Nobles County, Minn. Approves New Tobacco Retailer Ordinances

The Nobles County Board of Commissioners have approved a broad set of changes that will affect tobacco retailers in the rural county in the southwestern corner of the state that is home to approximately 22,000 residents.

The most notable of the changes, according to PrairieBizMag.com, is that new retail tobacco licensees will have to meet “certain requirements pertaining to proximity to schools, that the maximum number of retail establishments per county be based on U.S. census data, that roll-your-own machines be prohibited, that the minimum age of a tobacco seller be increased from 16 to 18 and that blunt wraps and imitation tobacco products be prohibited from sale in Nobles County.”

The changes come from a push to protect youth from exposure to to tobacco products, a movement led by the Public Health Law Center, the Local Public Health Directors Association and local grant partners, who led to the ordinance’s development.

According to the report, only one person spoke in opposition to the ordinance’s passage, a bar owner who worried that it might compromise her ability to make money on the sales cigarettes, which has already been compounded by the fact that tobacco taxes are lower in neighboring Iowa.