Vapers beware! San Francisco’s big government agenda just pushed it to the next level. According to the Daily Mail, San Francisco just became the first city in America to ban flavored tobacco products from shelves. This includes nicotine-laced vape juice and menthol cigarettes. Lawmakers say that nicotine masked in flavors like cotton candy, banana cream, and mint will pull children into a lifetime of addiction.
San Francisco businesses will suffer from the change along with the citizens who will need to travel outside of city limits to get their fix.
“’Those tobacco products aren’t 100 percent of our revenue, but they are an anchor product,” Miriam Zouzounis, a board member of the Arab American Grocers Association whose father owns a small corner store, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
She added, “Even at 15 percent of our stock, it’s what brings people through the door. We can’t compete with Safeway or Walgreens for food and milk items, let alone the online retailers filling the gap for everything else.”
It’s almost like San Francisco is competing with New York City for ‘Nanny State of the Century.’
New York City (NYC) mayor Michael Bloomberg learned that you can’t play nanny for long without the law catching up to you. When NYC banned unhealthy beverages, an appeals court struck down NYC’s sugary drink ban in 2013. Bloomberg’s nanny state mayhem didn’t stop there, however. He even introduced legislation encouraging residents to take stairs instead of elevators that same year.
San Francisco is following a slippery slope that doesn’t lead anywhere pleasurable. Maybe you’re the type of person that thinks vaping or smoking is for hipsters and San Francisco’s ban doesn’t concern you. The question one must raise is, what might they ban next?
