The Riverside City Council Tuesday voted unanimously to temporarily pause the approval of any new tobacco retail permits for 45 days. Councilmember Steven Robillard was absent.
It’s part of an effort, championed by council members Sean Mill and Philip Falcone, to revisit smoke shop policies and guidelines after an eight-month police investigation found several shops selling cannabis, nitrous oxide tanks and psilocybin mushrooms — many of which, according to the report submitted to the council, reopened the day after having the items confiscated.
“Police, in particular, found that there were 226 tobacco-related locations that were selling tobacco-related paraphernalia, and in my mind, that is way too many,” Falcone told The Riverside Record. “We’re looking at, how do we get our arms wrapped around that, handle some of the bad actors and the players in that particular number, and then go from there.”
Mill and Falcone said they were first made aware of the issue back in January during public comments on an item related to cannabis dispensaries.
One individual, Falcone explained, said they felt the city was more lenient with smoke shops when compared to how the council has approached permits for dispensaries.
Mill pointed to another instance in the January 7 meeting where a representative for a dispensary alleged that he had purchased illegal substances from various smoke shops, pulling out some of those items in front of the council.
“Here he was, coming down to argue in favor of marijuana dispensaries, but he was kind enough to come in and rat [out] all the illegal smoke shops in town,” Mill said at the September 16 meeting. “[It] kind of got my attention, so I started going out and doing an investigation of my own and there’s a lot of bad things.”
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A report provided to the council said police had confiscated 76,298 illegal tobacco products, 4,870 cannabis products, 535 nitrous oxide tanks and 182 individual mushroom packages from 13 different shops across the city over the last eight months.
During that investigation, the Riverside Police Department (RPD) also worked with the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration in March to raid several shops in the city. Together, the agencies seized hundreds of thousands of illegal and untaxed products and the owners received multiple charges.
According to RPD, 159 of the 226 known tobacco retailers in the city were operating with valid permits. The remaining 67 were operating with either expired, revoked, denied or no permits.
Deputy Chief Charles Payne told the council that the RPD Vice Team, which is responsible for investigating and enforcing the city’s ordinances regarding tobacco retailers, only has eight members. That team is also tasked with enforcing regulations on more than a dozen other sectors. He added that the fines for operating without a license were small, starting at $100 for the first offense. The second citation doubles to $200, with subsequent violations costing the business $500 each.
“It’s a cost of doing business when and if our detectives go out there, discover a violation [and] issue a citation,” he said. “It’s kind of just enrolled into their operating expenses, and they keep right on doing it, doesn’t really deter much.”
Paloma Montes, public policy lead for Blue Zones Project Riverside, spoke in support of the temporary pause, urging the council to also look into limiting how close a new smoke shop could be to places like schools and playgrounds.
Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes also said she had noticed an overconcentration of smoke shops within the Eastside neighborhood, a predominantly Hispanic community, and how easily teens can get flavored vapes despite the statewide ban.
“The amount of research that shows what the impact is in terms of tobacco is exorbitant,” Cervantes said. “I look forward to us being able to create healthy pathways to make sure we can let people have access to certain things they need, for healing, for recovery, but again, we have to make sure we take legal appropriate routes.”
The moratorium will only pause the approval of businesses applying for new permits, not existing businesses seeking to renew their licenses.
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