Flavored Tobacco

The letter asks for an update about when FDA plans to announce a final rule and how the agency plans to address the strategy cigarette companies have taken to get around menthol bans introduced in California and Massachusetts.

Connolly’s original bill sought to ban the sale of tobacco products to anyone born after Jan. 1, 2007.

The bill would have banned the sale of cigarettes to anyone born after Dec. 31, 2002, outlawed the sale of cigarettes in 2030 and banned flavored e-cigarettes. It contained no changes for cigars.

The bill now moves onto the Vermont House of Representatives. Like most bills proposed in other states, it would only punish the sales of these products by retailers and not the possession or consumption of a flavored product by a consumer.

While the outright ban on sales of flavored tobacco and vaping products will not pass, another bill would allow for counties to enact stricter tobacco and vaping regulations remains alive.

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s plan to increase the taxes on cigarettes from $4.35 to $5.35 per pack remains in the bill. Hochul’s budget did not call for any changes to the tax rate for cigars.

The town of just over 5,000 residents becomes the fifth city in Maine to pass such a ban.

The bill would ban all flavored tobacco and vaping products, with no exceptions. Interestingly, it would also make it illegal to gift someone in Texas a flavored cigar.

Given previous statements from FDA, if the agency follows through with this timeline, flavored cigars and menthol cigarettes could be illegal by the end of 2024. That would assume no lawsuits challenging the proposed regulations, an almost certainty.

Exactly 1,000 days after a lawsuit was first filed, R.J. Reynolds’ attempt to stop Los Angeles County’s ban on flavored tobacco sales has come to an end.

Fresh off Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto of a statewide preemption ban on laws like this, the Cleveland City Council is considering banning the sale of all flavored tobacco products except for some hookah tobacco sales.