Should Denver Ban Flavored Tobacco and Nicotine Products?

Denver became the latest Colorado city to pass a ban on flavored tobacco products last December, with Mayor Mike Johnston signing the legislation, first approved by Denver City Council, a week before Christmas. The ban's full enforcement date is over a year later, on January 1, 2026 — but before then, the electorate will get its say on this issue.

The ban in Denver targeted flavored tobacco and nicotine products, such as vapes and e-cigarettes, flavored nicotine pouches, like Zyn, and menthol cigarettes. According to supporters of the ban, these products are marketed to young people and minority communities.

Almost immediately, a coalition of smoke and vape shop owners put together a campaign to overturn the ban, gathering more than 17,000 signatures to successfully put a repeal of the ban in front of voters this November. Backers of the ban, including many local health organizations, created a committee called Denver Kids vs Big Tobacco to campaign in its favor.

The effort comes as tobacco giant Philip Morris International prepares to open a $600 million Zyn factory in Aurora, but Denver's local government has been less hospitable, with city council approving the ban 11-1. Supporters told councilmembers in a public hearing that flavored tobacco products like nicotine vapes target children with their marketing, and argued against the idea that vapes and oral nicotine pouches are smoking cessation products.

Several speakers highlighted the tobacco industry's targeting of Black and minority communities with menthol cigarettes. Milo Marquez, Director of Community Engagement at the Latino Research and Policy Center at the University of Colorado Denver, told the council that the marketing of flavored vape products is predatory.

"Flavored tobacco products are designed to entice and hook young children by using flavors that seem harmless, and mask the true dangers of addiction," Marquez said at the time.

In a phone call with Westword over eight months later, Marquez pointed to flavors and packaging of flavored nicotine products, which are often bright with flavors modeled after fruit and candy, and claims the manufacturers have targeted Latino neighborhoods. "Kids see them every single day in corner stores," he says.

According to the state's most recent Healthy Kids Colorado Survey, 3 percent of high school students admitted to smoking a cigarette in the past month in 2023, essentially the same as 2021's rate. However, vaping dropped significantly, going from 16 percent in 2021 to 9 percent in 2023.

Phil Guerin, the owner of Myxed Up Creations, a small chain of head shops across Colorado, is also president of the Rocky Mountain Smoke Free Alliance, a group of vape shop owners fighting against the ban of flavored nicotine vapes. Guerin says he's all for keeping vapes out of the hands of children, but calls the ban intellectually lazy.

"There's so much common ground. That's the irony," Guerin argues. "I have nothing for big tobacco but a middle finger. We don't want kids or youth to vape or even start using these products. We all agree on that; it's a no-brainer."

Guerin says he and his colleagues have advocated for regulating flavored nicotine products more like cannabis. That could include universal ID scanners, labels or chips for production and retail tracking, or a daily limit per customer on purchases.

"We agreed to do all this stuff, and we pretty much agreed to more enforcement," Guerin says, "which would give me higher licensing fees, higher penalties, [force me] to pay for education programs for youth — because everybody knows that bans don't work, but kids are pretty smart."

Guerin asserts that young people are getting their flavored vapes primarily off the internet, not at vape shops and smoke shops, and that a fair percentage of them are taking their parents' vapes.

On paper, those opposed to the ban have out-raised supporters of the ban by a more than two-to-one margin, but Guerin says the contest is neck-and-neck in the poll results he's seen,

On the other side of the issue, Marquez says that voting to keep the ban in place will "finally say our kids are not for sale; we're proud to stand with Denver kids against Big Tobacco."

The Denver City Council passed a ban on flavored tobacco products in 2021, but it was vetoed by then-Mayor Michael Hancock. If voters choose to keep this prohibition in place, Denver would join thirteen other local jurisdictions with similar bans. Last Tuesday, the Eagle Town Council passed a ban on flavored tobacco products like vapes and e-cigarettes, flavored nicotine pouches and menthol cigarettes. This followed several Denver metro, Front Range and ski towns, including Aspen, Boulder, Breckenridge, Glenwood Springs, Golden and Edgewater.