SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Store owners across California on Wednesday were finally required to wipe their shelves clean of fruity, minty and candied flavored tobacco products, marking the culmination of a two-year fight by the tobacco industry to halt a statewide ban.
It was a day both celebrated by tobacco-free advocates and bemoaned by smoke shop owners and customers.
“Flavors are the absolute key to the tobacco industry game plan so taking them off the table is going to have a huge impact on the industry’s attempt to lure us into a lifetime of addiction, death and misery,” said Jim Knox, California managing director of the American Cancer Society. “This is a major milestone in the battle against the health and economic toll that tobacco has on all of us.”
