Addressing smoke shops in Cedar Rapids makes sense

“Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em,” was an invitation back in the day to take a break. As the Cedar Rapids City Council sees it, the city’s got too many smokes, and alcohol, sold in small retail stores concentrated in some neighborhoods.

Those neighborhoods, city officials contend, could use a break.

“We make tons of investment but then these vampires come in only to further destabilize things,” City Council member Dale Todd wrote in an email to city officials last fall, according to The Gazette’s Marissa Payne. “Let's figure out how we can help the existing retail in the neighborhood and discourage these obvious public health risks.”

Todd, who represents two of those neighborhoods, Wellington Heights and Mound View, offers a 2020 study published in the Journal of Public Health, which found in Baltimore such stores are concentrated in high poverty, majority Black neighborhoods. A Baltimore ordinance which led some stores to close had “a significant reduction in violent crime” and other spillover problems.

A map of Cedar Rapids shows clusters of tobacco, alcohol and combined stores in several neighborhoods.

So, it makes sense for the city to initiate an effort to slow the proliferation of these businesses.

Earlier in May, the Council added a third classification to its existing regulations. A Class III certification is required for businesses where most sales come from alcohol and tobacco that can be consumed off-site. As Todd sees it, the change gives neighborhoods “more leverage.”

Previously, the council made a code change in 2019 requiring businesses to hold a neighborhood meeting and inform all residents living withing 300 feet of the site. It’s given neighborhoods more say in the process and has led the withdrawal of projects.

The city is putting some reasonable regulations in place. But the issues raised are complicated. The city must be cautious not to go too far in regulating businesses which sell legal products. Health risks have been talked about as a reason to curtail tobacco and alcohol shops. But these ae hardly the only businesses selling unhealthy products.

Above all, the city must make sure it’s a fair, consistent process with no preferential treatment.

But we understand the problem when we drive on First Avenue East, on Center Point Road, Edgewood Road and other areas where the stores at issue are highly concentrated. It’s an issue worth tackling. While it may take some time to see the impacts, we hope the changes approved so far will have a positive effect.

(319) 398-8262; editorial@thegazette.com