After Costly Election Loss, Denver Vape Shops Face Cloudy Future

Denver voters have spoken, and the city’s flavored-tobacco ban will stay in place.

In one of the most expensive ballot fights in city history, voters rejected Referendum 310, a measure that would have repealed Denver’s 2024 ban on the sale of flavored tobacco and nicotine products. According to unofficial results from the Denver Clerk & Recorder’s Office, 70.06 percent of voters chose to retain the ban, while 29.94 percent voted to repeal it, a more than two-to-one blowout.

The outcome caps nearly a year of campaigning that pitted a coalition of local vape-shop owners against national anti-tobacco advocates bankrolled largely by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. Through his philanthropic organization, Bloomberg contributed more than $5 million to Denver Kids vs Big Tobacco, the committee supporting the city’s ban. The referendum won with 131,028 votes, equaling about $38.29 spent by Bloomberg alone on every “Yes” vote. The campaign opposing the measure, led by the Rocky Mountain Smoke Free Alliance, raised roughly $725,000 — much of it spent on gathering signatures to qualify the referendum for the ballot.

The defeat felt like “me versus Michael Bloomberg,” says Phil Guerin, the alliance’s president and owner of Myxed Up Creations, a vape and smoke shop on East Colfax Avenue for the last 32 years.

“This was a local issue, and I was trying to do my civic duty,” Guerin says. “They outspent us 20-to-1. It’s really scary that there’s no limit to the amount of outside money that can come into local politics.”

Guerin, who helped lead the signature-gathering effort that placed the measure on the ballot, says he’s now focused on keeping his business afloat. He’s downsizing his shop on Colfax and still assessing how 310 will damage his company. “I’ve built my business over three decades, and these folks are destroying it overnight,” he says. “People are scared. We were already operating on thin margins.”

Denver’s flavored-tobacco ban, approved 11-to-1 by Denver City Council in December 2024, prohibits any retailer from selling or distributing flavored tobacco or nicotine products, including menthol cigarettes and flavored e-cigarettes. Supporters argued the policy would curb youth vaping and nicotine addiction; opponents said it would devastate small businesses and unfairly lump independent vape shops in with major tobacco companies.

Former state representative Joe Miklosi, who lobbies for the Rocky Mountain Smoke Free Alliance and organized much of the pro-repeal campaign, says he expects significant fallout. “Roughly a hundred small businesses in Denver are going to go bankrupt,” he tells Westword. “About 2,000 employees are going to lose their jobs, and the city will lose $13 million in annual sales-tax revenue.”

That revenue, Miklosi added, includes funds from Proposition EE — a 2020 statewide nicotine-tax measure earmarked to support universal pre-K. “Universal pre-K will suffer,” he says. “Parents will have fewer options, and children will suffer.”

Miklosi attributes much of the lopsided result to the funding imbalance between the two sides. “Bloomberg spent $5 million of the $6 million opposition budget,” he says. “We raised $725,000 and fought a good fight, but it’s hard to compete with that kind of money.”

While Denver is the latest Colorado city to uphold restrictions on flavored products — following Boulder, Golden and Glenwood Springs, among others — Miklosi warns that the Denver vote could encourage broader efforts. “Everyone’s concerned that there’s going to be a statewide ban next.

“The problem is, if you’re a small business owner who just took a gut punch in Denver, why would you expand anywhere else in Colorado?”

The debate over flavored vaping has long been complicated by the product’s history. Public-health officials credit vaping with helping some adults quit smoking, while others link flavored products to rising nicotine use among teenagers. Guerin says that distinction was lost in this campaign.

“They kept comparing us to big tobacco,” he says. “We’ve always just wanted to have an honest conversation about nicotine. My dad died from smoking cigarettes — this is personal to me. We’re not big tobacco.”

He says that despite the outcome, he’s proud that nearly 56,000 voters supported the repeal effort. “Even though we were outspent 20-to-1 in the last month, almost 60,000 people still voted our way. That tells me a lot of Denverites didn’t buy the misinformation.”

For now, Guerin is bracing for the economic impact and hoping to hang on. “I’ve never missed a paycheck in 33 years,” he says. “I’ve always created opportunities for people who never had them. That’s what hurts the most.”

As the city begins enforcing the ban come January 1, many vape-shop owners are weighing whether to relocate to nearby cities without similar restrictions. But with economic and real-estate constraints and talk of a statewide ban, options may be limited.

“Denver just told these business owners they’re not welcome,” Miklosi says. “And they heard it loud and clear.”