San Francisco could become the first city in the nation to ban flavored tobacco products from all store shelves. This includes everything from candy flavored e-cigarettes to conventional menthol smokes.
‘If you look at these products, they literally look like candy and that is clearly targeting our children.’Amanda Wright, UCSF medical student
City supervisors last year unanimously approved a ban on the products but then the tobacco industry funded a referendum to put the issue before voters. Residents will decide whether the ordinance, Proposition E, goes into effect on the June 5 ballot.
Nearly $10 Million And Counting
R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. is blanketing the city in radio, television and direct mail advertisements pushing a “no” vote on Prop. E. The tobacco giant has shelled out nearly $10 million to save Newport menthols, which is the nation’s best-selling mint-flavored cigarette. The ads, featuring vintage film of smashing kegs during 1930s Prohibition, claim that it didn’t work for alcohol and drugs, so it won’t work for flavored tobacco.
Protestors for the No-on-E campaign at a rally at the Civic Center in San Francisco. (Lesley McClurg/ KQED)
San Francisco resident Donna Anderson agrees. Even though she doesn’t smoke herself, she protested on behalf of the No campaign during a recent rally at the Civic Center.
‘You’re just driving sales underground.’Donna Anderson, No on E voter
“You’re just driving sales underground,” says Anderson. “It will not stop people from accessing what they want or using what they want.”
She uses the example of marijuana laws to illustrate how a black market usually hurts people of color the most.
“Black people, Latino people, people have been locked up — and are still locked up — having to do with little more than an ounce of marijuana,” said Anderson.
Local Businesses On Edge
At the Mission Smoke Shop, owner Sam Azar has plastered his walls with “No-on-E” signs.
“It’s going to hurt me as a small business here in the city by, like 30 percent or more,” he predicts.
Sam Azar worries about how a ban on flavored tobacco products will hurt his bottom line at his Mission Smoke Shop. (Lesley McClurg/ KQED)
He would no longer profit from flavored pipe tobacco, flavored hookah, infused cigars, or the numerous racks of syrupy vape liquids. There are more than 7,000 sweet and savory e-cigarette flavors on the market. Everything from gummi bear and Unicorn Milk to Red Bull and nacho cheese.
But medical experts worry about the role aromas play in enticing young people to start nicotine and get hooked on cigarettes.
Derek Smith, director of the Tobacco Free Project at the San Francisco Department of Public Health, says flavors and menthol deceptively mask the taste of tobacco and make it easier to inhale nicotine.
“Someone who has tried a cigarette for the first time will often turn green and cough,” said Smith, in an email. “Imagine instead a cereal milk-flavored inhalation that is considerably less harsh to start with.”
Physicians Take to the Streets
Smith says nearly all youth in the state start their tobacco habit with a flavored product, which worries doctors who gathered at a recent “Yes-on-E” rally on the steps of the Civic Center.
Doctors gather on the steps of the Civic Center to push for a ban on all flavored tobacco products in San Francisco. (Lesley McClurg/ KQED)
“The tobacco industry has targeted menthol cigarettes to the black community, to poor people, to mothers,” said Amanda Wright, a medical student at UCSF. “And if you look at these products, they literally look like candy and that is clearly targeting our children.”
Wright was standing next to a table laden with row after row of juice boxes and candy wrappers. They look like sugary snack foods, but they’re actually packages of vaping products. The New York Times recently reported on a federal crackdown of these look-alikes.
The candylike packaging for vaping products on display at a Yes-on-E rally. (Lesley McClurg/ KQED)
Nicotine is particularly addictive for the teenage brain, according to Pam Ling, a physician and smoking researcher at UCSF.
“This population is the future of the tobacco industry,” says Ling. “The industry recognized decades ago that if they don’t get kids to start, they [the industry] will die out.”
The California Department of Public Health says the number of kids in California who vape is currently double the number who smoke, but research suggests that a lot of those kids will be smoking cigarettes before long.
“Once these kids start with the e-cigarettes, the likelihood that they’ll be smoking cigarettes a year or so later is increased by a factor of three or four,” says Stanton Glantz, who heads the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at UCSF.
He says about a third of the kids who initiate nicotine use with e-cigarettes are not the kind of kids whose race, gender, home life and school performance would make them a high risk to pick up smoking on their own .
An array of flavors displayed at Vapor Den, including banana cream, mango and fruit mix. (Lauren Hanussak/KQED)
In other words, vaping is increasing the pool of teen smokers. A 2016 report from the U.S. Surgeon General cited a 900 percent increase in e-cigarette use by high school students from 2011 to 2015. And new research suggests that kids who vape are also more likely to try marijuana. Right now there is very little regulation of e-products at the federal level.
Glantz also contends that a flavor ban will help adults who think they’re inhaling a safer alternative.
“When e-cigarettes first became available, there was a lot of hope that they would be better than cigarettes,” he says, “but the more we learn the worse they look.”
The most recent evidence shows that vaping could be just as bad for human health as old-fashioned smoking.
“Electronic smoking products emit particles of chemicals, not clean air, and technically an aerosol not a vapor,” said Smith. “Think smog or hairspray, not the pure water vapor that steams when your teapot whistles.”
Glantz says these ultra-fine particles and toxins can damage the lungs and may lead to heart attacks.
If San Francisco voters pass the flavor ban, it will be the toughest restriction on e-cigarettes in the country, and opponents fear it will set a precedent.
Copyright 2018 KQED