Why Bloomington’s ban on flavored tobacco won’t work
On April 26, the Bloomington City Council voted to fully ban flavored tobacco products in the city, effective January 2022. The city will also end the provision of tobacco licenses beginning June 2022. This is all in an effort to reduce tobacco use in the city.
As reported by the Star Tribune,
The city of Bloomington, already a leader on tobacco regulation in Minnesota, is looking to phase out the sale of tobacco products within city limits altogether.
The City Council voted Monday to end the sale of flavored tobacco products beginning in January 2022, while also setting a sunset on all tobacco licenses beginning in June 2022. At that time, when a store with a tobacco license closes, that license will expire and will not be replaced.
Acting Public Health Administrator Nick Kelley said the sunset would eliminate the presence of tobacco in the city and the risk of tobacco use among youth. He said only two cities in California have passed similar laws on tobacco licenses.
“We would be the first here in Minnesota to go down that road,” he said. “Eventually this would result in Bloomington not having tobacco retailers at some point in the future — it will take several years for that to occur.”
It’s doubtful that these new rules will reduce tobacco use. Furthermore, to the extent that tobacco use decreases following the new rules, it will be at a smaller margin. In 2018, for example, Duluth restricted the sale of flavored tobacco to adult-only smoke shops. Tobacco use did not decrease. Instead, the sale of other non-flavored tobacco products increased in restricted stores. Overall, there was a 4.9 percent increase in non-menthol cigarette sales, with restricted stores seeing a disproportionately higher increase in the sales of menthol.
This means that smokers merely switched from flavored cigarettes like menthol to non-flavored cigarettes. Additionally, the sale of flavored tobacco increased in stores that were not restricted. This means that people just bought their flavored cigarettes elsewhere. To expect different results in Bloomington would be illogical.
Bloomington is surrounded by other cities in Minnesota that have no such restrictions. Smokers will likely flock to those cities and purchase flavored tobacco. More importantly, such a ban will make it lucrative for black market sellers to thrive.