How easy is it for someone under 18 to buy a pack of smokes in
San Benito County? Too easy. One-third of the retailers targeted in
a local tobacco
”
sting
”
sold cigarettes or chewing tobacco to underage teens.
How easy is it for someone under 18 to buy a pack of smokes in San Benito County? Too easy. One-third of the retailers targeted in a local tobacco “sting” sold cigarettes or chewing tobacco to underage teens.
It’s illegal everywhere in California to sell tobacco to anyone under age 18. But that doesn’t stop nicotine-addicted kids from trying to buy it. And apparently it doesn’t always stop stores from selling it to underage buyers.
That’s why some additional heat from ordinances such as the one adopted earlier this year in Hollister and the one now under consideration by the San Juan Bautista City Council would be welcome help in dealing with this situation.
The ordinances require that retailers selling tobacco in either city buy a special municipal license. Stores caught selling cigarettes to minors could be fined $1,000 and – more significantly – lose their license to sell tobacco for up to five years.
Tobacco sales can be very profitable for some retailers. Sales to minors are no exception. A recent U.S. Department of Health study of underage smoking in Texas found that teens under 18 in the Lone Star State smoke more than 15 million packs of cigarettes annually – spending a collective $39 million on the habit.
For retailers, a $1,000 fine would seem like a drop in the bucket compared to the financial pain of losing that license to sell cigarettes. Perhaps it would motivate them to force clerks to refuse to sell smokes to any young person who doesn’t have identification proving he or she is at least 18 years old.
Both the Hollister ordinance and the San Juan Bautista ordinance were proposed as a result of the distressing results of that countywide tobacco sting in which 33 percent of stores sold to underage buyers. It’s too soon to know definitively how effective the Hollister ordinance is at curbing the problem. But as county health educator Mike Torres said, “We’ve got to try to get a handle on that 33 percent.”
Elsewhere, there is plenty of evidence that such get-tough ordinances do prevent stores from selling tobacco to kids. In Berkeley, which adopted a similar tobacco licensing ordinance in 2002, spot checks show that tobacco sales to minors have dropped from 38 percent to 5.8 percent.
A DePaul University study conducted in various communities in the Chicago area found that middle school and high school students in places where underage smoking laws were strictly enforced were 29 percent less likely to smoke than their peers in places where enforcement was comparatively lax.
Such ordinances can help reduce underage smoking. But enforcement is the key. And the front-line responsibility for enforcing these laws begins in the stores where tobacco products are sold.
