Tag: massachussets

Massachusetts: Flavor Ban Pushes Sales Next Door

Credit: Aboltin
Massachusetts’ ban of flavored tobacco products is not the success its proponents make it out to be, according to Ulrik Boesen of the Tax Foundation.
While a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that the sale of flavored tobacco in Massachusetts decreased more than in 27 control states in the wake of the state ban, the authors failed to consider the impact of cross-border trade.
According to Boesen, increased sales in neighboring New Hampshire and Rhode Island almost completely made up for the decrease in Massachusetts.
“The end result of the ban, in fact, is that Massachusetts is stuck with the societal costs associated with consumption, while the revenue from taxing flavored tobacco products is being raised in neighboring states,” Boesen wrote on the Tax Foundation’s website.
Looking at the New England region as a whole confirms that the flavor ban did not work as intended, according to Boesen. “Sales moved around rather than disappeared, and the ban evidently did not impact consumption,” he wrote. “Total sales for the region decreased by slightly more than 1 percent comparing the 12 months preceding the ban to the 12 months following the ban—largely comparable to the national sales trends.”
Last year, a study by the New England Convenience Store and Energy Marketers Association (NECSEMA), found excise tax lost income in Massachusetts from selling fewer menthol cigarettes alone amounted to $62 million in the first six months of the ban. No specific figures were given for electronic nicotine delivery systems in the release for that study.
The previous study also found that losses simply transferred to Massachusetts’ neighboring states. Cigarettes excise tax stamp sales dropped 23.9 percent in Massachusetts while New Hampshire gained $28,574,340 or 29.7 percent. Rhode Island gained $12,100,000 or 18.2 percent in excise taxes.
The previous study’s estimated Massachusetts loss including the sales tax is $73,008,000 while Rhode Island saw a gain of $14,066,740.
As the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other states consider Massachusetts’ example, Boesen urges lawmakers to think twice before banning flavored tobacco products. “The experience out of Massachusetts has not been a success story and other states should be wary of conducting their own expensive experiments,” he wrote.
February 4, 2022
Massachusetts Flavor Ban Boosting Neighbor State Sales
A tobacco flavor ban that includes vaping products has cost the state of Massachusetts nearly $75 billion in taxes. According to a study by the New England Convenience Store and Energy Marketers Association (NECSEMA), excise tax lost income in Massachusetts from selling fewer menthol cigarettes alone amounted to $62 million in the first six months of the ban. No specific figures were given for electronic nicotine delivery systems in the release.
Credit: Ruben Bagues
That loss also simply transferred to Massachusetts’ neighboring states. Cigarettes excise tax stamp sales dropped 23.9 percent in Massachusetts while New Hampshire gained $28,574,340 or 29.7 percent. Rhode Island gained $12,100,000 or 18.2 percent in excise taxes.
The estimated Massachusetts loss including the sales tax is $73,008,000 while Rhode Island saw a gain of $14,066,740.
“With every month that passes, the state’s ban on flavored tobacco becomes increasingly absurd,” said Jonathan Shaer, executive director of NECSEMA. “All anyone needs to do is look at the excise tax stamp numbers from June through November to understand how ineffective and ridiculous this ban is. Rhode Island and New Hampshire have combined to sell 18.9 million more stamps than they did over the same period in 2019 while Massachusetts has sold 17.7 million fewer. Indisputably, menthol cigarettes are purchased in neighboring states and then brought back into Massachusetts for personal consumption or illicit market sales.”
NECSEMA opposed the flavored tobacco ban in 2019 when it was first presented, and continues to monitor sales data to demonstrate the failure of the law and the wrongful impact to its members. The association represents both chain and independent convenience store owners, including many in urban communities that NECSEMA states are being disproportionately affected by the flavor ban ban.
According to the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS), there are 3,360 convenience stores in Massachusetts with 54,000-plus employees accounting for $17 billion in sales annually. Over 89 percent of legal cigarette sales occurring at convenience stores.
“I challenge anyone to demonstrate how this ban has been effective,” Shaer said. “New Hampshire and Rhode Island imports have replaced sales once made in Massachusetts by licensed retailers. In fact, the latest data shows an uptick in cigarette sales when you combine the increases for non-flavored cigarettes in Massachusetts with total cigarette sales gains in New Hampshire and Rhode Island. Massachusetts small businesses have lost, the Massachusetts budget has lost, public health has lost, and youth who this law was allegedly intended to protect have lost since prevention revenue has greatly diminished.”
January 17, 2021
Massachusetts Releases Quarantined Cannabis Vapes

