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Our View: Tobacco proposal the wrong solution

Most of us are well aware that cigarettes and other tobacco products kill mercilessly, driving up community health care costs. That the earlier you start lighting up the harder it is to quit later on. That Big Tobacco ruthlessly pushes its danger...

t1.18.18 Bob King -- 012118.O.DNT.VERHELc1 -- Andy Verhel, owner of the Piedmont Milk House, is upset about the City Council's proposal to restrict the sales of menthol cigarettes and other flavored tobacco. He fears his store will take a big hit and that his customers will simply go up the road to Hermantown to buy the products. Bob King / rking@duluthnews.com
Andy Verhel, owner of the Piedmont Milk House, is upset about the City Council's proposal to restrict the sales of menthol cigarettes and other flavored tobacco. He fears his store will take a big hit and that his customers will simply go up the road to Hermantown to buy the products. Bob King / rking@duluthnews.com

Most of us are well aware that cigarettes and other tobacco products kill mercilessly, driving up community health care costs. That the earlier you start lighting up the harder it is to quit later on. That Big Tobacco ruthlessly pushes its dangerous goods, especially in neighborhoods where poorer people, people of color, and other vulnerable populations are. And that Big Tobacco uses fruit flavorings, fun packaging, and other marketing tricks to shamelessly entice children to pick up the filthy habit.

We've read about all the studies. We've been inundated with the grim stats and the drone of death tolls. And we've grimaced and taken to heart the uncomfortably blunt anti-smoking commercials we see on TV. Most of us are even eager to support efforts to snuff out smoking, to keep chew and Swisher Sweets and other no-good tobacco goods out of the hands of children, and to protect the most vulnerable among us from predatory practices.

All that said, though, it's hard to see how a proposed ordinance to restrict the sales of menthol and flavored tobacco products to Duluth's six adults-only tobacco shops will help with any of it.

The Duluth City Council is expected to open discussions on the ordinance Monday.

If a stronger, more convincing argument doesn't emerge than the ones being made now, councilors can reject this proposal. Or at least send it back for more work, lest they risk jeopardizing, for little discernible community or health benefit, the livelihoods of convenience store owners and other merchants who now count on tobacco sales to stay in business.

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As worthwhile as its intent may be, the ordinance also threatens to exacerbate Duluth's reputation, fair or not, as a less-than-friendly place to do business.

A stated goal of the ordinance: "Keep (tobacco) away from kids," as Duluth Human Rights Officer Carl Crawford said last week when a group of ordinance proponents met with News Tribune Editorial Board members. "If adults want to make those choices, they can, and hopefully we'll work with them later on down the line. But let's not start kids out on the wrong foot."

Agreed. But young people aren't getting smokes and other tobacco products from convenience stores. The stores actually do well at not selling to those under the legal age of 18, especially in Minnesota, according to Food and Drug Administration statistics. If sales are moved from convenience stores to smoke shops only, kids likely would continue to get cigarettes and chew the way they always have: by swiping from their parents or by having an 18-year-old friend purchase for them

"We're not the problem, so why are we the ones who would be punished by this?" Bob Bucci of the Holiday Stationstores in Duluth said when opponents met separately last week with editorial board members. "The way the ordinance is drawn up, it's going to pick winners and losers. It's not going to make the product illegal, so it's not going to have any effect on that side of it. But it's going to say to us as responsible retailers that we can no longer sell it."

We all can frown on government picking winners and losers, and here, while Duluth's convenience stores lose, adults-only tobacco shops win. So do convenience stores just outside Duluth in Hermantown, Proctor, and Superior. As much as 30 percent of Duluth convenience stores' revenues come from tobacco products, they estimate. And that doesn't count the revenue from sales of gas, milk and other things tobacco buyers also purchase - and would be purchasing elsewhere as a result of the ordinance. The losses to Duluth's convenience stores, meanwhile, stand to be substantial.

"It'll close many of our businesses," said Kevin Gulbranson, also of Holiday Stationstores in Duluth.

"Let's make it a fair playing field. If they want to ban menthol, then do it statewide, but don't pick winners and losers," Bucci said. "This feels like, 'OK, we have this solution; now we're trying to find a problem.'"

Another stated goal of the ordinance is to limit children's exposure to Big Tobacco's marketing messages, which also is a worthy goal.

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"Children are very susceptible to marketing, even from just going into a convenience store as a 4-year-old or 5-year-old and seeing all this stuff, day after day, laid out in front of them," said Dr. Tim Zaeger, a pediatrician for Essentia Health who also supports the ordinance. "From a chemical standpoint, their brains are ready to be patterned. ... It's desensitization."

Indeed, but tobacco products, with all their influential advertising and displays, still would be sold in convenience stores in Duluth if the ordinance passes.

If the concern is Big Tobacco's messaging and marketing, especially to young people, then an ordinance could be crafted to directly address marketing and messaging. If the concern is menthol and flavored tobacco and how such products can be gateways to nicotine addiction, then an ordinance - or, probably better, statewide or even federal legislation - can be crafted to counter menthol.

While the right problems are being addressed, the ordinance that Duluth's City Council is expected to begin considering doesn't directly address them. But it does promise to harm local retailers as well as our city's business climate and can be rejected - or at least sent back for more work.

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