People in Arizona and across the country look to local law enforcement to keep their communities safe.

That’s especially true today as we face some of the biggest public security challenges in decades, from rising violent crime rates and the opioid epidemic to rising cybercrime and the rise of extremist groups that threaten national security. increase.

And, with particular relevance to communities in southern Arizona, we continue to address the crisis along our southern border.

As Cochise County Sheriff, my department is the premier law enforcement agency covering 6,215 square miles of territory, including over 130 miles of our shared border with Mexico. We will prepare for further immigration and its impact on our small towns, while addressing other public safety priorities and modernizing our training, tactics and approaches to avoid escalation. By doing so, we also address the need to increase trust in the community.

So Washington’s regulators are about to give local police departments new, unfunded powers, fueling an already booming illicit market and at the risk of diverting police attention from these important goals. That’s what every Arizonan and every American should sound the alarm.

In the coming weeks, the US Food and Drug Administration will finalize new Prohibition-style rules criminalizing the use of flavored tobacco products.

These flavored tobacco products have historically been legal and regulated. As I warned the Biden administration last year, this prohibition-based policy will have profound implications not only for my agency, but also for law enforcement agencies across the United States and the communities we serve. deaf. Because it would just create a new large illegal market in the world. Products that the FDA is seeking to eliminate.

States such as Massachusetts, which have attempted unilateral criminal bans on these products, have seen a surge in illegal product sales.

The United States is already facing a growing illegal market for tobacco products, due in part to high taxes on legally sold cigarettes. Banning the legal sale of currently regulated products would create powerful economic incentives for domestic and international cartels and criminal networks to intervene to supply unmet demand.

With such strong financial incentives, the question is not whether the illicit market for flavored cigarettes will grow, but how large it will be.

In fact, just this month, a group of US senators called on the US Treasury Department to sanction Swiss-registered Tobacco International Holdings Ltd., which has reported ties to Mexican cartels. As senators noted, “Since at least 2018, the Jalisco Nueva Generation Cartel (CJNG), a cartel that has been sanctioned by the United States for its involvement in drug and fentanyl trafficking, is creating new drugs. has been involved in the sale of tobacco products for the purpose of “source of income…. ”

Aside from the public health harm caused by the unregulated tobacco products flooding the market, criminal networks do not limit their activities to one crime. Rather, history shows that the more criminal activity there is, the more crime escalates overall.

In 2018, the U.S. State Department released a report carefully detailing the multiple layers of serious crimes associated with illegal tobacco trafficking, including violent crimes, property crimes, human trafficking, and terrorism.

What Arizona needs most is an entirely new category of controlled substance that could generate billions of new dollars in the criminal networks we work tirelessly to mitigate the threat to society. is.

The FDA claims the ban will only be enforced against tobacco manufacturers, not individuals, but in fact all 50 states, including Arizona, treat the trafficking of illegal tobacco products as a serious crime. subject to arrest, prosecution or prosecution. imprisonment.

Faced with an influx of illegal products as a result of this new ban, law enforcement will become the Menthol Tobacco Police to investigate illegal manufacturing in the country, smuggling at borders and ports of entry (like ours), and illegal distribution. and will prevent it. Illegal sales occur within and across state lines and ultimately within communities.

And all of this must be done in a coordinated manner across multiple states with the necessary infrastructure to succeed. This business requires billions of dollars of resources.

FDA’s proposal thus represents an unfunded authority for law enforcement to shift responsibility for policing these tobacco products to state, local, and federal law enforcement agencies, but these new Insufficient resources to meet responsibilities.

Working with law enforcement leaders across the country, I am at liberty to use other tools that support harm reduction without criminalizing these products, and I am committed to working with entire product categories to maintain safe products. We have asked the FDA to turn it over to focused law enforcement men and women. Our communities and borders are safe.

Needless to say, we do not endorse or advocate tobacco use, and the fact that menthol cigarette use, along with other tobacco indicators, is at historically low levels should be applauded.

But tobacco policy belongs to regulators, not police. Prohibition-based criminalization endangers the men and women in uniform and the communities we serve. And there are much better options for further reducing tobacco use without moving these products into the criminal justice system.

Given the many challenges we face in keeping Arizona communities safe, a tobacco ban is not what we need most right now.