Denver Voters Could Overturn Flavored Vape Ban in Nov. Election

Last December, the Denver City Council passed an ordinance banning the sale of flavored vapes and nicotine pouches (except for tobacco flavor), along with menthol cigarettes, and flavored cigars and smokeless tobacco. The ordinance took effect on March 18.

Now a group of vape businesses and other retailers in the city are challenging the law. Smoke-Free Alliance Colorado has gathered more than 17,000 petition signatures from Denver citizens who support a referendum to overturn the flavor ban. 

Only 9,500 valid signatures are needed to place the question of whether to keep or reject the ordinance on the city’s 2025 ballot. If the city clerk validates the required signatures by April 12, the question will be included on the November 4 ballot, according to Denverite, unless the city council votes to hold a special election.

Six U.S. states have passed flavored vape bans, along with the District of Columbia and many cities, including several in Colorado. At least eight state legislatures are currently considering bills that would ban vape flavors.

Vape shops and tobacco retailers lead the fight against the Denver flavor ban

Smoke-Free Alliance Colorado, which gathered the signatures, is led by Phil Guerin, who owns five Myxed Up Creations vape shops in Colorado, including one in Denver. Guerin is also president of the state vape trade group the Rocky Mountain Smoke Free Alliance.

“This ban is an attack on family-owned and minority-owned businesses already struggling with rising costs and inflation,” said Guerin in a statement. “A ban will not stop people from buying these products—it will just send them to Lakewood, Glendale, Aurora, and neighboring communities—leaving Denver family-owned businesses and the city’s economy to suffer.”

Tobacco control activists who created the campaign that led to passage of the city’s flavor ban told Denverite that Denver voters understand the issue and support the ban. But Guerin disagreed.

“Basically the polling says that 40 percent of Denver voters are not decided on this issue,” he told Denverite. “People just don't have enough information. And in my experience and in collecting these signatures and talking to the general public, when you tell them what's going on, we have a lot of people that agree with us.”

That may be true, but if the signatures are validated, the vape shop owner will be facing a brutal six-month fight against well-funded, well-trained opponents. Today—just three days after Guerin filed signatures with the city clerk—the Denver Post published an op-ed by Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids regional director Jodi Radke decrying the ballot initiative to protect what she calls “candy-tasting tobacco products.”

Guerin told KDVR News that the signature-gathering process and the fight against the ban has been exhausting, but it is necessary. “We are fighting for not just our futures,” he said, “but the rights of all adults to make a better choice than smoking cigarettes.”

Tobacco-Free Kids’ astroturf flavor ban campaigns: the opposite of grassroots 

The Denver ban was engineered by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (TFK), following the tobacco control group’s well-worn template: an astroturf group created by TFK’s lobbying arm (in this case the Flavors Hook Kids Denver Coalition) seeks out local “partners,” usually from the healthcare, education and religious sectors; op-eds are placed in local newspapers, written by the tobacco control professionals but often attributed to local leaders; one-sided news stories promoting the proposed bill are generated; politicians who introduce and fight for the bill are lionized as plucky Davids fighting the tobacco industry Goliath; and public events are scheduled, often featuring leaders from the "partner" groups, along with high school students trained by TFK.

We call the TFK-created campaigns astroturf because they are the opposite of grassroots. It was not Denver citizens responding naturally to a problem they recognized that pushed lawmakers to ban flavored vapes, but well-paid professional activists swooping in and executing a prefabricated flavor ban campaign.

In Denver the ordinance was presented as a battle between heartless Big Tobacco and helpless children and minority groups targeted for addiction. The city’s school board passed a proclamation calling on the city council to ban flavored vapes. After the council eventually delivered the goods, TFK issued a national press release praising them.

It’s the same pattern seen in virtually every city or state in which a flavor ban backed by TFK is proposed. In Columbus, OH, where the city council unanimously passed a flavor ban in 2022, it was a TFK-created astroturf group called the Coalition to End Tobacco Targeting that played the same role as the Denver flavors coalition. In Michigan, where TFK has been unsuccessful so far, a group called the Keep MI Kids Tobacco Free Alliance runs the show. All are creations of the Tobacco-Free Kids Action Fund, TFK's lobbying and political action group.

Most of the flavor ban initiatives were created by TFK using funding from billionaire Michael Bloomberg, a close associate of TFK founder Matthew Myers. Bloomberg gave TFK a $160 million grant in September 2019 specifically designated to fund state and local vape flavor bans. 

No state had banned vape flavors before Bloomberg and TFK targeted them, but Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island passed flavor bans within months of the huge grant, and vape advocates in several other states fought difficult battles to avoid similar fates during that same period.