State Senate passes bill banning tobacco samples
OLYMPIA – The Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill Wednesday banning the distribution of free tobacco samples, something critics say routinely get into the hands of minors.
The bill, which has been a personal crusade of Sen. Bob Oke, R-Port Orchard, passed with a 38-9 vote that crossed party lines, with two lawmakers excused.
Senate Bill 5048 bans all distribution of free tobacco samples. Although such samples cannot legally be given to minors, thousands of cigarettes are routinely handed out at rock concerts and other events frequented by the young.
Sen. Pam Roach, R-Sumner, said she voted against the bill because “it is a legal product and we do live in this country where we have freedom of speech.”
“The issue here is one of constitutionality,” she said on the floor before the vote. “Every right, even though it might be to our disliking, is something worth protecting.”
Oke has been trying to get his bill into law for five years. It now goes to the House, where it has never made it to a floor vote in the past three years that it has passed the Senate.
After the bill passed Wednesday, several lawmakers hugged Oke, who was diagnosed with cancer last May. Oke said Gov. Christine Gregoire has also offered her support for the law.
Oke, who often uses a cane or wheelchair, said the vote “lifted me up out of that chair.”
“It’s because of that chair probably that I got the attention that I did,” he said. “I’ll be the first to admit it, I’ll use that chair in the House.”
Rep. Bill Grant, D-Walla Walla and caucus chairman, said he’d look at the bill but would “hate to make something that’s illegal, illegal” noting that it’s already against the law to give the samples to children.
Oke said the tobacco industry needs to recruit young smokers in order to keep their business viable, and the thought of children being targeted “has kept me going on and on and on.”
Oke, 64, said he doesn’t know if the fact that he smoked from his teens to his early 30s caused the multiple myeloma, which is a cell cancer that multiplies in the bone marrow, but “I wouldn’t doubt it.”
Three states – Idaho, Minnesota and Rhode Island – have laws banning distribution of tobacco samples, said Peter Fisher, director of state issues for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids in Washington, D.C.
Most other states have restrictions similar to the current ones in Washington, which make it illegal for samples to be given to minors, he said.
Meanwhile, the state House passed a bill Wednesday requiring law enforcement agencies to preserve DNA evidence for future testing. The bill also allows convicted felons to request DNA testing that could exonerate them if the testing technology wasn’t available at the time they were convicted.
House Bill 1014 extends a law that expired at the end of last year. It passed unanimously.
“There are folks spending time in our state prisons for crimes they didn’t commit,” said Rep. Jeannie Darneille, D-Tacoma. “We are going to right a wrong with the passage of this bill.”