R Street Testimony in Opposition to HI HB 1563, “Relating to Tobacco Products”
Testimony from:
Steven Greenhut, Western Region Director, R Street Institute
In OPPOSITION to House Bill 1563, “Relating to Tobacco Products”
March 4, 2026
House Committee on Finance
Chairman Todd and members of the committee,
My name is Steven Greenhut and I am the Western Region Director at the R Street Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization that promotes limited, effective government. R Street works on a variety of policy areas, including tobacco harm reduction. I am writing to oppose House Bill 1563, which would repeal an existing law that forbids counties from adopting tobacco-related ordinances that conflict with state law. It also clarifies that localities can pass laws that are more stringent than state regulations regarding cigarettes, tobacco products and electronic cigarettes.
This bill’s passage would effectively put into law already-passed local measures that ban flavored tobacco, thereby limiting smokers’ ability to purchase electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) and other reduced-risk alternatives to combustible cigarettes, such as flavored pouches made from pharmaceutical grade nicotine. We are concerned that this law would therefore have a negative effect on public health in Hawai’i by restricting access to lower-risk products while still allowing the sale of the highest-risk ones, namely combustible cigarettes.
As the bill language explains, the county of Hawai’i, the city and county of Honolulu and the county of Maui have introduced legislation that would ban the sale of flavored tobacco products to all residents as part of their effort to restrict the underage use of such products.1 Those measures, which are more stringent than state law, cannot go into effect until the state repeals a 2018 law that pre-empts local tobacco ordinances. Most vaping and lower-risk smokeless tobacco products include flavors. If HB 1563 goes into effect, then more than 95 percent of Hawai’i’s residents would live under the ban. State law already forbids direct-to-consumer sales of most nicotine products.
This is counterproductive and at odds with the principles of harm reduction, which encourages policy makers to ensure that people who engage in risky behaviors have access to options that help them mitigate the harm.2 Tobacco products exist on a continuum of risk, with combustible cigarettes providing the highest risk because of the thousands of dangerous chemicals found in tobacco smoke.
By contrast, Great Britain’s main public-health agency, Public Health England, finds that vaping is only 5 percent as risky as smoking.3 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration also views vaping as a lower-risk alternative.4 By limiting the availability of vaping, policy makers encourage people with nicotine addictions to switch to the most dangerous products. A variety of studies following bans, including in San Francisco, point to a resulting surge in cigarette smoking. The city’s “ban on flavored tobacco product sales was associated with higher odds of self-reported recent smoking among minor high school students relative to trends in other school districts,” according to a study in JAMA Pediatrics.5
We certainly share the bill author’s concerns about underage vaping. R Street was one of the first national think tanks to support raising the purchase age of all tobacco products to 21. However, it already is illegal for teens to buy electronic cigarettes. And research shows that flavors are not the main reason that young people experiment with vaping.6 The best policy is to strongly enforce existing law to keep tobacco products out of the hands of minors, while still allowing adult smokers the option to choose lower-risk products that can save their lives.7
Research also confirms that the availability of non-tobacco flavors entices more smokers to make the switch. One study found that 91 percent of smokers who had entirely quit smoking combustible cigarettes cited the availability of non-tobacco flavors as a “very important” part of their decision because it helped them disassociate the pleasurable effects of smoking with tobacco flavor.8 R Street therefore opposes HB 1563, which we believe would eliminate one key component of an effective harm reduction strategy.
Thank you for your consideration.
Best regards,
Steven Greenhut
Western Region Director
R Street Institute
(909) 260-9836
sgreenhut@rstreet.org
1 Ben Angarone, “Honolulu Mayor Signs Bill to Ban Flavored Tobacco,” Honolulu Civil Beat, Oct. 20, 2023, https://www.civilbeat.org/beat/honolulu-mayor-signs-bill-to-ban-flavored-tobacco/
2 Principles of Harm Reduction, National Harm Reduction Coalition, Accessed March 2, 2026, https://harmreduction.org/about-us/principles-of-harm-reduction/.
3 National Health Service, “Using e-cigarettes to stop smoking,” Department of Health and Social Care, March 29, 2019. https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/quit-smoking/using-e-cigarettes-to-stop-smoking.
4 U.S. Food and Drug Administration, “FDA announces comprehensive regulatory plan to shift trajectory of tobacco-related disease, death,” Department of Health and Human Services, July 27, 2017. https://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm568923.htm
5 Abigail S. Friedman, “A Difference-in-Differences Analysis of Youth Smoking and a Ban on Sales of Flavored Tobacco Products in San Francisco, California,” JAMA Pediatrics 175:8 (May 24, 2021), pp. 863- 865. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2780248?guestAccessKey=227700a4-e3cb-4ccf-8ad5-ae5133e0009c&utm_source=silverchair&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=article_alert-jamapediatrics&utm_content=olf&utm_term=052421.
6 Christopher Russell et al., “Changing patterns of first e-cigarette flavor used and current flavors used by 20,836 adult frequent e-cigarette users in the USA,” Harm Reduction Journal 15:33 (June 28, 2018). https://harmreductionjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12954-018-0238-6#Abs1.
7 Chelsea Boyd, “Pragmatic tobacco policy can decrease youth use without affecting adult smokers,” R Street Responds, July 7, 2020, https://www.rstreet.org/commentary/pragmatic-tobacco-policy-can-decrease-youth-use-without-affecting-adult-smokers/
8 Konstantinos E. Farsalinos et al., “Impact of Flavour Variability on Electronic Cigarette Use Experience: An Internet Survey,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 10:12 (Dec. 17, 2013), pp. 7272- 7282. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3881166.