Denver is set to ban the sale of most flavored nicotine products within city limits. Denver City Council voted 11-to-1 Monday to advance a proposal which would bar flavored vaporizers, menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars, chews and pouches from being sold in the city. Flavored hookah can still be sold.
Mayor Mike Johnston has indicated he supports the measure.
The proposal is expected to affect some 550 retailers that sell the products in Denver. Supporters of the ban said that flavored products are a gateway product that can lead young people to lifelong tobacco addiction.
Opponents — including nicotine makers and sellers — said that the ban would be ineffective because people will simply go to other cities or buy the products on the black market. They argued the 21-plus age limit for nicotine along with other measures implemented in Colorado in recent years are already effective.
This is the latest high-profile fight between businesses that make and sell the products against those who aim to limit them.
Monday’s vote followed a public hearing, with more than 100 people in attendance and an overflow crowd spilling into a second room to watch on TV. Representatives from both sides weighed in, including small business owners as well as members of a coalition of more than 100 community, health and education groups behind the proposal.
In 2021, then-mayor Michael Hancock vetoed a similar measure to ban the flavored products in Denver. The next year, a plan to ban them statewide didn’t cross the finish line in the legislature. At the time, Gov. Jared Polis said it was an issue for local governments to deal with.
Most council members who spoke shared their own personal stories about tobacco addiction; some told about losing a parent or other family member to cancer after a decades of smoking.
Council president Amanda Sandoval, who represents District 1, told the crowd and her colleagues about tobacco’s profound impact on her family. That includes a daughter who’s struggled with flavored vapes, and recently joined a class action lawsuit against Juul, the brand blamed for sparking a youth vaping epidemic, and her father, a state senator, Paul Sandoval. He was a lifelong smoker who died of pancreatic cancer in 2012.
She said the lingering scent of tobacco, on an old rocking chair, always brought back memories of him.
“That smell of nicotine in a car with tamales is my dad, Paul,” she said.
Sandoval placed the blame squarely on tobacco companies.
“Big tobacco has been targeting our communities for decades,” she said. “I think a lot of people of communities of color can go on and on and on about your experience with cigarettes and the long history of them plaguing our communities.”
District 11 council member Stacie Gilmore talked about her dad, a Lucky Strike smoker, and the smell in the family station wagon as a kid, driving with the windows rolled up. Her father-in-law died in 2018 from lung cancer, "literally drowning in the mucus and the tar that was in his lungs.”
She said she’d been on the fence. However, she says, when she realized the industry hasn’t revealed the chemicals in its products — chemicals that when heated and inhaled get embedded deep in people’s lungs — she made her decision.
“That was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Gilmore said. “Because there is a requirement for us as legislators to ensure that we’re protecting the public safety of our constituency.” Which she said includes not just voters but young people.
“This isn’t about choice, it’s about addiction,” said Councilman Chris Hinds, who represents District 10, referring to arguments from opponents that flavored products are aimed at adults who want to quit smoking traditional cigarettes.
Councilmember Darrell Watson from District 10, one of the sponsors, became animated when he recited a lengthy ode in which he took rhetorical shots at big tobacco and lobbyists, raising his arms at several points.
“Tonight we stand shoulder to shoulder with over a hundred healthcare leaders and twice as many community members,” he said. “We remember the names of our loved ones, sickened and killed by your poisons. Fool me once, shame on me. You won't fool me twice because we've learned our lessons.”
Opponents criticized the process as being rushed and unfair, something the measure’s sponsors denied
Critics said that the proposal would have a dramatic and negative impact on many small retailers in the city and hurt city tax revenues.
Zachary Shadi-Kingsley said his family were the longtime owners of Capitol Hill Conoco and Auto, just up the hill from city hall, and two other convenience stores in Denver. He said the ban would result in a “forty percent drop in sales, guaranteed.”
Shadi-Kingsley said their stores sold a number of flavored tobacco and vaping products, but not to kids.
“By banning these products, you're taking it away from the legal adults,” he said.
He joined a rally in front of the building before the meeting, amid signs reading “Abandon the Flavor Ban.” Some wore bright yellow T-shirts reading “Stop the Menthol Ban, Save Our Stores and Jobs.”
The lone no vote, Kevin Flynn, from District 2, said his mother smoked and died at 69 of ovarian cancer, though it’s not known if there was a link. He said this proposal would fail because bans don’t work. He added that kids are getting the products from other sources, not city tobacco retailers, and that the change would just create an illicit market.
“I believe that this is a poor policy choice to try to keep you from getting a legal adult product by prohibiting adults from buying it. And I'm not here to be a mommy to Denver’s adults,” he said.
In the weeks before the vote, the two sides exchanged a flurry of full-page newspaper ads, mailers, social media ads and texts sent directly to city residents.
Seven Colorado cities have approved similar proposals in recent years to prohibit or restrict flavored tobacco products: Aspen, Boulder, Carbondale, Edgewater, Glenwood Springs, Golden and Snowmass Village. Nationwide, the list includes nearly 400 municipalities and five states, according to the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, a non-profit based in Washington, D.C.
Colorado once had the nation’s highest rate of vaping among young people. It dropped sharply in recent years after a multifaceted push that included raising the purchase age to 21. But many who get hooked on vapor products struggle to stop and often turn to cigarettes.
The three sponsors said they brought the ban in hopes of limiting youth tobacco use and vaping and to address decades-long systemic health disparities, in part fueled by broad and aggressive industry marketing in Black and Latino communities, among others.
