Agenda - Council - 11/10/1997 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Other Ordinance Provisions and Approaches The following provisions are additional approaches to curb youth access to tobacco, tobacco products, and tobacco related devices. These provisions, however, tend to be less effective. riskier, or simply not within the scope of regulation many counties, cities, or townships wish to impose; Point-of-Sale Advertising. Point-of-sale advertising restrictions seek to eliminate the use of advertising methods such as clocks, colorful banners, grocery check-out lane dividers, etc. These forms of advertisements frequently use characters or symbols found to be highly recognizable and attractive to minors. The City of Preston, Minnesota was the first city to adopt an ordinance which sought to limit or prohibit most forms of advertising at the point of sale except for limited black and white, text/numeric only "tombstone" signs. This ordinance was struck down by the courts, with an emphasis being placed on the fact that the ordinance was not content neutral. While a less restrictive ordinance might be upheld, any ordinance of this type is highly subject to challenge. Point-of-sale advertising restrictions are contained in the FDA tobacco regulations scheduled to take effect August 28, 1997 if they are ultimately upheld by the Courts. Billboards. Related to point-of-sale advertising bans, some local governments have sought to prohibit the use of billboards for advertising tobacco, tobacco products, and tobacco related devices. The City of Baltimore, Maryland has a comprehensive ordinance restr/cting tobacco related billboards that was ultimately upheld by the courts following several legal challenges. While no Minnesota city has yet adopted such a ban, several cities have adopted zoning regulations restricting ali billboards in the city limits. This comprehensive zoning approach has generally been upheld by the courts. If upheld, the FDA tobacco regulations will regulate tobacco billboards. Free Distribution Prohibition. Most fonns of free distribution of tobacco and tobacco products are prohibited by State law, and few licensing authorities have had a problem with this issue and thus have not regulated it. One probtcm that still arises is the use of promotional activities where a person can trade in coupons, proofs-of-purcl~ase, etc. for free samples. Such activities will be restricted by the FDA tobacco reguthtions. Tracking this form of violation, however, is difficult and it is not totally clear which laws would apply to this situation. Use of Gifts. In addition to the free distribution of tobacco and tobacco pr{Sducts, some licensing authorities would like to regulate other free promotional activities. The idea of restricting free gifts is to eliminate the enticement of young people through flashy give away iterrmsuch as leather jackets with brand names, etc. Even small items like lighters and frisbees League of Minnesota Citiesdg/97 13 I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I