S.B. 210 Nicotine Amendments: transcript

Thank you. Oops. Apologies for making it get out of order and appreciation for being plugged back in. This is an intimidating room and committee. I'm just gonna go ahead and say that, um, here I am back to talk about nicotine related things, and I'm sure everyone is very excited about it, but I am grateful for the opportunity to be able to work on some of these pieces, um, that will make legislation we have worked on in the past better. The kind of nexus for this bill is some fixes that needed to be made related to original Senate Bill 61. Um, did we get the summaries? They're awesome. Okay, good. Excellent. Um, that, you know, we had, we had probably not thought enough about some of the search and seizure pieces, and then ultimately the courts agreed with that thought and took some pieces and said, these are not able to go forward. We tried to take those pieces out last year. Some interesting things ensued, and we were not able to take them out of the policy or out of the law, excuse me, the code. And so this year what I want to do is clean up those pieces, but I also want to put in some equity, um, around what I have gotten feedback in. And, and that is that when I first ran this bill, like I took some, I dunno if I'll call it strays, but I took some feedback that it seemed that it was very, um, tobacco or big tobacco friendly and, and very much anti e-cigarettes or vaporized products, which certainly had not been at all my intent. I had no nothing influencing me. There was no monetary or other reason for that. But since the focus had been on e-cigarette products, I can see why it came across that way. And so I wanted to do some leveling of the playing field, and I started thinking about, okay, well, you know, where can we make sure things are even, and level one of those areas was that it turns out that the licensing fee to tell sell tobacco products is only $30. I found that a little bit unnerving and that it tossed me $25 to license a single dog. If someone wants to license a whole dog boarding facility, it's $400 for 12 of them. And I only used that number because right at the time we were trying to draft all this, I was going through it and I thought, I can't, I really can't imagine that something that generates as much revenue as, as selling to tobacco or nicotine related products only has that much of a licensure fee. And it hasn't been increased. Oh, I'm drawing a blank and I'm sure someone who comes and talks, uh, could help me with when that was, but it has not been increased for years and years and years. Well, it turns out we also need to generate some revenue because something I wasn't aware of was that the illegal vape cartridges that were made illegal by, uh, S Bill 61 are about $5 a piece to dispose of. So when there are cartridges that are confiscated, we then have put our agencies in a space where they're gonna be negative in the dollars. And one of the reasons that we are increasing those fees is so that we can, as a state, pay for the disposition of those now illegal cartridges. Um, you can see on the bill summary where it, it lines up what those fee changes are. We also, you know, kind of realized that with this structure that we had set up and going in investigating confiscating being in, um, less than typical health department or health educator spaces, it probably made more sense for that to be something that was happening within like A-D-P-S-S-B-I space, not so much our local health people who really are health authorities, not law enforcement types. So the enforcement piece, as we are taking out the search and seizure parts will be transitioning more into the DPS space. There still is, uh, ability for DHHS to go in and inspect and, and do their piece. But as far as the confiscating, that sort of stuff, that will be more in our more typical law enforcement structures. And then finally, I had been asked by some of our folks that work in this space and have experienced, um, some situations that I think they would be better fit to describe when they come up to talk about this, um, what they thought was a, a needing of a leveling up of penalties associated with these, um, infra, or excuse me, with these violations. There's the word I'm looking for. I don't work in law enforcement, but these violations. So there will be essentially elevations from Class C to b, BS to a, all still staying within misdemeanors. And with that, that's pretty much the summary of this bill.

Thanks. Um, how, how does the $4,000 fine, um, for the unlawful sale of tobacco, electronic cigarette or nicotine product, you, you're proposing to increase that from two to 4,000. How does that compare to other fines that are outlined in the Utah code? You know, that's a fabulous question that I may have to phone a friend on. Well, Well maybe ask, let me ask the question a different way. Where did the $4,000 number come from? It, It was essentially as we were looking at a step up, it was, I think as we talked it out as a crew, and there were probably 14 or so of us different folks on there. That was where we arrived. I, I, you're right, I probably should have some frame of reference for what other fines are. Um, and I can certainly work on getting those two. And I mean, you're proposing to han enhanced penalties for almost every one of these, um, crimes. I'm wondering, um, what, what do other states do, and is there any data that shows that kicking something from a Class C to a Class B or a class B to a Class A has a deterrent effect? I think that's actually a really reasonable question. And, um, I would tell you that I know that making something illegal doesn't make it stop happening. And also something, making something more illegal doesn't necessarily make it stop happening more or less. Um, what the data is on that. Um, I would love to be enlightened if you have an idea. Well, I'm just, I mean, we, you know, we, there's been a concerted effort this session, I think, to just be methodical when we're increasing or enhancing crimes because, um, the legislature's kind of done that with Sure. Um, without a lot of strategy over the last, um, six or eight years. So I was just curious. All right. That's all I have, Mr. Mr. Chair. Thanks.

