Irvine, CA Tobacco & Vaping: Flavored Tobacco Bans (2026)

Ordinance No. 20-01, adopted January 28, 2020, added Chapter 6 to Division 10 after the City Council found "a current and immediate threat to the public health, safety, and welfare" from flavored tobacco marketed to youth (Sec. 4-10-601). Sec. 4-10-602 defines a "flavored tobacco product" as any tobacco product "that contains a constituent that imparts a characterizing flavor", a distinguishable taste or aroma other than tobacco itself, expressly including fruit, chocolate, vanilla, honey, candy, cocoa, dessert, alcoholic beverage, menthol, mint, wintergreen, herb or spice, and creates a rebuttable presumption that a product is flavored if the manufacturer's marketing or packaging communicates a characterizing flavor.

Sec. 4-10-603, titled "Sale, offer for sale, and use of flavored tobacco products prohibited," bars use of any flavored tobacco product by persons under 21 in subsection (A). Subsection (C) is the chapter's only exception: "the sale or offer for sale of hookah products and the use of flavored tobacco for hookah uses is not prohibited by this Section," which by its own terms confirms the sale and offer for sale of every other flavored tobacco product is prohibited. Enforcement runs through the Irvine Police Department, other peace officers and code enforcement officers under Sec.

4-10-604; if a person under 21 is caught violating the chapter, police "reserve the right to confiscate" any electronic smoking device or flavored tobacco product in that person's possession. A violation is an infraction under Title 4, Division 13, but a first-time violator who has not previously completed the diversion option may instead enroll in a City-approved educational tobacco diversion program, which results in dismissal of the infraction upon completion. Sec. 4-10-605 separately declares any violation a public nuisance.