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Previously:

• Del Norte Supervisors Approve A Tobacco Retail License Without Flavor Ban

• Crescent City, Del Norte Electeds Tell Youth They're Proud, But Shoot Down Their Proposed Tobacco Retail License Targeting Flavored Vapes

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Crescent City councilors reanimated a debate over a tobacco retail license Monday, listening to the same statistics about youth vaping and hearing the same pleas for help from teens they heard a year ago.

And while they didn’t tell students to “pound sand,” the result of Monday’s discussion was largely the same: Councilors voted 4-1 to direct staff to draft an ordinance and bring it back to them. Their colleague, Jason Greenough, dissented — again.

“Personally I hate cigarettes. I can’t stand them. I hate the smell. I don’t smoke. I don’t support it,” Greenough said. “But what I do support is free markets and government (not) putting its nose where it shouldn’t be…. I don’t think this is something we should be getting ourselves into.”

The City Council’s renewed discussion comes after California voters in November approved Proposition 31, which upheld State Senate Bill 793. SB 793 bans the sale of flavored tobacco products including e-cigarettes.

At a joint meeting of the City Council and Del Norte County Board of Supervisors in March 2022, members of Del Norte High School’s Standing Together Overcoming addiction with a Radical Movement, or (STORM), said it was flavors such as bubblegum, strawberry kiwi and butterscotch that gets their peers hooked.

At that meeting both boards heard testimony from students and health advocates and argued for more than three hours on whether restricting where vapes could be sold and who could sell them constituted government overreach.

Though that March 29, 2022 meeting ended without consensus, the Board of Supervisors approved a tobacco retail license ordinance in August. The county’s TRL stopped short on banning flavored products, however.

The county’s ordinance prohibits tobacco sales in a store that contains a pharmacy. Retailers had to have been in business on July 1, 2022 to apply for a tobacco retail license. It also prohibits advertising or placing tobacco products within five feet of candy, snacks or non-alcoholic beverages unless access is limited to people age 21 or older, according to City Attorney Martha Rice.

Crescent City has regulations that also affect where tobacco can be sold, Rice said. As of 2015, new tobacco retailers are required to obtain a conditional use permit and can only do business in the city’s commercial zones.

The city also restricts advertising tobacco products within 500 feet of places where children tend to congregate, Rice said. Stores must also limit the amount of signs on their doors and windows to 10 percent to provide a clear path of sight for the public from the street, she said.

A tobacco retail license could come with heavy local enforcement, resulting in the ability for a city to revoke a retailer’s ability to sell tobacco products if they violate regulations, Rice said. However there is administrative oversight, staff costs and paperwork, she said.

“The benefits for the tobacco retail license is we can reduce the number of retailers if that’s what you seek to do,” she said. “And we can also have the penalty of revoking the license. A lot of the other things we can accomplish just through regulations in our muni code.”

Mayor Pro Tem Blake Inscore and Councilor Kelly Schellong argued in favor of the tobacco retail license. Both said they were concerned about children having access to e-cigarettes and becoming addicted.

Schellong, whose mother was a smoker and died of lung cancer, said she was on the City Council in 2014 when students with the Friday Night Live organization at the high school collected cigarette butts from local parks and walked into Council chambers with buckets and jars full of them.

Their ask back then was to prohibit smoking in parks, during parades and at other community events, Schellong said.

“It’s really hard to look a child in the eye when they’ve got a bucket of cigarette butts they’ve picked up in your park and tell them, ‘No we’re not going to do that,’” she said.

During public comment, Del Norte High School graduates Abigail Duran and Ryan Smith again asked City Councilors for help.

“When I was in high school, I remember being not able to go to the bathroom during passing period because I found people vaping in there,” she said.

Though voters upheld the statewide flavor ban, Smith again reiterated that it’s the flavors that attract his peers.

“It’s the whole reason they get addicted to it and the problem is bigger than all of us,” he said.

Inscore, noting that there’s still an issue at the high school, proposed meeting with the Del Norte County Unified School District Board of Trustees and the Board of Supervisors about how to address teen vaping.

Greenough took issue with this.

“I made that recommendation a year ago and nothing happened with that,” he told Inscore. “The fact that you’re bringing it up now makes me a little upset that we didn’t do anything a year ago.”

Last year, Inscore retorted, the City Council did little to stand up for students.

“A year ago, if we want to throw things out, everybody just basically told our students to pound sand,” he said. “Only one voice stood up for our students. My guess is not a single Council member reached out and tried to interact with the parties involed to try and stay engaged about this topic.”

After last year’s joint City Council-Board of Supervisors meeting, both Inscore and District 2 Supervisor Valerie Starkey publicly stated their support for the tobacco retail license.

On Monday, Inscore said most of his colleagues walked away from the issue after that meeting, but he didn’t.

“I’ve been looking for an opportunity to bring this back because I believe in it and I do believe we should have engaged before,” he said. “But why would I bring something back up when four of the Council members basically said they’re not interested? And at the time, the county wasn’t interested either.”

With most of his colleagues calling for a level playing field between the city and the county, the Council asked staff to bring back a draft ordinance for members to discuss. Greenough continued to drag his heels, a TRL will come with a price tag.

“The county’s (ordinance) may not cost anything now, but it will,” he said. “And as soon as it does, the county is going to have to pay for it and they will not pay for it out of the general fund, I can almost guarantee you. They’re going to put it into a fee or they’re going to put it into a tax and they will pass that on to businesses in this community who are already struggling.”

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