Sales of flavored nicotine products will be forbidden in Multnomah County starting in 2024 under a new ordinance county commissioners approved Thursday, capping a multi-year effort to make a dent in youth vaping and health disparities.

“This is going to save people’s lives,” County Chair Deborah Kafoury said shortly before the board voted unanimously to approve the ban.

The county’s effort toward banning flavored tobacco and nicotine products most recently escalated with presentations and discussions in 2019, amidst a national vaping scare driven by cases of severe lung disease that were in many cases found to be connected to illicit cannabis vape products. That work was cut short by the pandemic.

That vape scare proved a prominent opportunity for health officials to consider the less dramatic but no less severe dangers behind vaping of nicotine, namely the rapidly growing use of the products by young people. Concerns about a youth vaping epidemic drove efforts to ban nicotine products with flavors that appear intended to appeal to children. Electronic cigarette use among 11th-grade Oregonians rose from 5% to 23% from 2013 to 2019, according to state estimates. The number dropped to 12% in 2020.

The ordinance seemed like all but a done deal after a commission meeting earlier this month, with the one hang-up being a proposal to make an exception for hookah lounges. That carve-out was shot down at the time, even as business representatives pleaded with commissioners to understand the cultural significance behind their businesses.

Unless the ban is blocked in court, starting Jan. 1, 2024, Multnomah County retailers will be barred from selling any cigarettes, vape products, chewing tobacco or synthetic nicotine products that have any flavor besides tobacco. Notably, the ban includes menthol cigarettes, which health officials say are especially popular — and damaging — among Black people.

To enforce the ban, county health officials will use a tobacco retailer licensing system already in place, which allows officials to fine retailers who violate county rules or suspend or revoke their license to sell nicotine products.

Multnomah County is the second in Oregon to vote to ban flavored nicotine products, after Washington County commissioners passed a similar ordinance last year. That ban never went into effect, however, blocked for the first time when Plaid Pantry’s chief executive officer gathered enough ballots to put the ordinance on the ballot. While voters approved the ban, it was ultimately tossed in circuit court by a judge who ruled the county didn’t have such sweeping authority.

“[T]he decision to disallow licensed retail sale of such products must come from the state, not county by county,” Circuit Judge Andrew Erwin wrote in his September ruling. “Certainly, the county has broad power to regulate how sales are made, but they cannot bar them entirely.”

Washington County has appealed the case, and it remains to be seen what bearing, if any, the outcome of that appeal will have on the fate of Multnomah County’s ban. Commissioners concluded the lawsuit in the neighboring county applied only to that county’s ban and would not pertain to Multnomah County’s, spokesperson Julie Sullivan-Springhetti said.

“Obviously, different courts have different options,” Sullivan-Springhetti said, contrasting the Washington County judge’s ruling with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this week allowing a statewide ban to stand in California. “That’s where the county came down.”

Plaid Pantry CEO Jonathan Polonsky said he will wait and see whether he will have to challenge the Multnomah County ban, with that decision hinging on what happens to Washington County’s appeal and whether the state Legislature takes independent action on flavored nicotine products.

“We’ll obviously comply when and if it is enacted,” Polonsky said of the ordinance. But, he added, “we’re disappointed.”

Oregon’s flavored nicotine legal drama pales in comparison to recent events out of California, which banned flavored nicotine products earlier this year. R.J. Reynolds sued the state and, after losing in lower courts, eventually asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block the California ban. The court declined to do so Monday, meaning the ban could go into effect by next week.

As of Oct. 1, nearly 90 local governments already ban flavored nicotine and tobacco products entirely, according to the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation, 71 of them in California and the rest in Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana and New York. Another 152 have laws on the books restricting the products’ sales in some manner, according to the foundation. The county has said 345 communities have passed similar ordinances.

— Fedor Zarkhin