Ad watch: Would proposed California flavored tobacco ban make an exception for hookahs?

As a bill to ban the sale of most flavored tobacco products in California approaches a final vote in the state Senate, opponents of the bill — including Altria, which owns the tobacco giant Philip Morris USA — have mounted a television and digital ad campaign in a bid to stop the bill in its tracks.

If passed into law, Senate Bill 793 would ban the sale of tobacco products that carry a flavor profile other than tobacco, including menthol cigarettes. However, certain tobacco products would be exempted from the ban, including hookah tobacco, pipe tobacco and cigars valued at $12 or more.

One of the digital ads in circulation is targeting the bill’s key supporters, in this case Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento.

TEXT: “Assemblymember Kevin McCarty claims to be fighting tobacco use — then why is he pushing a bill that would protect flavored hookah? We can’t ignore the California Department of Health, which reports that California kids smoke more flavored hookah than flavored cigarettes.

Asm. McCarty, it’s time to STOP the flawed SB 793.”

ANALYSIS: SB 793 does exempt the sale of flavored hookah from the ban.

The bill’s author, Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, explained during a July hearing on the bill why the hookah was exempted from the bill, saying that hookah is consumed using a large pipe that cannot be carried or concealed, and that its consumption is tied to “celebratory events on special occasions.”

“It’s not a daily use product. And that’s why it’s different than an e-cigarette, it’s different than a tobacco cigarette, and it’s different than a vaping device. And that’s why we felt that it would be appropriate to exclude them because it’s not the same problem as we find today,” Hill said.

According to a 2016 California Department of Public Health fact sheet, “recent declines in the prevalence of cigarette smoking among youth have coincided with an increased use of e-cigarettes and hookah tobacco.”

The ad campaign further alleges that passage of SB 793 would result in a loss of revenue of up to $1.8 billion over the next four years.

That’s unlikely, according to the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration, which analyzed the potential revenue loss for a previous version of this bill and found that in the first full year it would have been in effect, the state would have lost $218 million.

Since the bill has been amended to include some exemptions, “the revenue loss is slightly overstated,” according to an Assembly Appropriations Committee analysis of the bill.

This story was originally published August 24, 2020 at 2:08 PM.