A federal appeals court has ruled that state and local governments can ban the sales of flavoured tobacco products to protect young people from becoming addicted, rejecting tobacco companies’ arguments in a case from Los Angeles County, reports San Francisco Chronicle.

In a 2-1 ruling on 18 March, the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals said a 2009 federal law regulating tobacco products does not prevent states, counties and cities from going further and prohibiting the sale of flavoured cigarettes and other tobacco products. The ruling upheld Los Angeles County’s 2019 ban on all such products and would also apply to similar measures approved by San Francisco voters in 2018 and by the Berkeley City Council in 2019, the report said. Oakland banned flavoured tobacco products in 2018 but exempted sales in adults-only tobacco shops.
Of the 300 communities nationwide that outlaw most or all flavoured tobacco sales, about a third are in California, said Joelle Lester of the nonprofit Public Health Law Center, which filed arguments supporting the local regulation.
According to the report, California lawmakers approved a measure in 2020 to prohibit marketing of most flavoured tobacco products, exempting sales of pipe tobacco and premium cigars, and exempting sales of hookah tobacco to those 21 and older. However, industry groups collected enough signatures to qualify a referendum for the ballot and put the state law on hold until voters consider it this November.
The 2009 federal law followed more than a century of tobacco regulation by state governments. The law empowered the US Food and Drug Administration to regulate, which has prohibited some flavoured tobacco products and has announced plans to ban menthol-flavoured cigarettes in forthcoming regulations.
Under the 2009 law, only the federal government, and not state or local governments, can set “tobacco product standards”, the report said. But the appeals court said the ban on flavoured products was authorised by another provision of the law allowing states to impose “requirements relating to the sale … of tobacco products.”