Florida voters can decide in November to ban offshore drilling in state waters, but if they do, they will also ban firing up a vapor e-cigarette at the workplace.

If they want to ban vaping on the job, the offshore drilling ban comes with it.

The two proposals are bundled together as one of a dozen changes in the state constitution proposed by the state Constitutional Revision Commission.

The amendment will need 60 percent of the vote to pass.

The Florida Constitution requires a review every 20 years and grants the commission the power to submit questions to voters following a yearlong process of soliciting public opinion.

Members of the Constitutional Revision Commission defend the decision to combine two issues in a single ballot question. They say the practice is steeped in a state tradition, dating back more than 40 years, that mandates a fresh look at the constitution every 20 years.

"We grouped like-minded subject matters, just like all the other commissioners did, and put them on the ballot," said former state Sen. Lisa Carlton, a commission member. "The CRC started out with 2,000 ideas; from those 2,000 ideas, you are left with 20 ideas that are going to be considered."

More:Early voting begins Monday; Lee County leads state in Republican early mail votes cast

Carlton was a sponsor of Amendment 9 provision that would ban vaping in the workplace. She co-sponsored the companion measure in the Amendment 9 referendum, the proposal to create a constitutional ban on drilling for oil in offshore state waters.

"The commission looked at it as sort of our environmental subject amendment for voters to consider," Carlton said. "This is an environmental choice for the voters."

Each ballot question has serious implications for two major industries, tobacco and petroleum, by restricting the operation of major profit centers. Each question also has intense support among people who don't want oil drilling in the sea or vapor puffing in the next cubicle.

Florida has prohibited drilling for oil in state-owned waters — extending 10.5 statute miles into the Gulf of Mexico on the west coast and 3.3 miles into the Atlantic Ocean on the east coast. Voters will decide if the restriction belongs in the constitution.

The current restriction can be removed by vote of the Legislature and approval of the governor.

"In '09 there were Texas oil drillers who came in saying we want to do for Florida what we have done for Texas," said Susan Glickman, Florida director of the Southern Alliance for Clean energy. "The impact was, the Florida House of Representatives voted to lift the ban."

The state Senate killed the bill to lift the ban.

Less than a year later, suggesting drilling be allowed closer to shore became certain political suicide as the Deepwater Horizon blowout in Gulf of Mexico became the worst oil spill in U.S. waters, and second worst in history.

More:Election 2018: How school board candidates see issues important to you

Scientists who support a ban on offshore drilling say Deepwater Horizon is convincing evidence of the need for a ban.

"The next deep water calamity will be different," said Steve Murawski, a professor specializing in Marine Ecosystems Analysis at the University of South Florida. "Then it was 1 mile deep, considered a frontier; now it's a 2-mile deep well; so conditions will be different."

Murawski and academic colleagues theorize that responding to oil spills is often based on what happened in the last disaster, not what's ahead in the next one.

"When Deepwater Horizon happened, we were very prepared for another Exxon Valdez, a tanker accident," said David Mica, executive director of the Florida Petroleum Council. "The government and industry were really unprepared; they had no deep water blowout experience; they thought it was such a low probability."

The oil industry zeroes in on the bundling of the amendment as its major argument against it.

"Florida voters are really pretty smart; they know what’s going on," Mica said. "There's two totally unrelated topics; half the amendment is associated with environmental things, with offshore oil and gas, and half is related to public health-type stuff, with vaping."

Citing the longstanding state statute banning drilling in state waters, Mica calls the proposed amendment "redundant."

More:Andrew Gillum, Bill Nelson kick off general election campaign in Orlando

Permanent enshrinement in the constitution would make repealing the ban difficult, requiring years of petition gathering and a campaign to get 60 percent of voters.

Supporters of Amendment 9 see it as offering protection for the state and its reliance on tourism. Mica sees the immutability of a constitutional provision as a bigger threat if war or an embargo collapsed the supply.

"Something that would restrict the imports and raise the necessity to produce more domestically, if it were in the constitution it would take a longer period of time," Mica said. "It would take an emergency session for the Legislature to change a law."

He disputes the idea that the petroleum industry's safety practices trail its thirst for more oil exploration.

"That's an absurd and malignant type of comment that has no merit whatsoever," Mica said. "People in my industry care deeply about the environment; go to any college recruiting table and talk to young people who want to go into our industry and make it better."

The lawsuit challenging the bundling of the offshore drilling question with one that would bar vaping tobacco at the workplace claims it disenfranchises voters.

For example, if someone favors a ban on offshore drilling but thinks the state should stay out of deciding whether one can vape tobacco in one's work cubicle, that person is not able to express a reference on each.

Florida has some vaping bans on the books through administrative regulations. It is illegal in places where firefighters work and in licensed children's caregiver homes when the kids are around.

The chief judge in the 6th Judicial District, covering Pasco and Pinellas counties, has imposed a ban in the courthouses and within 50 feet of its entrances.

More:Kevin Anderson and Leigh Eby Scrabis headed to runoff election in November

The vaping question seems to be less controversial because there are fewer nicotine addicts, and those who still have a tobacco habit have long been in a culture that discourages smoking at work.

Carlton, the Constitutional Revision Committee member who proposed the vaping ban, says it is adapting modern technology to an existing constitutional ban on workplace smoking.

"That section has not been updated for new smoking technology," Carlton said. "It's the whole purpose for the 20-year Constitutional Revision Commission, to go through the whole constitution and update those sections that reflect changing times."

Florida is rare to have a provision of law that forces a review of the state constitution — its most basic law — and lets the Constitutional Review Commission send revisions directly to the public.

Carlton says bundling issues is as old as the current state constitution, which, she noted, was adopted in 1968 by bundling the entire document into just three questions.

More:A voter's guide to Florida's 12 amendments on the 2018 ballot

More:Florida Supreme Court rejects challenge to three constitutional amendments so they'll stay on ballot