State Senator Julie Morrison has been striving to put an end to tobacco use by teens since entering the General Assembly. In 2019, she passed a law that increased the state’s tobacco age limit to 21. And after carrying out extensive work to combat smoking, she has turned her attention to vapes.

The state’s existing Smoke Free Illinois Act has prohibited smoking in public and within 15 feet of entrances since 2007. However, when this law took effect most people used combustible tobacco, and now Morrison would like to extend it to vaping via Senate Bill 1561. Last year she also set in place a measure that restricts marketing of vaping productsso that it does not appeal to minors.

Meanwhile in 2022, Senate Bill 3854 was introduced to ban flavoured products including THC vaping devices, heat-not-burn systems and chewing tobacco products. In response to this bill and in line with arguments by tobacco harm reduction experts, Elizabeth Hicks from the U.S. Affairs analyst with the Consumer Choice Center, said that enacting a flavour ban for vaping products, will just lead former smokers back to smoking.

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