Reed City Looks To Raise Legal Vaping Age To 21

It’s a market growing by the day and a trend many don’t understand but we are starting to learn more about vaping.

A new study from the journal JAMA Pediatrics says 1 in 11 middle and high school students have used e-cigarettes or vape pen devices for marijuana.

Federal law says you must be 18 to buy e-cigarettes with or without nicotine and marijuana is even more highly regulated, but some communities are looking to push the regulations even further.

“When we talk about youth in the community that’s where this is targeted,” says Reed City Manager Ron Howell.

Reed City officials are currently working on an ordinance to change the legal age to buy e-cigarettes, or vape pens, to 21, in order to make it even harder for teens to use and avoid possible use for marijuana.

“If a student says ‘well I’m not using tobacco, there’s nothing in here,’ how do you verify that?” says Howell, “How do you test and how do you control?”

You can vape without nicotine, then you are just ingesting sugar and the flavor. But it’s hard to tell if it’s just vapor or something else, when dealing with teens.

“We just don’t know what is being introduced,” Howell says, “Is it tobacco? Is it marijuana? Is it something else?”

“Sometimes nicotine juice does have a little darker color but other than that, from an outside perspective, you’re not going to be able to tell,” says Eli Lloyd, manager of Burning Scent-sations in Big Rapids, “Only the person inhaling it can.”

Of course, shops specializing in vape equipment want to be careful with these rules. Burning Scent-sations says vape is about 75% of their sales.

“The biggest vape market is between 18 and 21-years-old,” says Lloyd, “When you attack a market like that, you’re also affecting people’s jobs.”

Things are sure to get even murkier come Election Day and a potential acceptance of recreational marijuana from voters.

“We’ll probably put something in place that the chief has something now but as this evolves and changes, we’re going to have to adjust,” says Howell.

As with anything new and trendy, the rules are always trying to catch up. When dealing with the safety of kids, nothing will come easy.

“As our parents said, ‘A kid’s going to do what a kid wants to do.’ but we can do our best to prevent that from happening,” says Lloyd.