California’s Prop 31 will ban in-person sales of flavored tobacco products. This measure received the majority of its funds from billionaire harm reduction denier Michael Bloomberg. $15.3 million raised by the “yes on prop 31 committee” out of the total $17.3 million total has come from Bloomberg. 

Bloomberg took to Twitter to gloat on his victory against “big tobacco” stating in one tweet “For years the tobacco industry has preyed on young people, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to market candied-flavored products that are a known gateway to a lifetime of tobacco use, which is one of the leading contributors to disease and death across the U.S.” Refusing to acknowledge that this ban will only push more adults away from harm reduction, and back to deadly cigarettes.

Evidence of this fact is the results from San Francisco’s vape ban as statistics clearly show that the ban has increased teen smoking.   The article posted by Filter’s Alex Norcia back in June of 2021 referenced the JAMA Pediatrics study that found that after San Francisco’s ban on flavored vapes and tobacco products, teenagers in the city’s high schools were more likely to take up smoking than teenagers in other US school districts. 

A lawsuit was already filed by RJ Reynolds and can be read in its entirety här

We already know bans and prohibition are never a solution and we hope that the flavour ban can be reversed to benefit all of the smokers in California that depend on this technology and more importantly these flavors that keep them off of combustible cigarettes.