Tobacco use still kills more than 480,000 people in the United States each year. It kills 40,000 people each year in California and drains nearly $10 billion in health care costs from the state’s coffers. Menthol cigarettes and other flavored tobacco products are particularly pernicious — mainly because kids use them; 1 in 8 California high school students was a tobacco user as of 2019. Of that group, 86.4% used flavored products.
Flavors mask the harshness of tobacco, making it easier to get hooked and stay hooked. In 2011, the Food and Drug Administration’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee concluded that “removal of menthol cigarettes from the marketplace would benefit public health in the United States.” Canada uncontroversially banned menthol cigarettes several years ago. One study predicted, based on Canada’s experience, that if the U.S. were to ban menthols it would help over 1.3 million people quit smoking.
In 2018, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed one of the first and most ambitious bans on flavored tobacco products in the country. Instead of accepting the ban, tobacco companies immediately tried to overturn that legislation at the ballot box — unsuccessfully.
Two years later, state legislators latched on to San Francisco’s effort by passing SB793, which banned the sale of menthol cigarettes, cigarillos and flavored vapes in California stores and vending machines. Like clockwork, Big Tobacco qualified a ballot measure to overturn the ban, spending at least $20 million in the process. In doing so they also delayed SB793’s implementation by nearly two years, allowing flavored tobacco sales to continue.
The result of that mercenary effort is Proposition 31 on the November ballot.
A yes vote on Prop. 31 would allow SB793’s flavored tobacco ban to finally go into effect, while a no vote would let California retailers continue to sell flavored tobacco products in-state.
Voters should reject Big Tobacco’s attempt to override sound public policy by saying yes to Prop. 31.
The arguments for a no vote are dubious. Most try to summon faux outrage over the so-called nanny state. For decades, tobacco companies marketed flavored products — especially menthol cigarettes — to Black communities, resulting in disproportionately high levels of use: 85% of Black adults who smoke use menthol cigarettes. If white people are allowed to continue using their tobacco products of choice, the argument goes, why not Black people?
But aggressively marketing a uniquely addictive and deadly product to Black communities, often to youths, isn’t personal preference — it’s targeting. Research indicates that if menthol cigarettes were banned at the federal level, 44.5% of African Americans who smoke would attempt to quit. A California ban will unquestionably save lives.
And, no, Prop. 31 won’t criminalize flavored tobacco use for people who continue to use these products if they can find them. The measure stops sales, it doesn’t create new criminal penalties.
The sad reality is that even if Big Tobacco loses in November, it still wins. For the $20 million it took to get Prop. 31 on the ballot, tobacco companies reaped hundreds of millions of dollars by delaying the implementation of SB793.
It’s too late for voters to stop this cynical manipulation of our political system. But they can at least deliver a decisive message in favor of public health by voting yes on Prop. 31.
This commentary is from The Chronicle’s editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.