Dear RMSFA Member and Vaping Ally,
Yesterday, the Golden City Council hosted its first reading on the proposed vaping flavor ban. The Golden City Council did not vote. Rather, the Council listened to the 25 powerful witnesses who spoke in opposition to the flavor ban.
Thank you to everyone who attended the Council meeting!
On July 25, 2023 at 6:30pm, the Golden City Council will host a second reading and final vote to ban flavored vaping products in Golden, Colorado.
We need your support now more than ever!
Please email and call the seven Golden City Council members (listed below) to amend the proposed vaping flavor ban with a 21-age-restricted store amendment. The amendment would only allow vaping stores to sell vaping products to customers who are 21 years of age or older and show an ID upon entry into a vaping store.
We also need you to attend the July 25 Golden City Council meeting at 911 10th Street, Golden, CO 80501 at 6:30pm and testify against the flavor ban.
QR Code
Attached is a QR code that you can send to your customers to offer a discount on future vaping product purchases if they join the RMSFA for as little as $4 per month.
Also, please ask your customers to attend the July 25th Golden City Council meeting on July 25 at 6:30pm!
Customers can join the RMSFA at the new RMSFA website at www.RMSFA.org
Even if your store is not in Golden, we need you to support your fellow vaping store owners in Golden.
Below is contact information for the Golden City Councilors. Use the talking points below. Make your comments personal and polite. Feel free to edit the email below.
Also, if you are a store owner, please collect as many petitions (name, email, and phone number) from your customers as you can. The petition will oppose a vaping flavor ban. We will present the petitions to the Golden City Council.
Call me with any questions at 303-919-4748.
Onward!
Golden City Councilors
https://www.cityofgolden.net/government/city-council/council-members-commentaries/
Mayor Laura Weinberg
(303) 384-8179
LWeinberg@cityofgolden.net
Mayor Pro Tem JJ Trout
(720) 880-5084
JTrout@cityofgolden.net
City Councilor Casey Brown
(303) 900-2003
CBrown@cityofgolden.net
City Councilor Robert Reed
RReed@cityofgolden.net
City Councilor Paul Haseman
PHaseman@cityofgolden.net
City Councilor Don Cameron
(720) 295-4370
DCameron@cityofgolden.net
City Councilor Bill Fisher
(303) 588-3389
BFisher@cityofgolden.net
Dear Golden City Councilor:
Thank you for your service to the people of Golden, Colorado. I am contacting you to strongly oppose a potential vaping flavor ban in Golden. A vaping flavor ban will have multiple negative healthcare and economic consequences and a ban will not reduce youth vaping. If the Council is strongly supportive of a ban, please consider exempting 21-and-over, age-restricted stores so that vaping stores are regulated similar to marijuana shops. Most youth access vaping products online or through less regulated gas stations.
Below is some important background information and policy best practices for you to consider as you craft a vaping policy in Golden.
Vaping Public Policy Best Practices to Reduce Youth Vaping While Allowing Adults to Access Flavored Vaping Products to Quit Smoking Cigarettes
Over 40 Colorado municipalities and hundreds of local governments across the United States have enacted reasonable and best evidence policies to both reduce youth vaping while still allowing age restricted stores to sell flavored vaping products to responsible adults to help them quit smoking more harmful cigarettes. These policies are outlined below.
During the last four years, both the federal and Colorado state governments passed over a dozen laws and regulations to reduce youth vaping. These new regulations are working. As a result, according to the CDC, youth vaping has reduced over 30% each year during the last four years. Even Dr. Brian King, the FDA Director of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Tobacco Products (CTP), recently stated that youth vaping is not an epidemic.
In Colorado, the voters of the State of Colorado increased taxes 62% to reduce youth vaping. The State of Colorado also created a state licensing and enforcement system for stores to prevent minors from purchasing vaping products, increased the number of inspections at stores, raised the age to 21 to purchase vaping products at the federal and state level, banned new retail vaping stores from existing within 500 feet of schools, and restricted advertising for vaping products. We support these new laws and regulations.
Over 40 Colorado municipalities have implemented responsible vaping public policy to both reduce youth vaping while still allowing adults to use flavored vaping products to quit smoking more harmful cigarettes. The eight Colorado municipalities that decided to ban flavors destroyed and shut down responsible small vaping businesses and dramatically reduced consumers’ options to be healthier.
If the City of Golden bans flavored vaping or tobacco products, small, responsible vaping stores will be forced to shut down (because 96% of adult consumers purchase flavored vaping products to help them forget the disgusting smell of cigarette smoke), thousands of responsible adult consumers will shop elsewhere which will cost the City of Golden thousands of dollars of sales tax dollars and put vaping small businesses at a competitive disadvantage.
