Boulder smoke shop retailers are worried their businesses could be doomed by new city regulations up for initial approval Tuesday.

City council is set to OK rules that would ban sales of flavored nicotine and tobacco products, including e-cigarettes and vapor liquid, raise the age to purchase them from 18 to 21 and to ask voters to approve a city sales tax on the merchandise. The measures appear for first reading on Tuesday’s consent agenda, which is moved forward automatically unless a council member wishes to remove an item for further discussion.

Boulder would become the second municipality in the state to prohibit flavored nicotine sales. Aspen this year became Colorado’s first. As of June, two states and more than 200 local governments across the country have passed restrictions on whether, when, where and how flavored smoking, vaporizing and chewing products can be sold, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

The trend is the latest public pushback against the perception the tobacco industry targets teens and young adults with candy and fruit-flavored nicotine-infused products that pose risks to health and form addictive habits.

Flavors are a “huge piece of our revenue and what keeps our store open,” Up’n Smoke Boulder store manager Ashley Bodig said. “(The proposed ban) is going to be a huge detriment for our business. I also believe that just by making flavors illegal, that sucks for me, who is a purchasing adult. I can legally purchase nicotine. I don’t like just the mint flavors. I want options.”

Age limits backed by industry leader

City staff in a memo to council cites a Boulder County Healthy Kids Behavior Survey showing 33% of Boulder Valley School District high school students consume tobacco vapor, exceeding the Colorado average of 26.2% and the national average of 13.2%.

But store managers and employees selling the products see the proposed Boulder rules as a hindrance to doing business. They see it as nothing more than a minor inconvenience to flavored tobacco and nicotine users that will simply send them outside city limits to satisfy their desires.

“It’s just going to be an irritant, just an annoying thing you have to do, go out of town to get this because Boulder wanted to tell me what to do,” Up’n Smoke Sales Associate Zoie Logan said.

Vaporized tobacco cartridge giant Juul — which has caught flack for the disposable nature of its products leading to litter issues at Boulder High School — supports raising tobacco use age limits to 21.

“We cannot fulfill our goal to provide the world’s one billion adult smokers with a true alternative to combustible cigarettes, the number one cause of preventable death in this country, if youth-use continues unabated,” Juul spokesperson Ted Kwong said. “Tobacco 21 laws fight one of the largest contributors to this problem — sharing by legal-age peers — and they have been shown to dramatically reduce youth-use rates.”

While Juul does not and “never will sell flavors clearly targeted to youth,” the company is against prohibition of all non-tobacco flavored vapor products.

“We would support an outright ban on inappropriate flavors and packaging, such as those that mimic kid candies, foods, and drinks,” Kwong said. “We also support swift government enforcement against any manufacturer that packages or markets its vapor products in a way intended to promote use by youth.”

Parents responsible, tobacco stores say

Boulder is threatening up to a $5,000 penalty on those caught violating the proposed ban on selling flavored tobacco products. The U.S. in 2009 banned flavors other than menthol from being used in traditional cigarettes with the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.

Tobacco retailers possessing four or more flavored products will be presumed to have intent to sell them or offer their sale, the proposed city ordinance states.

“We think the flavor ban is unfair to adult smokers,” Pearl Street’s Mile High Pipes and Tobacco Manager Alex Pirouznia said. “You can test your child for nicotine, just like THC (the active ingredient in pot), cocaine or any other drug. It should fall more on the parents’ shoulders than the shop getting punished, or people like me who vape being punished. We ID every person that comes in here.”

Tax outcomes

Council could also decide to put a city tobacco sales tax hike on the Nov. 5 election ballot for possible voter approval. Boulder staff has given council two options: one would put a 15-cents-per-cigarette tax on traditional smokes, plus a duty of 40% of the sales price on other tobacco products. This would potentially raise a staff-projected $6 million to $7 million in public revenue. The other would exclude a new tax on cigarettes themselves and only put the 40% tax on non-cigarette tobacco items, and result in a predicted $2.4 million in revenue for the city.

Under state law, Boulder receives a portion of Colorado’s cigarette tax revenue, which amounted to $290,000 in 2018, according to city officials.

“The city might forfeit this revenue if the council adopts a local cigarette tax,” the staff memo states. “There is an argument that a sales tax on cigarettes would not trigger the loss of the share-back dollars. Staff does not believe that the city would forfeit the revenue if the tax did not include cigarettes.”