Should California ban flavored tobacco products? Voters will get to decide in 2022

Californians will decide whether the state should ban the sale of flavored tobacco products, such as menthol cigarettes, in the 2022 midterm election.

The Secretary of State’s Office announced Friday afternoon that an effort to put the question to the voters successfully obtained enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.

California lawmakers last fall voted in favor of Senate Bill 793, the flavored tobacco ban but only after heated debate in the Legislature. Supporters of the ban argued that the tobacco industry is targeting young people by selling candy and fruit-flavored tobacco products in brightly colored packaging.

The California Coalition for Fairness, a group funded by the tobacco industry-funded that circulated the petitions, released a statement saying that while youth should be prevented from accessing tobacco products, the law passed in 2020 goes too far.

The group argues that a ban on menthol cigarettes “would criminalize the sale of menthol cigarettes preferred by people of color and create special exemptions for products preferred by the wealthy —allowing the sale of expensive flavored cigars and pipe tobacco, in addition to hookah, to remain legal.”

The group said that it will focus on educating voters on why it believes the law is unfair and goes too far. Such a ban would cause “serious and lasting damage” to tobacco harm reduction goals and hurt small businesses, the group said.

”More than 1 million Californians, undeterred by an unprecedented pandemic, raging wildfires, heatwaves and power outages, agreed, and signed petitions to give all Californians the opportunity to vote on an unfair law that benefits the wealthy and special interests while costing jobs and cutting funding for education and healthcare,” the group said.

Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, which championed the ban, said that in a statement that this referendum is “a battle between the people of California and Big Tobacco over the health, lives and future of our kids.”

“Big Tobacco is going to use every deceptive trick in their playbook just so they can continue to market and profit from hooking young kids on their candy-flavored products. For decades, our strong coalition — including public health groups, social justice organizations, education and community leaders, parents, and voters across the state — has fought successfully against Big Tobacco’s attempts to prey on our kids. And we will be victorious once again in this fight to protect young people from a lifetime of nicotine addiction,” Myers said.

In order to qualify for the ballot, a referendum needs 623,212 valid petition signatures — that’s 5% of the total votes cast in the 2018 governor’s race. The Secretary of State’s Office said that it projects that the flavored tobacco ban referendum campaign exceeded the threshold needed to qualify by random sampling of signatures.

This story was originally published January 22, 2021 at 3:12 PM.