Waterloo, IA Business Licensing & Operations: Tobacco Retail License (2026)

Section 5-2A-2, whose revocation and suspension provisions date to Ordinance 4448 of November 20, 2000, with penalty amounts added by Ordinance 4678 in 2004, governs how Waterloo disciplines a tobacco or cigarette retail permit holder. If a permit holder willfully violates subsection C's ban on selling, giving or supplying tobacco to anyone under eighteen, the city must revoke the permit, but only after giving the holder ten days' written notice by mail to the business address on file and a hearing at which the holder may appear.

Separately, if a retailer or its employee violates subsection D's ban on underage possession or purchase enabled by the retailer, the city assesses an escalating civil penalty on that same notice-and-hearing track: $300.00 for a first violation, with nonpayment triggering an automatic 14-day suspension; $1,500.00 or a 30-day suspension, at the retailer's choice, for a second violation within two years; $1,500.00 plus a mandatory 30-day suspension for a third violation within three years; $1,500.00 plus a 60-day suspension for a fourth violation within three years; and outright revocation for a fifth violation within four years.

Once a permit is revoked, no new permit may issue for that place of business, or to anyone else at that address, for one year absent good cause shown to the issuing authority, though a suspension or revocation applies only to the specific location where the violation occurred, not to a retailer's other locations. Waterloo must report every suspension or revocation to the Iowa Department of Public Health within thirty days.