It seems like everyone has their own tobacco, smoking or vaping tale.
“My mother, she passed away from a heart attack in 2019,” said high school senior Isaac Hysten, the student council president of the charter school AUL Denver.
He said the main cause was tobacco, especially cigarettes.
“She smoked them all her life. It was destroying her lungs,” said Hysten, who wore a red tie and dark suit. “It just goes to show that vapes and tobacco products, they don't do any good. They're destroying people's lungs. They're destroying people's lives.”
Hysten spoke at a youth rally this month inside the Denver City and County Building in favor of a proposal to end the sale of most flavored tobacco products in the city. Hysten’s mother used flavored tobacco, smoking menthol cigarettes.
He and others say banning flavored nicotine products will save people from the harms of nicotine and tobacco. They’re looking not just at menthols, but also at disposable vapes that come in flavors like watermelon bubblegum and banana taffy freeze, or nicotine pouches in varieties like wintergreen.
A Denver City Council committee gave initial approval to the measure this month on a 6-1 vote. The full council voted 11-1 last week to advance it. It’s set for a public hearing on Monday, Dec. 16 and possibly a final council vote that night.
Mayor Mike Johnston supports the proposal — meaning the city may be on the verge of enacting a ban after years of debate.
Flavors at the heart of the fight
It’s easy to understand why so many people have their own story, since tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S., according to the CDC. The same goes in the Centennial State, where it kills more than 5,000 Coloradans a year, according to the state health department. No tobacco product is safe, and smoked tobacco is the most harmful.
Opponents of the tobacco flavor ban argue that the change would not reduce consumption rates. Instead, they say, it would drive sales underground or to neighboring cities.
Phil Guerin, who owns a vape shop on Colfax Avenue called Myxed Up Creations, noted tobacco products are already banned for those under 21. “It's going to affect the rights of all adults and for people to make that choice,” Guerin told CPR News in an interview. “Ironically, they're saying that flavors target children. Well, I have news for everybody. Adults like flavors too.”
Supporters of the ban say flavors lure people into addictions that are hard to stop. Youth and young adults use flavored tobacco products more than older people, and flavored varieties are often the first products they try. The city’s website notes “tobacco use starts in adolescence (90%) and contributes to many long-term and adverse health outcomes,” like heart disease, stroke, lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
The flavor of choice for Hysten’s mother, Charella, was menthol, a compound with a cooling minty taste and smell, developed by tobacco companies to ease cigarette’s harsh feel.
She eventually moved on to e-cigarettes and flavored Zyn nicotine patches. But she never quit smoking, and she died at 43.
“She stopped vaping and then she went back to smoking menthol cigarettes,” said Hysten, who is Black. Menthol cigarettes are a leading cause of death among Black Americans. Eighty-five percent of Black smokers consume them, more than double the rate for white smokers. Some groups, like Hispanic and Latino people, women and people who identify as LGBT, also are more likely than other groups to smoke menthols.
Hysten also spoke out because of his own experience.
“I myself did struggle with the vapes, with the flavored tobacco too,” Hysten said, adding that he picked it up when he was 14, during the COVID-19 pandemic. He used popular disposable brands like Puff Bar and Geek Bar, which come in flavors like watermelon slush and berry bliss.
Hysten recently quit. “I had to realize that what happened to my mom can't happen to me, and I'm not going to allow that,” he said.
Family tobacco stories motivate city council members
CPR News has tracked the impact of tobacco in Colorado, including how corporations exacerbated health disparities by directly marketing flavored tobacco products in communities of color.
The sponsors of the Denver proposal, Shontel M. Lewis, Darrell Watson, and Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez, also have their own tobacco stories.
”I was a previous smoker and I actually became addicted to smoking because of the flavors,” said Lewis, a mother of two. “I love the scent of mint, and so I have real life experience when it comes to this.”
Watson told the crowd at the rally that he’d lost family members from tobacco use.
Gonzales-Gutierrez, who has a background working in child welfare and juvenile justice, said she’s seen a nicotine connection as young people and families struggle with things like truancy. “I can tell you how important that is when it comes to prevention,” she said.
Amanda Sandoval, the city council president, said at a meeting last month that her daughter had been vaping since high school. Sandoval even checked it out herself. “I tried her cool cucumber watermelon vape. I was like, ‘Well, this tastes really good.’ It does. It didn't taste like tobacco.”
Sandoval said she was dumbfounded because of her family’s history with tobacco. Her dad, who smoked cigarettes since he was young, died of pancreatic cancer. Sandoval’s father was Paul Sandoval, a well-known state senator.
“All I know is my dad was a Latino who grew up in the Eastside and started smoking cigarettes when he was 13, and died at 67 of a really, really tragic death of pancreatic cancer. And to see my daughter smoking, I was like, ‘What is going on?’” she said.
A big part of a small business
“I've been in business for 32 years. I grew up on Colfax and I'm super proud of Colfax,” said Guerin at Myxed Up Creations, which has a colorful storefront, showing off a business award it got from the city.
Guerin started the business with just $30, making and selling mushroom-shaped necklaces and key rings. It later grew into a retail store, which he expanded to Aurora, Colorado Springs, Pueblo and Grand Junction.
Myxed Up Creations offers, according to its website, Colorado's largest selection of locally blown glass pipes, vaporizers, e-cigarettes, hookahs, and more. “The headiest smoke shop around!” it proclaims.
But Guerin said he’s bent over backwards to not sell to those under 21, with plenty of signage and ID checks at the cash register. Flavored products are popular with adults looking to quit smoking, he said.
“It is a big part of our business. It's become probably the biggest part of our business,” he said. “If they get banned, it will put my business in peril.”
Guerin has a 14-year-old daughter and he’s talked to her about tobacco and nicotine.
“There's a time and a place for everything. And the time when you're a child is not for these products,” he said. “I really feel like this education starts in the home and really parents owning this."
But he said a flavor ban would be “taking away choices that we have as adults." Opponents of the ban also point out it could eliminate millions in tax revenue for the city.
Tobacco by the numbers
More than 550 retailers currently sell flavored tobacco products in Denver. “Eighteen percent of residents live within a thousand feet of tobacco retailers and 63 percent live within a 10-minute walk,” Gonzales-Gutierrez said at a recent hearing, while showing her colleagues a map covered with dots.
The city’s public health department has issued 660 tobacco violations, for a variety of offenses, between 2017 and 2023, according to the sponsors’ presentation. Each council district in the city recorded dozens of violations.
That means the average retailer had roughly one violation every six years, said Grier Bailey, executive director of the Colorado Wyoming Petroleum Marketers Association, which represents 2,200 retailers, including convenience stores.
“We have done right by our community,” he said. “As a dad of a kid in Denver Public Schools, I am OK with a bar or a liquor store having an employee once every six years that makes a mistake.”
Bailey said the flavor ban proposal was overreaching, a “carpet bomb” to an entire category of products, even as youth vaping rates have declined.
There is just one area where the two sides agree: Kids shouldn’t be using these products.
“Flavored vaping is a legitimate problem in our community and for our kids,” he said.
