Dear Vape Store Owner and Ally,
The election results on Tuesday in Denver were challenging.
On November 4, Denver voters rejected Referendum 310, voting 70% percent to retain the ban and 30% percent to repeal it. As of November 7, 2025, voter turnout sits at 187,026 or 35% voter turnout from Denver’s 533,000 total registered voters.
Billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s enormous amount of financial resources ($5 million dollars out of a $6 million dollar total opposition budget) played a significant role in the results.
The Citizen Power team (the 501 c4 organization created in January by the Denver vape store community) generated nearly $725,000 from January – November, 2025 – one of the highest amounts of funding across the nation to fund a municipal vape battle.
But Citizen Power was outspent 20-to-1 in October with an onslaught of television and cable advertisements, mailings, texts, paid phones, and social media advertisements. Overall, Citizen Power was outspent 8-to-1 during the entire campaign.
Our polling in both January and in August, 2025 revealed a competitive race within the margin of error. The opponents polled three times in September, 2025 and began heavily advertising on September 20, 2025.
Campaign Plan Review
Citizen Power’s original campaign plan called for $2.5–$4.5 million in paid voter contact to compete with public-health opposition, but that level of funding never materialized. Ultimately our voter contact program was allocated to the major activities below:
● Extensive Field and Earned Media efforts including both paid and volunteer phone banks that contacted every targeted Denver voter, over 50 press outreach and interviews, small business organizing, events and public organizing opportunities, and other grassroots and guerilla tactics, such as the distribution of 1,000 yard signs.
● Paid Digital Ads and Campaign Emails to reach Denver voters via social media, streaming services, display and programmatic ads and google search ads. In addition we had a robust email program with a 60,000 voter list that was launched in May, 2025.
● Paid Persuasion & GOTV Phones and Texts including paid live persuasion and GOTV calls, and multiple persuasion and GOTV text messages. Three texts were sent to 75,000 Denver voters in October, 2025.
Campaign Strengths
1. Grassroots Momentum and Small-Business Energy
● From January - March, 2025, more than 17,000 Denver voters signed petitions to place the repeal on the ballot — an extraordinary grassroots achievement powered by local small-business owners and independent vape retailers. Denver only required 9,450 signatures to force or require an election in November, 2025.
● Citizen Power built an authentic coalition connecting family-owned and minority-owned stores to a message of economic fairness, government overreach, and consumer choice.
● Volunteers organized store-based voter contact, direct outreach, and community events that generated hundreds of thousands of voter impressions without the benefit of television advertising.
● The campaign garnered endorsements from the Denver Republican Party, the Denver Libertarian Party, the Denver Democratic Socialist Party, and forced the Denver Democrats to stay neutral. The Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and a Business Development District also endorsed the campaign along with 100 small vape stores and over 500 convenience stores.
2. Earned Media and Digital Reach
● The campaign earned strong coverage from Denver7, Denverite, and every other TV outlets that framed the story as “Denver small businesses fighting for survival.”
● Citizen Power built a significant online presence (on a limited budget) through email outreach, social-media ads on Facebook and Instagram, and targeted streaming — reaching voters where we could and amplifying the small-business voice citywide.
● The professionally produced, 30-second advertisement was reviewed nearly 600,000 times on Facebook and Instagram and viewed over 300,000 times on online streaming platforms such as YouTube.
3. Message Resonance
● Fiscal and economic arguments — $13 million in lost city revenue, small-business closures, and layoffs — remained the most persuasive reasons to oppose the ban.
● Voters responded to themes of fairness and adult choice, highlighting Denver’s inconsistent policy toward alcohol, marijuana, and vaping.
● Citizen Power’s grassroots campaign shifted the narrative enough to make repeal appear viable, forcing the opposition to escalate its spending dramatically.
Challenges and Opposition Spending
Despite the campaign’s creativity and momentum, Citizen Power could not overcome the extraordinary financial disparity.
● National health organizations and Bloomberg-aligned groups began with an initial $1.5 million TV ad buy in late summer, 2025.
● Following the surge in grassroots visibility and internal polling that likely showed tightening numbers, they tripled down ultimately spending just under $6 million - spending approximately $3 million in spend in the final 2 weeks of the campaign
● Opposition Messaging saturated every Denver TV and streaming platform with emotional “protect-the-kids” messaging uncontested for the final 6 weeks of the campaign.
● During the last 10 years, healthcare organizations with Bloomberg funds have relentlessly communicated with the American public about the negative consequences of vaping. The small vape community and Big Tobacco will need to create a long-term communications and messaging story to counterbalance this negative messaging.
