Unreasonable tobacco restrictions will encourage black market
My industry is deeply concerned about the Colorado General Assembly’s recent attacks on legal products we rely on to sustain our stores. A new measure, Senate Bill 22, invites county governments to ban a wide range of products that are legal for those aged 21 and older on my shelves. This is happening as rule changes that focus on tobacco products from recent years are still just taking effect, and as my business is still working to adapt to them. A state senator described SB22 as a measure that explicitly allows cities and counties to regulate or prohibit the sale of tobacco products, and that includes “cigarettes, tobacco products, or nicotine products, including flavored cigarettes, flavored tobacco products, or flavored nicotine products,” according to bill text. Policymakers should avoid passing into law new measures that invite governments to enact sweeping bans of products legal adults enjoy, especially products the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) acknowledges as having the ability or potential to help users reduce risk of harm in their habits and personal choices.
The question is, do we allow adults to responsibly enjoy nicotine and tobacco products as they do alcohol and cannabis? Or, do we need to babysit them? What effect on our communities will banning nicotine and tobacco products have?
We’ve seen this play out before. Take Massachusetts, for example, where legislators banned flavored e-cigarettes, clearing them from store shelves like mine and depriving them of the customers who enjoyed them and used them to quit smoking. Years later, the state’s Multiagency Illegal Tobacco Task Force reported seizures of flavored e-cigarettes from unlicensed distributors had risen significantly by 2023. Similar bans on tobacco flavors also sparked local illegal-market surges, as consumers found other ways to buy their preferred cigarettes and cigars. If local governments ban or overregulate products that customers buy from my store, black market options may fill the vacuum. Who’s to stop the black market from also selling to atrisk youth? Along with new rules store owners have had to catch up to in recent years, the state has established a compliance tracking system. State Department of Revenue reports show stores have kept up a 92% compliance rate overall since then. If a store owner’s compliance rate falls below 90%, it pays 33% more in enforcement-directed dollars. That’s just one of the recent changes my business has adapted to, ahead of increases to the state’s per-cigarette tax and nicotine products tax rate in July 2024, and again in 2027.
As we work to keep up with the state’s heavy restrictions on some of our stores’ most popular products, family business owners implore our local governments to resist the pressures of the state government to ban tobacco and nicotine availability.
After all, who and or what will fund Colorado’s free universal preschool program? Elected officials recognize the political opportunity in taking these widely legal products off shelves but also understand risks in doing so at the state level, and, therefore, are passing the buck to the local level. Not only will this measure cost jobs and economic development in the state of Colorado, but it may cause greater illegal purchase without the guardrails that are working to keep Coloradans safe.