SANTA CRUZ — When the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors agreed to ban the sale of filtered cigarettes late final 12 months, it was probably the most important coverage win for a motion that had roots courting again greater than a decade.
The orange-tipped smoking sticks, chock filled with chemical substances and microplastics, stand head and shoulders above every other merchandise of trash picked up alongside native shores throughout seashore cleanups.
However at the same time as advocates pushed exhausting for the landmark native laws, there was an acknowledgement that the ordinance had some holes in it — 4 to be precise.
“Even at the county level, for it to be effective, we have to have not only the unincorporated county but all the city jurisdictions banning filtered tobacco products,” defined Katie Thompson, govt director of Save Our Shores, which has helped lead the “ban the butt” effort regionally. “Because we can’t have these holes within the county where people can continue to buy filtered cigarettes.”
Accomplice cities
Whereas different municipalities in California resembling Manhattan Seashore and Beverly Hills have outlawed the sale of tobacco altogether, Santa Cruz County is the primary to embrace a ban on filtered merchandise in hopes that it grows into one thing bigger.
As a result of the authority of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors was restricted to unincorporated county territory — nonetheless no small feat, provided that’s the place half the county’s inhabitants resides — people who smoke can nonetheless merely cease in at any one of many 4 included county cities for a pack earlier than heading to the coast. What’s extra, the cities even have a particular function to play in terms of the mechanics of shifting the legislation into motion.
Billed as a function that can assist native retailers modify, enforcement of the county’s ordinance was delayed till Jan. 1, 2027, or till two different native jurisdictions move related prohibitions, whichever is later. In order the motion to rid the county of filtered tobacco merchandise begins to select up the place it left off final October, it has set its sights on a brand new aim: enlisting companion cities.
At an occasion in March placed on by Save Our Shores to infuse power again into the butt ban motion, third District county Supervisor Justin Cummings, who sponsored the county’s coverage alongside Supervisor Manu Koenig, mentioned it made sense for the county to be the primary one by the wall. He famous that given its broad authority and entry to authorized assets, the jurisdiction was in a robust place to deal with any tobacco firms in the event that they challenged the ordinance in courtroom.
Tara Leonard, a senior well being educator with the county who helped craft the ordinance, confirmed that as of Friday the county had not been topic to any lawsuits or tort claims referring to the tobacco filter ban.
Thompson mentioned the outlaw effort will first flip its consideration to the cities of Capitola and Santa Cruz, pondering they’re almost certainly to embrace the coverage regardless of probably needing some encouragement. Leonard mentioned she might be presenting an informational merchandise about filtered cigarette impacts on the Capitola Metropolis Council’s assembly April 10.
Thompson hopes the non-action merchandise this month will ultimately result in the drafting of a brand new ordinance in Capitola that might then construct momentum in Santa Cruz the place, in keeping with Thompson, one other informational merchandise is tentatively being deliberate for a while in June.
Leonard added that town of Santa Cruz has already deliberate a public open home about tobacco and tobacco product waste from 5 p.m. to six:30 p.m. on April 29 on the London Nelson Neighborhood Heart. The middle is at 301 Heart St. in Santa Cruz.
Cummings emphasised on the March occasion that there needs to be widespread buy-in for any actual affect to be felt, given the pervasiveness of cigarette litter.
“While we do want to focus on trying to get Capitola and Santa Cruz maybe to be the first two,” Cummings mentioned, “we really want Capitola, Santa Cruz, Watsonville, Scotts Valley and then we want to start moving down to Monterey and keep moving north and south.”
‘Viable’ statewide technique
Whereas advocates argue an illustration of momentum might be key for regional adoption, their ambitions prolong properly past that. Thompson mentioned the undertaking to finish gross sales of filtered tobacco merchandise seems to take a web page out of the plastic bag abolition marketing campaign that performed out in Santa Cruz County 14 years in the past.
The county Board of Supervisors authorised some of the stringent plastic and paper bag legal guidelines within the state in 2011, and proponents say it served as a testing floor for a statewide legislation that was applied just a few years later. Mark Stone, who championed the plastic bag ban because the fifth District county supervisor and went on to serve for a decade within the state Meeting, informed the Sentinel that making use of the plastic bag template to filtered cigarettes might show to be a shrewd strategic transfer.
“Taking an effort like this, that has proven to be controversial at the state, and bringing it down to local jurisdictions who understand what the value is and are not as tied up in the political constraints that the (state) Legislature is, I think it’s a viable strategy,” mentioned Stone. “If other cities and counties will do the same thing, that does then kind of signal the state to be able to step in before these other ordinances do take effect.”
Stone expressed some disappointment in regards to the caveats hooked up to the county’s ordinance that seemingly slow-played its implementation, and for comprehensible causes. As a California assemblymember, he made 4 makes an attempt to get a filtered cigarette ban handed, however all efforts died inside varied committees and phases of the legislative course of. Stone mentioned it was due, partially, to massive tobacco firms flexing their political muscle.
Regardless that, by Stone’s estimation, lower than 12% of Californians smoked whereas he was spearheading these payments, “the tobacco industry was still spending millions of dollars targeted in the Legislature, which meant it was going to be very, very difficult to get anything through.”
That technique might be a lot more durable to drag off on the native stage, as was demonstrated throughout the plastic bag ban when the county obtained little to no opposition from main plastics business gamers, in keeping with Stone.
“Big Tobacco doesn’t have the same level of controls at these myriad of local jurisdictions that they do singularly in the state,” he mentioned. “They’d be hard pressed, I think, to block local jurisdictions from being able to take these steps. And if enough of them do, then that will force state action or force the state to relook at it.”
The ‘ciggy board’
However efforts to construct momentum aren’t reserved only for the political enviornment; there’s a cultural part too. Save Our Shores, with assist from Cummings’ and Koenig’s workplaces, hosted a screening in March of “The Cigarette Surfboard,” a documentary from Ben Judkins and Taylor Lane about surfboards which might be layered with discarded cigarette butts picked up from native seashores.
Whereas Lane, the surfboard’s designer, made some extent of shaping a board that’s really rideable underneath the harshest situations — the film climaxes with Lane taking his “ciggy board” out for a session on the world-famous, massive wave surf spot Mavericks close to Half Moon Bay — he defined that it additionally serves as a conduit into broader discussions in regards to the dangerous impacts of filtered cigarettes.
“We realized that this project was a vessel for the larger issue of addressing this global pollution,” mentioned Lane, who designed the board in Santa Cruz. “And what better place to start than in the community where these boards are from, where surfing is a part of the community and the environment is a pillar of this community. If we can’t do it in Santa Cruz, where those two things are so in conjunction with our lifestyle, where else is it going to happen?”
Along with leaching out poisonous chemical substances resembling arsenic and lead, the discarded cigarette butts ultimately break down into microplastics, which seep into the native setting and have been detected in almost each important human organ together with the mind, lungs, livers and kidneys. Moreover, well being care consultants have testified that the filters themselves not solely present no well being profit, however they really trigger extra hurt as a result of extra frequent puffs and deeper inhalations by people who smoke.
Lane has performed a key function in pushing the filtered cigarette message from artwork to motion and, alongside Save Our Shores and different advocates, has lobbied native governments to implement a ban for years.
“There’s momentum, people,” mentioned Lane. “Are we going to do it, or are we going to get scared?”
