When it comes to little vices, Miami-Dade is notoriously lax. Depending on where you are in the county, you can order a drink at a bar till 5 a.m. and smoke inside the whole night. You can also stop by a liquor store until 1 a.m. But the Miami-Dade County Commission is now considering an uncharacteristic proposal that would ban selling flavored tobacco products. Flavored cigarettes (excluding menthol) are already banned by federal law, but the proposed ordinance would ban flavored chewing tobacco and cigars as well. Yes, your grape blunts are in danger.
Charles Rabin leads his Herald piece about the matter with, "Flavored tobacco products, a favorite of high school kids, could be prohibited from sale in Miami-Dade County." Of course, there's no concrete data offered about the number of high school kids who are actually using the products in Miami, and the sentence should at least read "some high school kids." According to some anecdotal evidence, though, there are at least a few kids chewing flavored tobacco in class.
South Miami has already banned the sale of flavored smokeless tobacco products, but the proposed county ordinance would also ban flavored cigars. That means flavored cigars sold by Jacksonville-based Swisher Sweats and Lil Wayne-backed Boogey Blunts would be outlawed. Yes, they are coming for your strawberry blunts. We would point out why flavored blunts are so popular, but that probably wouldn't help any effort to keep them legal.
Of course, detractors are quick to point out that selling any tobacco products to minors is already illegal. As is using tobacco products at school. Meanwhile, alcohol companies still produce candy-flavored booze.
Menthol- and mint-flavored products would not be banned under the ordinance. So, uh, get used to wintergreen blunts.
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