LOS ANGELES: San Francisco on Tuesday became the first major US city to effectively ban the sale and manufacture of electronic cigarettes.
The city’s legislature unanimously approved an ordinance which backers said was necessary due to the “significant public health consequences” of a “dramatic surge” in vaping among youths.
The ordinance says e-cigarette products sold in shops or online in San Francisco would need approval by federal health authorities, which none currently has.
US health authorities are alarmed by the rise in popularity of e-cigarettes, battery-powered devices which enable users to inhale nicotine liquids that are often fruit flavored.
The number of young Americans using e-cigarettes grew by 1.5 million in 2018, with about 3.6 million middle and high school students using vaping products.
San Francisco is home to market-leading e-cigarette maker Juul.
The city’s mayor London Breed has 10 days to sign the legislation, which she has said she will do.
“We need to take action to protect the health of San Francisco’s youth and prevent the next generation of San Franciscans from becoming addicted to these products,” Breed said in a statement Tuesday ahead of the vote.
She added that e-cigarette companies were “targeting our kids in their advertising and getting them hooked on addictive nicotine products.”
But critics say the legislation will make it harder for people seeking alternatives to regular cigarettes. E-cigarettes do not contain the cancer-causing products found in tobacco.
An editorial in the Los Angeles Times noted that regular cigarettes were still for sale in San Francisco, arguing that “it’s bad public health policy to come down harder on the lesser of two tobacco evils.”
Juul said in a statement Monday that a ban would “not effectively address underage use and will leave cigarettes on shelves as the only choice for adult smokers.”
Concern is growing about the potential health consequences of vaping, which remain largely unknown in part because the practice is so new.
Experts point out that it took decades to determine that smoking tobacco — which accounts for more than seven million premature deaths worldwide every year — is truly dangerous.
Beside the well-known addictive consequences of consuming nicotine, public health experts are focusing on the effect of heating the liquid nicotine cartridges to high temperatures.
The San Francisco ordinance text said that nicotine exposure during adolescence “can harm the developing brain” and “can also increase risk for future addiction to other drugs.”
Unlike an e-cigarette ban in force in Singapore, the San Francisco legislation does not restrict the use of vaping products.
Recreational cannabis use has been legal in California for people over the age of 21 since January 1, 2018.
San Francisco becomes first major US city to ban e-cigarette sales
San Francisco becomes first major US city to ban e-cigarette sales
- Since 2014, e-cigarettes have been the most commonly used tobacco product among young people in the country
Book Review: ‘Padma’s All American’ Cookbook
- For her, the true story of American food proves that immigration is not an outside influence but the foundation of the country’s culinary identity
Closing out 2025 is “Padma’s All American: Tales, Travels, and Recipes from Taste the Nation and Beyond: A Cookbook,” a reminder that in these polarizing times within a seemingly un-united US, breaking bread really might be our only human connection left. Each page serves as a heaping — and healing — helping of hope.
“The book you have before you is a personal one, a record of my last seven years of eating, traveling and exploring. Much of this time was spent in cities and towns all over America, eating my way through our country as I filmed the shows ‘Top Chef’ and ‘Taste the Nation’,” the introduction states.
“Top Chef,” the Emmy, James Beard and Critics Choice Award-winning series, which began in 2006, is what really got Padma Lakshmi on the food map.
“Taste the Nation,” of course, is “a show for immigrants to tell their own stories, as they saw fit, and its success owes everything to the people who invited us into their communities, their homes, and their lives,” she writes.
Working with producer David Shadrack Smith, she began developing a television series that explored American immigration through cuisine, revealing how deeply immigrant food traditions shaped what people considered American today.
She was the consistent face and voice of reason — curious and encouraging to those she encountered.
Lakshmi notes that Americans now buy more salsa and sriracha than ketchup, and dishes like pad Thai, sushi, bubble tea, burritos and bagels are as American as apple pie — which, ironically, contains no ingredients indigenous to North America. Even the apples in the apple pie came from immigrants.
For her, the true story of American food proves that immigration is not an outside influence but the foundation of the country’s culinary identity.
“If I think about what’s really American … it’s the Appalachian ramp salt that I now sprinkle on top of my Indian plum chaat,” she writes.
In this book Lakshmi tells the tale of how her mother arrived in the US as an immigrant from India in 1972 to seek “a better life.”
Her mother, a nurse in New York, worked for two years before Lakshmi was brought to the US from India. At 4 years old, Lakshmi journeyed alone on the 19-hour flight.
America became home.
Now, with visibility as a model and with a noticeable scar on her arm (following a horrific car accident), she is using her platform for good once again.
Lakshmi is merging her immigrant advocacy with her long career in food media.
The photo of her on the cover, joined by a large American flag, is loud, proud and intentional.
The book contains pages dedicated to ingredients and their uses, actual recipes and, most deliciously, the stories of how those cooks came to be.
