CHICAGO —The other day, someone stole my wallet.
I was at a restaurant with friends. After paying my bill, I took a minute to say my goodbyes. I must have left my wallet on the table or it may have fallen, but in that minute, it disappeared. And within an hour, someone had tried to charge $200 on my bank card at a Walgreens.
Who could do something that low? If I saw a wallet on the floor, I’d immediately take it to a manager. Others would take the cash and turn in the rest. The truth is, reality isn’t just what I think it is. In the real world, all these clashing truths stand side by side. One minute I’m a victim, the next it’s all my fault. Both can be true and yet contradict each other.
Flavor Fracas
So what does this have to do with tobacco? A litany of things are true about tobacco. For example, professional, well-educated people are advocating for the elimination of flavors, including menthol, from tobacco products. Yet no one is calling for a ban on cucumber-flavored vodka. The flavor argument extends to marijuana. At CSP’s CBD & the Future of Cannabis conference last spring, we took retailers on a tour of dispensaries that offer all kinds of crazy “characterizations,” from dragon’s breath to sweet orange.
Then there are efforts to restrict tobacco sales to 21-and-older retail establishments, even though more teens acquire e-cigarettes from vape shops (14.8%) than c-stores (8.4%), according to U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) data cited by NACS. Such measures appeared in the FDA’s draft guidance on e-cigarettes and cigars last fall. If implemented as written, the guidance “will push underage consumers to retail outlets with the worst track record of compliance with age restrictions. The result will be more overall sales of [e-cigarettes] to minors rather than less,” according to NACS.
Such restrictions would also cut to the very core of tobacco distribution here in the United States. C-stores account for 71% of all retail nicotine volume, according to Pittsburgh-based Management Science Associates. What’s worse, the strategy of targeting retailers generally ignores how minors typically get tobacco: from family, friends or other social sources. The 2016 FDA Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health found that up to 89% of underage youth relied on social sources to obtain an e-cigarette product, according to officials with Lakeville, Minn.-based NATO.
A Complex Picture
With blame and emerging policy taking aim at c-stores, the first line of defense against minors’ access to tobacco—responsible retailers—starts to erode. And if responsible retailers vanish, the laws of supply and demand simply funnel commerce into the hands of a chosen few or illegal actors.
Multiple incongruent truths exist side by side. They fuel passion, raise ire and contradict each other in the moment it takes to steal a wallet. Unfortunately, each conflicting truth bases itself on an individual’s perspective and facts that either side will doggedly protect, whether one is a physician, a lobbyist, a kid whose aunt died of cancer or a retailer simply wanting to keep the lights on.
The problem with holding onto any single version of the truth is that it masks the larger complexities. Of course, I want people to make healthy choices. But that doesn’t negate the fact that people will still buy cigarettes, whether they’re more expensive, sold only at tobacco shops or available from a neighbor’s older brother. And their numbers are big—so immense that it’s a vibrant business, one responsible for many people’s livelihoods.
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