A St. Paul, Minn., convenience-store owner emailed me shortly after I interviewed him for a story on menthol bans. On top of construction that rerouted foot traffic away from his store and a pending minimum-wage increase to $15 an hour, the city’s new menthol restrictions put him mentally over the edge.
“I just feel that it’s too much,” wrote the store owner, who has been in the business for more than 20 years. “I am very stressed out and am looking at an exit plan. It breaks my heart.”
As I read his thoughts, I realized that sometimes, an honest day’s work is simply not enough—even after 20 years. Of course, focusing on the darker side of running a business is no fun. But neither is feeling crushed by a barrage of new and unexpected obstacles.
Whenever I—or anyone, for that matter—hears about such struggle, my knee-jerk response is to want to help. But how?
I’ve done what I can to help share his and other's concerns through CSP magazine and CSPDailyNews.com. Beyond that, I can only send him supportive well-wishes and a promise to continue the dialogue.
Fast-forward a month or two and today I find myself in the position to do a little bit more. No, nothing in terms of waving a magic wand and curing all that ails, but in the spirit of continuing the dialogue, I’ve been given more tools.
CSP has developed two new online resources—one is a website, a landing page really, dedicated to following regulatory movements from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The second is a monthly newsletter tracking legislative activities at the state and local level.
The first product, the landing page, can be found at CSPDailyNews.com/tobacco-regulation-report. If you’re a regular recipient of CSP Daily News online and our weekly Tobacco ENews, you should receive an email once a month as we update the page with a new chapter.
It is already up to five chapters, reviewing much of the FDA’s actions going back to the start of 2017. In that turnaround year, the industry saw the arrival of Dr. Scott Gottlieb as the FDA’s new commissioner and a new perspective emerge on everything from nicotine levels to the concept of harm reduction. Subsequent chapters look forward into 2018 and annotate new FDA retail and consumer programs. The site will eventually become a repository for all tobacco-related activity and information on the federal level.
The second new tool is a monthly e-newsletter, Tobacco Legislation Watch focused on state and local legislative issues. Similarly, anyone who receives Tobacco ENews each week will also start receiving this regular email.
The newsletter distills the dozens of tobacco-related lawmaking actions—both big and small—happening in governing bodies across the nation. While that kind of comprehensive review is almost impossible to do for any single organization, our hope is to collect the most pertinent news in one place for convenient access, while also providing action steps for retailers to stay informed and engaged.
Receiving information on the state and local level is critical because of how quickly new laws can pop up. While most federal regulation happens at a snail’s pace, local lawmakers can move from idea to public hearing to passing a new ordinance in a matter of weeks, or even days.
The hope is that these new online tools will keep retailers informed and, when functioning at their best, will inspire timely, appropriate and necessary reactions.
Of course, fighting tobacco-related legislative challenges is just one aspect of running a profitable convenience store. But I hope these tools can make a difference and be the competitive edge honest people can use to keep food on the table and threats at bay.
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