tobacco habit. the vendor who withdrew their appeal this evening they had voluntarily decided not to sale e-cigarette devices at all. dr.airagon who heard some of these cases has said that for those businesses that were going to make some effort that was tangible to make a lasting change about to prevent the sales to minors of these devices. >> my last question is that on the disciplinary side, regarding e-cigarette, does it affect his

regular cigarette and tobacco sales? >> yes. >> thank you very much. >> i think that was all the questions. did you have anything further? >> i do not. any further questions >> thank you. >> we'll take public comment on this item. sir, did you want to say something? you can step forward. >> good evening. nice to see you all. i just want to speak for this store. i worked for him 3.5 years. i'm no longer an employee. so i'm not biased. one thing about him they check i. i.d.s on boos and cigarettes. i seen it a thousand times. i used to work at a store where i handled the money. it would get really busy.

i'm human. it gets busy i've been in that store where you get 40 and 50 people in there. people throwing money and things are happening. that was not intentional. it was probably just a human error. come on people, we're all human. we make mistakes. that man would not sale cigarettes to a minor. i know it from my heart. it was just a slip. it was an error. e-cigarettes are so vague. i wouldn't know that. i smoke cigarettes myself. if e-cigarettes got nicotine in them. i don't know. let's take this into proportions here. it probably happened, i'm not saying it didn't happen. let's be rational. you will take a man's permit for 20 days for a human error that he probably wasn't fully aware

at the time. it's a mistake. i guarantee you it won't happen again. >> would you care to state your name sir? >> sir do you want to state your name for the record? >> clyde conrad. i'm sorry. i didn't put my card up there. >> next speaker please. >> good evening president lazarus and commissioners. i'm name is karen and i'm with breathe california. i'm here to urge you today to uphold the ruling of environmental health and maintain the suspension penalty for breaking the law. the coalition has work on supporting this ordinance to include the definition of e-cigarettes to the definition of tobacco products. we believe that e-cigarettes must be regulated and treated like regular cigarettes.

one of our primary authorities for the tobacco free coalition is to reduce use access to -- tobacco products. ;( s we don't want to sign precedence for this unfair business advantage. you know how young people are, we& purchase cigarettes and they're not going to check i.d.s. that becomes the place to go.

this is unfair business advantage that gets created at the same time. it thwarts our efforts to reduce smoking among minors. i urge you to uphold the suspension so retailers will take thi9df thank you very much for your consideration. >> thank you. >> next speaker please. >> hello my name is ted and i'm speaking as a member of the san francisco a back coe free coalition. lifetime smoking begins by the time kids graduate from high school. according to the cdc current e-cigarette use from middle and high school students tripled from 2013 to 2014. everyday several hundred kids who experienced with nicotine

become new and regular daily users. this because nicotine is a highly addicted drug. research on nicotine dependent shows key symptoms of addiction, such as strong urges for nicotine, anxiety can appear in young children within weeks or days after an occasional nicotine use. according to a report prepared for the european union by a group of distinguished scientists, tobacco has a substantially higher risk of causing addiction than heroin, cocaine, alcohol or cannabis. research shows that risk for tobacco related diseases is affected not just by how much people use but also how long they use tobacco products. those who use at an earlier age

are increased risk of2css÷ developing cancer. these younger users have been shown to be$á if current trends continue, 5. 5.6 million of the kids under 18 who are alive today will die from tobacco related causes. in conclusion, i would request that the board of appeals protect san francisco's children by fully enforcing health code article 19n which requires the sales of electronic cigarettes to follow all the requirements and penalties related to back coe sales -- tobacco sales. thank you. >> next speaker please. z1 >> good evening members of the board. my name is brian davis. i'm a member of the san francisco tobacco coalition. i'm concerned about the

electronic use of cigarettes in our city. advertising for e-cigarettes using the same playbook that had been used for traditional advertising traditional tobacco products for decades. symptoms comes up to freedom often associated with in case with the supposed freedom to use these devices in places where traditional smoking is prohibited. how much fun they would like young people to think ó7 these ads in-- use of

e-cigarettes tripled from 2013 to 2014 among middle and high school students in this country. they are more often used by kids than regular tobacco.p also, as a gay man, it angers me at least one e-cigarette company is targeting lgbt youth. that company hired a man that serves lgbt homeless youth and consulted withzc" organizations to serve youth. such as it gets better to sale e-cigarettes to queers.

