HomeMy WebLinkAbout05 04 2026 - Item 9.3 -Amaya Wooding
71 Stevenson St., Suite 400, San Francisco, CA 94105
www.lgbtqminustobacco.org
May 1, 2026
RE: Tobacco retail regulations in Gilroy
Dear Mayor Bozzo and Members of the City Council:
LGBTQ Minus Tobacco works with LGBTQ and allied community members around the greater Bay
Area to prevent tobacco addiction and reduce secondhand smoke and vape exposure. California’s
LGBTQ adults are 50% more likely to smoke and 75% more likely to vape, while California’s LGBTQ
youth are nearly twice as likely to vape and over four times as likely to smoke. Disparities are
greater for our bisexual, transgender, and intersex community members.
In our capacity as a regional project, we want to provide additional information about strategies
other cities have used to address retailer density. Grandfathering for retailers that would otherwise
be restricted by distance or density provisions leads to a slowing in the rate of reduction in the
number of those retailers. As an example, Livermore adopted a 1,000-foot buffer zone between
retailers and variety of youth areas including parks and schools in 2019, but in 2026 there are still
12 licensed retailers near a public school campus.1
Adopting distance or density provisions without grandfathering leads to faster reductions in the
number of retailers and has been done. Brentwood’s tobacco retail license cap is mentioned in the
staff report, but we would like to highlight another facet of that city’s licensure requirements :
effective October 2025, Brentwood prohibits new tobacco retailers within 500 feet of a public
school campus, while existing retailers are not grandfathered in. Instead, those retailers within 500
feet of a public school campus can apply for a 12-month “wind down permit,” after which no
tobacco sales are allowed in those locations.2
56% of Gilroy Unified 11th graders believe it is “very easy” or “fairly easy” to access vape products in
their community and 34% say the same for cigarettes, according to the 2023 -24 California Healthy
Kids Survey.3 We hope this information is helpful as you consider how best to protect Gilroy youth
from nicotine addiction.
Sincerely,
The staff of LGBTQ Minus Tobacco
1 https://cthat.org/#
2 https://www.brentwoodca.gov/government/community-development/community-
enrichment/tobacco-retail-license-requirements
3 https://data.calschls.org/resources/Gilroy_Unified_43_2324_Sec_CHKS.pdf