BATON ROUGE — Baton Rouge councilmembers voted in favor of imposing stricter distance requirements on vape stores and requiring specific signs to curb teenage use of e-tobacco products. 

After a unanimous vote at Wednesday's Metro Council meeting, shops that primarily sell tobacco, vapes and similar products are no longer allowed to be within 500 feet of schools, churches, libraries, day care centers, public parks and other vape shops.

These stores are also now required to display that anyone under 18 is restricted from being in the store. 

Louisiana law requires obtaining state permits and licenses to sell vape products. Baton Rouge, up until Wednesday, did not have any regulations on vape sales. 

Businesses in the newly prohibited areas before the new ordinance was passed would be grandfathered into the new regulations, but it is not clear whether owners of current vape shops would be permitted to sell their businesses to another vape or tobacco-related retailer.

This was an issue that members of the council expressed concerns over, despite passing the ordinance. 

Authors of the new rule, Rowdy Gaudet, Denise Amoroso, Carolyn Coleman and Twahna Harris, agreed to make further amendments to clarify the language. 

"We're really wasting a lot of time on this trivial stuff and we need to get to the meat of this thing, as far as the intent of this thing," Coleman said. "And that's talking about not being able to see this stuff within 500 feet (of a school)."