Preventing Online Sales of E-Cigarettes to Children Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on H.R. 3942, the Preventing Online Sales of E-Cigarettes to Children Act. As the Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Food and Drug Administration's regulation of tobacco products, I ardently support efforts to protect America's youth from a life of tobacco use, nicotine addiction, and its negative consequences.

It is an unfortunate reality that nearly all tobacco use begins during youth and young adulthood. Research shows that 95 percent of adult smokers begin smoking before age 21 and 80 percent start before age 18. This is alarming to me, and should be alarming to everyone, because this is a crucial period for brain development. More worrisome is the fact that adolescent brains are more sensitive to nicotine, therefore young people may be more likely to develop a dependence on nicotine than adults.

In recent years, online sales for e-cigarette products, including flavored e-cigarette products that are appealing to kids, are putting a new generation at risk of a lifetime of chronic health conditions and disease associated with nicotine addiction. Further, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that e-cigarette products can contain other harmful substances besides nicotine. Other than a few clicks of the mouse, we have few meaningful barriers to stop young Americans from purchasing these tobacco products online.

That is why I support efforts to stop the flow of online tobacco sales. And while H.R. 3942 would require online age verification for the purchase and delivery of certain tobacco products, among other things, I believe this bill does not go far enough. If our aim is to prevent youth from purchasing these products online, then I firmly believe we should enact a complete ban against remote retail sales of all tobacco products, including e-cigarettes and e-cigarette accessories. This would mean that individuals wishing to purchase tobacco products would have to do so in a face to face setting, providing a stronger barrier to youth purchase.

We should not focus alone on online sales though if our goal is to help reduce youth access and attraction to tobacco. I also believe we should take the following additional steps; raising the purchasing age to 21, enacting an across the board ban on all flavored tobacco products, including mint and menthol, and restricting the ability of tobacco and e-cigarette manufacturers to utilize deceptive marketing tactics to hook a new generation. That is why, this fall, I intend to move legislation I have authored--H.R. 2339, the Reversing the Youth Tobacco Epidemic of 2019--that contains these provisions among others. Taken together I believe these provisions would be the most meaningful step forward in working to reverse the damaging youth tobacco epidemic that is underway.

We are in a complicated epidemic of youth e-cigarette use, and this complex problem calls for a comprehensive, multifaceted solution. I thank my colleagues for offering up tools to fix the abundance of youth tobacco use, but believe we must take every step possible, including prohibiting all non-face-to-face sales in order to address this public health crisis.

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