SAN DIEGO (AP) — Two years in the past, California banned flavored tobacco merchandise similar to menthol cigarettes and cotton sweet vaping juice, arguing that they principally attracted youngsters and had been particularly harmful amid the coronavirus pandemic when youth deaths spiked from respiratory issues.
However the legislation 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 problem to the voters.
Californians now will determine on the Nov. 8 statewide poll whether or not to toss out the legislation or hold it.
The problem has set off a fierce struggle. The tobacco corporations are pushing exhausting to maintain from being shut out of a giant portion of California’s huge market. In the meantime, supporters of the ban, who embody medical doctors, youngster welfare advocates and the state’s dominant Democratic Get together, say the legislation is critical to place a cease to the staggering rise in teen smoking.
Nonetheless, the California Republican Get together desires to repeal the legislation, saying it could trigger a large loss in tax income. The unbiased Legislative Analyst’s Workplace estimates it might price the state tens of tens of millions of {dollars} to round $100 million yearly.
If voters approve, California would develop into the second state within the nation to enact such a ban after Massachusetts. A variety 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 below 21. However advocates of the ban say flavored cigarettes and vaping cartridges are nonetheless too straightforward for teenagers to acquire. The ban wouldn’t make it against the law to own such merchandise, however retailers who offered them to youngsters may very well be fined as much as $250.
The ban, which handed the Legislature with bipartisan assist, 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 dangerous for Black and Latino folks, who use menthol at increased charges than others.
“It’s unfair for communities of coloration. Unhealthy legislation. Unhealthy penalties,” stated one on-line banner advert paid for by RAI Providers, a subsidiary of Reynolds American, which is the mum or dad 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 this can be a discriminatory piece of laws towards Black folks,” 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.
To date the marketing campaign to permit the legislation to take impact has raised greater than $6 million, almost 4 occasions greater than the trouble to cease it, in accordance with state marketing campaign finance data.
Some small neighborhood market homeowners favor repealing the legislation, calling it one other blow to their companies as they battle to get better from a drop in gross sales through the pandemic.
