Second Try Legislation to Ban Smokeless Tobacco Products Passes Senate Approps
“Banning flavored tobacco products is a bad public-health move given that many smokers have used smokeless tobacco products such as snus and other flavored nicotine pouches to break their dangerous habit,” said Steven Greenhut, Western director for the free-market R Street Institute. “It’s a bad fiscal-health move, also. California receives hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenues from flavored tobacco products and needs that money to help plug a gaping budget hole.”
Greenhut points out in a 2019 op ed that “Large numbers of ex-smokers do in fact use these e-cigarettes and vape pens, which are 95 percent safer than combustible cigarettes, according to a well-respected British public health agency.”
“California lawmakers, at the state and local level, have been waging a war against vaping products for several years. San Francisco has outright banned the sale of e-cigarettes, even as it embraces marijuana retailers and promotes safe-injection sites for hard-core drug users. Other localities target vaping by forbidding flavored-tobacco sales. Because virtually all vape liquids are flavored, this becomes a de facto ban.”
