DENVER — Denver voters will decide whether to keep or overturn the city’s ban on flavored tobacco products.
Phil Guerin, owner of Myxed Up Creations smoke shops, is one of the business owners fighting the ban, which the Denver City Council approved in December after an 11-1 vote.
“We are fighting David versus Goliath, and we are David,” he told Denver7. “I’ve been able to go around and talk to a lot of my competitors and bring us all under the same tent.”
Their coalition, called Citizen Power, collected more than 17,000 signatures for a ballot petition.
The city has declared that petition sufficient but is waiting until a protest period ends Friday before formally notifying the city council, according to Ben Warwick with Denver’s Clerk and Recorder’s Office. Warwick said it will then be up to the city council to determine the election date. The next general election is set for this November.
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Denver City Council votes 11-1 to approve flavored tobacco ban
Current law requires buyers of these flavored tobacco products to be at least 21.
“There's already a ban for children,” said Guerin. “This is a ban on adults, and honestly, this is a ban on small, family-owned businesses.”
Guerin said flavored tobacco products account for more than 50 percent of his business.
“If we lost that business, it would be almost impossible to sustain after that point,” he said.
Guerin added that “nobody” wants young people to use flavored tobacco products and education is the best way to stop that from happening.
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Flavored tobacco products could stay on Denver store shelves amid ban
Backers of the ban, like public health advocates and Denver Public Schools (DPS), said it’s a meaningful way to reduce how many children and teens are using the products.
“This industry will stop at nothing to make sure that kids have access to products they know that entice and are catalysts for their use,” said Jodi Radke, regional director for Tobacco-Free Kids, who added there’s already a lot of education and strong enforcement going on in the Denver area.
“Retailers are being checked four times a year. They're being re-checked if they sell to someone who's not of age,” she continued. “It’s not really the sale that's the problem, it's the product that's the problem.”
Radke said tobacco giant Phillip Morris, which is building a large manufacturing facility in Aurora, has “contributed to efforts to repeal our work." She denied that this is a “mom-and-pop shop" issue.
Denver resident David Ballew spoke with Denver7 about the issue on Wednesday. Recognizing that a ban could be an issue for small businesses, he called the topic a “tough call.”
“My daughter, I raised her, and she was messing around with cigarettes,” he said. “I guess I'm for [a ban] if they think it's gonna keep kids from getting on this [expletive].”
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