Public-health experts hopeful Denver’s flavored-tobacco ban will discourage young people from using

A tobacco-policy analyst at Metropolitan State University of Denver thinks the city’s ban on the sale of flavored tobacco and nicotine products will help discourage young people from taking up the use of vape pens, menthol cigarettes and related retail goods. But it may take time to see results.

Denver City Council voted in December to prohibit the sale of any product that masks the smell or taste of tobacco, including fruit, mint, wintergreen, chocolate, cocoa, vanilla, honey or “any candy, dessert, alcoholic beverage, herb or spice.”

The ban, which will go into effect March 18, also encompasses products containing nicotine or nicotine analogs, such as metatine.

Erin Seedorf, Dr.P.H., a professor of Public Health in MSU Denver’s Department of Health Professions, said that historically, public policies promoting healthy behavior have been effective.

“If you look at when these substantial tobacco-control policies come into play, you see a policy and then you’ll see drops in tobacco initiation and also current use,” she said.

The marketing of sweet-flavored products is part of a decadeslong strategy by tobacco companies to attract new customers. The plan emerged following the widespread adoption of smoke-free ordinances and imposition of higher cigarette taxes, which discouraged youths from using tobacco.

“There was a whole new industry push to create other alternatives for tobacco products,” Seedorf said. “Flavored tobacco products were designed for younger audiences because they knew that traditional tobacco has a flavor that’s harsh for a new person who’s trying the product.

“The flavorings or menthol were strategies to lessen that impact to make it more appealing.”

Flavored smokeless tobacco products such as e-cigarettes were marketed differently from traditional tobacco as a way to circumvent smoke-free ordinances, and it took time for regulators to respond, she said.

“Subsequently, they started rolling in those protections — they started to identify that, yes, in fact, these e-cigarettes were delivering nicotine,” Seedorf said. “So then, some components of those were regulated, but the flavor piece has always been the last component to get to get regulation.

“This has been a strategy for tobacco prevention since the emergence of e-cigarettes. It’s just that it’s taken so long to get to this point.”

On the federal level, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009 gave the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco products, she said. “But it wasn’t really until 2020 that the FDA started to talk about removing flavored cartridges in e-cigarettes from the market,” she added.

When the flavored-tobacco and -nicotine ban takes effect this month, Denver will join six other Colorado communities, including Edgewater, Glenwood Springs and Golden, that have banned flavored tobacco products. “Historically, Denver has not taken the lead on tobacco-control policies,” Seedorf said. “However, it is great that they are now the largest municipality to initiate this important health policy.”

The menthol-cigarette ban is somewhat controversial because tobacco companies have historically focused the marketing and sale of those products in predominantly Black areas and cities, she said.

“We know that those strategies have led to higher use of these particular tobacco products in those populations,” Seedorf said. “I think that has been one of the pieces holding back the ban of flavored tobacco because menthol has been included in that ordinance.”

From a health-policy standpoint, “the challenge has been in removing a product where it has a disproportionate impact on these populations,” she said. “There’s not a right or wrong answer to that. I think that it’s a really difficult question.”

Denver City Council’s ban on flavored tobacco and nicotine products reflects a typical step in the process by which public health policy evolves, Seedorf said. “Most policy has to happen at the local level,” she said, “and then, it might roll up eventually to become state policy. Most public health policy happens at local or state levels, not at federal levels.”