OLYMPIA – With about a fourth of high school seniors in a recent survey saying they use e-cigarettes, health experts urged the state should tax and regulate the new way of delivering nicotine to the body.

Representatives of stores that sell the “vaping” supplies told a House committee they already refuse to sell to minors, and the state shouldn’t add too many restrictions or costs to a system that can help smokers quit a more dangerous product, regular cigarettes.

Scores of e-cigarette users, many of them wearing “I Vape, I Vote” stickers, filled the hearing room of the Commerce and Gambling Committee to overflowing Monday as the panel reviewed a plan to raise taxes on e-cigarette supplies and put other restrictions on the product.

“We have a new generation being addicted to e-cigarettes and nicotine,” said Rep. Gerry Pollet, D-Seattle, citing a study that showed tobacco use was declining among high school students but e-cigarette use was up sharply.

The Healthy Youth Survey interviewed students across the state last fall, including 10,000 in Spokane County. Cigarette smoking had dropped for high school seniors from 25 percent in 2008 to 15 percent in 2014 statewide. But a fourth of seniors said they had used an e-cigarette in the past month.

“We do care about children,” said Kim Thompson of the Anti Smoking Alliance, which supports e-cigarette stores and users. “We are trying to push health; we are not trying to push addiction.”

Any restriction should not “punish” adults for using vapor products, which some users said helped them quit tobacco.

Dr. Tim McAfee, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said e-cigarettes are “a major portal of entry” for teens to use nicotine and go on to cigarettes. While there are thousands of individual stories of people who say they quit cigarettes using e-cigarettes, he said, evidence from studies has been mixed.

E-cigarettes may be the healthier option for people who have tried and failed other methods to quit smoking, state Health Secretary John Wiesman said.

But vapor shops should be regulated by the state “to see if what they are saying is true” about turning away minors, Wiesman said.