Revises the Denver Municipal Code to align with Colorado and Federal laws regarding tobacco products. a) Presentation.  b) Fifteen (15) minutes of public comment on proposal. Two minutes per speaker and equal opportunity for opposing perspectives as determined by the Committee Chair. Individuals wishing to speak must sign up in the Council conference room (3rd Floor, City & County Building, Rm. 391) between 1:00 pm and 1:15 pm. The order of speakers is determined by the Committee Chair. c) Discussion/Action.
This is not a license. Your bill. This, as I understand it, was supposed to be conforming some of the definitions to state law. And so my first question is, is that the case? How does this fit with state law? The second question, the I had received a letter of concern from a constituent in Harvey Park, and I wanted to be sure that a couple of these questions were asked. She was concerned about having a ban on outdoor our public use of tobacco products. I want make sure it does not do that except in certain circumstances. And the last thing is, she was very concerned about since you can't give away tobacco products. Of having the vet, the vape and the electronic cigarets. She was very concerned about that, stopping the ability to sample the taste of some of these. And I am just wondering if if you if you can't give it away, can you charge a penny or a nickel fee on each of I mean, this is a legal question, but I would like to know, is there a way around that? And who is the lawyer who drafted it? No. Good evening. Jessica Brody, assistant city attorney for the Denver city attorney's office. And I will do my best to answer your questions. So with respect to your first question, the definition in state law, there are a couple of provisions in the Colorado Revised Statutes that define tobacco products and in particular in Title 24, which concerns the regulation of tobacco sales to minors. There is a definition in 2435 502 which refers you back to Title 1813 121, which defines cigaret tobacco product or nicotine product as follows A product that contains nicotine or tobacco or is derived from tobacco and is intended to be ingested or inhaled by or applied to the skin of an individual or any device that can be used to deliver tobacco or nicotine to the person inhaling from the device, including an electronic cigaret, cigar, cigarillos or pipe. So to clarify, the specific words in our code are a little bit different from the specific words in the state statute, but I think the intent is to broadly define tobacco and nicotine products to cover the universe of products that are available in the marketplace today. Q Addressing your second question about outdoor use, nothing in the bill today changes or restricts outdoor use of products, so it's not going to make any change with respect to that specific issue. With regard to sampling, we have an existing provision and this is in Chapter 24 of the revised municipal code. This is the language that would be amended by by this bill. The existing provision already prohibits sampling of tobacco products. But again, what we're doing tonight is essentially updating the definition of tobacco products. The original version of this law was enacted in 1998. A lot of products have come to market since then, which were not contemplated back in 98. So the intent is to update the definition to include all of this products and treat the products in a similar manner. Just as a follow up on the latter one, then I'm not exactly sure from what the sampling has done since I am not a smoker at this point, and so I have not partaken of any of this. But can a person have a method to at least sell a puff? Of something I. Don't believe that would be prohibited by the legislation if it's amended tonight. You do not believe it would be prohibited. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Councilwoman Potts. Councilwoman Sussman. Thank you for those questions. Councilman Potts, I have some similar ones. You read the state ordinance that were the state rule that we are trying to emulate. But you didn't read how ours was different from it. What were the characteristics that are so different from what the state says? What are we fixing in this city? Well, again, there are sort of two components to the bill before you tonight. One is an update of the definition of tobacco products, which we just talked about. Mm hmm. The other piece of it is to remove some restrictions on advertising of tobacco products at retail. Similar provisions have been struck down by the Supreme Court in the Lawler v Riley decision. So the intent of tonight's legislation is to address those those two issues. The state does not have a sampling prohibition akin to the city's sampling prohibition. And thank you. And my next question is, does the does our proposed ordinance prohibit the sampling of a product that has no nicotine in it? I don't believe it would. Okay. You don't believe it would? Well, again, I would refer you back to the definition of of tobacco products as it's as it's proposed, means any product containing tobacco or nicotine or that is made or derived from tobacco. So if there's no nicotine or no tobacco, I don't believe it would be included in that definition. And we don't allow sampling of cigarets. Right. Correct. