Opinion: Let’s Replace Banned Flavored Tobacco with Healthy Fare in San Diego’s ‘Food Deserts’

The passage of a flavored tobacco ban in the town of San Diego is good news for general public health. It could be specifically great news for San Diegans residing in communities in which independently owned foodstuff markets and liquor merchants affiliated with the Neighborhood Market Affiliation are the most important source of groceries.

That is since the metropolis council’s 7-2 vote to outlaw flavored e-cigarettes and flavored tobacco goods offers a timely opportunity for community marketplaces — located in “food deserts” stretching across the city’s city main — to fill empty shops cabinets when stocked with manufacturers like Juul, Blu, Camel, and Marlboro with meals and beverages that promote wholesome, equitable and resilient communities.

Food items deserts are household communities with confined obtain to nutritious, healthy foods. These underserved locations are mostly small-cash flow communities of colour wherever citizens have constrained mobility.

Without transportation and the obtaining electric power to obtain groceries at huge-box merchants situated outdoors their neighborhoods, inhabitants of foods deserts have no decision but to feed their households the large-calorie and low-nutrient foods and beverages that are easily and conveniently offered at their corner market.

Approximately 25% of all census tracts in San Diego County are food stuff deserts. In the town of San Diego, most are clustered to the east of Interstate 805, extending to the town restrictions.

Advocates of the flavored tobacco ban maintain sugary sweet flavored tobacco is a perilous gateway to nicotine habit amid young children and younger adults. Their arsenal of investigation includes research presenting the variety of preventable serious ailments linked to flavored tobacco — such as coronary heart and lung ailment, most cancers, and diabetic issues — and chronicling the tobacco industry’s predatory marketing campaigns focusing on little ones, girls and women,  folks who recognize as LGBTQ and communities of shade.

The Neighborhood Market Affiliation campaigned against ending the sale of flavored tobacco. Claiming flavored tobacco solutions comprise in between a quarter and half of its members’ retail profits, association leaders warned of the pending economic hardship the ban would provide upon its members, forcing its mom-and-pop markets to lay off staff, increase charges on other items and most likely shut.

But passage of the flavored tobacco ban sets the phase for the association to pivot to a new enterprise model. It can encourage its associates to stock fresh fruits and vegetables, nutritious foodstuff, and nutritious drinks at their corner marketplaces and liquor merchants. It can advocate for a new connection with suppliers of goods that induce the onset of everyday living-sapping serious
illness.

Luckily, the association needn’t seem considerably for assistance to navigate this crucial changeover. The San Diego County’s Are living Effectively Local community Current market Software is primed to guidance the trade organization’s transformation.

Grounded in ideal methods to aid market place house owners develop organization versions that draw in new purchasers and improve their base line, the plan is a catalyst for neighborhood markets interested in providing fresh new, wholesome, and very affordable foods and beverages.

Precisely, the method collaborates with homeowners and operators to strengthen interior and exterior shop patterns and develop promotion and availability of these goods. This dynamic empowers their clients to sign up for them in developing healthy, more robust communities.

In partnership with the UCSD Middle for Group Wellness, the neighborhood market plan prioritizes collaborations with modest, independently owned foodstuff markets serving minimal-revenue communities, which include City Heights and Southeastern San Diego. The application provides a Reside Nicely San Diego countywide platform that publicly acknowledges community markets for their participation and determination to community health.

The application is absolutely free, a profitable proposition for the smaller enterprises it serves.

The passage of the flavored tobacco ban provides the Community Sector Affiliation a new option. The neighborhood current market system can supply the corporation and its associates with the means and knowledge to aid them transition absent from a organization model dependent on unhealthy products.

Viewing the flavored tobacco ban as an open up door, not a useless conclude, it is fair to question: Why would not community market place proprietors select to cultivate shopper loyalty by stocking their cabinets with regionally sourced make and inexpensive purchaser brands that boost healthful, flourishing communities?

Dr. Rodney Hood is running spouse of the Treatment Watch Clinical Group and president of the Multicultural IPA, a group of impartial physicians delivering culturally sensitive health care. Dr. James Dunford served as San Diego’s initial director of emergency clinical products and services and is healthcare director of the McAlister Institute, which supplies low-charge substance abuse therapy, drug intervention, and recovery assist.