COSTA MESA

The youth group Speak Out! has succeeded in persuading the City Council to call for a more business-friendly ordinance designed to keep tobacco products out of the reach of minors. The group of Estancia High School teens has been lobbying the city for the last year for an ordinance that would require merchants who sell tobacco products to move them out of reach of children. Speak Out! proposed revisions Monday that would exempt stores and cigar lounges that rely on tobacco products for the majority of their business. Speak Out! member Eva Varma said the revisions were not a major compromise on the group’s part, but rather a practical lesson in how government works. “We are pro-business,” Varma said. “We never intended to do anything that was going to hurt businesses in Costa Mesa.”