The end of May meant the end of the Oklahoma Legislature’s current session. With that, a variety of proposed tobacco-related laws.

Oklahoma is now the sixth state to have a minimum purchasing age increased proposed this year, and the sixth state where such measure failed. Under the proposed H.B. 1970, the state would have increased the age to purchase tobacco to 19. This bill failed to get out of committee.

Three different smoking bans also failed. Sen. Frank Robinson, R-Springer, introduced two pieces of legislation: S.B. 36 would have allowed local governments to introduce stricter smoking laws, the other, S.B. 491, made all state-owned buildings smoke-free, banned smoking within 15 feet of a public entrance and made designated smoking rooms in buildings illegal. Both of these bills failed to exit committee.

Sen. Wayne Shaw, R-Grove, introduced S.B. 1185 which would have banned smoking indoors at business where food or beverages are served. It also failed to leave committee.

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Charlie Minato

I am an editor and co-founder of halfwheel.com/Rueda Media, LLC. I previously co-founded and published TheCigarFeed, one of the two predecessors of halfwheel. I have written about the cigar industry for more than a decade, covering everything from product launches to regulation to M&A. In addition, I handle a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff here at halfwheel. I enjoy playing tennis, watching boxing, falling asleep to the Le Mans 24, wearing sweatshirts year-round and eating gyros. echte liebe.