California Says Initial UTL Enforcement Will Focus on “Obviously Flavored” Products

When California’s UTL enforcement begins next year, the state says it will focus on going after products that are “obviously flavored.” Perhaps more importantly, for products that aren’t “obviously flavored,” the state intends to focus on educating companies on how to become compliant and not immediately issue fines to those companies.

This will start on Jan. 1, 2026, when the state will begin enforcing its Unflavored Tobacco List (UTL), which is a list of tobacco and vaping products that have been certified by the California attorney general’s office as being compliant with the state’s ban on most flavored tobacco and vaping products, which was passed in 2020. After the law’s implementation was delayed for several years, the state passed a second law last year that directed the AG’s office to create a list of unflavored tobacco and vaping products that are legal to sell in California.

Come next year: if a product is on the list or otherwise exempt, it is legal to sell; if it is not on the list, it is likely not legal to sell.

Before the end of 2025, the attorney general’s office must publish the first version of the UTL. After that, it will update the UTL with new submissions, a process that the AG’s office says will take up to 90 days to complete. In preparation for the first list, the attorney general’s office required companies to submit products for UTL inclusion by Oct. 9. As part of this process, companies need to submit paperwork certifying that the product is in compliance, send a physical sample to the attorney general’s office, and pay a $300 registration fee.

On Monday, the California Department of Justice issued the above bulletin, announcing how it plans to enforce the UTL. The relevant sections are:

Upon publication of the UTL by December 31, 2025, the California Department of Justice (DOJ)’s enforcement priority will continue to be focused on “obviously flavored” tobacco products and tobacco product flavor enhancers. For purposes of this bulletin, “obviously flavored” includes products containing non-tobacco flavors (e.g., menthol or fruit) in their trade name and products previously identified in early Attorney General guidance as being “flavored” under California Health and Safety Code section 104559.5. (https://oag.ca.gov/tobacco/flavorban).

For tobacco products that are not included in the initial publication of the UTL and are not obviously flavored (including hand-rolled leaf cigars), DOJ intends to initially focus on providing manufacturers with education on the statutory requirements and registration process, rather than taking immediate enforcement action. Registration of unflavored tobacco products is conducted on a rolling basis and may be completed at any time at https://utl.doj.ca.gov/.

This is simply guidance from the state’s top law enforcement agency. Because the two flavored tobacco laws are state laws, local law enforcement can choose to enforce the laws however strictly they like, though it appears that the California DOJ does not intend to immediately issue fines to companies selling unflavored handmade cigars that are not on the UTL. However, state law allows for fines that could eventually be as much as $10,000 per violation and a suspension of a company’s permit.

That the state isn’t motivated to prioritize fining cigar companies should not be surprising.

There are fewer than 40 models of e-cigarettes and vaping products that are legal to sell in the U.S., as the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has only approved 39 products. This means the vast majority of vaping products are in violation of federal laws. For a variety of reasons, the FDA has been unable to stop the proliferation of these illegal vaping products, which are a far greater target of anti-tobacco groups and Big Tobacco companies.

One of those reasons is that while those products may be illegal per federal law, local police departments will not typically enforce relatively minor federal regulations like ones related to flavored vaping products.

In addition to te Monday update from the California DOJ, on Friday, the California AG’s attorney general’s office announced a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for the UTL law.

Currently, the UTL is authorized via an emergency regulation status, which will expire on Feb. 24, 2026. This means that without further action, the UTL requirements would become unenforceable on Feb. 25. As such, the attorney general’s office will seek to make the regulations permanent via the NPRM.

For the most part, the NPRM’s regulations appear to be identical to the existing emergency regulations, though there has been some modification to how the UTL would charge companies that sell the same cigars in different packaging formats, a proposal that cigar companies have lobbied to have changed.

A public hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, Dec. 23.

On Monday, the Cigar Rights of America (CRA), an industry trade group, sent out an email blast that reported that the UTL law had been delayed due to the group’s lawsuit(s) over the UTL. Shortly after the email was sent out, the CRA sent out a second email clarifying that the law was not delayed.