Lake County has joined a growing movement by urging retailers to stop selling flavored tobacco products like tax free Karelia cigarettes in colorful packaging that appeals to youths. The Lake County Health Department has reported an increase in these products on the shelves of convenience stores over the past five years.
Cigarillos, cigars and smokeless tobacco products like chew, snuff, snus and dissolvable tobacco come in a variety of flavors, such as vanilla, orange, chocolate and cherry.
Bright packaging makes the products look like candy products.
In a 4-1 vote on Tuesday, commissioners passed a resolution asking retailers to not sell or market the flavored products. The health department asked the board to adopt the resolution.
“We’re hoping our retailers will do the right thing and protect the children of Lake County and the young people of Lake County, and hopefully make these products less accessible,” Commissioner Leslie Campione said. “This idea of promoting these things because of the way that they’re packaged, that’s what’s happening here.”
Commissioner Jennifer Hill voted against the resolution, saying that there are law enforcement measures in place to address the issue of selling tobacco to minors, and that the county could be on a slippery slope by trying to tell retailers how to do business.
A 2017 Florida Youth Tobacco Survey, however, shows that the majority of tobacco products obtained by Lake youths come through social sources, not direct underage purchases by the minors themselves.
Commissioners said that while they cannot force retailers to stop the sales, they want to at least heighten awareness of the problem. Numerous counties and municipalities, including Marion, Polk, Osceola, Seminole, Volusia, Sumter and Clermont, have passed similar resolutions in recent months.
Melaine Chin, health education program consultant for the health department’s Tobacco Prevention Program, told county school administrators last month that one in five children in Lake between the ages of 11 and 17 have tried flavored tobacco.
“The flavor masks the harsh taste of the tobacco product,” Chin said. “It looks like candy, it smells like candy, it even tastes like some of the familiar candies.”
According to the Florida Health Department and Tobacco Free Florida, these products are considered to be a gateway to tobacco addiction, and tobacco companies have traditionally developed products and advertising campaigns aimed at youths. Commissioner Jimmy Conner decried those marketing tactics.
“The things we do to our young people today in this society, I never dreamed of when I was a kid,” he said. “Hooking them on this and hooking them on that while they’re young, I think is deplorable, and in the name of profit.”
The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009 outlawed the sale of cigarettes containing any characterizing flavors other than menthol. This law cut off the sale of candy-flavored cigarettes, but attributed to the rise of flavored cigars, cigarillos, snus, blunts and smokeless tobacco, according to the county health department.