Credit: Add Weed
Last September, Massachusetts became the first state to ban sales of all vaping products, for both tobacco and cannabis, in response to a mysterious vaping-related lung illness known as e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury (EVALI). In November, the state’s Cannabis Control Commission ordered a quarantine on all cannabis vaping products, except for products for flower used by medical cannabis patients.
That quarantine is being lifted, releasing more than 600,000 vaping products manufactured before December 12, 2019, which is when the Commission allowed for new cannabis vaping products to be sold, according to ap press release. The Commission announced Monday that “licensees may retest and release—or destroy—certain products with enhanced warning labels,” under certain conditions.
“Since the Commonwealth declared a vaping public health emergency last fall, the Commission has dedicated significant energy and resources to investigating the additives, hardware, and storage practices that licensees use to produce and sell cannabis vaporizer products,” Shawn Collins, the executive director of the Commission, said in the announcement. “Fortunately, repeat tests of licensed product samples did not return any detectable levels of [vitamin E acetate]; unfortunately, they did establish that heavy metal contamination may increase in vaping products over time.”
Vitamin E acetate became the primary culprit in the investigations into the vaping-related illnesses by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Cannabis licensees have three options when it comes to their vaping products: dispose; retest and release; or reclaim, meaning, “repurposed into other products,” which would also require retesting. Re-released products must have a label indicating that they “passed retesting for heavy metals and Vitamin E Acetate,” and that they, or their contents, were “previously quarantined.”
August 4, 2020
Puff Bar Sued for Online Sale of Vapes, Youth Use

Credit: Puff Bar
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey is suing Puff Bar, alongside Cool Clouds Distribution, for allegedly selling its flavored vapor products online. The company is also being accused of failing to protect against delivery of their products to minors, in violation of state law, according to the suit.
The complaint filed in Suffolk Superior Court on Wednesday also seeks a preliminary injunction to prevent Puff Bar and its distributor from selling its products in Massachusetts while the lawsuit is ongoing. Puff Bar has already suspended all US sales of its products.
Last November, Massachusetts became the first state in the country to ban the sale of flavored vapor and tobacco products. The law also banned the sale of all menthol flavored tobacco products.
Much remains unknown about Puff Bar. For example, it is unclear who owns the company, according to FairWarning. A document filed with the California Secretary of State lists Patrick Beltran as the chief financial officer and Nick Minas as the CEO, but both men have stated that despite their titles, they are in charge only of running the company’s website.
“These products are dangerous, addictive and particularly appealing to young people, which is why Massachusetts moved quickly to regulate them. Companies that blatantly violate these laws will face legal action from my office,” Healey said in a statement.
July 17, 2020
Boston: $25 Million of THC Vape Products Await Testing

Credit: Martijn Baudoin
Worth a collective $25 million, roughly 620,000 vaping products are gathering dust. The products have been awaiting testing since September.
The devices have been quarantined under Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker’s ban on the sale of vaping products, according to an article in the Boston Globe. Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commision (CCC) is under pressure to do something.
″(Businesses) have reached out to us … and we’ve talked to them,” CCC Chairman Steven Hoffman explained. “We’re trying to find a position that works for everybody, but at the end of the day, we won’t compromise on public health and public safety.”
Baker instituted a ban on the sale of vaping products in September amid an outbreak of severe lung ailments associated with e-cigarettes and vaping products containing marijuana.
The ban was lifted in December for shops that met certain requirements — including posting signs warning of the dangers of severe lung disease and other health risks; keeping all vaping products behind the counter; and prohibiting the sale of unpackaged tobacco or vaping cartridge refills — and the CCC began allowing marijuana retailers to sell newly manufactured marijuana vaping products that were tested for contaminants such as vitamin E acetate, which was suspected to have caused the illnesses, according the article.
It also further regulated the requirements for testing of vaping products.
But that meant that a large amount of inventory — nearly 620,000 units, according to CCC Executive Director Shawn Collins — had been removed from circulation, according to the article.
Moreover, the testing of that product has been “a mixed bag of results,” Collins said.
July 12, 2020
Massachusetts Flavor Ban Takes Effect

Photo: Tobacco Reporter archive
The sale of flavored tobacco products, including menthol cigarettes, has become illegal in Massachusetts as of today.
Massachusetts became the first state to approve such a ban when Governor Charlie Baker signed the bill in November.
The law applies to the sale of all flavored tobacco products in Massachusetts retail stores and online.
Cigar bars, hookah lounges and other licensed venues can continue selling flavored tobacco as long as these products are consumed on-site.
Massachusetts’ decision to extend the ban to menthol flavors has been contentious in part because studies have shown menthol cigarettes are consumed disproportionately by minorities, which activists have warned could lead to disproportionate police enforcement in the black community.
June 1, 2020