Vanilla custard, chocolate cake, fruit loops or gummy bears.
They’re all on the menu at your local vape store. But an ordinance the Kansas City Council will take up Thursday could outlaw them in the near future. At least inside the city limits.
Under the ordinance introduced by Mayor Pro Tem Ryana Parks-Shaw, the sale of all flavored tobacco products, including a variety of dessert, fruit and menthol flavors, would be banned in Kansas City.
Some 400 cities and states have passed similar bans. If Kansas City follows suit, it would have the first flavored-tobacco ban in Missouri, and one of only a few in the Midwest.
Proponents of bans argue that flavored products, which are heavily marketed to young people and to people in poor Black communities, lure people in with flavors that hold a particular appeal for young adults and children and get them hooked on nicotine.
That can lead to a lifetime of health problems, including heart disease, stroke, emphysema and cancer.
“The tobacco industry has made an overt effort to target people who look like me: young people and people of color,” said DJ Yearwood, a college student who serves on the board for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
Yearwood, a graduate of Independence’s William Chrisman High School, said he watched his grandmother struggle with a smoking-related disease. Now his peers are addicted to vaping.
Young people, health experts said, are most vulnerable to the sickly sweet, yet highly addictive flavored tobacco products.
A health educator who testified in favor of Kansas City’s proposed ordinance at an Oct. 8 hearing before the Neighborhood Planning and Development Committee, brought along a bag full of fruit-flavored vaping products.
“You should be able to smell these from where you’re at,” she told council members on the committee. “It’s what’s enticing students. It tastes good. And when they get addicted, they’re going to want more and more.”
Vaping is the most common way U.S. youths consume tobacco. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 10% of high school students used e-cigarettes in 2023, while 4.6% of middle school students did. Most of them chose flavored products, health experts said.
And the flavored products — especially menthol cigarettes and vapes — are heavily marketed in lower-income, predominantly Black neighborhoods. Menthol cigarettes are the choice of 85% of Black smokers, according to the American Medical Association.
If you go to Brookside and drive east on 63rd Street, said Sara Prem of the American Lung Association in Kansas and Greater Kansas City, “you will start to see more and more tobacco advertising.”
Parks-Shaw said the marketing is evident “on every corner.” And the health effects are also easy to see, she said.
“In Kansas City we have an issue with life expectancy,” she said. “You can live in one of our ZIP codes on the east side and live up to 20 years less than someone who lives potentially a mile away.”
The CDC says Black people are more likely to die from smoking-related diseases than white people. And smoking-related illnesses are the leading cause of death among Black people.
Between 1965 and 2019, cigarette smoking among adults dropped by two-thirds, from 42% to 14%. Some smokers turned to vaping, which opponents of flavored-tobacco bans argue is a reason to keep them available.
Michael Pesko, an economics professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia, has studied other parts of the country that have enacted flavored-tobacco bans. He found that the bans can push people to riskier combustible tobacco products.
“There’s unintended negative effects that are really important to think about,” said Pesko.
Dan Shaul of the Missouri Grocers Association told the committee that the ban would also hurt Kansas City businesses.
“Consumers shop where they can get products they desire with minimal stops,” he said. “This ban will force consumers to go somewhere else and get the products that they desire.”
The city Finance Department estimates that the ban would mean a loss of between $1 million and $6 million in tax revenue to the city. Although vapes are not subject to the cigarette stamp tax, they do generate sales tax.
But that loss must be viewed against the ongoing health care cost, which the city bears, Parks-Shaw said. The city’s $50 million indigent tax levy funds care for people who might not be sick if not for tobacco use, she said.
Parks-Shaw introduced a similar ordinance in 2020, but pulled it back when the pandemic took over much of the city’s attention. Now the city has the chance to lead the way for other parts of the metro, she said.
“Kansas City can start by showing that we value the health of our community,” Parks-Shaw said.
Kansas City has attacked smoking aggressively before. In 2015, both Kansas City and Wyandotte County raised the legal age to buy cigarettes to 21. That was five years before a national 21 age limit took effect.
It is unclear whether the ordinance has enough votes to pass. It is sponsored by Parks-Shaw along with council members Andrea Bough, Johnathan Duncan, Eric Bunch and Melissa Patterson Hazley.
Jazzlyn Johnson, a spokeswoman for Mayor Quinton Lucas, said the mayor was “assessing the ordinance and will plan to gather additional information from experts, impacted local businesses, and community members before making an informed decision.”
Parks-Shaw, a health care executive who worked in hospice care, said she took office knowing she wanted to push the issue. During Tuesday’s committee hearing she became emotional when explaining her support.
“In my hospice work, I have literally sat and watched people take their last breath,” she said. “My commitment to them, to my family members that I’ve lost, to my immediate family members that have been victims of this, that are struggling right now with the addiction to those flavored vapes, I stand committed to fight for this. To fight on behalf of the health of our community. And put our people’s health over the profit.”
