San Jose leaders say stores selling tobacco, liquor and other illicit products are over concentrated on the east side of the city — and they are looking to temporarily ban new ones.
Councilmembers Peter Ortiz, Domingo Candelas, Pamela Campos, George Casey and David Cohen introduced a proposal Wednesday to pause new smoke shops from opening in East San Jose. The City Council voted last year to add more regulations for smoke shops before moving to a call for full suspension after Santa Clara County Public Health’s recent Latino Health Assessment cited the danger shops pose to impressionable youth. The assessment shows East San Jose has a tobacco retailer density of about seven per square mile — more than twice the county average of three per square mile.
After spearheading the effort to put more regulations on smoke shops last year, Ortiz said it’s time to take the next step in limiting their influence on East San Jose residents.
“I’ve tried to introduce this policy in the past — it wasn’t successful,” he told San José Spotlight. “They’re still opening them. So now I’m calling for a moratorium until the city can guarantee less smoke shops in concentrated areas.”
The San Jose Rules and Open Government Committee will revisit the proposed suspension of new smoke shops in two weeks after city workers analyze the potential workload. Neighboring Campbell recently approved a similar policy, which was extended last month.
District 1 Santa Clara County Supervisor Sylvia Arenas said the county’s first Latino health assessment in more than a decade showed cancer remains the leading cause of death among Latinos countywide. Latinos make up more than 25% of the county population, according to U.S. Census data.
“It’s no coincidence that in East San Jose there are smoke shops that are located across from high schools. These numbers are not just statistics,” she said Wednesday. “They are symptoms of targeted marketing, retail clustering and bad policies with a high concentration of tobacco retailers in Latino neighborhoods.”
Community leaders said imagery used by smoke shops draws in younger customers, and such shops sell underregulated items like synthetic marijuana and nitrous oxide.
Community Health Partnership CEO Dolores Alvarado said she wants to break the cycle of family members needing to convince older relatives to ditch their potentially fatal addictions.
“I have a father who is 94 years old,” she said Wednesday. “The only reason that he is the remaining member of the family is that in 1984, when I had my first child, I said to him, ‘If you don’t stop smoking you will never see your grandchildren.’ I suffer from secondhand smoke … So I know this enemy quite well, personally and professionally.”
The goal of the smoke shop suspension is to create more equitable health conditions for residents and encourage healthier lifestyles, Latinas Contra Cancer Executive Director Darcie Green said.
“We’re overburdened, underserved and targeted by harmful industries at the expense of our health,” she said. “Let’s be clear about what that leads to — more exposure to advertising that normalizes tobacco use, easier access for youth, secondhand smoke drifting into homes, schools and parks and greater difficulty for people trying to quit.”
Contact Vicente Vera at [email protected] or follow @VicenteJVera on X.
