On September 9, 2020, the City of Chicago passed an ordinance prohibiting the sale of flavored liquid nicotine products. The City has wasted no time enforcing the ordinance. At the end of January 2021, the City of Chicago filed a complaint against an e-cigarette seller for selling flavored liquid nicotine products to underage Chicagoans. Although the city has filed lawsuits against vape companies before, this suit is the first to enforce the recently passed ban…

Last year, voters in Montana, Arizona, New Jersey, South Dakota and Mississippi approved ballot measures to legalize marijuana in their states. It appears Virginia will continue this state legalization trend in 2021. In a historic vote last Friday, February 5, 2021, the Virginia General Assembly passed two bills (one in the House and one in the Senate) that would legalize the recreational use of marijuana in the Commonwealth. There are some key differences in the…

Earlier this month, the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) provided public notice that it plans to amend regulations governing Proposition 65 (Prop 65) short-form warning labels. OEHHA offered to hold a public hearing, upon request, which would need to be received by February 22, 2021 and it requested public comments on the proposed amendments by March 8, 2021. While these changes only apply to products sold in California, many companies take a…

The Biden administration and Democratic majorities in both the Senate and House could implement significant changes to federal tobacco and cannabis policy over the next two years. For tobacco, the change in party control of the White House and Senate will likely revive the debate around electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) products. For cannabis, the policy may shift toward outright reform (such as federal decriminalization or legalization), federal taxation, or the enactment of legislation beneficial…

On December 22, 2020, we blogged about the omnibus 2021 Consolidated Appropriations Act passed by Congress, which included legislation extending the applicability of the Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking (“PACT”) Act to electronic nicotine delivery systems or “ENDS.”  The legislation, called the ‘‘Preventing Online Sales of E-Cigarettes to Children Act,’’ sweeps ENDS into the PACT Act by amending the PACT Act’s definition of a cigarette to include electronic nicotine delivery systems, thereby subjecting remote sales of…

On Wednesday, December 23, 2020, the Washington State Attorney General’s office issued a press release that Smoker’s Outlet Online, a Pennsylvania online tobacco retailer, would be forced to pay $65,885 for allegedly distributing tobacco products into Washington state. The payment by Smoker’s Outlet Online was a settlement to avoid a lawsuit from the Attorney General’s Office. The press release states:  “Washington state law prohibits corporations from selling tobacco products by mail or internet to Washingtonians unless…