Currently, Washington State's laws on commercial tobacco regulation - including regulating e-cigarettes - block local authorities from passing stronger or different regulations. This preemption creates barriers to meeting community health needs. For example, a city cannot restrict the locations or numbers of vape shops to reduce youth access and exposure.

Washington is 1 of only 5 states with broad preemption of local commercial tobacco regulations. 19 states have no preemption and 26 states have more limited preemption.

The coalition's new 1-page Preemption in Washington's Commercial Tobacco Laws fact sheet provides a simple summary of restrictions in current WA laws, and limited actions that local governments can take to regulate vaping and smoking in public places.

Learn more about preemption on our Restore Local Authority page.

Find more of the coalition's position statements and issue fact sheets on our Policy Statements page, as well as translated versions in 5 languages.

Improving health in all communities by reducing commercial tobacco use is the focus of a comprehensive report released in November 2024 by the U.S. Surgeon General titled "Eliminating Tobacco-Related Disease and Death: Addressing Disparities". Overall use of commercial tobacco has gone down dramatically since the first Surgeon General's report in 1964, but those health improvements have not been equally distributed across all U.S. population groups. Disparities still exist by race and ethnicity, levels of income and education, mental health conditions, sexual orientation and gender identity, and geography.

Solving these problems requires recognizing that whether someone uses tobacco or not is not just an individual choice. There are factors that drive these disparities, which include the tobacco industry's strategies around aggressive marketing of flavored tobacco products and keeping product prices low. The report delves into these driving forces and defines strategies to reduce health disparities, such as increasing tobacco products prices, reducing nicotine levels in products, and eliminating flavored tobacco products.

See our Address Disparities page for a summary of the key report findings, the full report, and summary resources.

Trends in youth commercial tobacco use show a shift from smoking to vaping, and signs of increased use of oral nicotine products. After the pandemic, the WA Healthy Youth Survey (HYS) recorded an overall drop in youth commercial tobacco use that has also been seen in the 2024 National Youth Tobacco Survey. That's very encouraging, and there's more to the story.

A closer look at WA HYS data shows that the youth who vape are vaping more frequently. 44% of 10th grade students who vape at school say they vaped 20-30 days in the previous month, compared to 29% in 2021.

More frequent use indicates a greater dependence on nicotine. Nicotine is highly addictive and challenging to quit, yet national data shows almost two-thirds of youth who tried to quit nicotine had no cessation support.

The WA HYS provides important estimates of youth use and access to commercial tobacco products. With the help of our coalition members and partners, we've been delving deeper into the 2023 HYS data to inform our work.

See more data analysis from the WA HYS and the National Youth Tobacco Survey on our Support Healthy Youth page.