Rep. Andrew Gray, D-Anchorage, in his Capitol office on May 16, 2024, holds up a printout showing how warning signs about alcohol consumption’s health effects would change under legislation he sponsored in last year’s session. The bill wound up being combined with another alcohol-related bill. The combined bill passed just minutes after the midnight adjournment deadline and was vetoed. Gray is trying again with a new bill this year. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
Two health-related bills that faced unusual deaths in last year’s session of the Alaska Legislature have been resurrected as new bills for lawmakers to consider this session.
A list of bills filed before the start of the session as of Friday includes a measure sponsored by Rep. Andrew Gray, D-Anchorage, who seeks to require warning signs at bars, liquor stores and other beverage-selling establishments about the link between alcohol consumption and cancer. Under the measure, House Bill 37, the signs would be updates of health warnings already required at such establishments, with more simplified visuals and a notice that “Alcohol use can cause cancer, including breast and colon cancers.”
Gray sponsored a similar bill last session, House Bill 298. It got folded into another alcohol-related measure, House Bill 189, a bill that would have lowered the allowable age for workers serving alcohol from 21 to 18. The combined bill passed – but it got final approval from the state House a few minutes after midnight on the 121st day, the session adjournment deadline. Citing that reason, Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed it, as he did with four other bills that passed after the midnight deadline.
Gray’s bill comes as outgoing U.S, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is calling attention to the link between alcohol consumption and cancer.
Earlier this month, he issued a detailed advisory about the connection between alcohol and several forms of cancer, including cancers of the breast, colon and rectum, esophagus, voice box, liver, mouth and throat.
“Alcohol consumption is the third leading preventable cause of cancer in the United States, after tobacco and obesity,” the advisory said. In 2019, an estimated 96,730 cancer cases were related to alcohol consumption, and an estimated 741,300 cancer cases worldwide in 2020 were attributable to its consumption, the advisory said.
Another bill among the prefiled list as of Friday was a new attempt at imposing a state tax on electronic cigarette products, known as vapes, as well as some new age restrictions for purchase. The measure, Senate Bill 24, is sponsored by Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak.
Alaska state tobacco tax was last changed in 2006, years before vaping became popular, especially among youth. This is Stevens’ third attempt at a bill he believes will curb youth use of e-cigarette products.
The bill that Stevens introduced in 2023, Senate Bill 89, would have applied the tax and also raised the state’s age limit for buying those products from 19 to 21, matching federal law.
It was similar to a Stevens-sponsored bill that the Legislature passed in 2022, though with some modifications to how the tax was calculated. Dunleavy vetoed that bill, citing his objections to any new taxes.
After the Senate passed the second version, Senate Bill 89, the House made substantial changes to it. The House stripped out the e-cigarette tax provisions but added in provisions that lowered state taxes on marijuana, a product that is legal in Alaska, before returning it to the Senate for final passage.
Stevens and others in the Senate majority opted against passing the altered bill. After adjournment, Stevens said he and his colleagues had too little time to review the late marijuana-related changes. He killed the underlying bill, even though it was his own. “You can’t get too much in love with your own legislation,” he said at the time.
Cigarette smoking among Alaska high school students has declined dramatically over the past decades, but in recent years, vaping became more popular, according to youth surveys.
There has been a similar pattern in other states, according to health officials.
More recent results from the state’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey show a decline in use of e-cigarette products. While over 26% of youth respondents in the 2019 survey said they regularly use such products, that rate dropped to 17.3% in 2023, according to the survey.
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