we need to be sure that we do everything we can to keep e-cigarettes out of the youth. please take action to support that result. thank you. >> next speaker please. >> hello president lazarus andx%(@ commissioner. my name is christopher. i'm here as advocate for breathe california. i have a strong opinion on the sale of:up cigarettes to minors today. i was one of those minors at one point. at 16 years old, i started smoking cigarettes and tobacco products because it was easy to get and it was cool. in many ways cigarettes are a lot easier to get than alcohol

or other substances. many kids today believe that e-cigarettes are healthy alternatives to smoking traditional cigarettes. many of the products c harmful chemicals. i cannot reat -- reiterate enough the danger of smoking. researcherseh::4 smoking is much more difficult habit to quit than even other drugs such as heroin. i wish i would have known that back then. this all makes sense looking back because i couldn't stop thinking about when the next time i could smoke a cigarette. i don't wishpn the kids out there today. because when retail decided to sale the cigarettes. thank you.

>> next speaker please. tbég1 >> hello president and commissioners. i'm here today as an advocate from breathe california to urge you uphold the ruling of environmental health and keep the suspension as is. i like to share some statistics with you. the california healthy kid survey found that 30% of lgbt san francisco high school students have used e-cigarettes in their lifetime. compared to 17% of non-lgbt youth. youth are using e-cigarettes than traditional cigarettes alone. more lgbt youth smoke both electronic and traditional cigarettes than non-lgbt youth. because they've increased in popularity, strick schools responded by adding the definition of e-cigarettes to

the policy. if you don't hold retailers and countable to saling to minors then who will. thank you for your time. >> next speaker please. >> hello. my name is jacqueline. i'm also a member of the san francisco tobacco free coalition. our mission is to encourage voluntaryism and help build community. part of our job is to become advocates for the community and themselves for making healthy choices. i'm here to support holding tobacco retailers accountable for sales anyñnnnnf tobacco products to the minors under the age of 18. i remember when i was 16 i tried to buy a bunch of cigarettes from the local corner store with a bundle up cash.

here i am not trying to get kids hooked. you probably already heard from us that e-cigarettes are available in yummy flavors. as a future mother to my first child arrived in three months i am confident in our ability to raise our children in a healthy and supportive requirement. thank you. >> any other public comment? seeing none mr. taha you have three minutes rebuttal if you have anything more to add. >> first time i heard anything from the department was

march 12th. it was march 12th this year. the health inspector comes every six months. >> i got a question. you're sayingmíc prior notification regarding what's required for cigarettes? >> yes. >> how does that information -- regarding regular cigarettes, how is that information -- >> [inaudible] they need to update their license. >> thank you.

>> i'm manager of the regulatory program. i want to address a couple of points. first of all in your exhibit a, you have an example of the packet that was sent by the health department to every retail tobacco permit holder. that informed them of their responsibilities under 19n, which included information about the 5-year-old state law for e-cigarettes sales.

responsibilities were under the law. i also wanted to reiterate to you that the decision to suspend tobacco permit is fair and consistent within the context of enforcement for this law and for this particular type of tobacco product. other stores are complying with the law. my colleges provided me with detailed numbers for you. it's 19% of the stores visited in october and december of 2014. that was 15 sales out of 80 stores visited that sold e-cigarette device to minors during that decoy operation over three months. i also to mention to you that we do have san francisco police

department lieutenant and officer mattias are here in case you have questions about the decoy operation. they'd be happy to answer. i also wanted to address that i realized that the board maybe concerned about the long term economic effect of suspended tobacco sales for a small store. this store does not rely 100% on to back coe product sales. they also sale alcoholic beverages and snacks. it is a small store. we have researched this and found that of 35 businesses that serve suspensions in our research, not one had gone out of business. they all remained owners even after their suspension. thank you. >> that was a former commissioner who wanted to see if there was a correlation with the economic impact on the small

businesses. different line of questioning from me is -- two questions how did you arrive at the 20 days? not one you had before. you folks used to do 25 days. we haven't seen you quite a while so your program must be working. how did you establish the 20 day penalty. >> excellent question that we have put quite a bit of thought into. at the director's hearing i as manager of the program had recommended 25 days to be consistent with our decisions in other cases for the traditional tobacco products over the past year. the doctor reduced the suspension to 20 days because it's for the reason that it was

the first offense and he thought that was fair. >> the statistic that you made about the decoy operation over the three months last year 18 out of 80 to minor. have they appealed the decision? >> i believe a number. i don't have the exact break down. some accept the suspension. again, i don't have the number in terms of what you will see ultimately here. >> okay. >> i did want to comment. i was a little bit2%( n] confused by the appellant's statement that he made concerning the sequence

