The fight over Denver’s flavor ban pits the personal against the political

At the moment, Wheeler is a part of a multi-year marketing campaign to get these merchandise — and a whole lot of others like them — banned in Colorado. And this 12 months they’re taking over their most formidable combat but: banning the merchandise in state regulation.

 “I am doing it as a result of I consider it is the correct factor to do,” mentioned Wheeler. “That is why I am doing it.”

The invoice, HB22-1064, prohibits retailers of cigarettes, tobacco or nicotine merchandise from promoting or advertising any flavored product. These are outlined as merchandise “imparting a style or odor apart from the style or odor of tobacco.”

Menthols are a key a part of the ban, however the laws additionally would cowl newer merchandise, just like the fruit- and candy-flavored vaporizers which can be attracting a brand new technology of customers.

Although proponents say they’re hopeful, the destiny of the measure remains to be unsure with only a few weeks left on this 12 months’s session.

The combat in Denver

The present combat is on the statehouse, however the debate has its roots in native politics.

Denver was on the forefront of the motion to reign in youth tobacco use as vaping took off amongst teenagers. It handed Tobacco 21, a measure to boost the minimal authorized age from 18 to 21 for gross sales of tobacco and nicotine, as a strategy to maintain youngsters from utilizing the merchandise.

That was in 2019, earlier than the state of Colorado took motion the subsequent 12 months. After the town council permitted the measure that fall — amid issues about thriller e-cigarette associated lung accidents being reported across the nation — Mayor Michael Hancock signed it. 

On the time, CPR Information requested Hancock his tackle flavored tobacco merchandise. 

He mentioned he was open to banning flavors, however hedged that perhaps the state ought to take the lead on the merchandise as a substitute. 

“I imply, doing it in Denver, I do not suppose is as sensible to do it effectively versus doing it statewide,” Hancock mentioned.

By 2021, metropolis leaders had been able to tackle the flavored tobacco subject. By this time, a half-dozen smaller cities — Aspen, Boulder, Carbondale, Edgewater, Glenwood Springs and Snowmass Village — had banned flavors.

However because the capital metropolis, passing Denver’s proposal would make the largest assertion.

It was one of many 12 months’s most hotly debated subjects at metropolis council conferences. Proponents had assembled a coalition of greater than 100 organizations in favor of the measure. The group included the Marketing campaign for Tobacco Free Children, the group for which Wheeler works.

Opponents too organized in opposition to the measure, pairing enterprise pursuits with these arguing for private alternative.

Hearings featured frantic dad and mom, well being specialists, anti-tobacco advocates on one facet in opposition to apprehensive vape store and comfort retailer house owners and workers and individuals who testified flavored vaping merchandise had helped them give up conventional cigarettes.

And with opponents there was one huge — and perhaps shocking — voice: former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb.

Webb is Denver’s first Black mayor, and he’s a outstanding voice in Denver and statewide politics and a mentor to a whole lot of Democrats, together with the town’s high govt, its second Black mayor, Michael Hancock.

As the difficulty heated up final fall, on the eve of a important vote in metropolis council, the 2 sides held dueling press conferences, with Webb probably the most high-profile individual on the steps of the constructing the place he’d served three phrases.

He described his issues as being about fairness. He mentioned on the time the ban itself targets folks of colour, giving police a purpose to cease an individual who’s smoking to see in the event that they’re smoking menthols.

Webb is also working as a paid advisor for R.J. Reynolds, he confirmed in an interview with CPR Information. RJR is the nation’s second largest tobacco firm and owns the manufacturers Camel, New Port, Doral and Pall Mall — the kind of menthol cigarette Leanne Wheeler’s father smoked.

After Webb left workplace, he established a consulting firm, Webb Group Worldwide. Its web site says the “boutique agency” has a long time of “expertise of working with and fixing issues for metropolis authorities, county authorities and state authorities, and all kinds of shoppers.” On the location, the group exhibits or lists a few of its shoppers: the Nationwide Training Affiliation, McDonald’s, the American Beverage Institute, and the American Petroleum Institute. R.J. Reynolds will not be listed.

Within the latest interview with CPR, Webb mentioned relating to the flavored tobacco subject, he’s in step with a libertarian view that the federal government ought to let folks make their very own choices.

“While you’re 21 years outdated, you need to have the ability to choose and select what you need to do. To me, that is the important thing subject. You are gonna ban sugar? That is an enormous subject within the Black neighborhood, because it pertains to diabetes. Authorities can’t proceed to overreact,” mentioned Webb, 81. “And you’ll’t have a coverage that claims, ‘You’ll be able to’t smoke a menthol cigarette, however you’ll be able to smoke all of the dope you need.’ That doesn’t make sense.’”

