State lawmakers are moving to ban the sale of all flavored tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, and cigars. Cigarette use in California, and across the country, has been falling for decades. Additionally, the motivation for California’s “Stop Tobacco Access to Kids Enforcement” Act, is built on a false premise. There’s only one way to join this exclusive COVID-19 club. About 70% of Black smokers in California smoke menthol cigarettes, compared with 18% of white smokers, according to the California Department of Public Health. Public health officials are anxiously tracking the capacity of intensive care units as coronavirus case numbers surge. It also does not apply to Internet sales of flavored products. August 29, 2020 / 11:39 AM / CBS News Starting January 1, it will be illegal to sell most flavored tobacco products in California. The referendum was criticized Tuesday by Lindsey Freitas, advocacy director for Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a leading supporter of the new law. The ban is part of a measure barring the sale of flavored tobacco products, including all e-cigarettes except those that taste like tobacco, and would exclude hookahs and some cigars. SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. “California will continue to fight back and protect children from Big Tobacco.” The law Newsom signed would ban the retail sale of flavored tobacco products including menthol … The holidays can be brutal for children of alcoholics, especially amid a pandemic that traps families at home. The coalition has received more than $21 million so far, largely from companies including Philip Morris USA and its affiliated U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co., as well as R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. The tobacco industry ran television ads before the Legislature’s vote that alleged by exempting hookah, expensive cigars and flavored pipe tobacco from the ban, legislators gave “special treatment to the rich, and [singled] out communities of color” by banning menthol cigarettes. The high cost of qualifying the referendum and delaying the law for nearly two years would be eclipsed by the profits the industry would make selling flavored tobacco products in the meantime, supporters of the ban say. “In the midst of an unprecedented pandemic, raging wildfires, heatwaves and power outages across the state, more than one million Californians signed petitions for the right to have their voice heard on an unfair law that benefits the wealthy and special interests while costing jobs and cutting funding for education and healthcare,” the statement said. Black lawmakers called the ads offensive and argued that the tobacco industry has targeted Black and Latino residents with marketing of flavored tobacco products, causing disproportionate harm to their health. Opponents needed to collect the signatures of 623,312 registered voters to quality the referendum. GET BREAKING NEWS IN YOUR BROWSER. Jacob James Rich is a policy analyst at Reason Foundation, a free market think tank, and an opportunity fellow at Young Voices. It excludes hookah and some cigars. California must ban menthol cigarettes to protect Black lives from Big Tobacco’s greed By Karen Bass Special to The Sacramento Bee July 16, 2020 05:00 AM , California Approves Ban on Menthol Cigarettes New law makes it second state in nation to prohibit sales of Newports and other minty smokes over protest from tobacco companies . A court hearing on the lawsuit is scheduled for Dec. 10. Menthols … The signatures were submitted to the state by the California Coalition for Fairness, which said in a statement Tuesday that its signature drive showed that voters are put off by the new law. “This is Big Tobacco’s latest attempt to profit at the expense of our kids’ health,” Newsom said at the time. Restricting the sale of menthol cigarettes and other flavored tobacco products is a promising equity-focused strategy for countering the tobacco industry’s … By Guy Bentley and Jacob James Rich March 4, 2020 State lawmakers are moving to ban the sale of all flavored tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, and cigars. Patrick McGreevy is a reporter covering California state government and politics in the Sacramento Bureau. The new law, aimed at keeping flavored tobacco products away from youth, was cast by opponents as being discriminatory against African American smokers who favor menthol cigarettes. He is a native of San Diego and a graduate of San Jose State University. Pope’s Christmas Day plea: Make COVID-19 vaccines available for everybody. The new law, which bans the retail sale of flavored tobacco products including menthol and fruit flavors, as well as those used in electronic cigarettes, was … But now that tobacco is unpopular enough to move forward with targeted prohibitions, unfortunately California is again implementing laws that will disproportionately and negatively impact disadvantaged communities. Set to take effect in January 2021, the ban would prohibit the sale of all flavored products that contain nicotine, including flavored vaping products and menthol cigarettes. Californians have realized that smoking almost always lowers one’s life expectancy and brings painful diseases at the end of life. Packages of Juul mint flavored e-cigarettes are displayed at a San Rafael, California smoke shop. The late pop star’s Neverland Ranch in Los Olivos, near Santa Barbara, has found a new owner in billionaire businessman Ron Burkle. Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email. (Joe Raedle / … Despite Brexit, this ban also applies to the UK and includes capsule, click on, click & roll, crushball or dual menthol cigarettes, and excludes vaping and heated tobacco products. House passes ban on flavored and menthol cigarettes in drive to curb youth smoking Updated Feb 28, 2020; Posted Feb 28, 2020 The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a … L.A. County is probing whether a new, more contagious COVID strain is spreading locally. Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window), Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window), How California’s flavored tobacco ban will hurt communities and budgets, America’s long history of White House infighting, What happened to the Golden State? Menthol cigarettes have long been on policy makers' radar. The Trump election fraud story has the TV news biz asking. A coalition representing the tobacco industry said Tuesday it has turned in more than 1 million signatures as it seeks to qualify a referendum for the November 2022 ballot aimed at overturning a law banning the retail sale of flavored tobacco products in California. In fact, states with higher distribution rates of menthol relative to regular cigarettes actually have lower rates of youth smoking. The majority young people who smoke prefer regular cigarettes. Although federal law bans fruit- and candy-flavored cigarettes, neither federal nor California laws restrict sales of menthol cigarettes or other flavored tobacco products such as cigars, little cigars, smokeless tobacco, hookah tobacco, and electronic cigarettes. 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