SANTA CRUZ — Following similar bans by the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors last fall and the city of Capitola in April, the Santa Cruz City Council approved an ordinance Tuesday that would ban the sale of filtered tobacco products in the city beginning in 2027.
At the City Council meeting Tuesday afternoon, the chambers were filled with
“Ban the Butt”
advocates and others from the business community that oppose the local prohibition on filtered tobacco products. The item of general business began with an introduction by Santa Cruz Vice Mayor Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson.
“I just wanted to take a moment to thank city staff and county partners, Supervisor (Justin) Cummings who’s taken a leadership role on this
at the county
and a number of community partners for their extensive work on this item and on this issue for the last few years,” said Kalantari-Johnson at the meeting. “Today’s ordinance reflects a simple truth, and that is that filtered cigarettes are the most littered item on the planet and they impact our local beaches. They offer no health benefits, and they release microplastics and toxins into our oceans, into our parks and into our neighborhoods.”
Santa Cruz Principal Management Analyst Emeline Nguyen then described the yearslong effort to ban filtered tobacco products in the city and county, and the many community members and organizations involved, including Santa Cruz County, Taylor Lane and Ben Judkins of
“Cigarette Surfboard”
fame and Save Our Shores, among others. Nguyen mentioned that there are 48 retailers in the city that sell filtered tobacco products, and that some voiced concerns about the proposed prohibition during the community meetings and surveys conducted in the past few years.
“In short, the data reflects a range of perspectives,” said Nguyen. “Including both strong support for action and also specific concerns from affected businesses.”
The city’s youth liaison, Ben Sommerville, reported findings from a survey of students at Santa Cruz High School about their use and thoughts on filtered tobacco products. Through the survey, Sommerville discovered that the majority of students were generally familiar with electronic vaping products that don’t require filters and weren’t as familiar with “cigarette culture.”
“Overall the data has shown that youth agree that tobacco product waste is an issue that needs to be addressed within the city and in our community,” said Sommerville before passing the presentation to Save Our Shares Executive Director Katie Thompson.
Like Kalantari-Johnson, Thompson mentioned that cigarette butts are the most littered item on the planet and that, during the hundreds of beach cleanups conducted by Save Our Shores from 2013 to 2024, volunteers had collected nearly 500,000 butts on Monterey Bay beaches and about 200,000 on beaches in the city of Santa Cruz
“And these littered butts pose a threat to the health of our local marine environment,” said Thompson. “The butts are made out of plastic and over 9,000 different chemicals. Over time, butts break down into microplastics, which leach into our environment. Microplastics have been found in all layers of the water column in Monterey Bay, posing a threat not only to the marine organisms but also to the humans that consume local seafood.”
Thomas E. Novotny, co-director of the Center for Tobacco and the Environment at San Diego State University, then pointed out the high financial costs associated with cleaning up littered butts, which is estimated to be more than $2 million annually in the city of Santa Cruz.
“We do think the best approach to these cleanups actually is to prevent them from being necessary,” said Novotny. “Now, a ban on the sale of filtered cigarettes and filtered products here in Santa Cruz will be a step, not the answer, but it’s demonstrable leadership of a local community to make something happen.”
Following the presentation, community members were given the chance to voice their opinions. Some retailers were present to express their opposition to the ban such as local store owner Jimmy Burke, who suggested placing a fee on the sale of filtered tobacco products, which could be used to pay for cleanups similar to San Francisco’s Cigarette Litter Abatement Fee.
“The day the ban goes into effect, I’ll have someone outside my store with a backpack saying, ‘Hey, do you want to buy a pack of smokes?’” said Burke. “There’s a lot of problems. Look at graffiti. That’s a big problem in Santa Cruz. Should we ban aerosol cans?”
However, the vast majority of community members who spoke during public comment were in favor of the ban, including Ocean Conservancy Chief Scientist George Leonard.
“The truth is, you don’t need a Ph.D. to do the math here,” said Leonard. “Only 6% of people in California smoke and 94% clean up the mess and that has to stop.”
Following public comment, members of the City Council voiced their support of the measure and Kalantari-Johnson moved the item. Santa Cruz City Councilmember Susie O’Hara offered two friendly amendments: to direct city staff to conduct an annual performance review of the ban and direct the Health in All Policies committee to study a ban on all tobacco products in the city.
Kalantari-Johnson accepted the amendments and before the item went to a vote, Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley drew parallels to the effort to prevent offshore oil drilling in Monterey Bay decades ago. He noted the work of local environmentalists such as former director of Save Our Shores and the O’Neill Sea Odyssey, Dan Haifley, who was in the chambers, which was revisited by the council
earlier in the meeting
.
“At that time, Dan was hired by a coalition of local governments to go from the northern part of the state down to the Central Coast and further down to get every city along the coast to adopt a model ordinance, which said we understand that we can’t prohibit offshore oil drilling, but what we can do is prohibit onshore support facilities,” said Keeley. “There was a wall that was built of local ordinances from top to the middle down to the southern part of the state and that was a very effective strategy.”
The City Council approved the first reading of the ordinance in a unanimous vote, with Santa Cruz City Councilmember Gabriela Trigueiro absent. The second and final reading of the ordinance will take place at the council’s June 24 meeting.If passed, the ban will go into effect Jan. 1, 2027.
To watch the meeting, visit
cityofsantacruz.com
.
