City Council’s tobacco legislation proves ineffective

Despite good intentions, law ultimately harms community

William PhelanSeptember 9, 20171 Comment

According to the CDC, approximately 20 percent of United States high school students use a tobacco product. Due to the proven negative long term impacts of using tobacco products, such lung and gum cancers, it is important for local and federal governments to take steps to dissuade teens from using tobacco.

On July 17, the St. Louis Park City Council passed a measure to raise the age at which it is legal to buy tobacco from 18 to 21, effective October 1. While this may initially seem to be a positive step in reducing the number of teen tobacco users, the legislation has flaws that will ultimately outweigh the positive impacts it may have on the community.

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This law is ultimately ineffective in reducing tobacco usage among young people and will take away revenue from St. Louis Park businesses.

— William Phelan

By passing the measure, St. Louis Park became only the second city in Minnesota to raise the tobacco age to 21 behind Edina. Because the policy isonly in effect in such a small fraction of the metro area, the legislation will only make it marginally harder for teens to get their hands on the tobacco products they desire. If a Park student decides they want to obtain tobacco products, all they have to do is go to nearby Hopkins, Golden Valley, or Minneapolis, all of which still have their tobacco sales age set at 18.

Essentially, all this legislation will do is force teens to travel to surrounding cities to get tobacco. This will begin to hurt the city of St. Louis Park because of the revenue taken away from local tobacco retailers by the law. According to Fair Reporters, gross tobacco sales in Minnesota totaled 1.91 billion dollars. Because the legislation will simply cause tobacco users to travel to a different city and not substantially reduce the rate of tobacco use among teens, it is not worth sacrificing millions of dollars of revenue and risk losing businesses to surrounding cities.

Although I applaud the St. Louis Park City Council for recognizing tobacco use among teens as a significant problem, this law is ultimately ineffective in reducing tobacco usage among young people and will take away revenue from St. Louis Park businesses, thus doing more harm than good to the St. Louis Park community.