A new bill in California seeks to ban the use of electronic cigarettes in public areas and increase enforcement against those who sell them to minors.

As concerns grows about health risks associated with e-cigarettes — which are not lit but rather electronically produce a nicotine-infused vapor through heated liquid — lawmakers are attempting to put greater restrictions on the largely unregulated devices, and the latest bill in California introduced by Democratic state Senate Mark Leno is an example.

Leno predicted that hundreds of thousands of people would die from e-cigarette use just like with traditional tobacco use, hence his reason for introducing the bill, according to a Reuters report.

The bill would essentially treat e-cigarettes the same as regular cigarettes, which means they would be banned in public areas and increase penalties for selling them to minors.

California would be the fourth state to pass such a law, and the 23rd to attempt to regulate the devices. Many of the cities and counties have already enacted their own regulations, banning them from some public areas.

E-cigarettes contain cancer-causing chemicals and could cause some of the same ill health effects to people around the smoker as regular cigarettes, according to the American Lung Association in California.

The American Vaping Association struck back at the bill on Monday, saying that e-cigarettes help traditional smokers quit, and that the devices are safer because they don’t produce the nicotine vapor through combustion, making it easier on the lungs than filling them with smoke with a traditional cigarette. The president of the association called the claims about e-cigarettes “hype and conjecture designed to scare them.”