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<br />CACUQ ELECTRONIC CIGARETTE <br />FOCUSES ON ELECTRONIC CIGARETTE WHOLESALE. <br />Orange County Health Officials Punt on E- <br />cigarette Decision <br />3rd May 2016 cacuq Relative News 0 <br />Usually, just a handful of people show up to meetings of the Orange County Board of Health, if they show up <br />at all. But last week’s open meeting in Hillsborough on whether or not to include electronic cigarettes in the <br />county’s ban on tobacco in restaurants, bars and public buildings drew several dozen people and provided <br />emotional testimony both for and against the proposal. <br />The board heard, at times, emotional testimony from more than a dozen Orange County residents, along with a <br />presentation on an online survey and a review of the science around e-cigarettes. <br />In the end, county Health Director Colleen Bridger chose to hold off on a decision, citing the incomplete <br />science on e-cigarettes, until the U.S. Surgeon General publishes a long-awaited report sometime later this <br />year. <br />“I’d really like our government to come out and say something before putting my board out on a limb,” <br />Bridger said. <br />Bridger also cited her concern that in the wake of the General Assembly’s controversial decision to preempt a <br />Charlotte city ordinance on the use of bathrooms by transgender people, lawmakers in Raleigh might also <br />move to preempt her board if they moved to put e-cigarettes under the county’s bar and restaurant tobacco ban. <br />“I don’t think we do anything without worrying about the legislature coming in and preempting us,” she said. <br />It’s happened before <br />There’s precedent for legislative preemption of county smoking bans: That’s what happened in 1993, when <br />Democrats still held sway in Raleigh. <br />Several municipalities in the state, Asheville among them, had moved to ban smoking from restaurants and <br />bars. State legislators passed a law forbidding local governments from passing any smoking ordinances stricter <br />than state law. <br />That ban was only overturned in 2009. <br />More recently, the state has been roiled in controversy over HB2, passed during a special session in March of <br />this year. The law overturns a Charlotte city ordinance that would allow transgender people to use the