of events as far as the health department's outreach. that educational mailing went out in probably june or july of 2014 after passage of san francisco's law. the sale to thedg in october of 2014. so three to four months after he and his business partner received the educational mailer. >> i think he's saying something differently. he's saying that he should have received the direct notice or contact from you folks that e-cigarettes were part it. that's the way i read into it. >> obviously that will be impossible to go with the number

of tobacco retailers. >> certainly question. can you give me the numbers again regarding the decoy? percentage out of 100. >> sure. between octobere december 2014, 80 stores were visited. a sting operation was performed and 15 of those stores found to have sold e-cigs to minors. >> do you have your statistics for the same decoy regarding traditional tobacco? out ofe n.) 80 stores, what is the percentage of traditional tobacco sales being sold? >> i do not have that in terms of comparison. again. these are the exact same time frame. >> that's true. >> do you have any comment to

that? do you know what the statistics are? roughly on your decoy operations what is for traditional tobacco, what is the get caught rate? >> that, i am not. i don't know that number. i think that what will be important would be because the time frame october to december, we actually -- the decoy operation was specifically for e-cigarettes for the first time. they did not try to purchase regular tobacco products. >> i'm just trying to get a comparison. since it is the same program. i'm trying to figure out whether this is a compliance issue or notification issue. that's what i'm getting at. >> commissioners good evening. san francisco police department. very briefly and quickly, my background i am the original person within the police department thatmqtz created this

whole decoy program overfm( la decade ago. i ran it for over a decade. i was on a three year hiatus. some of your familiar faces when i was coming before you. what i can tell you commissioner honda specifically, i can't speak for the most recent months but historically traditional tobacco matched cigarettes averaged anywhere between 18 and 22 percent noncompliance. our best ever was down to 15%. i can tell you what drives that. the more decoy operations we do the better awareness we get and in the retail industry and compliance drops. when we got to our best, we were doing tobacco decoy on a weekly basis. we're currently not doing that. >> in short, recently, the tobacco get caught is still at 22% >> no, right now we're probably

hovering in the 19 to 20. it's similar to the e-cigarette. >> if i can clarify one other issue. there seems to be a talk about the five year law. 308a of the penal code has been on the books for decades. that has always been the books. this isn't really that new of an issue. the distribution issue with regards to e-cigarettes, they're all being distributed to the same tobacco director that sale tobacco. it's not like it's a different party. >> thank you. >> i just have one question. am i right that this is a strict liability statute? >> correct. it's criminal violation. yjpk/c

>> you say criminal but i'm talking about it doesn't matter intent? right? >> correct. >> i never did but i'm going to ask it anyway. you don't have to answerfjp%q this. [laughter] based on the legislationxmt'r÷ and you asw$( # clubs come under the legislation? as a retailer of a tobacco product? >> no. article 34 of the health code governs medical cannabis dispensaries and they don't -- they don't really meet.

i'm not sure how to answer your question. the actual use or smoking of cannabis you will find certain exceptions[o laws9n::?u for medical cannabis use. one example that comes to mind is there's a certain area outside a dispensary where it qualified patient can actually smoke medical cannabis. but that's the diagram of the two.rñjwñ >> any other questions? >> no other questions. matter submitted.

>> we just recently had the very good presentation of e-cigarettes and several more this evening. i don't know. i'm going to let my other commissioners start on this one. >> by the way i did look at the presentation that was made a few weeks ago on e-cigarettes online. i'm not prepared to argue and find what specific correlation of the penalty is. i'm prepared to accept the department's determination and not grant the appeal. >> care to make a motion? ç >> tobacco product is a tobacco product, it was stated. there's chewing tobacco and cigar and now we have e-cigarettes it's direct

parallel to the liquor industry where you have scotch, and you have sherry. they all have liquor in them and it's against the law to sale to under aged kids. the same issue goes with tobacco. it illegal. it doesn't matter. i'm having a hard time with the rationalization from the appellant where he went to a tobacco distributor and bought an e-cigarette that was there was a confusion of any kind. obviously i don't support this appeal. >> just a little bit of history, some of the many discussions that occurred here and they haven't occurred for a long time now was the correlation of the

degree of penalty. liquor, the first offense, you can pay a fine. most of the tobacco sellers who have been brought appeals here have no problem paying a fine. versus having their license suspended for any period of time. >> notification of that license suspension to be posted publicly. >> motion. >> i'll make it. moved to deny the appeal on the basis that the department imposed a proper penalty for the violation. >> thank you. >> there's a motion on the floor from the president who