FILE – On this Friday, Oct. 4, 2019, file photograph, a lady utilizing an digital cigarette exhales a puff of smoke in Mayfield Heights, Ohio. Massachusetts lawmakers permitted the nation’s hardest restrictions on flavored tobacco and vaping merchandise, together with menthol cigarettes. The Senate handed the ban early on Thursday, November 21, earlier than the Legislature went into recess for the vacation. The state Home of Representatives had permitted it earlier. (AP Photograph/Tony Dijak)
TEWKSBURY — The Tewksbury Board of Well being will contemplate an replace to metropolis insurance policies surrounding the variety of tobacco gross sales licenses obtainable in an effort that the town’s tobacco agent mentioned may cut back tobacco use amongst youth.
Tewksbury Tobacco Agent Ron Beauregard, who additionally serves as an agent for 17 different communities, instructed the Board of Well being Dec. 22 that the group effort to cut back the speed of tobacco use amongst youth and the general public as an entire is an “evolving course of.” Beauregard mentioned an excellent subsequent step for a lot of communities is to cap the variety of licenses that may be granted to companies that promote completely tobacco merchandise.
Such a cap may take completely different varieties, Beauregard mentioned.
“Everybody offers with it in another way. Some communities are capping it on the present quantity. Some have put in a buffer zone to permit for some growth,” Beauregard mentioned.
Most of the cities Beauregard covers, together with Westford, Andover, Billerica and Newburyport, have a allow cap that drops by one if solely the tobacco firm goes out of enterprise or permits its allow to run out.
Beauregard instructed the board that there are research that recommend a relationship between the decline within the variety of corporations promoting tobacco and tobacco use amongst youth, though that relationship could also be extra of a correlation than causation. One research discovered that Tewksbury had the next density of companies promoting tobacco per 1,000 youth than most different surrounding cities, at 4.6 shops per 1,000 youth, Beauregard mentioned. In comparison with that research, Beauregard mentioned, Andover’s charge is 1.38, Wilmington’s 3.38, Dracut’s 3.81, Lowell’s 4.75, and Billerica’s 5.77.
Beauregard instructed the board he is a fan of insurance policies that “discontinue” tobacco permits once they expire or the corporate that produces them closes.
“Do you need to make it extra handy? Do you need to make it extra regular? Will we need to make it acceptable?” Beauregard requested rhetorically. “It isn’t that those that promote them aren’t doing one thing acceptable, simply diminishing what’s acceptable considerably.”
Tewksbury at the moment has 28 energetic tobacco licenses, two of that are for shops that promote tobacco completely, Beauregard mentioned. He famous that insurance policies to cut back the cap on tobacco permits whereas discontinuing permits usually don’t obtain a lot opposition from corporations that have already got permits, since such insurance policies in concept make present permits extra useful with much less competitors.
Board of Well being Chairman Raymond Barry mentioned he does not really feel strongly both manner about implementing such a coverage, however he desires to listen to from board members Kate Bogda-Guillet and Bob Scarano, who had been absent from the Dec. 21 assembly.
“I believe that will likely be one thing that we are going to proceed to have a public listening to on, as we did with elevating the age [to purchase tobacco] “As a result of it’s a regulation change,” Barry mentioned.
Board of Well being member Susan Amato mentioned she was stunned by the information from locations like Andover, which has a a lot decrease charge of companies promoting tobacco per capita than different surrounding cities.
“I want to know the ratio. Does that imply there are fewer people who smoke? What are the ages of people that smoke? If that’s mirrored within the quantity of people that smoke and their ages, then I want to cut back our quantity as effectively,” Amato mentioned.
Barry mentioned one issue the board must discover when deciding on the coverage is whether or not limiting the variety of shops that promote tobacco truly reduces youth tobacco use, or if it prompts individuals to purchase from one other metropolis whereas performing as a barrier to them. . Entry for a corporation trying to promote tobacco together with different merchandise.