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Date: 2/21/2023
BELCHERTOWN – For the last three months the Board of Health has been learning about all the different tobacco products being used and drafting revised regulations and penalties to educate business owners on selling to minors or illegal products.
The Board of Health hosted a public hearing at its Feb. 8 meeting where they approved the proposed regulations.
The conversation began after Belchertown recently joined the Pioneer Valley Tobacco Control Coalition and also received two violations in their last semi-annual inspection.
The Department of Revenue on Sept. 20, 2022, issued 30-day suspension letters to Town Mart on 10 Federal St., for selling unstamped electronic nicotine delivery systems product and Diamond Food Store 1066 Federal St. for selling unstamped cigarettes and unstamped electronic nicotine delivery systems product. The suspensions began on Oct. 20, 2022.
Board of Health Chair Ken Elstein said the he wanted Belchertown to stay up-to-date with laws that Massachusetts laid out like banning the sale of flavored electronic cigarettes.
He added, “We also wanted to protect our youth. The Board of Health has a lot of power. We could ban the sale of cigarettes all together but we did not want to take the lead on that. Right now we can just educate.”
The board received model tobacco regulations in their agenda packets at its November 2022 meeting, The sections highlighted in yellow was language copied from the latest state law and Department of Health regulations. The highlighted sections in green were local policy decisions.
Quabbin Health District Director of Public Health Andrea Crete asked the board to review these regulations and to write down questions or changes they had for their next meeting.
At its December 2022 meeting, Meredith O’Leary, a member of the Pioneer Tobacco Control Coalition and a tobacco compliance officer, was invited to attend to explain and answer the board’s questions.
The conversation lasted for over an hour to teach the board how to address the new access and exposure to tobacco products and protect the public by providing information and education.
The board decided to fix definitions, include how many tobacco permits would be allowed in town, banning the sale of blunt wraps, prohibiting all non-residential roll-you-own machines and increasing the fines for violations in a proposed regulation draft.
O’Leary added, “These policies that you included in your draft regulation are proven to be effective and help curb youth initiation and tobacco use across the board.”
One of the amendments that the board made on Feb. 8 is that at any given time, there shall be no more than five tobacco product sales permits.
Belchertown originally had 11 permits and Crete said, “If you cap it at a certain number, you will always have that number and there will be no reduction over time when that permit retires.”
The original proposed regulation said the town can have a maximum of eight sale permits but Crete and Elstein thought that number was too high.
He added, “I would like to reduce it. On the principle, I do not think we should be encouraging and endorsing. I think we should be making a statement that sales of tobacco are a bad thing. It would not affect any of the current license holders.”
Board of Health Vice Chair Colleen Duroshea said, “Five would be great. It would take years to get there but is a good goal.”
The rest of the board acknowledged Duroshea’s point by stating that permits that will be retired may not be a problem they have to deal with for 20 plus years.
The proposed regulations were approved by the Board of Health and will be posted on their website for the public to view.
The regulations went into immediate effect on Feb. 8 and the board will give a 30-day grace period for businesses to dispose of prohibited products.
“You will have a lot of retailers who will have to do business remodeling in essence of what they are selling because of the regulations. The regulations should go into effect immediately so businesses can start working on getting the certain items off the shelf,” O’Leary added.
Crete said, “The only way that someone can lose their license is if there are egregious violations of regulations or consistently selling to minors. Without having a polling period, its forces businesses to be on their toes with education [for] their staff and making sure they don’t sell to a minor.”
The state laws have been in place since June 2020 so many of the banned products should not be on the shelf according to O’Leary.
“The only thing they may not have removed is the blunt wraps since that is a Belchertown thing. You are just reinforcing the law and there should not be a lot of capital loss,” O’Leary added.