Ban on the sale of flavored tobacco
Prohibition has serious costs; better to use taxation and regulation than outright bans.
As I wrote about California Prop 67 on the November 2016 ballot, which banned plastic bags:
Banning products should be a last resort reserved for products that severely harm users and/or others. Machine guns and heroin fall in this category; plastic bags do not.
Flavored tobacco is clearly more damaging than plastic bags, and in particular the marketing of flavored tobacco to children and communities of color is reprehensible. But prohibition has serious costs: our failed drug war has incarcerated hundreds of thousands of people — largely of color — not to mention the deaths and waste of public funds. Banning flavored tobacco could well generate a black market for it, and while those illicit transactions might not lead to murder, they could still put sellers in jail, doing more damage to the communities the measure aims to help.
Prohibition is not the only tool in our arsenal. Alongside 2016’s Prop 67, California voted on two taxes: Prop 56 (an additional $2 tobacco tax) and Prop 65 (turning the paper bag fee into a tax). I voted for both. We could similarly increase the tax on flavored tobacco, and divert the funds to addiction treatment in recognition that it is not a crime. If predatory marketing is a concern, San Francisco could further regulate flavored tobacco advertisements. These are the strategies we’re applying to cannabis, and they represent the right approach for flavored tobacco too. It may be the right time for action, but it’s not the time to turn back the clock on prohibition just as we’re learning from our mistakes.