Well, and also on kind of a broader, um, explanation as, as a kind of a consortium of folks got together to talk about this, there were different ones amongst us who had different concerns for things that needed to be fixed in the code.

Oops. Senator Weiler, I mean, you, you said 14 people. I mean, did you have any, uh, criminal defense attorneys in your group? Or, or who, who, tell me about the, Let me think of, no, actually, you know what?

That's, I, I know that there were conversations had outside of the, like, those of us on the call, there was representation from law enforcement, from SBI, from health, from retailers, from boy. And you know how it all starts to get fuzzy on whether or not that it was run past,

You passed one step ahead of removing, uh, defense from the sentencing commission. Just, I, I'm just saying. I Hear you. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Or removing Dems Dems from other committees. I hear you. I, I, I never ran that bill.

Um, I got a question for you. Um, so in the enforcement piece, how do you envision this? So you're restricting, you're kind of pulling back 'cause the local health departments typically have been the ones going in and inspecting, enforcing, and so do, if a local health department is doing a regular inspection and they find something, do they now call, uh, law enforcement or how does this work?

That's how I would envision it. And I think some of my law enforcement colleagues that consider here or, uh, working on this can explain to you the, the situa situations and scenarios that they've gone in on, on these. Um, bust isn't the right word, but that's the only one that's coming to me. The things that they come up with, these are not safe situations. These are dangerous potentially situations. And I, I really wouldn't want to put those folks that are very much more used to health like investigations than criminal like investigations. And so I would envision them being able to do, um, reports and also to call the next level of enforcement, which to me would be more in a, in a law enforcement space.

M might it make sense for me to have one of the law enforcement folks join where the enforcement folks join me to able to where answer some of these we'll here first And then we, we can do that if we need to. Okay. Similar to, uh, Senator Weiler, um, usually we try to keep fees close to what it costs to regulate the program and manage the program. Mm-hmm. I'm trying to figure out is, is 250 mean that the program is going to be costing more to go from 30 to 250? Is that

It's those disposal charges? Um, if, if I, I can pull up my, um, fiscal note and if you can see it as well, it'll give you some decent ideas on what sort of amounts of money are being required to dispose of those cartridges, as well as being able to bring on an invest an additional investigator to specifically be more in this realm. But the, uh, on the fiscal note, sorry, I'm on the wrong number. I've got it here. If you've got it pulled up there, it's, um, it really is to be able to dispose of those products about $5 a piece. Um, and then also to be able to bring someone in to assist with that, uh, those processing. Right now, um, we were looking at about an additional 160,000 in, starting in 2027 for the full-time equivalent position. Um, and then 30,000 for support equipment, et cetera. But the, the burden of expecting our agencies to dispose of these was, I didn't realize that because of EEPA restrictions and requirements, $5 a cartridge is about what it's costing. That's from DEQ. Mm-hmm. And so that's why I'm looking at it because the fiscal note is still positive. So it still brings in more money than it costs to administer the program based on the fiscal note. So I'm just wondering if there's, you know, trying to keep our fines and, you know, fines and fees close to where, you know, the cost to administer it is. And I'm just, that's the part I'm just trying to sort through and it isn't really clear from the fiscal note how much is brought in from the licensing side of things. Um, I'm looking at, you know, state government just looking at the restricted account one time, the court fee account, the general fund part, and I'm trying to figure out which one is the licensing fee. 'cause I couldn't really tell from anyways, from the fiscal In terms of calculus. Yeah, I got you. So that's what I was just trying to figure out. If you got a positive fiscal note, what are we overcharging for? You know, and trying to figure out where people think we're overcharging. Right. I mean, $23,700 is not a lot, but, you know, just something else to consider. Still Over. Yeah, no, I agree. I understand for sure. And I'm, uh, I'm, I'm definitely willing and, uh, Just take a look at it To look, to talk to tax commission for the fee collection part as well as the folks doing the disposal and then our investigative types too.

Okay. Thanks. To figure out if there's room. That's All I had. Okay. Thank

Ahead. Well, I'll be very efficient. I'm just here to say I support the bill and ask you to vote in favor of, this was kind of left over from last year and like to see it finished up. So thank you.

Okay. Gail Zeki with Utah Eagle Forum.

