How plans to crack down on tobacco shops in Fresno went up in smoke

Three hours wasn’t enough for city councilmembers to agree on the fate of smoke shops in Fresno. 

In front of them last week was a proposed ordinance years in the making, meant to crack down on smoke shops engaged in illegal practices — from selling cannabis and marijuana without a license to storing firearms on site. 

The proposal would have established a new permitting process for smoke shops, applicable to new ones, along with the 82 that already exist in Fresno.

It would’ve also instituted a citywide cap of seven smoke shops per council district — which means 49 citywide. Since the city already has more than that cap, the proposal would’ve used a lottery system to determine which ones would get a conditional permit and survive regulation. 

The remaining smoke shops in Fresno — at the very least 33 — would be forced to close in 2026 if they didn’t pivot to predominantly selling products other than tobacco. 

“It is my intention as a councilmember to leave my neighborhood in a better condition than I found it,” Councilmember Miguel Arias said during the March 13 hearing, adding that his council district has experienced an exponential growth in smoke shops since he first became a councilmember in 2019.

The proposal failed in a 3-3 vote at last week’s City Council meeting, as the council district 5 seat remains vacant. The proponents of the new ordinance — Arias, along with councilmembers Nelson Esparza and Annalisa Perea — will have to come back with a revised draft.

Councilmembers Tyler Maxwell, Mike Karbassi and Nick Richardson voted against the ordinance, saying its attempt to crack down on bad actors would hurt the good smoke shops steering clear of violating city code or other existing laws. 

The councilmembers went back and forth in public, with tensions flaring at times. When one councilmember would speak into the mic to debate the proposal, several others on the dais would step away to negotiate and hash out differences between themselves privately — something Arias, Maxwell and Esparza did several times. 

Amid the lively debate last week, Maxwell likened the policy to throwing “the baby out with the bathwater.” Karbassi compared it to “taking a shotgun to a problem when you really need a sniper rifle.” 

Some of the tensions amongst councilmembers had to do with who represents north Fresno, and who represents south Fresno — the latter of which has a much higher concentration of smoke shops. 

“If the north Fresno councilmembers do want more smoke shops in their districts … if they want to expand from seven to 20 smoke shops, I don’t want to take that away from them,” Perea quipped at the councilmembers voicing opposition to the proposal. 

Perea also pushed back against the assertion that the City of Fresno was shutting down the entire tobacco industry in Fresno with the proposed policy, explaining that the city was instead creating a framework for them to continue existing in the city.. She also defended the ordinance against the claim it wasn’t business friendly. 

“I’ve heard a lot of comments about (how) this is a very un-business-friendly ordinance,” Perea said. “I would like to think that I’m one of the most business-friendly councilmembers up here. And I will make the argument that this bill is business friendly: When you have a bad apple type of business, what does that do? It brings down the integrity of all the businesses around it.”

Additionally, Karbassi took a moment to rip into the Fresno Chamber of Commerce, criticizing it for being neutral during tax-sharing agreement negotiations, but taking a stance against the businesses that would be regulated under last week’s proposed ordinance.

“Now when it comes to an issue like this — that is literally going to shut down businesses — the Chamber is in support because we know who they’re bought and paid for by,” Karbassi said. “They want to create a monopoly so these smoke shops can’t sell the same products a grocery store or a cannabis store can sell.”

Scott Miller, the Chamber of Commerce’s CEO, said Karbassi knows what he said isn’t true, regarding where the Chamber of Commerce’s interests lie.

“We are not bought and paid for by anyone,” Miller told Fresnoland. Miller added that the Chamber didn’t have time to weigh in on the tax-sharing agreement, which was approved following limited notice to the public.

“We just did not have time to take any side,” Miller said.

A policy years in the making will need more time

Since August 2023, the Fresno City Attorney’s Office inspected 67 smoke shops in Fresno and found that all but four were selling illegal tobacco products. Additionally, 79% of them were selling marijuana and cannabis products without the necessary license to do so. 

City code inspectors also observed gambling and firearms at some smoke shops. 

In the past couple years, 14 smoke shops have shut down in Fresno. But that was only after the city fined property owners of the commercial spaces that smoke shop operators were renting out. Considering that, Karbassi questioned the need for the proposal to crack down on smoke shops.

“We’ve also shown we have the ability to shut them down,” Karbassi said during the March 13 hearing. “We shut down 14.”

Arias pushed back, reiterating that the city didn’t shut them down — commercial landlords took action against their smoke shop tenants. 

“It doesn’t matter how it gets shut down,” Karbassi responded. “It’s not in business anymore terrorizing our neighborhoods — that’s the point.” 

“I think it does matter,” Esparza interjected. “The city lacks a formal, legal mechanism to do it ourselves. We’re relying upon other actors to take action in order for smoke shops to actually shut down. That is a fact.”

Additionally, Fresno Police Chief Mindy Casto confirmed to councilmembers last week that the Fresno Police Department does not have the authority to permanently shut down smoke shops. 

The debate inside council chambers ended up stalling: councilmembers were evenly split on the proposal and its sponsors tried to make some concessions to reach the minimum 4 votes for approval. By the end, Arias tried to wiggle in five amendments to the proposal ordinance in order to get there, but it wasn’t enough. 

Karbassi eventually called for 10 minutes of recess, during which councilmembers negotiated one last time, again in private. 

“We really could not reconcile some of the more fundamental amendments, more structural amendments that were offered,” Esparza said when the councilmembers got back from the recess. 

Esparza added last week that the different concessions required to get a majority vote were too costly, and they didn’t address “the fundamental issue of saturation in central Fresno, south Fresno.”

The March 13 vote demonstrated how a shorthanded Fresno City Council deals with contentious issues. If the council district 5 seat wasn’t vacant, there was a chance the proposal could’ve been approved. 

“I think pride got in the way today of passing a policy that maybe wasn’t 100% as written, but was pretty darn close and would have addressed a lot of the concerns that they brought forward today,” Maxwell told Fresnoland after the vote.

On the other hand, Arias said it came down to councilmembers in north Fresno not understanding the gravity of what south Fresno has to deal with. He also reiterated the need for Fresno’s city code to articulate a definition for smoke shops in order to regulate them. 

“In a year of taking on these illicit operators, it only resulted in 14 smoke shops being shut down,” Arias said. “It has only been because of the goodwill of the property owner, not the city shutting them down.”

It’s unclear when the proposed ordinance could come back for consideration by the City Council. It’s also possible that the council district 5 special election could play a key role in shaping the outcome of future votes on smoke shop regulation.