Starting Monday, July 1, vaping will be prohibited indoors in most public places. The new law aligns smoking and vaping by adding vaping to the Colorado Clean Indoor Air Act, which already prohibited smoking indoors in most public places. 

The change comes as Colorado high school students are found to vape twice as much as the national average. Evidence shows that strong smoke-free policies reduce the likelihood that young people will start smoking. 

The new law also increases the distance from public entrances where people can smoke or vape from 15 to 25 feet. Studies show to completely avoid exposing others to secondhand smoke in an outdoor area, a person who is smoking may have to move as far away as 25 feet. According to statewide surveys, outside the doorway to a building is the most common place Coloradans report “having to put up with” secondhand smoke.

“We all deserve clean air to breathe without having to worry about secondhand smoke or breathing in vape chemicals. It makes sense to align the law for e-cigarettes with traditional cigarettes,” said Jill Hunsaker Ryan, executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. 

The new law will help protect customers and service industry employees at restaurants and bars, for example, from the cancer-causing chemicals, heavy metals and nicotine that are in the vapor that comes from vape devices.