The Advocate

On Tuesday, January 18th, the San Leandro City Council will finally consider adopting a policy to end the sale of menthol cigarettes in the city. The meeting starts at 6:30 PM and the menthol cigarette ordinance is agenda item #12A, which you can find at https://sanleandro.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=A&ID=907619&GUID=F5D283C4-1357-48C5-BDEB-525A681DA612. Here is the meeting agenda and the Zoom meeting link is https://zoom.us/j/506831637. You can view the draft ordinance at https://sanleandro.legistar.com/ViewReport.ashx?M=R&N=Text&GID=191&ID=4649781&GUID=6068FFC3-E264-443A-B5F2-D21F73E6EF6A&Title=Legislation+Text. There will be an opportunity for public comment, and speakers on this item will likely be given 1-2 minutes each to provide their comments. The Alameda County Tobacco Control Coalition has developed a participation packet with background information on this issue, as well as participation details. You can find that at https://docs.google.com/document/

 *CONTENT NOTICE/TRIGGER WARNING: this post discussed racist police violence and contains links to images/videos of that content.* (“Stop Police Brutality” by Icy and Sot) On November 21, at around 11:10 AM, an unnamed SLPD officer tased an innocent and mentally ill member of our city's unsheltered community in another act of police brutality in our city. This happened within less than 30 seconds from when the officer first made contact with the victim. The officer was ostensibly responding to a complaint from a local business, the Downtown McDonald's, about an allegation of someone "acting crazy" and "throwing punches." However, no one was hurt. No property was destroyed. No one was armed. There was no reason or basis to assume the victim posed a danger to themselves or others. Even worse, despite assertions to the contrary by SLPD, the officer did not engage in deescalation or crisis intervention tactics. There is no evidence that the CATT program was call

Thank you to everyone who came out in solidarity with neighbors, students, public health advocates, and local leaders across San Leandro to push for ending the sale of menthol cigarettes and similar products in our community!   We had thirty-one (31) speakers who shared public comment at the Rules Committee in support of ending the sale of menthol cigarettes, including representation from: 16 residents, 7 San Leandro youth (one of whom got permission to step out of class to give public comment!), 5 San Leandro-based community-based organizations, and 11 public health/coalition partners.   Because of your voices, the City Council’s Rules Committee unanimously voted to direct city staff to move forward with drafting a Tobacco Retail License (TRL) ordinance update that ends the sale of menthol cigarettes with a January 2023 implementation date. This draft is expected to return directly to the full City Council in January 2022. At that January meeting, discussion can happen regarding an ex