On Tuesday, Brownsville city commissioners discussed amending the city’s smoking ordinances to explicitly prohibit the use of e-cigs or vapes in public spaces.

According to the Brownsville Herald, City Attorney Will Treviño believes that current smoking laws aren’t very clear whether they include e-cigarettes and vaporizers alongside traditional smoking devices.

Nevertheless, the change is not coming as a crackdown on vapes or anything like that. The city is amending wider smoking rules in order to prevent bars from simultaneously being smoking venues (without the appropriate air and ventilation controls). In Texan spirit, bars across the valley use multiple loopholes to get around the rules above.

So while the city isn’t targeting vaping directly, the amending of the current rules to prevent bars from also being smoking lounges will require them to be clearer on what constitutes a smoking device, and vapes are categorically going to get caught up there.

In Texas many of these kinds of rules surrounding vice like activities, smoking, gambling, etc., get loopholed by savvy businesses and consumers so we’ll see how this law works out in practice. Also, who knows if police officers or businesses will be keen to enforce it.