MINNEAPOLIS (Legal Newsline) – A Minnesota city has enacted one of the nation’s most “draconian’ anti-tobacco laws, R.J. Reynolds and other companies are arguing in a lawsuit filed June 17.
American Snuff Company, Santa Fe Natural Tobacco and Lang’s One Stop Market filed their challenge to an ordinance passed in the city of Edina that targets youth vaping. Edina has banned menthol-flavored tobacco products in order to curb the appeal to teenagers.
“The City of Edina could have supplemented these efforts by targeting youth usage of vapor products through increased enforcement of age restrictions or public-education campaigns,” says the challenge, similar to one three of these plaintiffs filed against a Los Angeles ban on flavored tobacco.
“Instead, the City’s Ordinance… bans sales to adult tobacco consumers and, moreover, indiscriminately extends the ban to every conceivable flavored tobacco product, from menthol cigarettes and smokeless tobacco to flavored vapor products and flavored modern oral products.
“This categorical ban is unjustified.”