Thank you. And good evening. My name's Tanner Jensen. I'm chief of Investigations for the Department of Public Safety. Um, we've worked closely with Senator Plumb on this bill and are appreciative of her efforts to, to help fix some of the problems that we're seeing in law enforcement today. Um, I, I work with our state Bureau of investigation. We have a nicotine enforcement team, and we are, um, coming across, uh, what we would perceive as criminal organizations that are, um, leveraging the leniency that we have in the state to, um, effectively deal with the issue of, of illegal sale of nicotine here. And so, essentially, uh, what we're seeing as, uh, organizations that are, um, putting up shop in our cities, and as we in, uh, go to enforce, uh, some of our regulations, uh, they'll, they'll close up shop, move to another area and open right back up, um, and continue, uh, businesses normal. And so we're trying to find ways to, uh, make sure that our laws, uh, incentivize or, uh, prohibit them from continuing these types of actions. Another issue that we're seeing is, as Senator Plumb indicated, it's costly for us to dispose of these, uh, vape cartridges. Uh, we're looking at $5 a vape cartridge right now. Department of Public Safety has over 50,000 of these and our evidence, and we're trying to find a, an appropriate way to get rid of these. And so, uh, this bill certainly looks to leverage some of those, uh, funds to help us with that. Thank you.

So we still get the inspections. We still get the enforcement. Yeah. I, I foresee us to continue to have good collaboration with the health department, um, in these efforts and the inspections. The one thing that, uh, Senator Plumb did mention is oftentimes these situations can be somewhat violent, um, and need a law enforcement interaction as we do search warrants and confiscate, uh, thousands of, uh, illegal products inside of these facilities. Uh, many times we've come across firearms and dangerous weapons. And so we foresee, uh, the need to have law enforcement, uh, in these operations, but working hand in hand in collaboration with some of our other state entities.

Hi, Brian Red, chief of Police, Salt Lake City Police Department. I'll just echo what Chief Jensen said, and we appreciate the support from the Department of Public Safety and their nicotine unit. But this is an ongoing problem. This isn't, uh, with most tobacco retailers, but there are some who are, are causing problems in their repeat offenses, and they take our youth into the back rooms. And, uh, th this is something that is negatively impacting our, our community in Salt Lake City. And we are, we're trying to reduce the access, uh, for, to these products for our youth. We appreciate the support.

Thank you. Senator Vickers. This is David Kyle Herring. I'm representing Drug Safe Utah, and we are here, uh, uh, supporting Senator Plumb and this legislation and appreciate the work of law enforcement and their, and, uh, that's pretty much it. Thank

Mr. Chair. Thank you. Steve Burton. Hello again. Um, as was mentioned by Senator Weiler and others, um, there are certain principles of deterrence, and the three main principles are the swiftness with which somebody encounters a penalty, the certainty. And then the last one that's not very effective is the severity. Um, so our main concern with penalty increases in a bill like this are that you might get a, a gas station clerk that, uh, you know, is making minimum wage, uh, maybe a, a teenager or, or somebody pretty young that, uh, provides tobacco to a minor and, uh, just isn't very careful, may not know what they're doing. And now they're facing higher criminal penalties that we don't see will be an effective deterrence. Our, uh, our request and our understanding is the supporters of the bill might be willing to kind of make an exemption for those folks that are just kind of working a front counter job and trying to do their best and they make some mistakes. So our hope is that, uh, if the bill goes forward, that we can continue working with the sponsor on that issue.

Yes, it was a date change that was requested by Council motion.

Yes, I, I make a motion that Senate Bill two 10 nicotine as first substitute nicotine amendments passed.

Aye. Senator

McKay? Aye.

Senator Musselman Ish. Oh, sorry. Senator Musselman. I'm gonna be a no, just so it's not unanimous, but I, I'll I could be convinced to change that vote when it gets to the floor if it does. I, I, I'm still turning wrap my mind around some of these, uh, increases in penalties, um, up to the Class A and just kind of across the board there. So on subsequent end, the possibility of making some changes as was requested earlier.

I'm gonna vote no for the reasons articulated by Senator Musselman

You, chair. Chair. And I'll follow up some further questions with answers to you all on email too. Thank you. I apologize I didn't ask anyone to chair while I was presenting.

And our committee had really good discussions about penalties that were happening. And, um, my, my colleague has I think, an improved substitute to suggest. So I'd like to, if you agree, get that adopted and then circle, uh, third sub Motion. But I, I think, Sorry about that. Motion to, I'll speak to it.