Webb mentioned he doesn’t help younger folks vaping, however maintains that it’s as much as adults to resolve whether or not to make use of tobacco. 

“I’ve mentioned earlier than, when an individual reaches age at 21, they need to have the ability to make their very own selections,” Webb mentioned.

The vast majority of African Individuals who smoke use menthol cigarettes, in line with the CDC, usually beginning at a younger age. Seven out of 10 African American youth ages 12-17 who smoke use menthol cigarettes. The CDC additionally says a better share of Black adults who smoke began utilizing menthol cigarettes (93 %) than white adults who smoke (44 %). 

When it got here to the town’s consideration of the flavored tobacco ban, “we do not foyer. I seek the advice of with advising shoppers by way of how they need to proceed,” Webb mentioned.

However these on the opposite facet, like Leanne Wheeler, who additionally works as a paid advisor, suppose the precise reverse. Her view is business has focused the neighborhood by way of advertising of flavors to the profound detriment of its well being and the federal government’s position must be to guard public well being.  

Different tobacco reformers additionally see menthol as simply one other automobile for hurt that was inflicted on Black communities. That’s the message you hear from activists like Brother Jeff Fard, a multimedia journalist, neighborhood organizer and founding father of a cultural heart within the metropolis’s 5 Factors neighborhood, not removed from Handbook Excessive, from which each Webb and Hancock graduated.

“How does this predatory business proceed to make billions off of menthol? And people are primarily communities of colour, particularly black communities,” Fard mentioned. “And now that you just take a look at the analysis, it seems to be extra prefer it’s extra marginalized communities which can be always being focused. In different phrases, these communities which can be disposable in society.”

Hancock has even vetoed a taste van

In December, the Denver Metropolis Council voted 8-3 to approve the flavour ban, which included flavored cigarettes, chewing tobacco and vape liquids, whereas exempting hookah, pipe tobacco and cigars.

Just a few days later, Hancock vetoed it — solely his second veto as mayor. (The primary was a measure to overturn the town’s ban on pit bulls.)

The mayor mentioned in a press release he shared some council members’ objective to scale back youth nicotine use within the metropolis. 

However Hancock mentioned he’d want a statewide ban or perhaps a metro-area ban on flavored tobacco merchandise. 

“We can not appropriately tackle the general public well being impacts of youth tobacco use if that public well being response happens solely in Denver,” Hancock wrote within the letter to metropolis council members.

That didn’t sit effectively with some. 

“I discover it appalling,” Fard mentioned of the veto. He criticized each the present and former mayor. “There’s an entire Black Lives Matter motion that has taken place. You’ve received the reforms which have taken place following the demise of George Floyd. After which you are going to inform me that I’ll veto, or I’ll use my political capital, my affect, to face on the facet of an business that’s liable for extra deaths yearly of Black folks than something anybody has protested in opposition to because the founding of this nation.”

Hancock, in an interview with CPR, mentioned he spoke to folks on each side, together with former mayor Webb, who he just lately saluted at a latest unveiling of a statue of his predecessor. He declined to reply on to critics however mentioned it was troublesome to be caught within the center.

“I do not get into that type of dialog,” mentioned Hancock, who’s term-limited after three phrases and might’t run once more in subsequent 12 months’s election. “You understand, there are folks on each side who felt very strongly about this subject, some who’re pricey buddies who shared with me that they wished me to signal the invoice. And there are some pricey buddies on each side of this subject.”

Hancock added it wasn’t good coverage to inform Denver’s retailers they couldn’t promote merchandise customers may simply purchase by crossing right into a neighboring metropolis.

“I made the choice based mostly on the details and the truth that if we actually did need to do one thing, let’s go to the state and let’s do one thing,” he mentioned.

Just a few days after Hancock vetoed the flavored tobacco measure, the town council did not override the veto on an 8-4 vote.

The mayor says it’s a statewide subject, the governor says it is native

However there appears to be little urge for food, from the state’s high govt, to sort out flavored tobacco statewide.

In an interview this week on CPR’s Colorado Issues, Gov. Jared Polis mentioned that the sort of ban must be left to native management — like cities do with marijuana or alcohol.

“I am in opposition to statewide prohibition of alcohol or marijuana or tobacco, but when a neighborhood does not need to have a dispensary or does not need to have vape, that’s utterly their prerogative,” he mentioned. “I signed a invoice that gave that specific authority to native communities round vaping.”

When requested about Hancock’s feedback that any taste ban must be a state duty, Polis mentioned, “We signed a regulation that particularly left it as much as native governments. Most mayors help native management, in fact that is an enormous a part of what they need to do. So clearly if the mayor needs to impression state coverage he can run for state legislature.”