Single-use vaporizers may be banned in California after recycling fires

Savvy Californians should already be accustomed to various bans on single-use plastics, such as grocery bags, straws and food wrappers, in the state’s effort to curb waste in the environment.

But one suggestion for ban single use nicotine vapes classifies waste as a secondary concern. Instead, the bill’s sponsors argue that banning single-use e-cigarettes — better known as vapes — will help prevent fires that start from improperly disposed lithium batteries.

The bill would ban the sale of single-use vapes by 2028 and fine people up to $500 for each violation.

Garbage companies are among the groups rallying behind the measure, citing the dangers and high costs of disposing of the lithium batteries contained in e-cigarettes. Assemblywoman Jackie Irwin, the bill’s author, said her proposal aims to push consumers toward reusable cartridges.

• IrwinDemocrat from Thousand Oaks, at a committee hearing Wednesday: “We don’t throw away our phones or laptops after a week of use, and we shouldn’t treat other lithium devices any differently.”

Nick Lapis of Californians Against Waste, a co-sponsor of the bill, said single-use vapes are “an easily preventable ticking time bomb.” In 2016, a a lithium battery started a fire at a San Mateo County recycling facility, costing him $8.5 million and raising his annual insurance costs by nearly $3 million. Residents ultimately absorb those costs through higher trash rates and taxpayer-funded cleanups, Lapis said.

Law enforcement groups and an industry group for convenience stores and gas stations oppose the bill, arguing that most of the litter and fires the bill tries to curb come from single-use vapes, which are already illegal. They say banning the limited number of legal single-use devices would encourage consumers to buy illegal vape products.

• Alessandra BrichettoCalifornia Fuels & Convenience Alliance: “That’s the main flaw of this bill. Eliminating the legal market is supposed to eliminate the problem. It doesn’t.”

However, Democratic senators on the Revenue and Taxation Committee advanced the bill this week, according to CalMatters Digital democracysending it to appropriations.

The billionaire tax still heading to the polls.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and California Democrats could not strike a deal with the health care union that collected signatures to put a one-time wealth tax on several hundred of the state’s wealthiest people on the ballot this fall, setting up a clash between voters willing to water the rich and people worried about ruining the economy.

This is one of the 14 proposals that will go to voters in November. The deadline for voting passed Thursday night, and several 11th-hour deals occurred that convinced interest groups to pull initiatives from the ballot.

In one case, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association withdraw your offer it would limit property taxes and make it harder for local governments to collect other revenue.

In exchange, Democratic lawmakers agreed to pull a proposed constitutional amendment from the ballot that would have made certain tax-limiting measures more difficult to pass. They will also propose putting a different amendment on the ballot that would increase the vote share needed to pass certain local taxes.

Read more about anti-tax proposal by Ben Christopher of CalMatters. And check out Yue Stella Yu and Kristen Huang’s story for more on the initiatives you will see in the fall.

Earlier this month, California prisons began limiting access to classes and rehabilitation programs for incarcerated people as the corrections system ran out of money to pay overtime to its staffwrites Cayla Mihalovich of CalMatters.

A spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation described the restrictions as a “cost-saving measure.” Over the past four years, the department’s budget has remained relatively flat at $18 billion a year, despite recent layoffs, prison closings and lawmakers pressing the department to cut spending.

The repeal is expected to expire on June 30, but its effect is being felt among some inmates.

Tony Tafoya, who has been incarcerated since 2012 and enrolled at Mount Tamalpais College in San Quentin, said his math class missed 12 days of instruction.

• travel: “There’s a lot of healing that comes from going to school. It provides humanity. It makes me feel like I’m really being seen as a person. I feel like that’s what’s being missed.”

Read more.

More than 100 California police officers are facing minor consequences after they were found to have used racist, sexist and homophobic slurs, according to an investigation by The California Newsroom and UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program. Most of the interactions reviewed were between fellow officers as well as other members of the criminal justice system, such as court officers and judges. Read more.