Menthol cigarettes and different baccy products astatine a store successful San Francisco. | Jeff Chiu/AP Photo
California voters connected Tuesday nighttime voted to uphold a 2020 authorities instrumentality banning the merchantability of astir flavored baccy products in a triumph for anti-tobacco advocates anxious to halt young radical from getting hooked connected nicotine done enticing flavors.
By a decisive margin, supporters rejected the baccy industry’s effort to artifact the prohibition done a referendum. This makes California the 5th authorities to enforce a spirit prohibition aft Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island.
The baccy manufacture initiated the referendum that stopped the implementation of CA S.B. 793(19R), by erstwhile authorities Sen. Jerry Hill (D-San Mateo). The instrumentality bans the merchantability of flavored baccy products successful storefronts and vending machines statewide, with the objection of escaped leafage and hookah tobacco, and premium cigars.
The deep-pocketed manufacture contributed $25 cardinal connected the referendum but was outspent by the measure’s supporters, who raised $71 cardinal — astir each of it from billionaire erstwhile New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The erstwhile statesmanlike campaigner has financed different anti-vaping and flavored baccy initiatives, including San Francisco’s palmy 2018 effort to uphold its sweeping spirit ban. The metropolis successful 2020 became the archetypal large metropolis successful the federation to prohibition the merchantability of e-cigarettes entirely.
By simply delaying the enactment of S.B. 793 for astir 2 years, baccy companies including R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. person taken successful immoderate $830 cardinal successful gross from menthol cigarettes unsocial since 2021, according to the Yes connected Prop 31 campaign.
More than 160 section governments successful California person already imposed immoderate signifier of a flavored baccy ban, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
Prop 31 would trim authorities taxation gross by up to $100 cardinal a year, according to a authorities analysis. But that’s a nonaccomplishment that voters are consenting to take.
Owen Tucker-Smith contributed to this report.
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