Golden cracked down on local businesses when the city council last year voted to ban the sale of flavored tobacco and nicotine products.

The council said it has no intention of reversing course, but is, however, trying to mitigate the damage it caused by creating a $100,000 relief fund for businesses impacted by the ban.

Though the city council’s initial actions were well-intentioned and their recent gesture is certainly thoughtful as it acknowledges business owners have been hurt, a one-time grant will not make up for years of future losses.

I want to thank the mayor and other council folks for their consideration, but we still argue for a better path. Adult nicotine users are trending toward products that are less harmful, and we should not be taking away their ability to make better choices.

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As Americans, we also cannot cede the future of the smoke-free products category to unregulated foreign interests.

One of the biggest reasons bans on flavored tobacco and nicotine are ineffective is they only change where people buy these products, not their demand for them. For example, not one single community surrounding Golden has a similar ban in place. For a convenience store customer, why would you go to a store that doesn’t sell the product you want? When jurisdictions do this, it only shifts business to other areas. Bans also undercut the funding sources for important state programs that rely on the tax revenues generated by adults who you don’t support by pushing products to an untaxed underground market.

When people go elsewhere for flavored tobacco, they also take their business for other items, such as snacks and beverages, which are popular in convenience stores. This severely hurts store owners operating on razor-thin margins squeezed by rising costs and inflation. Again, we are thankful to the council for transparently recognizing this.

Youth smoking is at an all-time low, and responsible retailers are doing their part to ensure these products are not sold to young people. There is simply no incentive for businesses to sell tobacco or nicotine products to anyone but those of legal age. Consequently, it is far more likely for young people to obtain these products on the black market and outside the well-regulated environment where American companies operate.

The most recent Healthy Kids survey from the Colorado Department of Health & Environment (CDPHE) shows all the efforts to reduce youth use are working, especially in vaping and without bans, yet more evidence that bans are not effective.

A flavor ban in Massachusetts created a massive illegal market that has cost the state approximately $150 million in tax revenue. When sales are taken away from licensed and responsible retailers and moved to the streets, it becomes much harder to regulate access to these products. In fact, studies have shown bans on products do nothing to prevent youth uptake and, in some instances, have had the exact opposite effect. Finally, there are consequences for adult smokers, many of whom turn to flavored smoke-free products as an alternative to cigarettes.

We share in the Golden City Council’s desire to protect kids, and Chinese-based companies that promote youth appealing marketing and profiling practices need to know Colorado is closed for business to those products. But continuing to move forward with an overly broad policy that has a track record of failure is not the solution. Though the council has resisted revisiting the policy, we are hopeful they reconsider and other jurisdictions in the Centennial State proceed with caution before repeating the same mistakes leading to predictable and eminently avoidable consequences.

Grier Bailey is executive director of the Colorado Wyoming Petroleum Marketers Association and Kern Shahi is a business owner in Golden.