CRA Files Comment on California UTL Emergency Proposal

Alexandria, Virginia (August 19, 2025) – Today, Cigar Rights of America (CRA) formally filed its public comment in opposition to the California Attorney General's (AG) proposed emergency regulations to implement California's Unflavored Tobacco List (UTL). The proposed regulations, as written, would impose tremendous filing burdens and excessive fees on the premium cigar industry. The law explicitly exempts premium cigars, but the regulations proposed by the AG's office would unnecessarily cover many premium cigars sold in the state. 

"The intended purpose of the UTL is to remove flavored tobacco products from the California marketplace. By definition, premium cigars do not contain characterizing flavors. This is not only an accepted fact within the industry, but one recognized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and in federal courts," said Mike Copperman, Executive Director, CRA. "Subjecting non-flavored premium cigar products to this arbitrary framework and requiring them to prove they are unflavored despite by definition being unflavored will only harm the small business premium cigar industry that does not have an issue with youth usage, which is the very issue the law was designed to solve."

In our comment, CRA highlighted key objections to the proposed regulations:

• Arbitrary Price Threshold: The proposed regulations use a $12 wholesale price to define a "premium cigar," a standard that is not used by the FDA or federal courts in their recognized definition of premium cigars and has no relation to a product's composition or risk profile. This qualifier would subject thousands of legitimate, unflavored premium cigars to unnecessary regulation, even though they are unflavored.

• Excessive Financial Burden: The UTL statute limits the fees to reasonable costs associated with administering the UTL. The proposed regulations would impose a $300 initial application fee per "Brand Style," which means any distinct product within a brand family like robusto or toro, $150 per "Variant," which are different versions of a brand style sold in various packaging sizes, and a $150 annual renewal fee for each brand style listing. Given that there are more than 20,000 unique product SKUs in the premium cigar industry, subjecting a significant percentage of these SKUs to these fees is not a reasonable cost-recovery measure.

• Enforcement Concerns: Applying full registration and fee requirements to premium cigars priced under $12, while exempting identical products above that threshold, raises serious concerns. This unequal treatment bears no rational connection to the statute's purpose of removing flavored products as both groups are unflavored by definition, both present the same enforcement profile, and wholesale price is an unstable, easily manipulated metric unrelated to composition or youth access.

With this filing, CRA firmly believes that the AG's office has created a process that is inefficient and requires endless paperwork and excessive fees from a segment of the market that is, by definition, unflavored. By pursuing this path, they are diverting resources that could be better used to combat illicit flavored products.

While the California Department of Justice has reserved the right to reply to comments at its discretion, CRA hopes that our comments will be given due consideration to the serious concerns raised by the industry as a whole.

CRA will continue to explore all available avenues to challenge the implementation of the UTL and protect the premium cigar industry from this unjustified and unnecessary action.

To read a copy of CRA’s filing, please click here.