SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Store owners across California on Wednesday were finally required to wipe their shelves clean of fruity, minty and candied flavored tobacco products, marking the culmination of a two-year fight by the tobacco industry to halt a statewide ban.
It was a day both celebrated by tobacco-free advocates and bemoaned by smoke shop owners and customers.
“Flavors are the absolute key to the tobacco industry game plan so taking them off the table is going to have a huge impact on the industry’s attempt to lure us into a lifetime of addiction, death and misery,” said Jim Knox, California managing director of the American Cancer Society. “This is a major milestone in the battle against the health and economic toll that tobacco has on all of us.”
Emily Green, 29, of Alameda, was far less enthusiastic about the state’s new policy and questioned the extent to which it would be enforced.
“I feel very angry about it. Vaping is so much better than smoking cigarettes,” Green said. “To be honest I’m sure a lot of places will keep selling them.”
A battle in California to ban flavored tobacco
In an attempt to safeguard young Californians and keep the products away from the eyes of easily enticed children, Gov. Gavin Newsom in August 2020 signed a bill banning the sale of most flavored tobacco products statewide. It was initially set to take effect at the start of 2021 but the tobacco industry promptly responded with a referendum campaign — the first of two efforts by the industry to block the legislation.
In November, California voters rejected that campaign by overwhelmingly voting to uphold the state law.
A day after the election, R.J. Reynolds and other tobacco companies filed a federal lawsuit, which made its way to the Supreme Court, challenging California’s landmark regulation. Earlier this month, the high court refused the industry’s petition, solidifying the ban’s enactment on Dec. 21.
California is the second state behind Massachusetts to outlaw the sale of most flavored tobacco products. The new law bans the sale of certain flavored tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes, in stores and vending machines. Exemptions were made for hookah, premium cigars and loose-leaf tobacco.
Prior to the statewide measure, more than 100 cities and counties in California, including Sacramento, San Francisco and San Jose, already had their own prohibitions in place, some of which go further than the state regulation.
Proponents of prohibiting flavored tobacco products cite research indicating that most teens who experiment with tobacco first do so with flavored products. They argue that banning the products will help address a national youth vaping epidemic.
Sacramento area smoke shops adapt to statewide ban
The City of Sacramento banned the sale of flavored tobacco products and menthol cigarettes in 2020. Sacramento County followed earlier this year in July, prohibiting sales in unincorporated parts of the county.
“Flavored vapes were our bread and butter,” said Reina Bowers, an employee at Downtown Vapes and Smokes on Broadway in Sacramento.
When customers would come in looking for flavored products, Bowers would tell them to just drive to a store outside the county. . Now, her customers will have to drive out of state.
Bowers has two daughters, ages 8 and 18. She said she wished parents took more responsibility to make sure their kids weren’t using flavored nicotine, rather than having the state ban the products outright for everyone.
“It’s not fair to those of us 21 and older,” Bowers said. “We should still be able to have that option.”
In Citrus Heights, where flavored nicotine was still available prior to Wednesday, Stacy Heard took stock of how much product she’d have to take off the shelves at Magma Vape & Smoke Shop. An entire wall of the store was covered with fruit and candy-flavored vape juices and disposable cartridges.
“It’s definitely going to be a heavy hit,” said Heard, who works as a general manager. “We’re losing about 30% of our business.”
Heard said she wasn’t sure what they were going to do with their unsold product. Ever since Proposition 31 passed in November, Magma employees have been encouraging customers to stock up on their favorite products before the ban went into effect.
Signs on the shelves Wednesday morning still read “Buy 2, Get 1 Free” and “SALE $12.99”.
“Our customers aren’t happy,” Heard said. “Who are we to tell people who are 80 years old not to smoke menthol?”
Will police officers enforce California’s new law?
Store owners who violate California’s new flavored tobacco ban could face fines of up to $250 for each violation. But how strictly the measure will be enforced is unclear.
Enforcement will be up to the discretion of local law enforcement agencies.
In cities like Sacramento, where the sale of flavored tobacco products has been outlawed for years, little is likely to change.
Sacramento’s code enforcement team conducts compliance inspections twice a year at each of its nearly 400 tobacco retailers, according to Jose Mendez, Sacramento code enforcement manager. Business owners face a 30-day suspension of their license for an initial violation; a 90-day suspension for the second; and a complete revocation for a third violation.
Since the city’s ban took effect in 2020, 6-12 businesses have received suspensions a year.
“It seems like if we don’t routinely conduct outreach and education on flavored tobacco, it seems to come back,” Mendez said.
In Citrus Heights, Sgt. Joseph Aguilar indicated that his agency has some catching up to do.
The department plans to spend the month of January educating and training its officers on the new law, Aguilar said.
“It’s so new, so at this point, it’s really getting everybody educated so that we can partner with our businesses to make sure violations aren’t occurring, and so that in the event that (a violation) does come up soon, we’re able to handle it appropriately,” he said.
Even in cities that previously banned the products, some stores have allegedly continued to sell them. Earlier this year, the Oakland Police Department Alcohol Beverage and Tobacco Unit conducted an investigation targeting local shops that were reportedly selling prohibited flavor tobacco products to minors. Two Oakland smoke shops were cited and more than $10,000 worth of banned products were seized by investigators, according to the department.
If properly enforced, advocates hope the measure will help reduce the number of youth who experiment with tobacco and nicotine and lead more people who are using it to quit. But even with this victory, they say their fight against Big Tobacco isn’t over.
“The tobacco industry is very creative with what they do,” said Kimberlee Homer Vagadori, project director for the California Youth Advocacy Network, “so were not letting our guard down.”
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