Flavor Ban

  1. Tobacco
  2. Flavor Ban
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California Health and Safety Code section 104559.5 prohibits the retail sale of most flavored tobacco products and tobacco product flavor enhancers. A flavored tobacco product is a “tobacco product that contains a constituent that imparts a characterizing flavor.” Similarly, a tobacco product flavor enhancer is “a product designed, manufactured, produced, marketed, or sold to produce a characterizing flavor when added to a tobacco product.”

A character flavor is “a taste or odor, distinguishable by an ordinary consumer either prior to or during the consumption of a tobacco product, other than the taste or odor of tobacco, including, but not limited to, tastes or odors relating to any fruit, chocolate, vanilla, honey, candy, cocoa, dessert, alcoholic beverage, menthol, mint, wintergreen, herb, or spice, or a cooling sensation distinguishable by an ordinary consumer during the consumption of a tobacco product.”

The statute rebuttably presumes that tobacco products are flavored if a manufacturer “has made a statement or claim directed to consumers or to the public that the tobacco product has or produces a characterizing flavor, including, but not limited to, text, color, images, or all, on the product's labeling or packaging that are used to explicitly or implicitly communicate that the tobacco product has a characterizing flavor.”

California Health and Safety Code section 104559.1 requires the Attorney General to establish and maintain a list of tobacco product brand styles that lack a characterizing flavor, which shall be known as the Unflavored Tobacco List (UTL). The UTL will be published later this year. Regulations implementing that list and the portal permitting the manufacturers and public to submit information regarding brand styles for that list are available below.

Unflavored Tobacco List Portal

Unflavored Tobacco List Regulations

The following notices of determination have been sent to tobacco product manufacturers regarding their tobacco products.

The following letters have been sent to tobacco product manufacturers regarding their tobacco products.

The following notices of determination have been sent to manufacturers regarding their tobacco product flavor enhancers.

The following DLE Information Bulletins have been issued regarding the flavor ban.