The Village of Williston Park will not yet join several municipalities across the North Shore in banning businesses that allow smoking in what officials called an effort to protect public health.

After holding a public hearing Monday, the village will change the language of a proposed law to ban businesses that profit from on-site smoking and vaping, the use of electronic cigarettes, before voting on it next month, Mayor Paul Ehrbar said.

The change will clarify how the law defines vaping, Ehrbar said.

“I think that we’re being proactive and that this is necessary,” Trustee Teresa Thomann said of the law Monday.

The law met some opposition Monday from residents and the owner of the one vape shop within the village’s jurisdiction.

Samick Sharma, owner of Aces Up Vapor & Smoke Shop at 235 Hillside Ave., said he believes the board should reconsider the local ban, as vaping is a possibly healthier alternative to smoking cigarettes.

Vaping has helped some people quit smoking, he said, and no vape-related deaths have been reported in over nine years.

Ehrbar said he was once a heavy smoker and understands how difficult quitting smoking can be.

“It’s our obligation to protect the community the best way we can, and I think smoking on-site right now, whether it’s a cigar, cigarette, or whatever, is not a healthy thing,” Ehrbar said.

Resident Robert Mitchell said he thinks the proposed ban is targeting hookah bars, and that certain exceptions should be allowed.

Ehrbar said the law would apply to all businesses where smoking would happen on-site, including hookah bars and vape shops.

A business owner could apply for variance from the village Board of Zoning Appeals, to be excepted from the rule, the village’s attorney said, but doing so would be difficult.

It is already illegal to smoke in a public setting in Nassau County, Thomann said.

Local resident Richard Dierlam expressed his concern for people smoking outside within a certain distance, and said smoking still affects bystanders.

Williston Park’s proposed law follows the rising popularity of various smoke shops and hookah bars dotting parts of Long Island, and other local villages’ efforts to regulate them.

Williston Park modeled its law on the Village of Great Neck’s 2014 ban on hookah bars after reviewing similar provisions in other villages, Ehrbar has said. The Village of Great Neck Plaza passed a similar ban in February 2015.

The Village of New Hyde Park is weighing a law that would define hookah bars and vape shops as adult uses, relegating them to industrial zones and imposing distance restrictions.

The Village of Mineola similarly regulates hookah bars and is considering the same for vape shops. 

Aces Up is the only vape shop in the village. Hillside Cigar Shop, a similar business at 338 Hillside Ave., is just outside its boundaries.

The federal Food and Drug Administration recently announced that it would regulate hookahs, electronic cigarettes, cigars and related products as tightly as cigarettes, meaning they cannot be sold to minors and are subject to stricter manufacturing and marketing rules.

However, a study released by the United Kingdom’s Royal College of Physicians the week before the FDA’s announcement said e-cigarettes are overall less dangerous than tobacco cigarettes and are an effective way to quit smoking tobacco.