Menthol tobacco prohibition: Ban or just Band-Aid?

How effective is a state-authorized ban when its neighbors don’t follow suit?

Not very, if at all.

That appears to be the case with Massachusetts’ first-in-the-nation prohibition on the sale of menthol-flavored tobacco products.

If tax collections are any indication, menthol smokers not only haven’t quit, they’ve skipped across the border to New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York and other states to satisfy their habit, taking other conveniencestore related business with them.

That’s what a new report from the New England Convenience Store and Energy Marketers Association (NECSEMA) indicates.

That group, which opposed the legislation that also placed a 75% excise tax on vaping products, said the menthol ban has cost Massachusetts more than $62 million in lost tax revenue.

Meanwhile, New Hampshire has gained more than $28 million in tobacco excise taxes since the ban took effect on June 1.

According to data from the New Hampshire Department of Revenue Administration, tobacco taxes are already $25.4 million over projections since July 1.

Overall, New Hampshire cigarette sales are up 46%, while in Massachusetts they’re down almost 24%.

Jon Shaer, executive director of NECSEMA, noted the ban is costing small businesses more than just cigarette money. Hit hardest, he says, are the gateway communities with larger minority populations, where menthol cigarettes are more popular.

Our state lawmakers were willing to absorb an economic hit if the ban diminished menthol-cigarette demand, but that apparently hasn’t happened.

By now, this trend shouldn’t be a surprise.

Back in December, in an editorial board meeting hosted by Boston Herald columnist Michael Graham of InsideSources, Ulrik Boesen, a senior analyst at the Tax Foundation, said the state’s ban on flavored vape products in 2019 and menthol cigarettes this past June has caused a decrease in state revenue, but not a corresponding drop in smoking.

Massachusetts collected about $550 million in cigarette excise-tax revenue during fiscal 2019, Boesen said, and lawmakers predict a loss of $93 million in fiscal 2021 revenue due to the flavored-tobacco ban.

“If all those people had outright quit, I’d assume lawmakers would take that as a win,” Boesen said. In reality, what has happened, according to Boesen, is that consumers are heading across state borders to make their tobacco purchases.

He provided statistics showing a 17% decrease in Massachusetts sales in June 2020, compared to the previous year.

However, during that same time, he says in Rhode Island and New Hampshire sales increased by 56%, Maine by 31%, Vermont by 21%, and by 17% in New York.

And adding insult to injury, a New Hampshire think tank in July went so far as to say businesses in the Granite State recently avoided a tax hike thanks in part to “cigarette smokers and flavored tobacco scavengers from Massachusetts.”

Had general and education fund revenue in fiscal year 2020 fallen at least 6% below New Hampshire’s estimates, it would have triggered automatic business tax increases, the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy said.

But boosted by tobacco tax revenue 7.3% above estimates and 6.9% higher than last year, tax revenue figures appear to be just 5.4% below estimates, the center said.

“If these figures hold, business owners could reasonably thank smokers and Massachusetts lawmakers for helping to prevent those automatic tax hikes,” the center’s report stated.

Obviously, plummeting Massachusetts tobacco sales and tax revenue and corresponding polar-opposite results in contiguous states can’t accurately gauge the effectiveness of our state’s menthol-tobacco ban, but it stands as a fairly reliable barometer.

Government-mandated lifestyle changes — even ones with proven health benefits — don’t often work if they can be easily circumvented.

It didn’t work with a nationwide prohibition on the manufacture and consumption of alcohol, and a century later, Massachusetts has experienced the same result on a far smaller scale.