KC tried to ban flavored tobacco. Now, Missouri could halt future city regulations
When Kansas City officials tried to ban flavored tobacco products last year, the ordinance faced intense pushback from business owners like Daniel Hoambrecker.
Hoambrecker owns a string of gas stations and convenience stores in the Kansas City area called The Station. For Hoambecker, bans like the one proposed in Kansas City would have severely hampered the stores, which sell a wide variety of food, alcohol and, of course, tobacco products.
“Those ordinances…follow an alarming trend across the U.S. to restrict local sales of legal adult products (that) threaten to cripple businesses like mine,” Hoambrecker said in a written statement.
He wants the state of Missouri to step in.
Business owners in Kansas City and elsewhere — along with proponents of the powerful tobacco industry — are pushing Missouri lawmakers to pass legislation that would ban cities from enacting stricter regulations on tobacco sales.
The pieces of legislation pit owners like Hoambrecker, who say the state should have one set of rules guiding tobacco sales, against health care groups, who argue that local leaders should be able to enact their own regulations to protect residents against tobacco use.
Ed Kraemer, a family physician who practiced in Lee’s Summit for nearly two decades, opposes the legislation, telling The Star that the bills are tailored to support a product that kills people.
“I’m not saying that people who sell cigarettes are bad people, but the product itself is bad,” said Kraemer, now an assistant professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine. “It’s an industry where they have to continuously replace their customers faster than other industries because they die at a faster rate by using the product.”
If passed, the legislation would follow a familiar trend in Missouri in which Republican lawmakers in Jefferson City strip away local control from Kansas City, a largely Democratic city. Even local officials sympathetic to concerns over tobacco bans, such as Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, are likely to chafe at the move.
“Mayor Lucas opposes state overrides of local decisions in all cases, even where, as here, he disagrees with past local proposals,” said Lucas spokesperson Megan Strickland. “Kansas Citians vote for leaders to make decisions. The will of local voters should always be respected.”
Republican state lawmakers have already laid the groundwork to thwart local efforts to enact stricter regulations on tobacco sales. A Missouri House committee last week signed off on one of the bills filed by Rep. Ben Keathley, a Chesterfield Republican, sending it to the full chamber for a potential vote.
“The main point of this is to create a consistent standard so businesses aren’t having the rug pulled out from underneath them and having games played with their business licenses,” Keathley told the committee earlier this month.
Keathley did not respond to a call and text seeking comment for this story.
Keathley’s legislation, similar to one filed in the Senate, would state that Missouri laws supersede any local ordinances that regulate the sale of tobacco, nicotine and vape products. This would block local efforts to ban certain products, regulate ingredients or raise the age to purchase and sell tobacco above 21.
The bill states that Missouri would not be able to stop cities from enforcing ordinances that ban tobacco sales to minors “as defined under state law.” While Missouri has not raised the minimum age for tobacco sales from 18 to 21, federal law prohibits sales to anyone under 21.
Inside Kansas City’s push
Supporters of the legislation have consistently used Kansas City as an example, pointing to a yearslong effort to restrict flavored tobacco sales within the city.
The city council, as recently as last year, considered a proposal to ban flavored tobacco and vape products. The ban was intended to improve public health in predominantly Black neighborhoods as tobacco products disproportionately harm communities of color and young people.
But the effort has for years run into opposition from store owners and business groups, who argue customers would simply go to businesses outside of Kansas City limits.
“Although these laws have not passed, the threat remains real, and the precedent set by these proposals is alarming for business owners like me,” Kevin Bhamani, who owns Kay-Bee’s convenience stores in Raytown, wrote to Missouri lawmakers earlier this month, referring to Kansas City’s proposed ordinance.
Business owners and the tobacco industry argue that allowing municipalities to enact their own regulations forces businesses to comply with a confusing patchwork of laws that differ from city to city. Missouri, they say, should have one set of laws guiding tobacco sales.
But a constellation of health care groups say the bills set a dangerous precedent, barring local officials from passing rules that protect the people who live in their communities. The legislation comes as tobacco use remains the leading cause of preventable death in Missouri, according to the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.
Maura Patel, who works in government relations for the American Heart Association, said the legislation would essentially deregulate the tobacco industry in Missouri.
“Preemption legislation is a tactic that the tobacco industry uses in other states as well,” Patel said. “Because they know that if they get rid of local laws and local enforcement, that they essentially don’t have anything to replace it at the state level.”
Across the country, more than 480,000 people die from smoking-related cardiovascular disease each year, Patel said. The life expectancy for smokers is at least 10 years shorter than for nonsmokers, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For Hoambrecker, who owns the string of gas stations in the Kansas City area, preemption laws like the one being considered in Missouri aren’t about preventing cities from enforcing current tobacco regulations.
“It ensures that retailers across Missouri operate under consistent regulations, providing a level playing field and protecting consumer choice,” he said.
But Kraemer, the Lee’s Summit family physician, said the effort by Missouri officials to limit cities from pursuing additional public health standards is concerning. The state should be setting the floor, not the ceiling, he said.
“There’s no reason for state legislators, who are not public health people…telling local municipalities how to handle their local community health,” he said.