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Sussman. Guzman-Lopez Councilman Brooks deferred to you. Actually, go ahead, Councilman. What I was going to maybe in your remarks you're going to answer my question, but I wanted to talk a little bit about the outreach that you did in lieu of this bill coming up. No, absolutely. Thank you, Councilman, if I may. Council President. Go ahead. Hernan and I do appreciate the the questions. In no way is this a ban of any kind of outdoor use or public use. What we wanted to do is when we were looking at originally what we set out to do, and this is a lot of folks actually in our city, especially a lot of the youngsters that came and have been working on this for a few years. Let me just start out with what the problem we have found and we with Denver Health and also with a lot of the youth that are working on this license to sell tobacco products. But we are seeing more access for young people. And this all started with young people. And no way is this an attack on the folks who sell vape. What we want to prohibit is what's going on now. And this is something that's recently been released by the CDC, is that more and more than a quarter of a million young people, middle of these middle school, middle school and high school students who have never smoked a regular cigaret had smoked an electronic cigaret. Now, this is something that does carry nicotine, and that's three times the increase in usage among teens from 2013 to 14. In the same breath, a group of students that were working, working over a couple of years had gone in on their own as part of this project, as part of the study, and found that any time they go into some of these shops and cigarets, but these were non non cigaret tobacco products and they asked to sample and they asked to get a hold of them 60% of the time they were successful. And so we want to be able to address that. That is an issue. Yes, tobacco use is a preventable issue and it is a death from tobacco products is preventable. We want to make sure that this bill, when we looked at we originally looked at this as licensing. In looking at licensing, we realized that we were behind were behind the times in our own ordinances. And so in doing that, we realized that, one, we can preempt federal law in Supreme Court decision. So we wanted to eradicate those that language. But two, to add to update the universe because since 1998, there's been a lot of new products out there. We're looking at cigarillos, dissolvable electronic cigarets who could tobacco not listed in and so we want to do is update it because you know nine times out of ten you go into a shop, a lot of folks know what they're doing is not selling to anybody under 18. But there are some bad actors out there and we want to make sure that we are going after those bad actors because it's not right minors being given these products. Right. And we want to protect that. So, you know, I was unaware of the email until today. And, you know, not to say that it doesn't count or doesn't matter, but we did have a public hearing committee. We discussed this. You invited a lot of folks to the table or you outreached with the business community, the Retailers Association. A lot of those folks, you know, at the end of the day, they were okay with actually updating our language is the license, the licensing scheme that generated a lot of the heartburn. So, you know, the result of it is, is we're working on it with the task force at Denver Health and we're going to look at it closer and see what we can do to prevent the usage among youngsters with some of these products, but also to make sure that that we are doing our best in the city to understand who is selling these products, update that database because it is defunct, it is disorganized, and also to make sure that at least from our in our enforcement is up to par. And I think that's something that we discussed in that process. So like I said, the intent is to clean up the bill and the intent is to clean up the universe, make sure that we're in stride with with regulation. So thank you, Councilman Lopez. Councilman Brooks. Yeah. So I received a just an email and you know, this bill is on second reading. And I say this all the time when we're or discussing bills, you know, please don't come at the last minute. But we did receive this email today and then I received a couple messages as well. And it was enough for me to to bring it up to you, councilman, and to, you know, whoever you're working with was staff. But the issue is the vamping stores are feeling like if they don't get a chance to, you know, we're