Meanwhile, Citizen Power’s side had no television presence (cable or broadcast media) and relied primarily on grassroots organizing, digital channels, and earned media. Despite record-high press coverage and community engagement, the sheer weight of paid advertising reshaped the electorate’s understanding of the measure in the final stretch.
Key Takeaways
Grassroots Cannot Replace Paid Air Cover
Citizen Power’s network mobilized remarkable volunteer energy and press attention but could not counter a multi-million-dollar TV and digital barrage in the closing weeks.
Narrative Framing Remains a Structural Challenge
Even with strong economic and fairness arguments, the “protect the kids” frame seems to continue to dominate public sentiment among older and college-educated women — the voting bloc in Denver’s electorate. A recent national poll revealed that 91% of the American public believes vaping is “harmful” or “very harmful”. The national and local narrative was exploited by enormous Bloomberg resources.
Additional Debrief Comments
The Citizen Power team is in the process of creating an election debrief presentation that can be used to engage in future battles. The team will share the deck with you in the near future.
It’s obvious that many voters in Denver, in Colorado, and across the country have a negative opinion about vaping. In a recent Gallup poll, 91% of Americans said they view vaping as “harmful” or “very harmful”. The Bloomberg funds highlighted these viewpoints.
Long-term, it will be important to reshape public opinion about vaping in the minds of the non-vaping public. We need to communicate what we all know – that small vape store owners help adult consumers stay alive with flavored vaping products by quitting deadly combustible cigarettes.
Short-term, unfortunately, the passage of Referendum 310 will have serious consequences for Denver vape store owners, staff, and customers as well as negatively impact universal pre-k childcare funding and adult cigarette cessation habits.
First, the City and County of Denver will lose $13 million annually in sales tax revenue to neighboring communities such as Glendale, Englewood, Aurora, and Lakewood. The Proposition EE (a Colorado statewide funding source) revenues were specifically earmarked for Denver’s Universal Pre-K childcare program. The result will be fewer childcare options for Denver families.
These losses come at a time when Denver faces a $250 million budget deficit and has either eliminated or left unfilled 1,000 city jobs. With half of Denver’s $4 billion annual budget dependent on sales tax revenue, the timing of this outcome could not be worse.
Second, approximately 100 small, family-owned, vape businesses will close, leading to the loss of up to 2,000 local jobs. These are real families and community members who will bear the burden of this policy.
Third, adult choice will be restricted. It is already illegal to sell vaping products to minors, yet adults who choose to use legal products will now simply cross city lines to make their purchases elsewhere.
Fourth, and most concerning, youth cigarette smoking use will likely rise. A widely respected Yale University School of Public Health study found that after San Francisco enacted its 2018 flavored tobacco ban, youth cigarette smoking increased by 30%.
Next Steps
These are challenging times for the vaping community in both Denver and in Colorado.
Most likely, Jodi Radke from Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, with Bloomberg funds, will introduce a statewide flavored vaping ban in Colorado in the 2026 Colorado State Legislature, which convenes in January, 2026.
During the last five years, Colorado Governor Jared Polis has threatened to veto similar bills because the sin taxes collected from cigar, cigarette, and vaping sales transactions (from Proposition EE funds) contribute approximately $200 million dollars annually to fund universal pre-kindergarten childcare.
Opponents will force Governor Polis into a difficult political position even though he would most likely veto the bill because Colorado has to cut another $841 million dollars from next year’s budget. During the past two years, Colorado has cut nearly $2 billion dollars from the state budget. Colorado has experienced lean budget years and a balanced budget requirement.
The opponents will also continue to attempt nicotine and vaping flavored bans in other major Colorado municipalities, starting with Aurora, Colorado, which just elected a progressive majority on the Aurora City Council.
During the last six years, we have fought the opposition in 53 Colorado municipalities. We have won 43 battles and lost 10. We also have defeated three statewide vaping bans in Colorado. The Denver victory emboldened our opponents.
Last December, the Denver small vape community unanimously agreed to collect the necessary signatures to overturn the Denver flavor ban. The ban would have started on March 17, 2025 without the election fight. The stores were able to stay open for an additional eight months and generate hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue.
We have heard from Denver municipal sources that the Denver Department of Public Health & Environment (DDPHE) will begin issuing citations to Denver vape stores on November 21, 2025, the date the Denver Clerk and Recorder certifies the election. The Denver health department is understaffed so it will take time to contact the 100 Denver vape stores and the 521 Denver retail, nicotine establishments.
Attached is the Denver law for reference. Please contact me with questions about the statute.
We will keep fighting. We will readjust. We will play the long game to protect adults’ right to vape. Thank you for all your support. Talk to you soon.