State and national youth health advocates want this to be the year that Vermont joins Massachusetts and California in banning the retail sale of all flavored tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes.
A Senate bill, S.18, would do that. This is the third legislative session in a row in which Health and Welfare Committee Chair Ginny Lyons and other supporters have tried to push the ban through.
“Right now, if you walk into any school, you are pretty much walking into an epidemic environment where kids are vaping flavors and then becoming the next generation of addicted adults,” Lyons said last week before her committee voted 3-2 along party lines to move the bill, with Democrats in support.
A hearing in the Senate Finance Committee with representatives from retail sellers is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, followed by a possible vote.
The state ban on sales would apply to all flavors of e-cigarettes and e-liquids, cigars and menthol-flavored cigarettes, which were exempt from a federal ban on other flavored cigarettes in 2009. Advocates say a comprehensive ban is needed because federal efforts to ban flavored tobacco products through the Food and Drug Administration have been halting, piecemeal and could be hung up for years if challenged in court.
“This whack-a-mole approach with flavors just isn’t going to work,” said Kevin O’Flaherty, the Northeast region advocacy director for Tobacco Free Kids, which has purchased banner ads on VTDigger’s website to advocate for the measure. The organization has also been running television ads in New York State markets backing a parallel push there, he said.
If approved, the ban would begin on Sept. 1, 2023. The Vermont Legislative Joint Fiscal Office, which provides analysis for legislators, estimates the ban would cost the state $5.6 million in tax revenue — both from special tobacco taxes and general sales and use taxes — in its first full fiscal year in effect.
The sale of tobacco products to people under 21 has been prohibited by state and federal law since 2019, up from age 18. Despite that, teachers and students say there is still widespread vaping in school bathrooms, particularly the disposable flavored vape pens and bars.
“I’d walk into a bathroom and I’d see kids pulling a smoke in stalls. You could smell it when you went in there. It’s like fruity-tooty,” said Ryan Canty, a recent graduate of Champlain Valley Union High School, a non-vaper who testified before the Senate Health and Welfare Committee last month. “The flavors really were appealing to me, and appealing to a lot of my friends. There was strawberry-lemonade. There was mango.”
In 2019, the most recent year of the Vermont Department of Health’s school-based Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 26% of respondents said they had used an electronic vapor product within the last 30 days, almost four times the percentage that smoked cigarettes. The problem has only become worse since then, according to school leaders and doctors who testified before the health committee.
“All across the state, the stories are really similar. We are seeing a lot of youth use, and a lot of youth nicotine dependence and a lot of difficulty in quitting,” said L.E. Faricy, a pulmonologist at the UVM Children’s Hospital, in testimony last month. She said she has done training on the topic in recent years with around a dozen primary care practices around the state.
“Vaping is an immense problem in our schools right now,” echoed Jay Nichols, head of the Vermont Principals’ Association, in his testimony.
Opponents are skeptical that an all-out ban will have the impact anticipated, given the prevalence of internet sales and continued availability in neighboring New Hampshire. They also say a ban would interfere with the personal social choices of adults.
“I think this is just overreach,” said Sen. Terry Williams, R-Rutland, before his “no” vote in the health committee.
Retailers are also expected to point out the impact on their sales. Cigarette sales generated $62 million in revenue in 2021, according to the Joint Fiscal Office, which estimated that between 20% and 40% of that were menthol-flavored.
But advocates for health equity told the committee that they supported the ban because it was likely to reduce smoking and its health-related impact in communities of color around the state. Black and Latino smokers prefer menthol cigarettes at a much higher rate than other ethnic groups, said Wichie Artu of Athens, Vermont, in testimony in February.
Artu said his first cigarette at age 16 was a menthol and he still struggles with quitting the habit. “I know this bill has come up year after year after year, and I am really really hoping that this year is finally the year that we can loosen flavored tobacco’s grip on our lives,” he said.