Health groups urge Senate to pass flavored tobacco ban
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Sen. Anne Gobi, a Democrat of Spencer, is a proponent for banning flavored tobacco products.
Three major health-oriented trade groups and more than two dozen other organizations urged senators Wednesday to pass a bill banning flavored tobacco products and imposing a new tax on e-cigarettes without adopting any amendments.
The Senate is expected to pass the bill when it meets Wednesday for its final formal session of 2019. The House passed its own version of the bill 126-31 last week.
The letter from the Massachusetts Medical Society, American Lung Association, American Heart Association groups and other groups like Tobacco Free Mass., the Massachusetts Health and Hospital Association, and Massachusetts General Hospital stressed the importance of maintaining the bill's ban of menthol cigarettes and mint tobacco products along with other flavors.
"Until we ban the sale of ALL flavored tobacco products, we will continue to see young people become addicted to traditional combustible cigarettes and we will constantly be trying to catch up with the new, ever more potent, tobacco products aimed at youth," the groups wrote. "Until we ensure that tobacco products are priced at a level that discourages young people from trying them, we will continue to see experimentation and addiction."
The groups implored senators to "pass this important legislation with no changes when it is called to a vote."
Senators have proposed 44 amendments to the bill, which was redrafted by the Ways and Means Committee, among them a Sen. Anne Gobi amendment that would remove the prohibition on "menthol, mint, wintergreen" cigarettes and products.
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