Voters to decide on California ban on flavored tobacco

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Two years in the past, California banned flavored tobacco merchandise akin to menthol cigarettes and cotton sweet vaping juice, arguing that they principally attracted youngsters and have been particularly harmful amid the coronavirus pandemic when youth deaths spiked from respiratory issues.

However the regulation by no means took impact. Tobacco giants, together with R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and Philip Morris USA, spent $20 million on a marketing campaign that gathered sufficient signatures to place the difficulty to the voters.

Californians now will determine on the Nov. 8 statewide poll whether or not to toss out the regulation or hold it.

The difficulty has set off a fierce struggle. The tobacco corporations are pushing arduous to maintain from being shut out of a big portion of California’s huge market. In the meantime, supporters of the ban, who embrace medical doctors, baby welfare advocates and the state’s dominant Democratic Get together, say the regulation is critical to place a cease to the staggering rise in teen smoking.

Nevertheless, the California Republican Get together desires to repeal the regulation, saying it could trigger a large loss in tax income. The impartial Legislative Analyst’s Workplace estimates it might price the state tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to round $100 million yearly.

If voters approve, California would grow to be the second state within the nation to enact such a ban after Massachusetts. A lot of cities, together with Los Angeles and San Diego, have already enacted their very own bans.

It’s already unlawful for retailers to promote tobacco to anybody beneath 21. However advocates of the ban say flavored cigarettes and vaping cartridges are nonetheless too simple for teenagers to acquire. The ban would not make it against the law to own such merchandise, however retailers who bought them to youngsters might be fined as much as $250.

The ban, which handed the Legislature with bipartisan help, would additionally prohibit the sale of pods for vape pens, tank-based methods and chewing tobacco, with exceptions made for hookahs, some cigars and loose-leaf tobacco.

The tobacco business’s marketing campaign has painted the ban as being particularly unhealthy for Black and Latino individuals, who use menthol at increased charges than others.

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“It’s unfair for communities of coloration. Dangerous regulation. Dangerous penalties,” stated one on-line banner advert paid for by RAI Companies, a subsidiary of Reynolds American, which is the mother or father firm of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco.

However the adverts drew a backlash from some Black leaders who name the marketing campaign offensive.

“I’m insulted that the tobacco business would make an effort to make us imagine that mentholated cigarettes are a part of African American tradition, and that it is a discriminatory piece of laws towards Black individuals,” then-Assemblywoman Shirley Weber stated earlier than the Legislature voted on the ban. Weber, a San Diego Democrat who chaired the California Legislative Black Caucus, is now California’s secretary of state.

Up to now the marketing campaign to permit the regulation to take impact has raised greater than $6 million, practically 4 occasions greater than the trouble to cease it, in response to state marketing campaign finance data.

Some small neighborhood market homeowners favor repealing the regulation, calling it one other blow to their companies as they wrestle to recuperate from a drop in gross sales throughout the pandemic.