Marin County, CA Tobacco & Vaping: Flavored Tobacco Bans (2026)

010); San Rafael and Novato have their own separate tobacco ordinances. 040 prohibits any person or tobacco retailer from selling or offering for sale a flavored tobacco product, and creates a rebuttable presumption that a product is flavored if the manufacturer has made any statement or claim, including through labeling or packaging text, color, or images, that the product has a characterizing flavor. 030 defines "characterizing flavor" broadly as a distinguishable taste or aroma other than tobacco itself, expressly listing fruit, chocolate, vanilla, honey, candy, cocoa, dessert, alcoholic beverage, menthol, mint, wintergreen, herb, or spice, and covers cigarettes, cigars, chewing tobacco, pipe tobacco, snuff, and electronic devices such as e-cigarettes, e-cigars, e-pipes, and e-hookahs plus their components and accessories.

The Board of Supervisors adopted the ban under Ordinance No. 3698 in 2018, finding that flavored products drive youth initiation and citing county data that vaping among Marin eleventh graders rose from eleven percent to twenty-eight percent in one survey period. 040 is an independent ground for revocation. 058, a first citation for a licensing-chapter violation (including a related flavored-tobacco sale) carries a fine of not less than $200 plus mandatory staff training with the health and human services tobacco coordinator, while subsequent connected violations carry a fine of not less than $500 per violation, and each day a retailer sells tobacco without a valid license is a separate $500-per-day violation. 070 confirms the chapter yields to any conflicting federal or state law.