Bennito L. Kelty
Audio By Carbonatix
Denver high-schoolers spoke in support of a flavored tobacco ban ahead of a public hearing to consider the divisive proposal as smoke shop owners continue to ask Denver City Council members to reconsider their position.
“My mother passed from a heart attack in 2019. She had two of them, and the main cause of this were tobacco products, mainly cigarettes,” said Isaac Hysten, a student with AUL Denver, a charter high school in north Denver. “Vapes and tobacco products, they’re destroying people’s lungs, they’re destroying people’s lives. Currently, I have a friend in the hospital with tubes down his throat because he was using tobacco vaping products.”
A city council committee will vote on a proposed ban of all flavored tobacco products, including hookah, vapes and flavored cigarettes or cigars, at a meeting today, December 4. If it makes it out of committee, it will go to full council, which likely will vote on it December 16.
The rally to support the ban on December 2, at the Denver City and County Building, largely featured teens who spoke about how tobacco products have killed family members and hooked friends.
“My cousin is just a year younger than me, and he’s smoking, can’t run, can’t do all the stuff he used to do as a kid. He would do it regularly, and he would say, ‘I need to do it. I can’t stop,'” said Jaime Rodriguez-Castro, another AUL Denver student. “If we remove it, it would help a lot of people, including kids.”
This is the council’s second time proposing a flavored tobacco ban; the first attempt came in 2021 but was vetoed by former Mayor Michael Hancock despite passing. The renewed push for a ban came from council sponsors Shontel Lewis, Darrell Watson and Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez, who were all elected in 2023.
“We know from the U.S. surgeon general, from the CDC, from every municipality in the state that has done this, that removing the sale of flavored tobacco reduces the use for youth,” Watson tells Westword. “It reduces the access to menthol cigarettes that are targeted at communities based on predatory advertising. We know that works.”
Council sponsors of the bill have made it through early stages of getting the ban passed, including a town hall in October and introducing the bill to council later that month. At the town hall, the opposition packed the meeting and outnumbered the supporters in the crowd.
Phil Guerin, the founder of local head shop chain Myxed Up, told councilmembers at the October town hall that they were ignoring the impact to businesses. He tells Westword that the rally on Monday was a “shameless publicity stunt” and reiterated that a ban “would be a death sentence” to smoke shop owners.
“We have a lot of common ground. We don’t want kids and high-schoolers to smoke or vape, either. We could really help out with marketing, with posters, with communicating that vape is a bad influence. Let’s educate our kids. Our kids are super smart,” Guerin says. “This is a draconian law. It’s a death sentence for a lot of small businesses, and it’s going to affect not just smoke shops, but liquor stores and convenient stores.”
Guerin also notes that vapes, hookahs and other flavored tobacco products are being lumped in with cigarettes.
“We’re not big tobacco. We’re small-business owners. We’re Main Street,” he says. “I’m on my hands and knees begging council here. Let’s just talk about this.”
Watson says the city’s ban is a prelude to statewide action that will likely come from the the attorney general’s office, which he says is considering measures to ban or limit the sale of flavored tobacco across Colorado.
“This is not the only enforcement that’s being done across the state,” Watson warns. “Any other enforcement steps that the attorney general is planning on taking, that the state legislature is planning on taking, enforcement steps will be in play.”
