Retailers make plea against vaping ban
As the Senate prepares to pass legislation Wednesday banning flavored tobacco products and taxing vaping products, convenience store owners are making a last-ditch effort to get senators to delay the vote.
In a pair of letters sent to all senators Friday and Monday, the New England Convenience Store & Energy Marketers Association asked that the Senate hold off on voting on the bill "until the Legislature has appropriately evaluated the consequences of such an extreme action on the people of the Commonwealth."
One letter, delivered Monday, focuses on "the impact a menthol and mint tobacco products [ban] would have on already rampant illicit tobacco activity in the Commonwealth" and features several excerpts from the latest annual report of the Illegal Tobacco Task Force detailing tobacco smuggling activities and efforts to combat them in Massachusetts.
"The illegal tobacco market in Massachusetts continues to operate, which serves to deprive the commonwealth of millions of dollars of revenue in the form of tobacco excise taxes lost to the illegal market," the task force wrote in the report. "It has become abundantly clear that the problem of illegal tobacco smuggling is widespread and requires meaningful legislative and policy action at the state level to effectively control and ultimately defeat it."
The report detailed the "largest tobacco-related prosecution ever brought in a Massachusetts state court" in which large quantities of smokeless tobacco, cigars and pipe tobacco were being purchased in Pennsylvania, transported to Massachusetts and "sold to unscrupulous retailers" in southeastern Massachusetts without paying the Massachusetts tobacco excise tax. The task force estimated that the scheme cost the state $13 million over several years.
Jon Shaer, executive director of NECSEMA, said it was important to provide senators with the context of illicit tobacco activity in Massachusetts because "during the House debate last week, several remarks were made to dampen concern about increased black market and criminal activity."
Rep. Danielle Gregoire, the House sponsor of the flavor ban and vape tax bill, said last week that the tobacco industry "often cites a concern that menthol bans will lead to a market for dangerous, illicit trade but little to no evidence exists to support that claim" and cited the work of the Illegal Tobacco Task Force, which she said has been fully funded since 2016.
"This task force has had tremendous success in cracking down on the tobacco black market and will play a key role in enforcing the provisions of the law we vote on today," Gregoire said. "Opponents of this bill are people who have a vested financial interest in the success of Big Vape and Big Tobacco. Year over year, Massachusetts revenue from tobacco sales has decreased as more and more people quit smoking ... at the same time convenience store profits have continued to increase."
In the report the task force filed in March, it said that it had "increased the scope and scale of its investigative and enforcement activities over the past year" through a restructuring that involved "numerous" additional State Police troopers and equipment dedicated to assisting with tobacco investigations.
With the increase in investigative and enforcement actions, the task force has also run into a problem: it is now seizing more illegal tobacco and is running low on space to store it all.
"The increasing number of seizures has put a strain on the Task Force's storage capacity for contraband tobacco products. The Task Force has outgrown its current storage facilities and is in the process of exploring other storage options which can accommodate the growing amount of seized contraband tobacco, which must be preserved as evidence in connection with the Task Force's civil and criminal enforcement cases," the report said.
The task force discussed the storage of seized illegal tobacco at its last meeting, in June, and is expected to discuss the issue further when it meets on Tuesday morning. The meeting's agenda calls for a "seized product storage discussion."
The task force heard from a State Police trooper assigned to the attorney general's office about "their storage operation that is currently being maintained at various locations" and from Department of Revenue officials about "their stories of seizing product and the issues they're having with storage," according to the minutes from that meeting. The task force also heard about efforts underway in other states to destroy seized tobacco, and that "MA has shredded evidence in the past, but that created contamination issues with the vendor."
Supporters of the ban bill have said that the Medicaid costs related to smoking in Massachusetts outpace any revenues brought in from tobacco sales and that the benefit of reducing smoking and vaping among young people outweighs the concerns about forgone revenue.
The Senate is widely 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.
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