Bill would require KY vape retailers to be licensed, enforce sales ban for anyone under 21
Stores that sell tobacco, vape or alternative nicotine products in Kentucky would have to be licensed by the state or face criminal charges under a proposal making its second trip through the General Assembly in as many years.
The Senate Licensing and Occupations Committee on Tuesday approved Senate Bill 100 and sent it to the full Senate for further action.
Under the bill, a Kentucky Division of Tobacco, Nicotine and Vapor Licensing would be created to license smoking product retailers; inspect their stores and be sure they aren’t selling their products to anyone under age 21, which is prohibited by federal law; and levy fines on scofflaws.
The new agency would operate much as the Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control licenses and inspects businesses that sell alcohol, said the bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Jimmy Higdon, R-Lebanon.
Unlike alcohol retailers, smoking product retailers in Kentucky currently aren’t licensed, which means that state inspectors don’t know where all of them operate or how many even exist.
It also means the state has no easy way to shut them down when they repeatedly break the law.
The Herald-Leader reported in 2023 that over a recent two-year period, state inspectors cited at least 114 retailers multiple times for selling tobacco and vape products to minors. They usually only issued warning letters or, in some cases, small fines that were a tiny fraction of the scofflaws’ annual revenue.
“From my 42 years as a retailer, I firmly believe the only way to control the bad actors in this industry is by licensing all retailers of vape, tobacco and alternative nicotine products. This bill takes a strong step in that direction,” Higdon told the Senate committee on Tuesday.
Under Higdon’s bill, fines for selling smoking products to minors would escalate, starting with a $100 fine to the clerk for a first offense; ramping up to bigger fines, as high as $1,000 for the store owner; and ending with the loss of the retail license for the fourth offense.
Failing to register a retail outlet with the state would start as a misdemeanor for the first two offenses and become a Class D felony, punishable by up to five years in prison, for the third offense.
“Yes, you could go to jail if you sell these products without a license,” Higdon said. “This bill has teeth.”
Anti-smoking advocacy groups told the Senate committee that Kentucky is one of only 10 states that does not license its smoking products retailers to enforce the federal law against selling to minors. Yet Kentucky has one of the highest densities of these retailers in the country, with 3.6 retailers per 1,000 residents, compared to the national average of 1.2.
Delanie Crump, a freshman at Ashland’s Boyd County High School, told the committee her peers are targeted in middle school by the smoking products industry, hoping to addict them with candy flavors and online influencers promoting their wares to kids.
“They don’t realize that one (vape) pod contains as much nicotine as 20 cigarettes and newer devices often contain even more,” Crump said. “They don’t see the addiction coming. But it grabs hold of them, anyway. By high school they’re hooked.”
Lawmakers started to require retail licensing for smoking products with a similar proposal last year.
But the legislature instead dropped retail licensing and tobacco language from House Bill 11, which in the end focused more narrowly on the removal of most flavored vape products from store shelves. That bill took effect on Jan. 1 after a vape industry lawsuit challenging it was dismissed in July in Franklin Circuit Court.
This story was originally published February 18, 2025 at 1:48 PM.