Thank you Mr. President Proti. I I do have a, the third sub is in my name. Um, okay. And, um, so I think this is a good bill. Uh, when I, when I looked at the bill, it, it just across the board increased every penalty. Like if it was a Class B, increased it to Class A, if it was a class A increased it to a felony. And so I, I talked to the good sponsor and, um, and talked to the sentencing commission. I talked to the police, uh, chief of police about this. And I do think, um, so this third sub, it, it, it, it keeps the bill intact, but it just doesn't have a cross the board, um, criminal penalty enhancement. And I, I understand the original intent of the bill was to equalize, um, um, teens using alcohol the same as teens using cigarettes. But, uh, I think there's a difference. I think a teen using alcohol that gets behind the car, even with one drop is, is guilty of a DUI and, and may kill somebody. Whereas a teen smoking is bad. But you don't have those same risks of, of, of danger. So after talking to the Salt Lake police chief, this third sub does, does enhance, uh, a, a lot fewer penalties, but, but really where, uh, the police chief feels like he needs them to, to be effective. And so with that explanation, I would move to delete first substitute Senate Bill two 10 and Thailand body. Replace it with third substitute Senate Bill two 10.

I, I appreciate the effort that went into making sure we were doing the right thing and, and I, I support this, uh, change as well.

Two years ago there was a court case and it was determined there was a piece that we needed to think more strongly about, about search and seizure. So this bill removes the authorities granted previously to local health departments related to the enforcement of the e-cigarette registry. So search and seizure. Essentially this will take out the pieces that were deemed unconstitutional by the courts. It also does increase tobacco licensing fees to allow that revenue generated to go toward the disposal of confiscated Allegra electronic cigarette products, uh, and increases the criminal penalty for just one of the offenses related to selling tobacco products and e-cigarette products to children. It is the only, the most egregious, which is what we had agreed upon. And that is the one that when we talked with Chief Red, he thought there would maybe be no more than 10 a year. I'm certainly open to any questions, uh, about the bill.

Thank you. Mr. President Pro tem sponsor yield. Of Course. Yes. Go ahead. Thank you. Just, uh, I see that, um, on, in the bail here it says that the, they shall distribute the funds deposited in, into the nicotine disposal account, um, for the enforcement. How are those funds being used currently?

Uh, so the funds are right now, if you can believe to get a tobacco license in this state is $30. And so the funds that are coming in are pretty minimal. Um, and it, it turns out it costs about $5 per cartridge for the flavored vape, uh, cartridges that have been determined to be illegal. So the fees going up are to basically cover that and that's where those, the fees will be generated. And then we'll go into that. I think that we've done it in a, in a relatively smart way, talking with the folks and that it will go to DPS and SBI, but there is a process by which more local entities could get a grant to dispose of their product if they would like to. Um, but this is, this is new revenue generated by those licensing fees.

Thank You. Thank you.

So you, you're gonna raise the fee on this and then use that money for disposal, is that my correct understanding?

Correct. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. President Prote. Just a follow up question of that, uh, for the sponsor with, will that money go to DEQ for the disposal or where does that go? And you, and you may have said this, and I'm, I'm sorry if you did,

So DEQ is actually who is doing the disposal right now, but the money will be going to DPS, uh, and that kind of DPS and SBI space, and they will then be paying DEQ for the disposals. That also leaves a path for if the, um, products are coming through our local health authorities, that there will be paths for it to get to the ultimate disposal and get it paid for.

Uh, with that, those great questions. Thank you. And I would call the question,

Senator Plumb.

Thank you Mr. President Pro Tem.

This bill has had a lot of stakeholder input and essentially helps us clean up some pieces from Senate Bill 61 a couple years ago to get our search and seizure parts cleaned up. It also increases licensure fees so that we can dispose of illegal vape cartridges that cost $5 a piece. Um, I appreciate all the folks who've put good work on this and, and would encourage us to move it forward.

Senator Millner, Thank you very much Mr. President Proto. Um, first thing I need to do is

Representative Burton Motion is circle.

Alright, thank you Ms. Speaker. Uh, this bill addresses some issues that have come to light in recent years. As we've discovered, uh, that disposal of confiscated electronic cigarette products is quite a costly endeavor. Um, this bill addresses enforcement activities related to these electronic cigarette products and shifts some of those enforcement responsibilities from the Department of Health to the Department of Public Safety. This increases the criminal penalty for unlawful sale of tobacco products. It also increases the Utah Tax Commission permit fees for tobacco and electronic cigarette retailers and for new licensing. Uh, and though this has a, uh, fiscal note, it's a belief that it will be budget neutral once these fees start coming in. That will help us, uh, with the disposal of these, uh, confiscated products. Um, and it, uh, also awards grants to state and local law enforcement agencies and local education agencies. Uh, for disposal of these confiscated, uh, electronic cigarette products. They require incineration. And with that, uh, I'm open to questions.

It's a good bill. Friend of mine said vote. Vote for it.