How and where e-cigarettes are sold, parents alarmed, Chicago considers new restrictions – Chicago Tribune
Kim McAuliffe was looking out the window of her favorite restaurant on the Far Northwest Side when she noticed an unfamiliar banner reading: “Chickens N Kicks.”
The canvas, which hung above the storefront on Northwest Highway in Edison Park, was decorated with an illustration of a hookah instrument wrapped around a pair of red and white Nike trainers, with puffs of smoke in the background. The bulleted list advertised the sale of shoes, vapes and more. Inside were rows of designer shoes, a mural of Chicago Bulls superstar Michael Jordan, and sparkling glass bongs sitting on the counter.
“My kid was saying he wanted to go to the store to look at a pair of Yeezys,” McAuliffe said in an interview that came before Adidas broke with Kanye West and his once-coveted shoe line over his anti-Semitic comments. .
“Fundamentally, I do not support or believe that businesses should be allowed to sell dangerous, addictive and life-threatening products to children by enticing them with high-end, very hard-to-find designer fashions and trainers.”
McAuliffe later initiated an online petition against the business that appeared to be closed to the public during a recent visit and whose owner could not be reached for comment. McAuliffe said she and her neighbors are fed up with what they see as an unfettered encroachment on smoke shops in their close-knit community.
That’s why she supports the proposed 41st Ward Ald. Anthony Napolitano gives the City Council the authority to impose a moratorium in certain areas on future tobacco retail licenses, which are required in Chicago to sell cigarettes, vapes and other smoke products.
“As legislators, we should probably write something to protect communities from every other storefront being a tobacco store or a vape shop,” Napolitano said. “The way vaping is affecting our kids right now, I’m getting calls from every school in my ward that vaping is out of control.”
If passed, the ordinance would be the latest move by Chicago government to crack down on e-cigarettes, which have recently been targeted by a broad coalition of aldermen and Mayor Laurie Lightfoot. Advocates of vaping restrictions say the products have caused a public health crisis among teenagers as they go through the pen-shaped devices at breakneck speed.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as of 2014, e-cigarettes are the most common tobacco products among middle and high school students, with a particular preference for the flavored variety. A study released in October by the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, based on a large-scale survey of youth, found that 14% of high school students and more than 3% of middle schoolers reported using vaping in the past 30 days.
But according to those who work in vape shops, their products have helped many adults quit traditional cigarettes, and existing restrictions have not been able to keep electronic cigarettes away from children. Owners who spoke to the Tribune said they oppose the potential new law, arguing it would further hurt small businesses without doing any harm to prevent youth addiction.
Since Lightfoot took office, the Lightfoot administration has sued vaping manufacturers and retailers in numerous lawsuits, accusing them of misleading advertising to young people and selling to minors. She said she is working with Napolitano on a final version of the moratorium ordinance that would give communities that don’t want stores an option.
“There’s a lot of concern among a number of aldermen across the city about the sale of tobacco, the sale of so-called ‘loos’ (cigarettes that are sold individually) and obviously vaping,” Lightfoot said. “I think we are all united in our concern about the high dependence on vaping, especially when it comes to our young people.”
The impact of Chicago’s ban on all flavored vapes in 2020 was evident at Lucky Smoke Shop on Chicago’s Northwest Side. Since then, countless e-cigarette users have crossed the city line a few blocks north in search of sweeter-tasting vape products, said the manager, who identified herself as Nicole.
“It’s just rotting on the shelf,” Nicole said of the small pile of disposable tobacco vape pens that remains. “The money went down. But guess what? We went to the outskirts, so it had no effect on the consumer.”
Illinois prohibits the sale of tobacco and e-cigarettes to anyone under the age of 21, but Nicole said many teenagers have told her they often don’t get cards in suburbs that mostly don’t have flavored vaping bans. Elsewhere in the US, at least five states have passed laws banning the sale of flavored e-cigarettes, while the FDA has gradually tightened regulations on these manufacturers over the years.
