Last month, the National City City Council took action to better enforce their tobacco sales laws. After months of advocacy efforts by Sweetwater Union High School District students and community members asking for help in addressing vaping on school campuses, the council approved the adoption of a Tobacco Retial License program, or TRL.
Once implemented, the TRL will provide local oversight for the city’s 50+ stores that sell tobacco. Strong TRLs, such as the policy adopted by National City, have been proven to reduce youth access to vapes and other tobacco products, like little cigars and nicotine pouches.
Chula Vista has a TRL program in place, however National City’s action has given residents reason to examine their city’s program and ways to strengthen it.
A 2021 survey of Sweetwater Union students found that, of the students who vape (or use e-cigarettes), 42% purchase tobacco at local stores. This data spurred the Chula Vista City Council to end the sale of flavored tobacco in 2022, an action that was echoed by the voters of California, who decided to end the sale of flavored tobacco statewide later that year.
However, despite flavored vapes being illegal to sell in Chula Vista for nearly 3 years, a recent survey found that 17% of stores continue to sell these prohibited products.
Chula Vista has about 140 stores that sell tobacco, most of which are clustered together along the Broadway and 3rd Avenue corridors. West Chula Vista has more communities of color, is more densely populated, and is historically lower income than East Chula Vista. This aligns with Big Tobacco’s predatory practice of pushing their products into low income, Black and Latino communities.
Elizabeth Murphy, a Chula Vista resident and teacher on special assignment with Sweetwater Union, was a catalyst in the city’s move to end the sale of flavored tobacco. As a tenured staff member, she witnessed the rise of teen vaping firsthand among her students. When Murphy viewed a map showing where tobacco retailers operate in the city, seemingly side-by-side along Broadway and 3rd, she saw an immediate correlation between the campuses with high rates of student vaping and their adjacency to tobacco retailers.
“Student vaping on campus is impacting not only those vaping, but the other students around them,” said Murphy. “It drains staff time and resources to monitor the restrooms and respond to the vaping incidents. Ending the sale of flavored tobacco was a great step, but we can do more, such as move smoke shops and other stores that sell tobacco away from our campuses.”
Envision Broadway is a community-based coalition working to beautify and revitalize Chula Vista’s Broadway corridor through murals, clean ups, and infrastructure improvements. Longtime coalition member Carlos Rodrigues said the smoke shops in the corridor are a major problem for the coalition.
“The sheer quantity of smoke shops along this street is just unnecessary. There are about 10 smoke shops selling hallucinogenic, intoxicating, unregulated products up and down Broadway, plus the liquor stores and other tobacco retailers saturating the area with advertising,” he said. “We want Broadway to be a family-friendly hub for the community, not a tobacco swamp”.
Chula Vista can take action to better protect our youth by strengthening the TRL program in several effective ways. These include:
- Limiting how many licenses are issued
- Prohibiting tobacco from being sold near schools
- Conducting annual compliance checks of every retailer to ensure they are not selling to people under the legal age and are not selling illegal flavored products
Murphy supported the Sweetwater Union students who advocated for a TRL in National City, and has heard from her Chula Vista students that they want to help protect their peers as well.
“The students are excited to advocate for something that impacts their school experience every day,” Murphy said. “They want to protect themselves and their classmates from the harm caused by vaping and are looking forward to being part of the process.”
Cynthia Knapp is a senior program manager of alcohol, tobacco, and other drug prevention with Social Advocates for Youth (SAY) San Diego
