Are smoke shops saturating your Fresno neighborhood? This councilman wants to change that
The Fresno City Council on Thursday will decide whether to pursue inspecting and regulating smoke shops in the city the same way it does liquor stores.
Councilmember Miguel Arias proposed a resolution to amend the city’s municipal code relating to the sale of tobacco, a lengthy, months-long process that would need approval from the planning commission, updating city zoning and amending the city’s development code.
In the last two years, Arias said, smoke shops selling tobacco products and cannabis accessories have moved in and saturated south Fresno neighborhoods the same way liquor stores did in the past. Arias said they pose a nuisance to neighborhoods. Some of the shops have even been busted for illegally selling marijuana, he said.
If the resolution passes and the process moves forward, smoke shops will be subject to inspection, regulation, and enforcement measures. The process could take anywhere from six to nine months, Arias said.
“Tobacco consumption clearly poses a health and safety risk for the consumer,” he said. “But what we’ve noticed from the saturation of tobacco shops that are unregulated, they have posed a neighborhood blight challenge for the areas in which they have opened shop. Some of these shops have not only been caught selling cannabis products, but they also have been selling individual cigarettes.”
Arias said the stores are plastering their exteriors with advertisements for their products. Plus, they’re opening by using city zoning that was intended for grocery stores.
Lemuel “LJ” Mariano, a program manager for MYNT (Mobilizing Youth to Nix Tobacco) with Youth Leadership Institute, said historically Black communities tend to be over-saturated with tobacco retailers.
“In the community, it’s unavoidable,” he said about tobacco retailers in Fresno. “If people are setting up smoke shops, the reality is there’s going to be more smoking and a normalizing of smoking around that area.”
Health effects
Leila Gholamrezaei-Eha, a health educator with the Fresno County Department of Public Health, said the proposal is timely because vaping has become an epidemic.
“We as the health department are always happy to see our local communities standing up for health and wanting to make the community healthier and a better place to live,” Gholamrezaei-Eha said.
The health department has fielded reports of school bathrooms being shut down due to vaping, and concerned parents are calling to complain about tobacco retailers. The Fresno County Sheriff’s Office has conducted undercover tobacco stings, too, to ensure retailers aren’t selling tobacco products to minors, she said.
While smoking cigarettes seems to be decreasing in popularity among young people, vaping has increased, Gholamrezaei-Eha said.
The health department conducted a student survey in the 2019-2020 school year among Fresno County students. Results indicated that among respondents, 1.1% reported smoking in the last 30 days. When it came to vaping, 22% of high school students who responded reported ever using vape products, and 6% reported being current vape users.
Gholamrezaei-Eha said she believes those numbers are low, too, due to underreporting.
Retailers’ behaviors affect health, too, Gholamrezaei-Eha said.
When tobacco retailers are near schools and homes, young people are more likely to experiment with tobacco products, and people who smoke consume more. People trying to quit also have a harder time, Gholamrezaei-Eha said. Increased availability directly translates to increased consumption, she said.
Plus, tobacco retailers tend to cluster in neighborhoods with higher rates of low-income residents and residents of color, she said.
“When tobacco retailers are located near your homes and schools, people’s health suffers,” she said. “So the retail environment is a really important issue in our communities. Taking a look at the location of retailers and making sure that that we don’t have high concentrations in neighborhoods and that we’re being equitable in our community are all important things for the community overall.”
Mariano invited the city council to work with MYNT’s coalition.
“We’re all going to live here. We want to see it thrive,” he said. “So let’s let’s craft something together and partnership to fight for equity and celebrate it.”