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Athens City Council tables a proposal to regulate tobacco retailers

By: David Forster
Posted on: Wednesday, December 20, 2023

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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — After much discussion, the Athens City Council has put off until next year a decision about creating a licensing program for tobacco retailers.

Among other things, the proposed program would restrict where businesses that sell tobacco and related products could be located and would penalize businesses that sell to underage buyers.

The ordinance that would create the program has undergone multiple amendments since it was first proposed. As a result, the only way to get it passed Monday night, the council’s last meeting of the year, was to suspend the rules that require three readings of an ordinance before a vote can be taken.

Six of the seven council members agreed to suspend the rules, more than enough to move ahead with a vote on the ordinance.

Councilmember Alan Swank was the lone no vote. He said the rules should be suspended only for emergencies, and he argued this was not one.

Swank also said he felt the ordinance was being rushed through at the last minute. He said he contacted several businesses that would be affected by the ordinance who had not heard about it. The council should get more input from them before voting, he said.

Swank also noted the state Legislature may soon prohibit cities from enacting their own tobacco licensing programs.

One of the many provisions tucked into the state budget bill at the last minute was a provision banning cities from regulating tobacco. Gov. Mike DeWine used his line-item veto to strike this language when he signed the budget. But last week Ohio House Republicans voted to override the veto.

The fate of the provision now rests with the Senate, which may take up the veto override next month.

Swank argued the council should wait to see what the Senate does before voting on the ordinance.

“Because this is not an emergency measure, and secondly we don’t know what the Senate is going to do,” he said, “it doesn’t make a whole of sense to me for us to pass this and start doing things when it might be a moot point if the Senate also votes to override Governor DeWine’s veto.”

The ordinance was sponsored by Councilmember Sarah Grace. Monday’s meeting was her last as a council member, and this meant that if the ordinance did not get passed, it would have to go back to square one in January with a new sponsor.

Grace argued the ordinance was not being rushed. She said it was based on tobacco licensing programs already in place in many other Ohio cities going back several years.

“It’s not something that I or anyone else here in the city of Athens just sat down and made up or wrote down on the back of a napkin,” she said. “This is well-researched, well-informed legislation.”

Grace argued the city has a responsibility to step in and regulate the sale of a product that presents a significant public health risk.

“We do it for restaurants, for businesses that sell alcohol, for grocery stores,” she said. “We are not banning or prohibiting the sale of any products with this legislation. We are simply saying that businesses that wish to sell it need to obtain a license and they will then be subject to compliance checks to make sure that they are selling it legally, which is only to individuals over the age of 21.”

Several people in the audience also weighed in on the ordinance, including Wendy Hyde, Ohio regional director of the Preventing Tobacco Addiction Foundation. The organization encourages local governments to regulate tobacco retailers and has developed model language for these programs.

Hyde acknowledged the threat to these programs posed by the Ohio House veto override, but said it’s unclear what the Senate will do. She said her organization is encouraging cities to press forward with licensing programs and noted the city of Gahanna was considering its own program Monday night. It was passed unanimously.

Many industries have licensing requirements based on the risks they pose to public health, Hyde said.

“Tobacco kills 500,000 people annually,” she said. “I would say that the risk of getting these products in the hands of children is pretty stinking high of a risk factor to have.”

The state already requires tobacco retailers to get a license and does random checks to make sure retailers are complying with the age restriction.

Hyde argued enforcement by the state is spotty and also noted the state does not require licenses for retailers that sell only vaping products, which are also linked to serious health risks.

“This would close that loophole,” Hyde said of the proposed Athens ordinance, “… and allow the Athens health department to be able to conduct enforcement and hold these retailers accountable to selling to young people.”

Alex Schwartz, general manager of the Silver Serpent smoke shop on Court Street, argued that a local licensing and compliance program is unnecessary because state law already prohibits the sale of tobacco products or products that contain nicotine to anyone under 21. This is enough, he said.

“I’m not inherently against the nature of this law,” he said of the ordinance before the council. “Nobody wants kids being addicted to nicotine or being addicted to drugs or alcohol or anything. But there’s a law for that already.”

Other speakers expressed concerns the ordinance was anti-business. Councilmember Swank shared some of these concerns but also said he favors taking action to reduce tobacco use by young people.

“Let’s move this to next year so we have a chance to vet it even more,” he suggested, and promised that as the incoming chair of the council’s planning committee he would bring the ordinance back before council first thing in the new year. It still could be passed as soon as February, he said.

Swank moved to table the ordinance, and five other council members agreed. Grace, in one of her final actions as a council member, voted no.