KY tobacco, vape retailers face penalties if they’re not licensed in 2026

Hundreds of Kentucky tobacco, nicotine and vape retailers seem likely to miss the Jan. 1 deadline to apply for a license that’s now required by a new state law.

The General Assembly last winter passed Senate Bill 100 to crack down on Kentucky stores illegally selling smoking products to minors.

Tobacco and vape retailers now must buy a $500 state license, renewable annually, so state regulators who conduct inspections can know where their stores are located. The law also stiffens some of the penalties on retailers caught breaking the rules, such as bigger fines and the new threat of having their license revoked.

However, of the estimated 7,000 smoking product retailers operating across Kentucky, including gas stations, groceries and stand-alone tobacco and vape shops, only 5,304 had applied for a license with the Kentucky Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, or ABC, as of Dec. 30.

Of that total, “4,270 of those have been fully reviewed and issued or are waiting on final payment of licensing fee,” said Kristin Voskuhl, spokeswoman for the Public Protection Cabinet, which oversees the ABC.

The roughly 1,000 tobacco and vape retailers who applied in time but who didn’t necessarily get a license approved by New Year’s Day won’t get in trouble.

Gov. Andy Beshear announced this week that the state will issue provisional licenses to such retailers, which will be sufficient until their actual licenses are ready.

“I signed Senate Bill 100 into law to help make sure harmful tobacco and vapor products are not marketed and sold to our kids, and during this transition, I am committed to supporting our businesses that are working to do the same,” Beshear said in a prepared statement.

“This provisional license will allow businesses that are committed to selling legal product through the licensure process to continue operation as we take steps together to protect Kentucky’s children,” Beshear said.

No such assurances are offered the retailers who failed to meet the deadline. Senate Bill 100 includes criminal penalties for tobacco and vape retailers who are caught operating without a license: a Class B misdemeanor for the first offense, a Class A misdemeanor for the second offense and a Class D felony for additional offenses.

Steve McClain, spokesman for the Kentucky Retail Federation, said his group has been sending out reminders to its members for most of the year about Senate Bill 100 and the mandatory licensing requirement.

But the state’s online application portal only opened in mid-November, giving retailers a relatively short window, McClain said.

What’s more, he added, he has heard complaints from some retailers about the portal being offline at times, as well as a burdensome application process that can require retailers to upload hundreds of pages of documents, including store leases and photos of their stores’ interiors.

While he’s sympathetic, McClain said, he’s been telling his members this new law is not optional.

“At least get the application in,” he said.

Lawmakers passed Senate Bill 100 after health advocacy groups, high school students and others urged them to crack down on tobacco and vape retailers who sell smoking products to minors. Federal law prohibits the sale of smoking products to people under age 21.

The Herald-Leader reported in 2023 that over a recent two-year period, state inspectors cited at least 114 retailers multiple times for selling tobacco and vape products to minors. The state usually only issued warning letters or, in some cases, small fines that were a tiny fraction of the scofflaws’ annual revenue.

The state ABC regularly sends under-aged undercover agents into stores to attempt to buy tobacco, nicotine and vape products, which is how it generally catches violations.

But that only works if state officials know the locations of all the stores that sell those products. Without mandatory licensing, some stores have operated off the state’s radar.

Requiring tobacco and vape retailers to be licensed also gives the state ABC another penalty to use for violations other than warnings and fines. Senate Bill 100 allows a license to be revoked when stores or their employees break laws, regulations or local ordinances.

The state ABC will need to hire 20 more employees to implement the new law, at an initial cost of $2.75 million and a recurring annual cost of $2.25 million, according to the Public Protection Cabinet in an administrative regulation filing last month. Licensing fees and fines should cover those costs, the cabinet said.

John Cheves

Lexington Herald-Leader

(859) 334-0802

John Cheves is a government accountability reporter at the Lexington Herald-Leader. He joined the newspaper in 1997 and previously worked in its Washington and Frankfort bureaus and covered the courthouse beat. Support my work with a digital subscription