Bridgeport council debates banning flavored tobacco
BRIDGEPORT — A public hearing on banning the sale of flavored tobacco products at citybased stores drew passionate local advocates, plus large companies and trade groups aiming to defeat the measure.
“Adult customers will not stop using the products,” Michael McQuillan of Core-Mark International, a distributor to North American convenience stores, testified Monday. “They will either go online, to neighboring towns or the black market. All you’re doing is hurting local businesses.”
Similar sentiments were expressed during Monday’s teleconference by representatives with the National Association of Tobacco Outlets and the New England Convenience Store & Energy Marketers Association.
But activist and parent Kate Rivera countered that if a flavored tobacco prohibition, which proponents like herself argue will prevent youths from starting and becoming addicted to smoking, hurts retailers, so be it: “The bottom line is if their business exists because it’s poisoning children, then maybe they shouldn’t be in business.”
City Council President Aidee Nieves, state Sen. Marilyn Moore, D-Bridgeport, the local NAACP and others proposed in late January that Bridgeport pursue the sales restrictions even as state lawmakers weigh similar bills for all of Connecticut.
The Bridgeport ban, which would include menthol cigarettes, cigars and e-cigarettes (vaping), is before the council’s ordinance committee, the host of Monday’s event. Because of time constraints, the public hearing was continued until Wednesday at 5:30 p.m.
Some who testified shared their own battles to quit smoking.
“I started at the age of 14 and continued the habit on and off until my mid-20s,” said Callie Heilmann, head of the Bridgeport Generation Now civic group. “I see young people vaping everywhere . ... Once you start, it is very addictive.”
Giovanna Mozzo, a social worker with The HUB, a Bridgeport-based behavioral health organization, told council members that even though she gave up menthol cigarettes a year ago, “I still have cravings. … I truly don’t think I will ever stop craving the drug.”
For the last few years city lawmakers have targeted smoking. In 2015 the council banned it at playgrounds, beaches and athletic fields. Then, in 2019, Bridgeport, followed by the state legislature, raised the smoking age from 18 to 21 to try to curb usage.
Former Bridgeport Councilman Pete Spain said Monday that “some good” came from the age increase he helped to enact, but “it’s not been enough.”
“Flavored tobacco products help ‘Big Tobacco’ entice and hook young, replacement smokers,” Spain said.
Since the flavor prohibition was proposed, local smoke shops that specialize in tobacco products, along with convenience store and gas station owners, have warned the ban will be detrimental to their businesses, and insisted they work hard to keep cigarettes and similar items away from young people.
Those retailers have also argued that adults who are old enough to understand the health consequences should continue to have the right to purchase flavored tobacco products.
Jonathan Shaer with the New England Convenience Store & Energy Marketers Association said at Monday’s hearing that the ban “is policymaking at its worst . ... It’s like using a grenade to drill a small hole (and) thumbs its nose at thousands of Bridgeport adults.”
Brian Fojtik from the National Association of Tobacco Outlets testified that his 60,000 members, including “many in Bridgeport,” have already seen a reduction in profits due to the global coronavirus pandemic. Fojtik said tobacco accounts for about 36 percent of their in-store sales and urged the council to consider that many proprietors are “first or second generation immigrants, people of color . ... Stand up for them.”
But the Rev. D. Stanley Lord, president of the Greater Bridgeport NAACP, told the ordinance committee the sales restrictions would help put an end to “Big Tobacco’s” decades of preying on “Black and brown communities.” He also referred to the fact that COVID-19 attacks the lungs, so smokers, especially those in minority neighborhoods, have been particularly vulnerable to the deadly virus.
“The reality is they (tobacco companies) have targeted us and through this pandemic it exposed the inequities in health, inequities in insurance, inequities in how we have died,” Lord said.
He said the ban’s critics only talk about “their profit, not about any lives dying. We are sick of it.”
Though Nieves as council president is one of the ban’s architects, its passage is not a sure thing. A few of her colleagues have already voiced opposition. One council member — AmyMarie Vizzo Paniccia — on Monday said she will eventually vote “no.”
Vizzo Paniccia testified it is not the legislative body’s role to play “big brother” and “tell people what they can buy, eat, drink, smoke or not smoke.”
Councilwoman Denese TaylorMoye said she understands the importance of having corner stores throughout the city and does not want to see them forced to close.
But, Taylor-Moye added, she also sees too many young people, particularly in low-income neighborhoods, using tobacco. And as a former menthol cigarette smoker she understands how her own life expectancy was shortened.
“I support banning this,” TaylorMoye said. “That’s where I stand.”
“The bottom line is if their business exists because it’s poisoning children, then maybe they shouldn’t be in business.”
Activist and parent Kate Rivera