Beverly Hills City Council Approves Ban on Tobacco Sales

The Beverly Hills City Council unanimously voted on the first-ever ban in the United States on all tobacco sales.

The city documents list the following as banned items: cigarettes, cigars, cigarillo, pipe tobacco, snuff, chewing tobacco, and smokeless tobacco and any electronic cigarette.

Following protests, hotels and high-end cigar lounges would be exempted from the ordinance under the proposed measure, if cigars were smoked inside one of three dedicated lounges.

“We should point out with that, we just passed the ban on the sale of tobacco in Beverly Hills,” Councilman Julian Gold said.

“We’re a city that has been kind of in the forefront of smoking controls and our tobacco policy in general. Ultimately, public health can and should outweigh just profits or short-term business decisions,” Mayor John Mirisch told CNBC in an interview.

In 1987, Beverly Hills became the first city in California to ban smoking in restaurants and retail stores, and adopted an ordinance in 2017 to curb smoking in and around multi-unit residences.

The ordinance will have a second reading and final vote by the council on June 4. If approved, the ban would take effect in 2021.