By Charles Owens
For Bluefield Daily Telegraph
Bluefield— The Bluefield Board of Directors approved the first reading Tuesday of a new tobacco and vape shop ordinance for the city.
The first reading of the ordinance passed unanimously, but the city board must still approve a second reading of the ordinance before it becomes law.
The proposed ordinance states that no new vape shop can be located within 1,500 feet of any church, school, daycare, public park or any other location that is frequented by children. A business that would fall under the proposed ordinance would be one where 40 percent of its retail space is utilized for the consumption of tobacco and vaping products. Existing vape shops would be grandfathered into the ordinance.
Prior to the vote, the board heard from several school and law enforcement officials who spoke on the issue of vaping, including from Bluefield High School Principal Mike Collins and Melissa Clemons, school safety and security coordinator for Mercer County Public Schools, as well as Bluefield Chief Dennis Dillow.
Dillow said Sgt. Amanda Moore with the Bluefield Police Department is also a certified D.A.R.E. officer who teaches a D.A.R.E. class once a week at the primary school level in Bluefield. Dillow said starting this fall she will be teaching the DARE program classes full-time in primary, intermediate and middle schools.
“That will be in the works starting in the fall and maybe it will help address some of this vaping issue that you have,” Dillow said.
D.A.R.E., which is an acronym for Drug Abuse Resistance Education, began in 1983 and is now taught in thousands of schools across the nation. It is a police officer-led series of classroom lessons that teach students from kindergarten through 12th grade how to resist peer pressure and live productive drug and violence-free lives.
Collins spoke about the problem of students vaping in schools.
“To just give you some numbers, the incidents have really grown in the last five years,” Collins said, adding that Bluefield High School does have a sensor system installed in the bathrooms that can detect the presence of vape products.
“It senses any kind of vaping, and we get an alert in the main office, on our phones, on our computers,” Collins said. “And we even have a speaker in the hallway that announces and shames them that there’s someone vaping in the bathroom.”
Collins said this year at Bluefield High School there have been 593 alerts that led to 40 actual cases.
“Again the most alarming thing to us we found lately is there is an addiction issue,” Collins added.
Clemons, a former West Virginia State Police trooper, said vaping is a problem with students carrying vaping products in their backpacks and onto school buses.
“I had two third graders at a local elementary school that had a THC vape,” Clemons said. “You know at that age what we are trying to do, you know there is a punishment that has to come with it as well, but then you are putting kids out of school. But they are still getting their education.”
City Attorney David Kersey was asked to provide a brief description of the proposed ordinance to the board.
“We heard from principals and other interested parties why we need this,” Mayor Ron Martin said. “David do you want to give us just like what the highlights of this is.”
“It defines a vape/smoke shop as a retail establishment that devotes 40 percent of their floor and or shelf space to those products,” Kersey said of the tobacco and vape products.
The first reading of the proposed ordinance then passed on a unanimous 5-0 vote.
“I think it’s a valid ordinance that we need to have,” Martin said.
The Bluefield Planning Commission voted last month to recommend the approval of the tobacco and vape shop ordinance.
According to the proposed ordinance, the city of Bluefield deems it to be in the best interests of the health, safety and welfare of its youth to limit the access and exposure of under-age children to electronic cigarette items and markings by imposing a distance restriction for such retail shops.
The ordinance adds that the city wishes to enact a content neutral ordinance that addresses only the secondary effects of vape/smoke shops within the city limits. According to the proposed ordinance, violations could constitute a misdemeanor offense.
A number of vape shops have opened across the region in recent years with several of those located in the city limits of Bluefield, W.Va., and the town limits of neighboring Bluefield, Va.
According to the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources, vaping can be very addictive to youth.
Tobacco products, including most vapes, contain nicotine, the state agency says. According to the DHHR, it is unsafe for kids, teens and young adults to use vape products. The DHHR adds that nicotine exposure during adolescence can harm the parts of the brain that control attention, learning, mood and impulse control. It adds that youth who use vape products also report symptoms of depression and anxiety.
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