Latest News On Tobacco

Latest California Healthline Stories

New Tobacco Tax Bill Touches All Bases

A new bill introduced in the California Legislature yesterday proposes a new tax on cigarettes and electronic cigarettes to raise money for a variety of purposes including solving the managed care tax conundrum, funding regional centers and boosting some Medi-Cal provider rates.

Another Tobacco Bill Off to Governor

Major league baseball players will have to give up the chaw — at least while they’re playing games in California — if the governor signs a ban on smokeless tobacco passed yesterday by the California Legislature.

Tobacco Bills Headed for Senate Floor

A half dozen tobacco bills — including legislation to regulate electronic cigarettes and raise the legal smoking age to 21 — passed the state Senate appropriations committee and are headed for a floor vote.

What’s Behind the Committee Door?

In the scrum of Sacramento politics and influence, some controversial bills are buried into the ground at the committee level. But recently, in a neat political power play, a few given-up-for-dead anti-tobacco bills pulled a little end-around.

Special Session Allows an End-Around; Tobacco Bills Avoid G.O. Committee

In an unusual move, legislative leaders moved tobacco regulation proposals to the California Legislature’s special session on health, circumventing the Assembly Committee on Governmental Organization that had scuttled two of them.

Legislation To Regulate E-Cigarettes Is Facing Stiff Resistance in California

Stefan Didak of the Smoke Free Alternatives Trade Association, Tim Gibbs of the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, UC-San Francisco professor Stanton Glantz, state Sen. Mark Leno and Zach Shpizner, a vape shop worker in San Mateo, spoke with California Healthline about proposed legislation to regulate electronic cigarettes as a tobacco product and ban vaping in public places.