DENVER — The Denver City Council has passed a ban on the sale of certain flavored tobacco products in the city starting in 2023.
The proposal passed in an 8 to 3 vote Monday night. It bans flavored menthol cigarettes, chewing tobacco, and vaping products sold in all establishments in Denver. It goes into effect July 1, 2023.
The ban does not include hookah, natural cigars, pipe tobacco, and harm reduction tools.
The ordinance defines a flavored tobacco product as any tobacco product, or part of a tobacco product, that imparts a taste or smell other than the taste or smell of tobacco.
Mayor Michael Hancock's office said the mayor will take the next few days to review the legislation and understand its potential impacts, then decide whether to sign it or not.
Denver is the state's largest city to pass such a ban. Edgewater, Aspen, Carbondale, and Glenwood Springs have passed their own bans.
Boulder banned flavored e-cigarettes in 2019. In 2020, that city's voters approved a 40% tax on all vaping products.
Boulder County Public Health doesn't know if the ban and the sales tax have decreased teen vaping rates. The last numbers they have are from 2019. Those showed more than a quarter of high school students in Boulder County vaped and nearly half had tried it.
Boulder County will be getting data on the teen vaping rate soon from the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey that was conducted this fall. But the survey is broken down by county and isn't city-specific.
The Boulder County health department said they do have data that shows flavors are the reason many young people start using vaping products.
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