HOWELL – It has been over a year since Howell Township passed an ordinance to prevent both illegal nicotine product sales and all nicotine sales to the youth of Howell Township. What originally started as an idea from concerned parents and township officials has grown into a powerful ordinance that is actively making changes to common retailers within Howell’s town lines.
Changing Rules
According to Christa Riddle, the Howell Township Municipal Alliance coordinator, the talk of this new ordinance came in 2021 from the idea of suspending the existing ordinance that was enacted in 1974. There had been many updates and changes in the world of nicotine and tobacco use since this time, which inspired Riddle and others to provide a similar update to Howell’s laws.
Ideas were discussed and shared until they eventually grew to expand further than the alliance. Eventually, the Howell Police Department and department of code enforcement joined in moving forward with the ordinance.
“Our ideas started as a round table three years ago, and slowly and carefully took life through an immense amount of cross department expertise, collaboration, discussion, cross checks and revisions to get to where we are today,” Riddle said. “Every detail included in the ordinance was given serious consideration across multiple professional perspectives.”
The ordinance includes summonses for the following violations:
1. Selling, distributing, or providing any tobacco, nicotine or synthetic nicotine product to a person under 21
2. Selling any form of an electronic smoking device product that indicates a characterizing flavor, regardless of the buyer’s age and regardless if the product contains nicotine or other substances (This is against the law in all parts of New Jersey)
3. Failing to maintain an electronic smoking device retailer and/or manufacturer license issued by Howell Township
The fines for the ordinance are $1,000 for the first offense, $1,500 for the second offense, and $2,000 for third and subsequent offenses. After the third offense, there is also potential for additional action for repeatedly failing to comply with the law.
The ordinance was unanimously adopted by the Howell Township Council in April of 2023.
Enforcing The Code
In July of 2023, Riddle visited 37 different establishments and retailers in Howell to visually assess their products and inform them of the newly adopted ordinance. These establishments included convenience stores, gas stations and smoke shops. She immediately noticed illegal flavored vapes and attempted to educate the retail owners, providing them with fliers with information and a QR code to the ordinance, all giving a clear warning to immediately stop selling illegal products. Providing the retailers with this information was a vital step in the opinion of both Riddle and the Howell Police Department. A second round of visits with the same informational clippings was held by the police.
“Instead of going a criminal route with a criminal charge, we felt it to be more appropriate to put together an ordinance that would be comprehensive that would address the problem but would also offer something I believe we are lacking in our society: education and meeting consequence,” said Captain Thomas Rizzo.
After the information was distributed to all the retailers, a Town Hall meeting was held on March 25, 2024 for the retailers to bring any questions or concerns to the attention of the police department, code enforcement department and township officials.
Lastly, the most recent procedure implemented for the ordinance was conducted on June 24 and July 31 of 2024. Howell Police, using an undercover officer, visited the retailers and issued summonses for underage nicotine and tobacco sales, illegal flavored vape sales and failure to hold a current electronic smoking device retailer or manufacturers licenses.
Impact Of The Ordinance
Data involving the aftermath of visits from both Riddle and the Howell PD were documented by the code enforcement department and presented by enforcement officer John Aguiar at the most recent Township Council meeting.
According to his findings, 16 of the 37 retailers (43%) were still found in violation of the new ordinance. Their violations included insufficient licensing and illegal products for sale.
The department sent official letters of warning again explaining the laws of the ordinance. After that, Aguiar said three retailers remained in violation.
After the undercover visits with the police department, the team had made another significant difference: Four summonses were issued, one business closed down and six retailers took all products off their shelves.
During the undercover operation, the Howell PD “customer” was able to purchase a total of $150 worth of illegal products across all stores in the two days, resulting in $24,000 in fines from the summonses.
More Than Just Howell
The most common violation of the ordinance was selling flavored electronic vapes, which is not age restrictive, and selling of the oral nicotine patch Zyn to underage customers.
Not only have the efforts made a difference within the confines of Howell, according to Riddle, other municipalities in the state of New Jersey have noticed and applauded the efforts of this ordinance.
“Howell’s proactive dedication to protecting our youth in this area goes unmatched by other municipalities, who are now using our ordinance and its enforcement as a model for their own communities to combat the [youth nicotine and vaping] epidemic,” she said. “We are envied by many, many towns for our collaboration and our accomplishments.”
Riddle, the police and code enforcement department also showed many measures of gratitude toward the township leaders and all members of the participating departments for their efforts.
“You can’t eradicate the problem completely, but you can make it very inconvenient to do here. That was the goal, and really what we did.” Rizzo said.
