Assembly Panel OKs Bill Easing Access to Cigarette Machines

A bill to make cigarette vending machines more accessible won approval in its first Assembly committee Monday, while a resolution urging Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren to sue the tobacco industry died in a committee headed by Speaker Curt Pringle.

The actions Monday represent victories for the tobacco industry, which in recent years has mostly suffered defeats in the Legislature.

The bill by Assemblyman Brett Granlund (R-Yucaipa) was approved 10 to 0 in the Assembly Governmental Organization Committee, over objections of anti-smoking advocates who said children would be able to buy cigarettes more easily if vending machines were placed in restaurants and retail outlets.

Eight Republicans, one Democrat and one Reform Party member voted for the bill. Three other Democrats were absent.

Granlund insisted that the bill was not being pushed on behalf of the tobacco industry but rather was being backed by vending machine operators and some supermarket chains that want to install vending machines to guard against cigarette theft.

“It’s not about tobacco,” Granlund said. “It’s about free enterprise, a convenience for adults who smoke and a security measure for retailers.”

But Paul Knepprath of the American Lung Assn. of California said the bill “takes us in the wrong direction,” would make it easier for children to obtain cigarettes, and is a “reversal of a policy of pursuing a smoke-free environment.”

California law now limits cigarette vending machines to bars. Granlund’s bill would permit machines in restaurants, grocery stores, and factories where minors don’t have access. The bill would require machines in restaurants or stores to have locking devices to help ensure that minors could not buy cigarettes.

Granlund called opponents of the measure “nothing but prohibitionists using kids as an excuse” to ban smoking completely. The Assembly Rules Committee, meanwhile, voted down a resolution by Assemblyman John Burton (D-San Francisco) urging Lungren to sue the tobacco industry to recoup state funds spent on caring for people with tobacco-related illnesses.

Burton’s resolution received votes from five Democrats on the Rules Committee, but needed seven to win passage. Speaker Pringle, who heads the committee, voted against it, as did two other Republicans. Four other Republicans did not vote.