Nearly all of the adult customers who visit small vaping stores have tried the nicotine patch or gum and pharmaceutical drugs to quit smoking cigarettes and they all have failed. However, thousands of adult customers have successfully used flavored vaping products to quit smoking cigarettes.
The small independent vaping stores in Golden and in Jefferson County would support an age restricted amendment to any vaping flavor ban bill. Without an age restricted amendment, all the small vaping stores will be destroyed and out of business within 30 days as demonstrated by flavor ban policies in Boulder, Glenwood Springs and the state of New York. Additionally, youth cigarette rates will increase with a flavored vaping ban, as demonstrated by the harmful policy in the City of San Francisco.
We have discovered that the most effective public policies to reduce access to youth vaping products include:
Only allowing adult-only, 21-and-over, age-restricted stores to sell vaping products with strict ID checks and mandatory swipes. Regulate vaping stores like marijuana shops.
Implement and enforce a licensing plan to understand who is selling vaping products in your community. Licensing reduces youth vaping access and use because the municipality can better monitor sales.
Stiff penalties to stores, such as $5,000 for first offense, $10,000 for second offense, and revocation of license for 90 days on a third offense, for selling to minors.
Marketing restrictions.
Distance restrictions between schools and vaping stores.
Track and trace technology to identify any parent or adult who provides a vaping device to a minor. We also support fining parents who give vaping products to youth.
It’s important to note that from 2009 – 2016, thousands of small vaping stores peacefully existed throughout the United States. In late 2016, international tobacco companies invested tens of millions of dollars in JUUL, which caused youth vaping. Small responsible vaping stores did not cause the youth vaping problem.
Safety Standards
Regarding safety store standards, the small vaping stores have strict safety, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution standards to prevent youth from using vaping products while still allowing responsible adults to use vaping products to quit more harmful cigarettes. For example, most stores have ID scanners at point of sale, strict ID check upon entry, video cameras, and numerous other safety protocols.
Vaping stores manufacture locally and do not purchase products from JUUL or large tobacco companies.
Regarding harm reduction, vaping products do not contain charcoal and tar, the two main ingredients that kill approximately 480,000 Americans annually from lung disease, heart disease, emphysema, and various forms of cancer. The owners of the vaping stores started their businesses because vaping helps smokers find alternatives to cigarettes. Flavor bans are counter to these life-saving goals.
Remember that a single cigarette contains 7,000 chemicals – at least 93 of which are proven carcinogens. A typical vaping device only contains approximately 12 major ingredients. That is why 14 domestic and international health care organizations have publicly commented that vaping is a 95% safer alternative than smoking combustible cigarettes.
For example, in Great Britain, when a consumer calls the 1800-Quit Smoking telephone number, they are referred to a vaping resource because Great Britain has incorporated vaping into the public health care system as a cigarette cessation tool. The United Kingdom’s Royal College of Physicians concluded that vaping products are 95% safer than traditional, combustible cigarettes.
A 2017 Yale University study concluded that “a ban on flavored e-cigarettes would drive smokers to combustible cigarettes, which have been found to be the more harmful way of getting nicotine.”
In 2018, the San Francisco City Council enacted a ban of the sale of flavored tobacco products — including menthol cigarettes and flavored vape liquids. According to a May, 2021 study from the Yale School of Public Health (YSPH), that law had the opposite effect. After the ban’s implementation, high school students’ odds of smoking conventional cigarettes doubled in San Francisco’s school district relative to trends in districts without the ban, even when adjusting for individual demographics and other tobacco policies. The study was published in JAMA Pediatrics.
“These findings suggest a need for caution,” said Abigail Friedman, the study’s author and an assistant professor of health policy at YSPH. “While neither smoking cigarettes nor vaping nicotine are safe per se, the bulk of current evidence indicates substantially greater harms from smoking, which is responsible for nearly one in five adult deaths annually. Even if it is well-intentioned, a law that increases youth smoking could pose a threat to public health.”
Recently, 15 medical doctors and public health professionals and professors authored an article in the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) that emphasized the need for age restricted vaping stores to reduce adult cigarette use. The peer reviewed and widely respected article also scientifically proved how flavored vaping has been used by millions of responsible adults as a cessation tool to quit smoking more harmful cigarettes. Additionally, the FDA recently documented how 6.8 million American adults have used flavored vaping products to quit smoking cigarettes.
The article is both a well-timed and important document that can guide the Golden City Council to both reduce youth vaping while still empowering responsible adults to use flavored vaping products to quit smoking more harmful cigarettes.
Thank you for listening to my concerns. I encourage you to visit one of the local vaping stores in your community to gain an even deeper level of understanding about how small vaping stores are both preventing youth vaping use and assisting adults to use vaping products to quit smoking more harmful cigarettes.
Thank you for listening to my concerns and thank you for considering amending the vaping flavor ban with a 21-and-over, store, age-restricted amendment.