hurting our whole industry, right? If they don't get a chance to sample in there. And so I just wanted to make sure you were they were able to reach out to you, that you had a conversation with some of those folks. And if so, who who were those individuals? And just. Yeah, just for the record, if I if I can respond, you know, I, I didn't with all due respect, I had no idea you and your association even existed until about 2:00 today, and I just figure it out. Okay. Well, I guess there was a blog, an announcement that sent out. There's something. I had no idea. Had we known. We've been invited to the table. I'm the intent is isn't to hurt the shops itself, but it's to tighten up our laws to make sure that we are were up to date. It's the chapter 24 to point out. You want to make sure that we're up to date and that we are mindful of what products are out there. And we want to make sure that they're out of the hands of minors. Now, is this something that would prevent your business from succeeding? Is this something that will prevent you from sampling? Absolutely not. Charge a penny, charge a nickel, whatever it takes. You know, I can't go into a cigaret store and say, can I sample a cigaret? I can't. I can't do that with a lot of products. That's something that, you know, we worked out. But that's not the intent. The intent is to keep it out of hands of minors that our our laws. You can still sample. Just might want to charge a penny. Charge a nickel. Bricks. You have any other. Nano right now? Thank you. Councilmember, you're up. I'm sorry, I. I had rung in, and then I wasn't sure that I needed to weigh in on it. But I do want to say that I've watched the work that Councilman Lopez has done on this. We're a group of students in front of council a couple years ago, and once I. I did to receive the emails today and once I read through the bill and realized these are fairly minor changes that do bring it up to date, I am in support of the ordinance. All right, so my screen just went out. So I have to look up, see if there anybody else. Kathryn Lopez, go ahead. You know, president, with all due faith and respect, you know, I do want to be able to have a conversation with folks. Just because you are not out at the podium and weren't able to come to committee doesn't mean that the opinion doesn't matter. And does it matter? I would have knowing that there is some kind of organization, I would like to have that discussion. But do I want to hold up the bill? Something I've worked on for a long time on and put a lot of effort in? No, but I would love to understand, you know, the industry, everything else and see how we move forward from there. But at this point forward, you know, at the final reading, I'd like to see it pass on final reading. But like I said, no, no disrespect intended. All right. Any other comments on 268? All right. Well, Madam Secretary, I believe that is all the bills we have called out. So we are ready for the block votes. All of the bills for introduction are ordered published. Councilwoman Sussman, would you please put the resolutions on the floor for adoption? Yes, Mr. President. I move that resolutions all of series 15 to 60 6 to 69 to 70 to 73 to be adopted in a block. It has been moved. And secondly, saying no comments. Madam Secretary, roll call Lopez. Hi. Monteiro. Hi, Nevitt. Hi, Ortega. Hi, Rob Shepherd. I Sussman. Hi, Brooks. Hi. Fats. Hi. Lehmann. Hi, Mr. President. Hi. Madam Secretary, please close the voting. And now the results. 11 eyes. 11 eyes. The resolutions have been adopted in the block. Councilman Sussman, would you please put the bills on final consideration on the floor for passage in block? Yes, Mr. President. I move that all series of 15 bills for final consideration do pass in a bloc. They are bill 257 258 259 two 6261 to 60 2 to 63 191 213 229 two 3231 232 233 234, two, 35, 256 and 268. Hi. It's been moved and seconded. So you no comments, ma'am? Secretary Roll Call. Shepherd I Susman Brooks. I. Putts i. Liman Lopez. Monteiro, I. Nevett I. Ortega, I. Rob I. Mr. President. Hi, Madam Secretary. Please close the voting, announce the results. 11 ice, 11 eyes. The bills placed on final consideration do pass in the block. Since there are no public hearing tonight and no objections from member of Council will not take a recess on Monday, June 1st, there will be required public hearing on Council Bill 304 establishing the Reno Business Improvement District and a required public hearing on Council Bill 309 establishing the Reno Denver General Improvement District. On Monday, June 15th, there'll be a required public hearing on Council Bill 298 regarding tax amendment to the Denver Zoning Code. We are off next week for the Memorial Day holiday. So, you know the business before this body, this meeting is adjourned. Denver eight. On TV and online. To stay connected to your community, your city, your source. You are watching Denver. Eight TV's Your City, your source.