Elmont mother asks town to pass vape store ordinance

A stationery store behind Elmont Memorial High School closed for renovations last year, only to reopen as a vape shop over the summer, which concerned some local parents.

“I don’t think it was well thought out,” said Tiffany Capers, the mother of a student at the junior-senior high school. “It bothered me.”

Capers did some research, and discovered that the Town of Hempstead does not regulate how close a store selling age-restricted products can be to a school, even though both the Town of North Hempstead and the Village of Floral Park do. North Hempstead’s zoning laws state that marijuana dispensaries cannot be within 1,000 feet of schools, child-care centers, parks or places of worship, and Floral Park officials adopted a law last year prohibiting hookah bars and vape shops from being built within 250 feet of homes, schools, churches, parks, playgrounds or playing fields.

The Smoking Factory, on Elmont Road, however, is not only across the street from the high school, but also is adjacent to the Martin de Porres School for Exceptional Children, and is only a few hundred feet from both St. Boniface Roman Catholic Church and the St. Gregorios Orthodox Church.

Capers said she would like Hempstead to enact a law similar to those in North Hempstead and Floral Park. So she started lobbying town officials to draft such an ordinance, and in October, she created an online petition, “Not on Our Block — Not on Our Watch.” As of Dec. 13, it had more than 400 signatures, with residents commenting, “The vape shop does not belong in this neighborhood, let alone across from a high school,” and “Our kids have a lot of pressure, they definitely don’t need the lure of a smoke shop in close proximity to their school.”

On Monday, Nassau County Executive Laura Curran signed into law a measure banning the sale of flavored e-cigarettes and vaping products. The Town Board passed a resolution in June stating that advertisements for age-restricted products could not be posted within 1,000 feet of schools, parks, playgrounds, day care centers or facilities serving developmentally disabled children and adults.

In response, Capers said, the storeowner simply removed the signs in the window. “I don’t have a problem with that business,” she explained. “I have a problem with its location.”

Smoking Factory Owner Rajat Loonia, however, noted that some smoke stores have been at a certain location for more than 30 years, and said that, while he agrees the town should pass an ordinance about a smoke store’s location, it should only be applied to new stores. He added that he did not know how effective some of the laws are at prohibiting minors from buying e-cigarettes, and said county officials should instead inspect smoke stores to ensure that they are following the law.

The use of vaping devices has grown among teenagers across the country. According to the Truth Initiative, an organization that promotes tobacco-free lives, 11 percent of high school students reported using an e-cigarette in 2017, and by 2018, the figure rose to 21 percent. By 2019, the study showed, 27.5 percent of high school students reported using an e-cigarette within the past month.

Additionally, the 2019 National Youth Tobacco Survey showed that 34.2 percent of current middle school e-cigarette smokers use it on 20 days or more per month, and Monitoring the Future found that in 2019, 11.7 percent of high school seniors vape every day.

Studies have shown that vaping can increase heart rate and the likelihood of having a heart attack, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that as of Dec. 10, 53 deaths and more than 2,000 lung injury cases associated with vaping had been reported.

To prevent this trend from continuing, Capers said, municipalities should limit its availability to adolescents. “I can’t control the pop-up ads that these students are seeing on their phones,” she noted, “but I can control what’s in my backyard.”

Due in part to her activism, local officials have expressed their support for an ordinance limiting where smoke shops can operate. Town Councilman Tom Muscarella, a Republican from Garden City, said he has already supported other legislation to “protect our children from the scourge of vaping and will do everything I can to continue to help advance any legislation that will achieve that goal,” and Supervisor-elect Don Clavin, who is taking office next month, said he would propose legislation in his first 30 days to further “safeguard children from the dangers that vaping poses.”

But until anything happens, Capers vowed to continue fighting, telling the Sewanhaka Board of Education on Nov. 26, “I’m not giving up.”