Menthol E-Cigarettes Will Be Banned In NY, Cuomo Says

NEW YORK — Vapers' options are evaporating. New York will soon ban menthol e-cigarettes amid growing health concerns about the products, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Thursday, just a week after the state banned other flavors.

Dr. Howard Zucker, the state health commissioner, "confidently" recommended the move Thursday, saying mentol e-cigarettes have hooked an alarming number of teens but have not been proven to help people quit smoking.

Cuomo accepted the recommendation and ordered Zucker to implement it by calling an emergency meeting of the Public Health and Health Planning Council, the obscure state board that just banned other flavors of e-cigarettes on Sept. 17.

"We can't sit back and wait for the federal government to take action while a whole new generation becomes addicted to nicotine, and this ban on the sale of menthol flavors further enhances our efforts to protect young people from forming dangerous lifelong habits," the Democratic governor said in a statement.

City and state officials have raised concerns about the health risks of vaping as it has apparently sickened a growing number of New Yorkers, even though the links between those illnesses and commercial e-cigarettes are not definitive.

As of Tuesday, some 93 people across the state — including 21 in New York City — had come down with severe lung illnesses after using a marijuana vape product, according to the state Department of Health. State health officials have tied the cases to vitamin E acetate, a substance found in black-market cannabis vapes but not nicotine e-cigarettes.

Nevertheless, e-cigarettes are highly addictive and contain toxic substances that pose major health risks, Zucker wrote in his Thursday recommendation.

Menthol flavors have convinced a growing number of kids to use the dangerous devices, Zucker argues. Some 34.1 percent of teens surveyed this spring said menthol or mint was their preferred flavor, and 47.8 percent said they thought menthol was less harmful than tobacco flavor, he wrote.

"Including menthol in the emergency regulation will send a strong message that menthol flavored e-cigarettes are anything but safe or acceptable for use by anyone in our state," Zucker wrote.

Vaping industry advocates slammed the state last week for banning other flavors, arguing the measure — which takes effect Oct. 4 — would force many people to go back to regular cigarettes.

"There is blood on the hands of the unelected bureaucrats who fiddled with their phones while members of the public explained how this ban would cause disastrous public health consequences," Gregory Conley, the president of the American Vaping Association, said in a statement last week.