In the near future, 18-year-olds in Cleveland, Ohio, will be able to vote and enlist in the military. But they won’t be old enough to buy a pack of smokes.
That’s because the City Council has passed a resolution banning the sale of “cigarettes, tobacco or other smoking products, including electronic cigarettes, in the city of Cleveland” to those under the age of 21.
Last year, the Cleveland metro area recently renewed its regional sin-for-losing-sports-teams tax. They estimated that extension of the measure would generate a quarter of a billion dollars in tax revenue for the city’s three major sports teams over two decades.
The tobacco age prohibition measure was the brainchild of Councilman Joe Cimperman, who partnered with Tobacco21, a Columbus-based organization dedicated to raising the age of legal purchase for tobacco products. Cleveland was the first major Ohio city to adopt the group’s proposal. Cimperman touted the 13-3 vote on the measure as a move to protect the young denizens of the Forest City.
@CDCTobaccoFree @CDCTobaccoFree @Tobacco21 tonight @CleCityCouncil moves to protect is citizens, young&younger pic.twitter.com/X4fejcI014
— joecimperman (@joecimperman) December 8, 2015
Other members of the council weren’t so sure the original measure wouldn’t come without unintended consequences and pushed for amendments to weaken the package. As the Plain Dealer reports:
The amendments come in the wake of the death of Eric Garner in New York City, who was accosted by police for selling loose cigarettes (a rational market response to the city’s draconian sin taxes), and Cleveland’s own woes with police misbehavior. New York City also requires individuals buying cigarettes to be 21 years of age.
Even with the weakened language, the effort is fundamentally flawed.
Should the measure be enrolled in law, which is likely, Cleveland has done a yet another favor to its neighboring suburbs; something the city has done for decades. Convenience store owners in the inner-ring suburbs of Lakewood, Brooklyn, North Olmstead, Parma, Euclid, and Cleveland Heights should rejoice. The ones in Cleveland? Consider them skeptical.
They questioned the motivations behind a witness Cimperman, as sponsor of the measure, brought to testify in favor of it:
As has been the case in other regions where cigarette taxes and age laws have become disaparate, black markets emerge and thrive. And there’s this concern, as well: How will the amendment clarifying application of the law only to vendors (however defined) be enforced? With the uncertainty over whether enforcement will be handled by bureaucrats or police, it’s a good question given recent civic unrest.
It’s unclear whether the law will reduce tax revenues going into the pockets of Browns owner Jimmy Haslam (a positive unintended consequence for Browns fans, to be sure). If economics and history are any guide, the sin tax dollars will still flow into the ‘Factory of Sadness‘ known as First Energy Field, albeit through a more circuitous route. And Cimperman will have created a new army of young entrepreneurs shipping in cigarettes from the suburbs. (Nevermind that one can buy flavored hookah tobacco and vaping fluid online.)
Business owners selling legal products like Mustafa will be but one of many economic casualties in what’s likely to be an ineffectual, feel-good war over reducing the region’s tobacco consuming population.
The Cleveland Clinic, one of the city’s largest white collar employers in a culturally blue collar down, got the ball rolling when it adopted a controversial non-smoking hiring policy. Cimperman hopes the city will adopt the same policy.
But Mustafa shouldn’t lose hope: If Ohio legalizes marijuana in 2016 after a failed bid this year, he can replace one drug with another. Pending the watchful eye of the Cleveland City Council, of course.
