Concerned residents attended Tuesday’s common council meeting to speak out against the sale of menthol tobacco and vape products in the city of Buffalo. About a dozen community leaders and anti-tobacco advocates spoke at the meeting. They said Big Tobacco is specifically targeting youth to recruit its next generation of smokers. They are urging councilmembers to use their local authority to accomplish, what they said, New York State failed to do.
Assistant Court Council Karen Gordon said the common council has no legal authority to enact a ban, but they can take "time, place, and manner" into consideration when approving or denying smoke shop licenses. For example, the council can determine whether or not a smoke shop will be opening too close to a school.
Among the opposition was retired New York State police officer Elliot Boyce. He says a ban on these products will hurt the community because tobacco users will simply travel to surrounding areas to purchase the products, taking away a large portion of the tax revenue that is used to fund services and programs that benefit Buffalo residents. He says the only solution is education, treatment, and counseling.
“Now what’s going to happen is, instead of having these menthol cigarettes regulated by the FDA, you’ll have the menthol cigarettes that’ll be coming from out of the country, the illicit market, and now, which is really popular, coming from China, no longer FDA regulated," said Boyce. "No longer being bought from stores in which individuals will have to show their driver’s license in most cases. It’s going to be one more police item that goes from a health issue to a criminal issue. We’re already struggling in policing the deal with mental health encounters. Why would we add something like menthol cigarettes to the ban?”
Long-time tobacco control advocate Stan Martin and his colleagues say that the bottom line is that healthcare costs are going up and people are dying. Approximately 45,000 African Americans die each year from tobacco-related causes. Since African Americans make up over 33 percent of Buffalo’s population, Martin’s goal is to ultimately remove these products from the shelves.
“When you look at where menthol ban has already been implemented – in Canada, the European Union, Massachusetts, and California – there’s no evidence that supports that there’s an increase, in terms of an illicit market, things of that nature," said Martin. "We’re focusing on the manufacturing, at the retail sale, of menthol tobacco. It does not focus on the individual possession of menthol tobacco or tobacco products. That is a tactic that the tobacco industry utilizes as one of their talking points. So, we definitely have the information, the research, the science, and the data to support our claims.”
Councilmember Rasheed Wyatt vowed to sponsor this cause, and to “work with local groups to send a strong message to our government.” He says this issue is causing Medicare costs to go up because preventative measures are not being taken. He also says there has been a recent increase in tobacco license applications and an oversaturation of smoke shops in the city of Buffalo.