SAN FRANCISCO—On September 2024, City Attorney David Chiu filed a lawsuit against Rogue Holdings, LLC, Swisher International, Inc., and Northern Scandinavian, Inc. for selling different nicotine pouches to San Francisco customers through their websites, which was a violation of San Francisco tobacco- flavored products ban in accordance to California’s Unfair Competition Law.
After the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office discovered that online nicotine companies was selling flavored tobacco, they were held responsible for breaking San Francisco’s flavored- tobacco ban by settling through an agreement for $3 million.
On October 23, San Francisco Superior Court approved the settlement for almost $3 million, requiring that Rouge Holdings, LLC and Swisher International, Inc. to pay $485,000 and Northern Scandinavia, Inc. to pay $2.5 million.
On October 24, City Attorney David Chiu blocked further sales from occurring to San Francisco customers.
The team at the City Attorney’s Office, who worked on this case, were Rhonda Andrew, Sara Eisenberg, Miguel Gradilla, Nancy Harris, Christine Hoang, Ronald Lee, Chris Manitsoudis and Yvonne Meré.
Along with the settlement, the defendants are now required to have clear wording on their websites that they no longer sell flavored tobacco to San Francisco customers, and they are not allowed to have San Francisco in their shipping or billing address fields. They are required to pay $2,985,000 in civil penalties and lawyers’ fees.
According to the California Youth Tobacco Survey, most high school students are currently using flavored-tobacco products; the second most common form of tobacco use among eighth graders and nicotine products.
There are health risks in flavored-tobacco usage, Supervisor Shamann Walton, former City Attorney Dennis Herrera and former Supervisor Malia Cohen successfully enacted laws prohibiting or distributing selling flavored-tobacco products to anybody in San Francisco.
