SF Supervisors OK ban on sale of flavored tobacco

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a citywide ban on the sale of flavored tobacco products Tuesday, saying the candy tinctures and bright-colored wrapping help lure children into a life of addiction.

But the law met resistance from small grocers and smoke shop owners — many of them immigrants — who are grappling with other taxes and costs, including tobacco retailer licenses, cigarette litter abatement fees and the new $2-per-pack cigarette tax that state voters approved last year.

Some said they anticipate losing business to Daly City, which has no prohibitions on flavored tobacco, once the measure takes effect in April. Some also said the law pits one vulnerable population against another: It aims to protect the African Americans, teenagers and the LGBT community to whom these products are marketed but hurts San Francisco’s Arab and Sikh store owners.

“Don’t get us wrong, we agree that cigarettes cause cancer,” said Salim Nasser, owner of the New Star-Ell liquor store on Divisadero Street. “But they’re not doing anything to help small businesses.”

He and roughly half a dozen other store owners came to the supervisors’ meeting carrying signs with such slogans as “Stop Criminalizing Our Communities” and “DPH = Duplicitous Player Haters” — a reference to the Department of Public Health.

Store owners said the law would deprive them of an anchor product and open the door for an unregulated market of street cigarette vendors. Some of them noted the products cited in the ordinance are all available via online retailers.

Supervisors Malia Cohen, who sponsored the anti-flavored tobacco ordinance, said she recognized the impact it would have on mom-and-pop shops. Even so, she maintained that the April start date gave them ample time to sell their existing inventory of vapes, cigarillos, e-cigarettes and hookah tobacco, and replace it with something else.

“We are not looking to put small stores out of business,” she said at the board meeting on Tuesday. “We want to help them make this transition from selling a poisonous commodity to selling something that will benefit the neighborhood.”

Supervisor Ahsha Safai, who co-sponsored the ordinance, deemed it a righteous jab at advertising campaigns that he said carried over from the last century.

“Can you imagine it’s 2017, and we’re dealing with something that happened back in the 1950s?” he asked his colleagues at the meeting. He said the eye-catching wrappers and fruit tints are meant to “cultivate the next generation of smokers to fill an industry.”

“Low income communities of color are feeding one of the most deadly industries in the U.S.,” he said.

San Francisco is among several Bay Area cities taking a stand against flavored tobacco. Two years ago Berkeley created 600-foot buffers around schools where the sale of flavored and menthol tobacco products is forbidden. Santa Clara County outlawed the products in October, and the Oakland City Council is contemplating a similar ban.

The loose coalition of store owners who attended Tuesday’s meeting said they plan to take legal action.

“This is going to completely put me out of business,” lamented Asad Sharifi, owner of Cheaper Cigarettes in the Sunset. He and other opponents feared the law would cause San Francisco’s commercial strips to be littered with vacant storefronts.

“They’re going after all the stuff we make our money on,” Sharifi continued. “Cigarettes just bring people in the door.”

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @rachelswan