California has some of the toughest tobacco laws in the country. In 2024, Newark and Union City both introduced an additional patchwork of regulations on flavored tobacco products and retail licenses.
“I feel like this is a step in the right direction, but there are still lots of holes, and it’s a much weaker ordinance than what Union City has,” said a Newark parent who preferred to remain anonymous because her kids “don’t want their parents to be associated with ratting them out.”
Concerned about her hometown’s historically lax tobacco policies compared to neighboring cities, the parent remains frustrated by the presence of a vape shop in the shopping complex across from her son’s school. Like other locals, she advocates for more limitations on retailer proximity to youth or sensitive areas, as well as caps on issuing new tobacco licenses and transferring existing ones. “I’m not proposing [the shop] should be shut down, but the ordinance should be written in a way such that once the owner is ready to sell the business, it should not be replaced with another tobacco store,” she said.
This perspective pits parents and advocacy groups directly against local businesses. “Nearly 32% of convenience store in-store sales come from tobacco, with e-cigarettes contributing significantly,” wrote a Union City business owner earlier this year, arguing that stringent limitations would only hurt the local economy. Another resident pleaded passionately at a 2024 January city council meeting to leave tobacco licenses alone: “If we can’t sell our business, that’s my dad’s retirement.”
Shop owners argue that excessive restrictions on tobacco products will only fuel a black market. Some media outlets have reported the proliferation of goods online, while others tell stories of six-figures worth of vapes being confiscated from drug dealers allegedly selling to middle school kids. One proprietor of a Newark smoke shop recalled meeting a parent who appeared to select cartridges for her kid: “Do you like this, or this?” the woman asked the teen. When confronted, the customer claimed she was making purchases for herself.
For local retailers who play by the rules, it seems unfair to be punished with sweeping bans due to the actions of a few irresponsible people. “We’re not selling to minors,” said Jason Singh, whose family owns nine convenience stores that sell tobacco products in the Bay Area. “I think there needs to be enforcement all around,” he added.
One challenge is the varying standards of enforcement. An online petition from Newark claimed that youth decoy operations on 16 of the city’s tobacco retailers found seven that sold tobacco products to minors in 2020, and that “Newark was tied with Oakland at 43.8% for the highest violation rate in Alameda County that year.”
In reporting this article, not a single Newark smoke shop owner was willing to speak on the record to the media, for fear of increased scrutiny. “I think we’re in the wrong business. Every year, it’s ‘Don’t sell this, don’t sell that,’” one owner said, on the condition of anonymity.
E-cigarettes, or vapes, are particularly worrisome to public health officials because of their toxins and potential to be abused by minors. According to this year’s California Healthy Kids Survey, nearly 1 in 5 juniors in both Newark and Union City high schools reported having tried vape products, an increase from last year. In contrast, a much smaller fraction of students claim to have “ever smoked a whole cigarette.” The same report shows that vape usage disproportionately affects students whose parents have lower than high school degrees, as well as Black and Latinx populations.
“I’ve seen this epidemic on my high school campus grow increasingly prevalent from my sophomore to my senior year,” said Fatima Khawaja, who graduated from James Logan High School last year. Khawaja recalled going to the bathroom during exam season her junior year and finding girls using e-cigarettes in the stalls. “People were literally skipping out on their finals to vape,” she said.
A single smoking cartridge can hold as much nicotine as an entire pack of cigarettes. With delicious fruity flavors packaged in discreet containers—“a little battery powered thing like your AirPods case that you can hide in the palm of your hand,” one parent said— vapes are easy to conceal. Enforcing school tobacco policies are also highly disruptive to learning. “They basically search all the kids. They need to search the classrooms, and the girls are hiding the vapes in their bras,” another parent explained.
At the same time, the vast majority of local juniors say they’ve never tried vaping or tobacco products before. In Fremont, which passed a tobacco ordinance five years ago banning flavored tobacco products but not e-cigarettes in entirety, only 8% of juniors reported having “ever tried vape products.” In contrast, 9% of Grade 11 students reported having had alcohol in the past 30 days. It’s unclear whether low rates of tobacco use are due to Fremont’s much earlier adoption of restrictions, or because a population that applauds early adoption of such measures tends to be less vulnerable to tobacco usage.
Singh is frustrated by what he feels is unfair public antagonism towards tobacco products. He points to the harmful effects of sugary drinks, alcohol and even social media, which can all be easily abused by minors. “Those are bad decisions…but there’s no limit to fast food or Coke,” he said. Many grocery store items like processed foods and alcohol are highly addictive and have been associated with cancer, yet there are no bans on their sales.
“Why are you targeting us?” Singh asked. “We’re not doing anything bad. We’re just running a business. We’re being compliant… We’re paying payroll tax to the federal government, we’re paying licensing fees, we’re giving back to the city.”
Others disagree. “The scale is skewed,” said Khawaja, when she reflected on the tradeoffs between local business and public health. Since most adult smokers begin their habit in adolescence, Khawaja explained, “Even a single exposure to tobacco can cause lifelong addiction, generational addiction and even poverty. The effects of tobacco are far more harsh than sugary drinks.”
Bay Area communities have to wait and see how much the updated local ordinances in 2024 will impact underaged tobacco usage in the future. In the meantime, retailers are bracing for lost revenues today.
Sources:
- Letter to the Editor: Strengthening Newark’s Tobacco Retail Licensing Ordinance, Tri-City Voice Newspaper
- Letter to the Editor: Union City can impact teen vaping by enforcing a ban on disposable flavored vapes; The Easy Bay Echo
