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Roughly forty days ago, cigar makers faced an impossible mid-October deadline: file separate applications for every unflavored cigar SKU they wished to keep selling in California, complete with paperwork, photos, certifications under penalty of perjury, and full boxed samples. Miss that deadline by even one day, and those cigars will be illegal to sell once the Unflavored Tobacco List takes effect on January 1 — all because Governor Gavin Newsom signed the law that created this bureaucratic torture.
A New Front in Newsom’s War on Personal Choice
California has never met a regulation it didn’t like. Sacramento rarely regulates with a scalpel — it usually reaches for the sledgehammer. And Newsom has turned that instinct into a governing philosophy. His latest target isn’t vapes or candy-flavored cigarillos — it’s premium cigars, the traditional, handcrafted products enjoyed almost entirely by adults who know exactly what they’re buying.
This mess began with SB 793, the flavored-tobacco ban upheld by voters, but it metastasized in 2024 when Newsom signed AB 3218 and SB 1230. Those bills ordered the Attorney General to create an Unflavored Tobacco List — a roster of products deemed “unflavored” enough to sell, with anything not listed presumed flavored and banned. It’s not a tweak; it’s a whole pre-approval regime. And the story gets worse.
I didn’t fully appreciate how aggressive this had become until a close friend sent me a blistering editorial from Cigar Aficionado, written by Marvin R. Shanken (Editor & Publisher) and David Savona (Executive Editor). These are not political commentators — yet even they were stunned by the scope of this scheme. Their description of the process was stunningly blunt:
“Cigar companies have to register each size, or SKU, that they wish to sell. Some have hundreds of SKUs. In addition to a $300 fee for each application, applicants must submit a box of each cigar they wish to register. Certain elements confuse the process, and not enough questions are being answered. This is an onerous, ambiguous request, a burden on an industry that has had far too much regulation.”
When cigar-industry journalists — some of the most apolitical people in media — call the process onerous and ambiguous, you know the government has gone off the rails, and those rails lead directly back to Newsom.
How Newsom’s New List Actually Works
Newsom’s law flips the burden of proof entirely onto manufacturers. A cigar that has long been sold legally in California must now be individually reviewed again, SKU by SKU, with every size, wrapper, and box configuration treated as its own separate application. Each requires a $300 fee, a $150 annual renewal, a boxed sample, technical specs, packaging photos, supporting documentation, and a certification under penalty of perjury that it has no characterizing flavor. The paperwork is dense, and the burden remains huge.
Under emergency regulations adopted August 25, the Attorney General gave manufacturers just 45 days — until October 9 — to get products onto the initial list. Large companies scrambled to submit hundreds of filings, while small boutique makers — the backbone of premium cigar culture — couldn’t keep up. Their cigars will disappear from store shelves, not because they’re flavored or unsafe, but because the Governor and the Legislature created an impossible obstacle course and called it “enforcement.”
This is slow suffocation dressed up as “compliance” — engineered attrition, not public health. And it fits Sacramento’s long tradition of regulating disfavored products to death.
To see how this plays out, imagine asking a Napa winery to submit paperwork, samples, and fees for every single bottle size, vintage, and label variation — with only 45 days’ notice. No reasonable person would call that a regulation. They’d call it sabotage.
The Gun Roster All Over Again — Same Trick, Different Target
If this sounds familiar, it should. California used the same playbook with its infamous Safe Handgun Roster. Sacramento didn’t ban handguns; it made approval so burdensome that the roster shrank to old, grandfathered models. Testing mandates, added fees, and design rules pushed manufacturers out as the state continued to add requirements faster than companies could comply.
Now Newsom is using that same tactic against cigars. He is creating a roster, imposing requirements that no regular business can meet, layering in expensive and time-consuming hurdles, and then sitting back as products vanish “naturally.” This isn’t normal policymaking. It’s social engineering by way of scarcity.
And Now, the Lawsuits Begin
Not surprisingly, the cigar industry has already taken California to court. Several manufacturers and trade groups argue that the 45-day filing window, the vague “characterizing flavor” standard, and the SKU-by-SKU approval system impose an unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce and a de facto ban on premium cigars, forcing out-of-state companies to reorganize just to access a market that Sacramento now seeks to control through paperwork.
So, Does It Matter?
It matters because Gavin Newsom’s approach is ideological, not incidental. Sacramento’s progressive leadership doesn’t merely tolerate the disappearance of cigar products; they actively embrace it. If fewer adults smoke because of the cumbersome paperwork, high fees, and a state-run approval list, they view it as a feature, not a flaw.
The same mindset shows up at the gas pump, where Californians pay some of the highest prices in the country. When taxes, cap-and-trade costs, refinery mandates, and fuel rules drive gasoline sky-high, they call it necessary. If fewer people can afford to drive carbon-emitting cars, Sacramento considers that a step forward.
Newsom’s Unflavored Tobacco List comes from that same worldview. It limits adult choice by relying on bureaucracy rather than honesty and replaces debate with paperwork. At the end of the year, the consequences of that October 9 paperwork deadline will hit: entire cigar lines — some of the oldest, most respected premium cigars in the world — will vanish from California shelves not because they’re flavored, but because Gavin Newsom and his allies in the legislature declared them unapproved.
California doesn’t need another list or another product line wiped out by the Governor’s pen. It requires fewer politicians who believe freedom is something they get to curate.
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