There was a short Smoking Ordinance Workshop for Retailer “education.” It was presented by City Attorney’s Office of the City of Vallejo on the forthcoming Tobacco Retail License (“TRL”).

It’s important to me to document the activism being done in fighting for tobacco control in my city. This is a video and presentation intended for tobacco retailers in Vallejo about the forthcoming TRL our coalition has been fighting for. For the record no tobacco retailers showed up (there are well over 100 in our city of 125,000. There were two callers on Zoom, but I believe they were both members of our coalition.

At the end of this presentation, you will hear me ask a question about the criminal enforcement portion of this proposed TRL. For the record, I object to the criminalization of clerks in these situations and intend to make that point to City Council when this is first read, among other things where I feel the TRL falls short. I also feel strongly that the city MUST mandate at least one yearly check for all tobacco retailers for this ordinance to have any teeth, regardless of their possibly having to get creative to hire a non-profit organization or someone to assist with it if the staffing is inadequate in certain years. Furthermore, I believe a yearly report of what was and what was not done must be presented publicly to City Council so that there is accountability regardless of where this ordinance goes.

Here is the slide deck: