Staff outlines options to regulate vape and smoke shops; council asks for distance criteria and enforcement review

At council request, long‑range planner Cameron Christie summarized regulatory approaches other North Texas cities have adopted for vape and smoke shops and presented a menu of options for McKinney.

"Right now, we have no specific regulation for these shops because, to us from a regulatory standpoint, they are just retail sales," Christie said, explaining that Allen and Frisco have recently adopted location and spacing requirements and that Fort Worth and Richardson have their own approaches (some with SUPs and others with distance criteria). He proposed defining a specific land‑use category for vape/smoke shops and then applying combinations of distance buffers, SUP requirements or limiting the use to industrial districts.

Councilmembers asked whether existing shops would be grandfathered, how to distinguish convenience stores that sell vapes from specialized stores, and whether inspection and enforcement authority would be feasible at the municipal level. One councilmember pressed for stronger enforcement tools after describing alleged illicit sales; staff and the city attorney’s office said enforcement can be challenging and may require coordination with state agencies such as the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission and public‑health authorities.

Council directed staff to prepare a scheme using distance criteria, to estimate how many existing shops would be affected under different buffers, and to coordinate with police and legal staff on enforcement and inspection options for a future Unified Development Code update.