The city of Richmond is considering legislation that would ban the sale of safer tobacco and vapor products. Like the new law in San Francisco, this prohibition would apply to products that have not yet received premarket authorization (PMTA) from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

This ordinance is scheduled for introduction on

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

6:30 PM

Community Services Building

440 Civic Center Plaza

Richmond, CA

There will be an opportunity for public comment at 5:30 PM.

If you wish to speak, you must sign up.

The public is welcome to share their comments on any item on the agenda.

Speakers will be allowed two minutes to address the council on this ordinance, which is not scheduled for a public hearing at Tuesday’s meeting.

Bad ideas spread like viruses in California and banning sales of smoke-free alternatives while leaving cigarettes to be the most visible nicotine product is definitely at the top of the list of bad ideas. Just like with flavor bans, no California city is safe from this policy movement.

It is vital that Richmond residents

make contact with their city council members!

We are providing contact information, talking points, and a pre-written email below for you to use.

CASAA opposes this legislation for three very clear reasons:

Banning the sale of safer alternatives to smoking means that fewer people who smoke will make switch-&-quit attempts. It also puts many people at risk for initiating nicotine use with the most dangerous tobacco products. The FDA’s premarket approval process is notoriously prohibitive when it comes to cost, time, and ambiguity with regard to what scientific studies and evidence is required. State and local governments are inappropriately deferring to a market approval process that is arguably incomplete. While governments are holding up a marketing order as the “gold standard,” this ordinance does not defer to FDA’s discretion to “exempt new products from PMTA filing requirements for good cause on a case-by-case basis.”1

Rather than enacting a law that protects consumers and children, cities like San Francisco are exploiting a loophole that allows state and local governments to enact stricter regulation without going through a robust notice and comment rulemaking process. This means that municipalities can pass laws in a speedy manner that escapes the scrutiny of scientists, researchers, regulatory and policy experts, and the very populations they claim to be protecting. San Francisco’s ban-by-PMTA-compliance is an emotional decision with deadly consequences. Replicating this policy is a mistake for any government or regulatory agency.

Please take action now by making contact with your City Council members:

Comma delimited email list:

[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Mayor and City Council contact information:

Prewritten message ( copy and paste into the body of your email and customise with your story about switching to smoke-free alternatives ):

Dear Mayor Butt and members of the Richmond City Council,

I am writing as a voter and taxpayer in Richmond to share my opposition and extreme concern regarding a proposal to ban the sales of low-risk alternatives to smoking, like vapor products and other smoke-free nicotine alternatives. I find it confusing that the city would take such an extreme measure against demonstrably safer nicotine products while, at the same time, allowing for combustible tobacco products to continue being sold. I am deeply concerned and outraged that the city would consider exposing thousands of people to the risk of returning to smoking.

The sale of flavored tobacco and nicotine products is already banned in Richmond (including products that are approved by the FDA for sale as new tobacco products–having met the standard of appropriate for the protection of public health). Enacting an all-out prohibition on sales of vapor products will take one more tool away from people who are trying to quit smoking.

Vapor products are the most popular product among people who are attempting to quit smoking–and for good reason. A recent study published in The New England Journal of Medicine concluded that people who choose to vape are twice as likely to quit smoking compared to people who use FDA-approved nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), like the gum or the patch. While eye popping headlines about the ills of alternative nicotine products are grabbing the imaginations of policy makers, the evidence continues to build that vaping is a viable and important tool to helping people live smoke-free lives.

According to The Royal College of Physicians–a 500 year-old organization comprised of 32,000 medical professionals–in their report “Nicotine without smoke: Tobacco harm reduction,” vapor products should be promoted to people who smoke as an alternative to cigarettes. This is a sound endorsement from the same organization that warned about the risks of smoking in 1962–two years prior to the US Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health.

While many are understandably concerned about young people using smoke-free tobacco and nicotine products, and that youth might transition to the most dangerous combusted tobacco products, this fear is not validated by real-world data. In fact, annual reports from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) confirm that youth smoking is declining precipitously! This is great news and certainly does not warrant heavy-handed regulatory action from local and state governments that would take smoke-free alternatives away from adults.

I along with my fellow members of Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives Association (CASAA) thank you for considering my comments on this issue and urge you to reject any proposal that would impede or discourage adult access to low-risk alternatives to smoking. I look forward to your response on this issue and I am available for any questions you might have.

Sincerely,

__________