Daphne officials moved in June 2014 to consider restricting the use of electronic cigarettes inside some of the city’s public buildings, responding to a series of complaints from residents who encountered the devices at municipal venues such as the civic center.
The city’s ordinance committee began reviewing proposed changes to Daphne’s 2008 smoking ordinance, a step that placed the Eastern Shore community alongside a growing number of Baldwin County municipalities weighing how to treat the increasingly popular devices.
Part of a broader Baldwin County trend
The Daphne review came as the question of vaping in public spaces became a recurring theme across the county. The Foley City Council had approved a far more sweeping measure that Monday, banning e-cigarettes and similar devices in all public facilities and workplaces. In Orange Beach, a comparable prohibition was under consideration, though officials there postponed a vote until later in the year.
For Daphne, the discussion was narrower. Council President Randy Fry said any ban would be limited to indoor city facilities, such as the civic center, where the city had fielded complaints during events.
What the devices are
The majority of the targeted products use a battery to heat a nicotine-infused liquid, usually flavored, producing a vapor that is inhaled. Their rapid rise in popularity had outpaced local rules written years earlier, when the devices were far less common on the Eastern Shore.
A shifting regulatory backdrop
The local debate unfolded against a changing national and state picture. The Food and Drug Administration had announced plans to begin regulating e-cigarettes and similar products as tobacco for the first time. The year before, the Alabama Legislature had enacted a law prohibiting the sale of e-cigarettes and other alternative smoking devices to anyone under the age of 19.
Those developments gave city leaders reason to revisit an ordinance that predated the devices entirely. Fry told colleagues during Monday’s meeting that the proposed changes were still being reviewed by counsel and were not yet ready to be brought before the full council.
Mayor pushes for a broader policy
After the meeting, Mayor Dane Haygood said he was concerned that the proposal, as drafted, was not comprehensive enough because it would not extend to outdoor parks, where residents had also raised questions about the devices.
"Some of those could be addressed in our park rules and some other ways, but we have incidents at our library and at our civic center," Haygood said. "So we’ve got to establish what the policy is across the board."
For the moment, the matter remained with the ordinance committee, with officials signaling that a citywide standard, rather than a piecemeal set of rules, was the goal as Daphne worked to catch its regulations up to a fast-changing product.