If you live in Cincinnati and want to keep flavored tobacco out of the hands of your kids, you are out of luck.
Cincinnati could have its own ordinance banning the sale of flavored tobacco products, shown to be addictive to kids, right now.
But the Republican supermajority in the Ohio General Assembly won't allow it.
"It's frustrating — very frustrating," said Cincinnati City Council President Victoria Parks, a Democrat who has prepared an ordinance to ban the sale of flavored tobacco. "But given the political climate in Columbus now, I'm not surprised."
She had a message for the Republican supermajority in the legislature: "They need to cut it out. Just stop."
But there is little chance the GOP legislators will do that.
Elected officials in Ohio's largest cities — Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland, all run by Democrats — want strong laws to regulate the sale of flavored tobacco to kids.
But the Republican supermajority at the state level have told them they can't enact such laws — just as they won't allow the cities, plagued with rampant gun violence, to make their own gun control laws.
RELATED: Ohio Senate overrides second veto, this time a ban on local bans of flavored tobacco sales
Last summer, the Republicans in the legislature passed a bill prohibiting the cities from adopting laws to regulate tobacco.
Their fellow Republican, Gov. Mike DeWine, vetoed the bill, as he had with previous incarnations of the prohibition.
Last Wednesday, the Ohio Senate over-rode DeWine's veto.
And now, the Columbus law department is preparing a lawsuit challenging the new law, which goes into effect April 23, saying it violates Ohio's home rule.
"Home rule" has, for many years, given Ohio cities and villages the ability to pass laws that don't interfere with laws in the Ohio Revised Code.
"The centralization of power in the legislature is hurting Ohio and its cities," said Aftab Pureval, the mayor of Cincinnati. "This is not a theoretical debate. Kids' lives are at stake."
Cincinnati has no ordinance regulating tobacco sales now. The proposed ordinance Parks has been working on is on hold for now because of the state legislature's law banning cities from taking action on their own.
Here's what Parks' ordinance would have done, had the Republicans in the legislature not shut it down:
- Banned the sale of flavored tobacco products in the city after June 1.
- The ban would have included flavored cigarettes, vapes/e-cigarettes, flavored cigarillos, flavored chewing tobacco, and flavored products such as Zyn.
- Retailers would have been inspected through undercover buys from the health department just like they check for underage cigarette sales.
- Businesses violating the law would have faced a $500 fine for the first offense. A second violation would have put the retailers in danger of losing their licenses to sell tobacco.
The Republicans in the legislature won't let cities regulate tobacco sales and they won't allow them to adopt their own gun control measures either.
Last year, Cincinnati sued the state over a law that limits the city's power to enact local gun regulations. Columbus had done the same in 2019. Both cities contend the law violates the city's home-rule authority under Ohio's Constitution.
"What is the point of electing city council and city mayors if the legislature can prevent them from passing laws to protect its citizens?" Pureval posited. "It is local government's responsibility to react quickly to problems in the community."
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State Sen. Rob McColley of Napoleon, floor leader of the Republican majority, said in a floor debate on the veto override that, in effect, the GOP supermajority has an obligation to use its power.
"If we have the requisite amount of votes to override a veto and the governor — with all due respect to him — decides to veto what we are doing in that legislation, for us to not even consider — and sometimes there may be reasons we wouldn't do it — but for us to not even consider overriding that veto in some cases would be an abdication of our authority; would be minimizing our role in this three-branch system of government," McColley said.
State Sen. Catherine Ingram, a Democrat from Cincinnati, heard McColley say this, and she said she couldn't believe what she was hearing.
"He was saying that we can do whatever the heck we want to do," said Ingram, who voted against the override. "He was saying to the cities in Ohio, 'We are the ones who get to tell you what you can and can not do in your cities.'
"I don't understand these people on the other side of the aisle. They say they want government to stay out of people's lives, but they do nothing but interfere."
