This meeting is being recorded and summarized.

Good morning, everyone.

It's still right.

I'm uh Gul Williams Johnson, Chair of the Board of Legislators Committee on Health.

Today is May 13th.

I will take attendance to officially start.

Mark and myself is here, committee by Chair Barra here.

Legislative Mamor.

Legislative here.

Morning.

Let's say Ullah.

And Chairman Gosh.

We are officially starting at 11.05 AM.

Um we are grateful to have our commissioner of our Department of Health, Dr.

Sharita Amler with us this morning, as well as Susan Garcillo, who is the assistant commissioner for regulatory affairs and compliance of the Department of Health.

Please join us at the table.

As they come forth, we have two pieces of proposed legislation on this morning's agenda.

But before we get to that, I would like to um entertain a motion to pass two sets of minutes from April 29th and May 6th of this.

So all in favor of those minutes.

And um accompanying that is a public hearing.

And then the second piece of proposed legislation is um a local law to amend the chapter 535 of the county's local laws to establish a reputable rebuttable sorry presumption in regards to the possession of nicotine vapor products in the county of Westchester.

And what does that mean?

Uh it means that uh retailers who are um selling flavored vaping products and have them not selling retailers who have flavored vape products on their premises are inspectors would be able to um cite them and they would have to prove because the only legal way they should have them on the premises is if they're for uh currently for uh internet sales.

So this was to um establish a law to make uh them uh uh indicate uh and uh be able to rebut the presumption that they are and proved that they are for internet sales.

Leading up to this meeting, uh Dr.

Amler and I as well, what's Bob's name and Dr.

Amor?

Robert Bellot.

Robert Bellock and I have had discussions about this, and um we're thinking that um not we're thinking, but Dr.

Amler and Bob proposed that a permitte uh establishing a required permit for retailers to sell uh tobacco products might be the best way to go.

Bob explained and Susan jump in whenever you want, and that's all about them, that um the storage issue isn't so much a problem uh any longer since he's been um uh performed orderly inspection school.

So we do a two program which base a lot of us have the migrants to go in and try to buy products and tobacco baby products from uh vendors.

And um, so you know, on the first bill, Bob said that they've done around, he's done around four or five inspections, he told me, and he hasn't really seen camouflage baby products.

He said, unless they're so camouflaged that he that he can't find it, but he said that he's really that's not something that he's really seeing.

products and tobacco baby products from uh vendors and um so you know on the first bill bob said that they've done around he's done around four hundred inspections he told me and he hasn't really seen camouflage vaping products he said unless they're so camouflage that he that he can't find it but he said that he's really that's not something that he's really seeing but mostly we you know we take we have the miners go in and they try to make a purchase and if they make a purchase of a product that miners cannot legally purchase then our our inspectors then are there to site the facility and I think one of the problems that we have is then um we take the we would bring the image of our our judge and it goes through a hearing process and Susan probably talk about that uh more um susan do you want to chime in um so we discover that um more often than not occasion um the attorney for the um bookshop they're often our attorneys because we're talking about very large fines they will enter into a stipulation with us um and they agree to a negotiated fine which is still substantial although their fines can be couple over a hundred thousand dollars and uh we have difficulty collecting we don't have any leverage and yes yes and that's our um camouflage tobacco uh let's proposed legislation I should say that this idea came from our county executive and um stemmed from his summer interns from summer interns of last summer and I've I have spoken with um power to get um against tobacco and the American Long Association and they too did don't see that it's so much of a problem but um uh I don't it's no harm in pushing this and I know that there are you know like uh USB ports they look like a USB port but it's actually a big let's say question I I know that these are are sold uh likely on the internet I don't know how easy they are to find in stores um what impact if any would our law have internet on internet sales I don't think it would because um the state allows that as part of our the state is entertaining I think in committee some legislation to make it illegal to have what we consider to be illegal products which are these flavored rapes on premises of retail establishments or on premises of wholesale entities one of the problems we went into is that we'll go we'll go into a into a store but the law says that these products have to be for sale or somewhat in the stream of commerce so we have to get them to expose the product for sale if the product they can have literally thousands of these things in storage and if and we have no access to that storage today that stored material is considered to be or the defense would be that they were meant for online sales and not meant to be sold to New York residents.

And when we have had opportunities to get them to open up a cabinet club will ask for it of labor and they'll go into a cabinet and open the cabinet now once they do that and they pick one out which is now for sale to us the entire cabinet is open for sale to us and we haven't we have an ability to sanction them for that.

So anything that's visible to us or make visible to us is something we can rehouse it in anything that's in storage state legislation is doing is it's saying if you're storing it anywhere on the premises of retail they would like to make that illegal which would then we'd have to give us the power to be able to go into a store and be able to search the entire piece and search search the storage room look around and then we would be able to identify many many more product to date we don't have the department of health does not have the power to confiscate for embargo it would be interesting if we were able to call police to do that if you think and now I'm not I'm not speaking you know from legal the legal implications but send that to the law department um but hundreds of thousands of dollars of inventory could be confiscated which would create a disincentive right if this were possible so I guess my follow up question that that is a state law a potenti a potential state law so would that if we have the law on the books against camouflage of eight and the state law comes to play comes into play

We'll send that to the law department.

Um hundreds of thousands of dollars of inventory could be confiscated, which would create a disincentive, right?

If this were possible.

So I guess my follow-up question that that is a state law, a potential potential state law.

So would that if we have the law on the books against camouflage of eight and the state law comes to play comes into play?

Does that mean then that local stock stores that are stocking campus bake products for sale on the internet?

Those items too could then be well, they would have to store them if they were going to sell the internet.

Right, no, I understand.

I'm just saying, yeah, if we found them off site, right?

Uh on site, right?

If they were scored, um, even if they were not on the shelves to be sold here, because obviously we know they're being sold on the internet.

Um so those would also be open season, so to speak.

If the state law passes if the state law passes, yes, absolutely.

Isn't there a state law also that's legalized some of the vape products?

So this is also interesting.

I don't know that there's state law.

I know the federal government, as you know, the FDA is moving quickly towards uh authorizing use that we're authorizing the sale of flavored vapes to adults 21 or over.

I don't know if they're gonna pilot that with certain flavors, and there's a lot of intricacies that I'm not I don't know anything about now.

Our state public health law says that all flavored vapes are illegal except those that have FDA market approval.

So if the FDA creates an exemption, we will not be able to execute public health out.

But we have, but we have that.

I imagine because otherwise the law would have been because we're preempted by federal law, and we can't say we're not going to be preempted by federal public preempted from saying we're not going to be preempted by federal law.

So I'm sure it's in there for exactly this purpose, which if we tried to take, you know.