As Prop. 31 battle brews, activists slam tobacco companies for impact on Black communities

Tobacco is on the California ballot this November — and Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, isn’t happy.

Two years ago, the Legislature passed McCarty’s SB 793, effectively banning the sale of flavored tobacco products across the state. Now, national tobacco giants have poured $22 million into a ballot measure that would repeal the ban.

McCarty joined other Black leaders on Thursday to host a “funeral” for menthol products, which they say have resulted in thousands of deaths in their communities.

“It’s not going to be repealed,” McCarty told The Bee. “The voters are going to see right through this. They’re going to see Big Tobacco spending all kinds of money to hook the next generation of kids. Suburban moms see it loud and clear, with their kids coming home with these flavored vape cigarettes. Black California sees the impact of menthol cigarettes. The polling on this is off the charts.”

Nevertheless, advocates of the ban — opponents of the referendum — have been outspent by millions of dollars. The tobacco industry, which has long marketed menthol products to Black communities, has made a special effort to say that the ban would criminalize menthol, placing Blacks at legal risk for using it.

Backers of the ban have placed their focus on the lives it could save. After Thursday morning’s press conference, organizers led attendees to Fremont Park, where they planted 1000 white flags to represent 10,000 annual deaths caused by menthol consumption.

“We’ve already said enough and it was halted,” said Tracie Stafford, Sacramento Democratic Central Committee chair. “We’re here again, more time, more money, more millions and millions of dollars later, to fight something that we had already gotten through. Let’s not waste any more time.”

Betty Williams, president of the NAACP Sacramento, said her 14-year-old granddaughter has become addicted to flavored tobacco products over the last year. She was speaking, she said, “from the heart of a grandmother whose 14-year-old is now hooked.”

“The tobacco industry tried to suck the life out of our Black neighborhoods, in our schools,” Williams said. “But we won the war. They tried to strip the future of our children. But we restored hope and promise that this present in every child.”

McCarty stressed that the ban on flavored tobacco products won bipartisan support — a rarity for controversial issues, he noted. So the opposition has nothing to do with politics, he said, but with an industry that has billions of dollars at its disposal.

For Paulette Gipson, co-chair of Black Leaders Against Tobacco Injustice, the location of Thursday’s event was apt: organizers stood in front of the Sacramento headquarters of Altria, one of the world’s largest tobacco companies.

“Tobacco use isn’t a thing of the past,” Gipson said. “It’s a real, ongoing threat to Black health, liberation and autonomy. On the November ballot, we must vote Big Tobacco out of our neighborhoods, and out of California, by voting yes, on Proposition 31.”

Because the November measure is a referendum, a “yes” vote favors keeping the ban, while a “no” vote supports its repeal.

This story was originally published July 28, 2022 at 2:48 PM.