Lobbyists Clash Over Proposed E-cigarette Restrictions in D.C.

The Washington Post reported last week that tobacco industry lobbyists and public health advocates battled it out in a D.C. Council committee chamber over whether the city should restrict electronic cigarettes from all of the same places that it bans those rolled with tobacco. In the absence of any federal guidelines on the increasingly popular devices, states and cities have scrambled to decide how to treat them. On Thursday, those for and against a bill to create “parity” with tobacco cigarettes, restricting them from all indoor areas, patios and bus stops, presented wildly different views of the battery-operated inhalers.