Convenience store owners continue to oppose tobacco ordinance in Windsor

The Windsor Town Council made concessions and delayed the enforcement date of an update to the town’s tobacco retail ordinance in response to strong and continued opposition from local convenience store owners, at its meeting Aug. 4.

The new ordinance, which will require one more reading before adoption, will include full bans on the sale of flavored tobacco products — including menthol cigarettes and wintergreen chewing tobacco and all e-cigarettes and vaping devices, while also prohibiting any “price promotion” strategies, such as coupons and discounts on tobacco products. It also bans the sale of tobacco products at pharmacy locations.

Other restrictions prohibit new retailers from acquiring a license within 1,000 feet of a park, preschool or K-12 school and limiting the number of tobacco retailers to one per 2,000 community members.

Windsor started regulating tobacco in 2008. Ten years later, in February 2018, the town began requiring a Tobacco Retailer License (TRL) to sell tobacco, working with the County of Sonoma for enforcement and administration services. The TRL update included new provisions, such as setting minimum pack prices at $7 and requiring the chewing tobacco be purchased in larger quantities.

According to town staff, the council decided to revisit the TRL ordinance once more this summer, amid growing concerns over the underage usage of flavored tobacco products, including vaping products.
 

Small businesses speak up

Pratik Ghimire’s parents came over from Nepal with nothing but a couple of suitcases and ambitions to own a store in America. They now own three: Windsor Market and Fast and Easy in Windsor, and Liquor Mart in Santa Rosa.

Ghimire’s father is currently suffering from double kidney failure, requiring transplant and the family is upset by a proposed update to the Town of Windsor’s tobacco retail license ordinance, which Pratik said may hurt the resale value of the stores at a time when the family needs funds most desperately.


Ghimire, his mother and other Windsor tobacco retailers — many of whom are Nepalese immigrants — spoke up to express their displeasure with the additional policies, which would further reduce the types of tobacco products sold within city limits.

The problem, Ghimire said, isn’t necessarily the ban on tobacco products, which he concedes are addictive and harmful to the health of users. However, it is the asymmetrical application of such policies, supported by anti-tobacco movements not based in Windsor, that will hurt Windsor storeowners as would-be customers can easily travel outside city limits and down a few exits on Highway 101 to get their products.

“Unfortunately, I’m not too happy with the current state of the propositions,” Ghimire said during public comment at the Aug. 4 town council meeting. “The unequal rule is still an ongoing frustration for many of us.” 

Ghimire said that if Sonoma County or even just Santa Rosa passed a similar ordinance ahead of a November 2022 ballot initiative that could uphold California’s statewide SB 793, applying similar restrictions on tobacco throughout the state, he and other tobacco retailers would be supportive of the policies.

Losing the sale of nicotine is only part of it, as those lost customers will not buy other, unregulated items from the store as they usually do. Items like milk, chips and alcohol, which make up a large portion of business at such stores.

Ghimire said that for larger corporations like WalMart, CVS and Safeway, tobacco sales make up a relatively small part of their total revenue — large corporations can handle the loss. For him and other small business owners like Prandeep Pandi, owner of Pohley’s Market in Windsor, the direct loss in tobacco revenue and indirect loss of revenue from other products as customers choose markets in other towns can be much more impactful.

Pandi, who said he is afraid to let his 16-year-old daughter work in the market after his wife experienced racist attacks from a disgruntled would-be tobacco purchaser, said governments should be going after Big Tobacco, not small retailers. 

“It’s like closing all the windows, but leaving the doors open,” Pandi told SoCoNews.

Ghimire understands the council will likely vote to adopt the resolution, despite the harm he said it will do to immigrant businesses within the Town of Windsor. He said it’s not surprising that disenfranchised brown communities, many members of which don’t speak good English or else aren’t knowledgeable about local political processes, would bear the brunt of such an ordinance he thinks should be uniform across the region prior to implementation.

After hearing from an unhappy business community, including Ghimire and his mother, the council recommended changes to the proposed update including the removal of a proposed increase from $7 to $10 for the minimum pack price of cigarettes, little cigars and chewing tobacco. The new version of the ordinance also allows for TRLs to be transferred to new owners of the same business, granted it stays at the same location. Amendments to the transferability clauses would limit the impact on resale value of a business, and allow for the transfer of a business from parent to child without penalties.

Another significant amendment to the ordinance update includes directing staff to create signage and educational materials to be presented at tobacco retail locations, which will clearly inform customers — many of whom have been abusive and even racist towards storeowners — that the restrictions on the sale of tobacco products is by town ordinance with which retailers are merely complying. Discussions have begun between Town of Windsor staff and the County Health Department regarding grant funding to support outreach and education efforts, including signage.

Following public comment during the meeting on Aug. 4, during which many spoke about the need to further diminish the reach of Big Tobacco given the irrefutable negative health effects of tobacco use, council members decided to further delay implementation of the ordinance to give more time for retailers to sell their existing stock. Assuming the ordinance is adopted at the council’s next meeting, enforcement of the new rules will not go into effect until June 30, 2022, rather than Jan. 1, 2022.

In a recent interview with SoCoNews, Ghimire said in regards to the changes made at the council, “It’s better than nothing, but they probably wouldn’t have changed it if we hadn’t kept showing up to speak. I just wish they would wait.” 

Despite the delay in enforcement, Ghimire said it’s unlikely he and his family will be able to sell the entire existing stock of items to be banned come June 30.