On Tuesday, Denver voters overwhelmingly supported maintaining a ban on flavored vapes and tobacco products. As of midnight, Referendum 310 was passing with over 71 percent of the vote.
The city will begin to enforce the flavor ban as soon as the election results are final and certified.
The ban was passed last December by the Denver City Council, and signed into law soon after by Mayor Mike Johnston. It prohibits the sale of flavored vapes and nicotine pouches, along with menthol cigarettes, and flavored cigars and smokeless tobacco.
Following a signature-gathering campaign by a group of vaping and retail industry interests, Referendum 310 was placed on the city’s 2025 November ballot.
The ballot question asked, “Shall the voters of the City and County of Denver retain ordinance number 24-1765, entitled 'A bill for an ordinance amending Chapters 24 and 34 of the Denver Revised Municipal Code regarding the sale of tobacco products including flavored tobacco products,' which prohibits the sale of flavored tobacco products by retail tobacco stores?”
Five million Bloomberg dollars
The election result was heavily influenced by $5 million in contributions from billionaire anti-vaping advocate Michael Bloomberg to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (TFK) front group running the pro-310 campaign. According to Denverite, the group, Denver Kids vs Big Tobacco, raised $5.8 million in total.
The opposition campaign raised less than $700,000, including $172,000 from vape industry group the Rocky Mountain Smoke Free Alliance, and two $75,000 contributions from tobacco companies Altria Group and Philip Morris International (PMI).
The referendum result was even more lopsided than the vote in a similar effort to stop California’s flavored vape and tobacco ban in 2022. The anti-flavor campaign in that election was also fueled primarily by Bloomberg money.
Another prefab flavor ban from Tobacco-Free Kids
The ban was engineered by an astroturf group created by TFK’s lobbying arm the Tobacco-Free Kids Action Fund. We call the “Flavors Hook Kids Denver Coalition” astroturf because it is the opposite of a true grassroots campaign, which is led by local citizens concerned over a real issue.
It was not Denverites worried about flavored vapes that launched the campaign to ban them, but rather paid professional activists from Washington, D.C.-based TFK, executing a prefabricated flavor ban template developed with funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies and used previously in many other locations.
In 2019, Bloomberg gave TFK a $160 million grant designated to promote flavored vape bans. Before that, no state had banned flavors, but within a few months, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island prohibited flavored vapes.
Six U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and many cities—including several in Colorado—have passed flavored vape bans.