Lafayette to Vote on Banning Sale of Flavored Tobacco Products

Lafayette could become the next California city to put a ban on the sale of flavored tobacco products in hopes of curbing their use among young people.

The city council is expected to vote Monday night on a ban that would include menthol cigarettes as well candy and fruit flavored e-cigarettes. Regular non-flavored tobacco and products used to consume non-flavored tobacco are not covered in the proposed ordinance.

City staff, which have been working on the proposal since November, are recommending that Lafayette ban all sales of flavored tobacco products, and that a tobacco retailers' licensing program be adopted to provide a framework to enforce the ban.

In the proposed ordinance, a retailer could have its business license suspended for 12 months for a third offense of selling flavored tobacco products. A city staff report says Lafayette has 13 tobacco retailers, including six gas stations, and all of them sell at least one kind of flavored tobacco products.

The proposed ordinance comes less than a year after San Francisco became the first city in the nation to pass a flavored tobacco and vape ban. The same week voters passed San Francisco's ban, San Mateo's Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a similar comprehensive ban.

Several other communities like Oakland, El Cerrito and Palo Alto have since passed similar bans, though none are as comprehensive as the ones in San Francisco and San Mateo County.

"California repeatedly has been the leader on innovation on tobacco control," said Matt Myers, the president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, after San Francisco passed its ban in June 2018. "And what California does almost always spreads not only across the country, but globally."

The Federal Food and Drug Administration announced in November plans to ban the sale of flavored tobacco products.

Even though cigarette smoking among adults in the U.S. has hit a record low, vaping is on the rise. Research has shown that vaping by young people is particularly alarming since nicotine can change the brain of an adolescent, making it easier for the user to be calm while addicted to that substance.

A 2016 report from the U.S. Surgeon General cited a 900 percent increase in the use of e-cigarettes by high school students from 2011 to 2015.

San Francisco-based Juul has stopped selling their flavored cartridges in stores, but tobacco giant Altria, which owns a large stake of Juul, has said bans are an ineffective way to combat youth tobacco use and are unfair to adult consumers.

This report includes reporting from KQED's Lesley McClurg, Sonja Hutson and Vianey Alderete.