Delete WardMaking a Public Comment
Council welcomes public comment before regular council meetings. Fill out the online form below for your chance to make a public comment at the next regular Monday Council meeting. Please read the revised rules and procedures.
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Public Comments
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We, the undersigned organizations, ask for your support for an ordinance that ends the sale of all flavored
tobacco products including menthol and establishes a Tobacco Retail License (TRL) in the City of Cleveland.
For decades, the tobacco industry has targeted communities of color with flavored tobacco products. Products
such as menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars were intentionally developed to mask the harsh taste of
tobacco, allowing more frequent use, and resulting in higher addiction rates. The industry’s predatory
behavior has had a devastating impact. Black communities suffer the greatest burden of tobacco-related
death, with black adults 32% more likely to die from heart disease and 45% more likely to die from stroke.
Now the tobacco industry is using the same tactics to addict our children. Kid-friendly flavors like gummy bear,
grape crush and cotton candy, often used in non-combustible “e-cigarettes,” are designed to hook a new
generation of tobacco users. Nearly all (97%) youth e-cigarette users report using flavored products, and the
overwhelming majority point to flavored products as their starting point.
In addition to ending the sale of flavored products, the City of Cleveland needs better tools to enforce existing
tobacco laws. While the minimum age for tobacco sales was raised to 21 in 2015, enforcement efforts
continue to be inadequate in deterring sales to underage youth. In 2019, only 28% (176) of Cleveland’s 618
tobacco retailers received a compliance check. Of the 176 inspections performed, 66 or 38% failed inspection.
And of the tobacco retailers that failed inspection, 78% received only a warning letter.
A comprehensive Flavored Tobacco and Tobacco Retail License ordinance is needed to:
• End the sale of all flavored tobacco products, including but not limited to menthol cigarettes, flavored
cigars/cigarillos, flavored e-cigarettes, flavored smokeless tobacco, flavored shisha/hookah, etc.
• Require every tobacco retailer in Cleveland to get a license and renew annually so the city can know
how many tobacco retailers are operating in the city and more effectively enforce local, state, and
federal tobacco laws.
• Use the annual tobacco retail license fee to fund robust enforcement efforts, including at a minimum
one compliance check per retailer per year.
• Hold retailers accountable for unlawful sales to youth through graduated penalties and license
suspension or revocation for repeated violations.
Ending the sale of flavored products addresses decades of predatory marketing on behalf of the tobacco
industry directed towards communities of color, as well as recent efforts to hook a generation of youth users
with flavored e-cigarettes. Establishing a Tobacco Retail License will allow the City to better enforce laws that
keep tobacco products out of the hands of youth. Taken together, these policies give the City the tools needed
to lower Cleveland’s startling high smoking rate of 35.2% (a rate significantly higher than state and national
averages), prevent future tobacco addiction and tobacco-related health outcomes including heart disease,
lung cancer and stroke, and reduce the health disparities that confront Cleveland’s Black and Brown
communities as a result of decades of racial targeting.
Please put the health of our kids and community first by passing a comprehensive Flavored Tobacco and
Tobacco Retail license ordinance that ends the sale of ALL flavored tobacco products in Cleveland and ensures
tobacco retailers aren’t selling to underage customers. This policy will go a long way toward addressing racism
as a public health crisis in the City of Cleveland.
Sincerely,
American Cancer Society - Cancer Action Network
American Heart Association
American Lung Association
A Vision of Change
Better Health Partnership
Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids
Care Alliance Health Center
Case Western Reserve University
Center for Black Health and Equity
Center for Health Affairs
Center for Community Solutions
Cleveland Clinic
Cleveland Office of Minority Health
Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority
First Year Cleveland
Healthy Cleveland BreatheFree Committee
Hospice of the Western Reserve
MetroHealth
Midtown Cleveland Inc.
Mt. Sinai Health Foundation
National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP) – Cleveland Branch
National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Inc.
Northeast Ohio Black Health Coalition
Northeast Ohio Neighborhood Health Services, Inc.
Ohio Public Health Association
Old Brooklyn Community Development Corporation
Parents Against Vaping E-Cigarettes
Preventing Tobacco Addiction Foundation
See You at the Top (SYATT)
Signature Health
Slavic Village Community Development Corporation
The African American Tobacco Control Leadership
Council
The Gathering Place
University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children's
Hospital
Urban League of Greater Cleveland
Young Latino Network
YWCA Greater Cleveland
Voters in Cleveland (City) thought we elected Mayor Bibb to hire and surround himself with excellent people and tap existing City resources to get the City moving in the right direction fast. The City administration’s penchant to rely on expensive outside consultants is very disturbing. How many horribly expensive plans like this one proposed do we need that never get fully implemented? The City’s history with this type of planning is not very good.
The City should internalize this functionality to get continuous operational improvement over time. Mayor Bibb can lead the strategic planning himself (he is the City CEO, after all) with existing people, newly hired expertise and community input. There are many community members with exceptional expertise in this type of endeavor that could volunteer their time in oversight.
It is critical to implement much needed changes and reforms quickly and incrementally as they go. Waiting months for a minutely comprehensive, gold-plated consultant plan with myriad pretty pictures, graphs and endless slide-decks is unnecessary and a waste of limited City resources. Little or no control can be had with the recommendations the consultant will provide with no budget constraints and requiring more consulting. The consultant’s endgame is to addict the City to the consultant.
Forget the endless, obscenely overpriced study, analysis paralysis and pretty plan and do the obvious work that every employee of the City knows is needed right now. It’s not rocket-science, nowhere near as complex and complicated as it is being presented and it doesn’t take a consultant with little or no present knowledge of the City’s operations to tell the City what people on the front lines know needs to be done.
A consulting team to do this work will cost many hundreds if not thousands of dollars an hour. Projects like this are typically late in arrival, hugely overbudget and can be monumentally off-target in recommendations.
It is in the consultant’s best interest to vigorously expand its scope and embed itself in the City’s operations as a permanent fixture to provide an ever-expanding spectrum of services. Once a consulting firm like this embeds itself like a tick in the inner workings of the City, its presence, influence and on-going cost will only grow exponentially and become permanent.
Existing City managers and staff will be engaged and ultimately distracted by the consultant, often in ill-fitting, patterned investigative exercises that provide little or no ultimate benefit. It is far more efficient to engage those people directly in the project’s design, inputs and outputs, making the people that will be responsible for implementation also the agents for the plan end-product.
It’s effective, efficient, builds ownership in outcomes and enhances internal teamwork and consensus to do this type of strategic operational planning with internal resources.
A consultant-lead, grandiose operational strategic planning process right now is a waste of taxpayer money and will be a gargantuan distraction at City Hall. Internalizing and making permanent strategic operational thinking and action for continuous improvement is the most effective way to get and keep Cleveland’s operational capacity strong.
And there are many more important priorities that can be addressed with $1.5 million.
Thank you.
(2) Given the magnitude of the wage gap foor Black women, commission counsel participants should be compensate.