By Khalida Sarwari
Now that Saratoga has a law on the books restricting sales of tobacco in the city, elected officials are starting a dialogue about flavored tobacco products in an attempt to further curb the high rate of youth smoking.
The city council didn’t make any decisions at its Sept. 2 meeting but accepted a report from staff on what the rest of the county, state and country are doing in terms of regulating flavored tobacco. The topic is to return for further review at the council’s annual retreat in January.
About a handful of people showed up to encourage the council to prohibit sales of flavored tobacco products including e-cigarettes. Among them was Carol Baker, a volunteer ambassador for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.
“I would like to ask you, why flavored tobacco products? Why flavor them at all? Well, because frankly they taste like awful … especially to a person who’s trying them for the first time,” Baker said. “[The tobacco industry is} losing us- ers every day; thousands of users that are going out of their marketing, and they need to replace those users, so they’ve got to attract them some way, and that’s how they’re going to do it.”
The meeting was also an opportunity to ask a group of Prospect High School students in attendance their thoughts on whether the legal smoking age should be raised from 18 to 21. The group seemed split down the middle, with some opining that the change wouldn’t make much of a difference, while others said they believed it would actually discourage some young people from taking up smoking. Mayor Howard Miller said he agreed with the latter group.
“Not to contradict the youth of our city, [but] I do think raising the age to 21 would help,” Miller said. “It may not stop every avenue, it may not help every child, but I do think
Six retailers in Saratoga currently sell tobacco or tobacco products and none has been found to be illegally selling them to youth.
Santa Clara County banned flavored tobacco in February, making it the only jurisdiction in California to do so. The ordinance restricts retailers from selling any tobacco products “containing an artificial or natural flavor that is a characterizing flavor of the tobacco product,” although the rule does not apply to electronic smoking devices. Adult-only tobacco stores— in other words, retailers that primarily sell tobacco products and generate more than 60 percent of
their revenue from tobacco products and paraphernalia—are exempt from the county enforcement policy.
Elsewhere, the cities of Chicago, Minneapolis, New York and Providence all have enacted regulations against flavored tobacco. Minneapolis and Chicago have stricter laws, which extend to electronic smoking devices.
The state of Maine prohibits the sale of flavored cigars and in Illinois, retailers are banned from selling flavored rolling papers.
The federal government has also delved into this territory with its 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which prohibits cigarettes flavored with fruit, candy and clove flavors based on the premise that these cigarettes are considered more appealing to children. Federal law, however, doesn’t restrict menthol or flavored tobacco products, such as small cigars, cigarillos, bidis, rolling papers and hookah tobacco with various flavorings to disguise the flavor of tobacco.
In June, the Saratoga City Council passed an ordinance that requires retailers to obtain a special license to sell tobacco products, paraphernalia and electronic smoking devices. The ordinance prohibits the use of self-service displays for tobacco products, paraphernalia or electronic smoking devices. Under this law, underage employees can no longer sell these items to customers.
The tobacco retailer license carries a one-year term and will go into effect next month.
