The San Jose City Council on Tuesday should join Oakland and San Francisco in banning all sales of flavored tobacco products.
Tobacco addiction remains the No. 1 cause of preventable death in California. Nearly nine out of every 10 smokers begin smoking by age 18. And eight in every 10 Santa Clara County teen-agers who use tobacco products smoke a flavored tobacco product. This we know.
Young people are more susceptible to smoking addiction because their brains are more vulnerable to the effects of nicotine. It’s unconscionable for council members to allow flavored tobacco sales that hook teens into a deadly habit.
Smoking kills about 40,000 Californians every year. Flavored tobacco — including menthol — is a gateway to nicotine addiction that ultimately costs taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in annual health care costs. The reason Big Tobacco keeps pushing the products on youth — and especially people of color — is they generate roughly $30 billion for the industry every year.
City staff is recommending a ban on flavored tobacco products, including menthol. Unfortunately, staff is also recommending that the council grant exemptions for hookah, loose leaf tobacco and cigarillos. That would make San Jose an outlier from Oakland and San Francisco, which removed those exemptions when they passed their bans.
Mayor Sam Liccardo and councilmembers Chappie Jones, Pam Foley, Magdalena Carrasco and David Cohen favor a total ban and filed a memo last week that would add a strict enforcement mechanism to the ordinance. The six remaining council members should follow their lead. A poll shows widespread support for the ban. An August survey of 571 likely San Jose voters found 63% of those polled voicing “strongly support” and an additional 10% in “somewhat support”.
Smoking laws work. In 1988, California increased the tax on cigarettes by 25 cents a pack and used the money on a smoking-prevention program. The state cut the smoking rate for adults from 23% in 1988 to 12% in 2011, saving thousands of lives.
In 2020, the state became the second state in the nation, after Massachusetts, to ban the sale of most flavored tobacco products. The bill passed the Legislature and was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom. But the tobacco industry — surprise, surprise — collected enough signatures to place a referendum on the November 2022 general election ballot, meaning the law has been suspended until it goes before voters.
More than 100 California cities and counties have passed restrictions on sales of flavored tobacco products, including Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties. We hope voters make the ban state law. In the meantime, the San Jose City Council should adopt a ban on flavored tobacco product sales.