Several smoke shop owners who spoke to the Tribune agreed that vaping among teenagers is a serious concern. But they argued that Chicago’s existing restrictions are cumbersome with little to show for it, and Napolitano’s ordinance would be no different.
Nabil Ismael said he started smoking cigarettes at the age of 15. Now, as the owner of Kazzaz Smoke Shop just outside the Park Ridge city limits, he drinks only nicotine and does not carry cigarettes in his shop. He doesn’t think it’s fair for the city to pass laws that essentially clamp down on all smokehouses, which he believes are a small group of bad actors selling to minors.
“I would say limiting licensing is going too far,” Ismail said. “The way I look at it, … if we’re going to crack down on smoke shops, there’s a lot of other things that we have to crack down on as well, including underage sales.”
Gregory Conley, director of legislative affairs for the American Vapor Manufacturers Association, suggested that vape products are already so regulated in Chicago that smoke shops are no longer relying on them for profit and have shifted to cannabis accessories and hemp-related products.
“Chicago’s vape-specific flavor ban and local excise tax have already pushed sales of vape products to unlicensed retailers,” Conley wrote in a statement. “Forcing people to go to the illegal market to find safer alternatives to cigarettes is absurd and dangerous, but that’s the decision Chicago made when it decided to politicize health care and oppose harm reduction.”
For Addison Park mother Elizabeth, who declined to use her last name for privacy reasons, a years-long nightmare began when she saw her son sneak into his closet before a family dinner at the start of his freshman year in high school. Confused, she walked in and saw him put the vape in the box.
Since then, her son’s progress in overcoming his nicotine addiction has come and gone, Elizabeth said. He’s off work now, but his mother said she finds it hard to relax and enjoy herself when she’s constantly preparing for her next coughing fit — an ominous sign he might be back to vaping.
“We just started high school and we’re dealing with it,” said Elizabeth, whose daughter also struggled with frequent eyelash application. “It felt like we had failed as parents. … It definitely put a wedge in our relationship for a long time. A lot of therapy, a lot of trust issues that still remain.’
Elizabeth described her children as sticklers for the rules, but the vaping craze that swept their peers proved irresistible. At one point, they both had to be checked out at the hospital because of severe headaches and stomach problems, she said.
Now, any vape shop she sees near her home looks like both “a big shiny rock” designed to lure kids in and “trash” at the same time, Elizabeth said. She supports Napolitano’s proposed ordinance and hopes her district will be the first to implement the moratorium.
“Teenagers think they’re invincible, so they don’t really understand,” she said.
It’s too early to know what the long-term effects of vaping will be, although vape clouds do lack the harmful tar of a traditional cigarette. However, liquid nicotine chemicals still can hurt the heart and other bodies, research shows. And in 2019, the U.S. saw a wave of hospitalizations for a respiratory illness that the CDC linked in part to contraband nicotine and cannabis-infused e-cigarettes.
For Edison Park parent Shay Boyle, the harm of teenage vaping is evident at Notre Dame College Prep, the Catholic school in Niles where he serves as president. He said he’s seen promising students expelled or stripped of their scholarships after sneaking in or selling groceries on campus.
Even sadder is the explanation of many: “I’m addicted to these things. I need to do it during school. I have to run to the bathroom and vape between classes,” Boyle is quoted as saying.
“It’s a level of addiction that some kids have,” Boyle said. “It’s so easy to do. You guys can do that and run them out the sleeve and nobody will be the wiser.”
Boyle said it’s important that Napolitano’s ordinance passes because he believes there is widespread opposition in his community to any additional vape shops. He argued that the mere presence of smoke-themed signs and fancy window displays normalizes the idea among children that tobacco products are not harmful.
“I think it would be a big win for the city of Chicago and a big win for our area,” Boyle said. “I’ve seen the damage these things do and I can’t sit back. …If we don’t do something now, there will be no end to this. There will be one on every corner.”
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