Vote for Prop. 31 to end selling of flavored tobacco
Say this for the tobacco industry. It's ruthlessly persistent in pushing its deadly products on Californians.
Two years ago, the state Legislature passed then-Sen. Jerry Hill's SB 793, banning the sale of flavored tobacco products across the state. But after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bipartisan legislation into law, Big Tobacco, to no one's surprise, collected enough signatures to place a referendum on the November ballot. Consequently, the law has been suspended until it goes before voters.
This is California voters' chance to send Big Tobacco a message. Vote yes on Proposition 31. Stop the sale of flavored tobacco products that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says are even more addictive than regular tobacco products.
Tobacco addiction remains the No. 1 cause of preventable death in the state, killing about 40,000 Californians a year. And flavored tobacco is the industry's gateway product to hook young smokers for life.
The CDC reports that nearly 9 of 10 adults who smoke cigarettes daily first try smoking by age 18. Big Tobacco knows that flavored tobacco makes their products more appealing to youth. In 2021, according to the CDC, 80% of high school students and 75% of middle school students who smoked reported using a flavored tobacco product in the past 30 days.
Don't believe Big Tobacco's argument that bans are ineffective or its deceptive ballot statement argument about a Yale University study of high school students' smoking habits in San Francisco. The study purported that after San Francisco banned flavored tobacco products in 2018, smoking by high school students increased. But the Yale researcher who conducted the study later admitted that her data was collected before San Francisco began enforcing the ban.
Opponents of Prop. 31 also argue that banning flavored tobacco products will hurt small businesses. That's a small price to pay for saving the lives of thousands of Californians and lowering costly health care bills associated with smoking.
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. As a result, the state cut the smoking rate for adults from 23% in 1988 to 12% in 2011. That rate has dropped under 10% in recent years.
In 2019, Massachusetts became the first state to restrict the sale of all flavored tobacco products. New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island enacted bans on the sale of flavored e-cigarettes in 2020.
About 130 California cities and counties have passed some form of restrictions on flavored tobacco products, including Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties and more than 30 Bay Area cities.
A statewide ban of flavored tobacco products can't happen too soon. Vote yes on Proposition 31.