Ads to list good, bad tobacco retailers
| • | Restaurant smoking ban gains support |
By Alice Keesing
Advertiser Health Writer
The Health Department will today begin publishing the names of stores whose clerks were caught selling tobacco to minors in a new campaign to curb the illegal practice.
Since 1996, the department has conducted monthly sting operations with police and cancer researchers in which under 18-year-olds try to buy tobacco products.
But the stings don't appear to have had much effect.
Although store clerks who are caught are fined as much as $500, the number of stores selling tobacco illegally has remained at around 20 percent.
The Health Department wants to cut that to about 10 percent and is adopting a strategy used on the Mainland: publishing the names of stores that follow, or break, the law. The ads will appear in papers across the state every month.
Appearing today are the names of 22 stores whose clerks violated the law and 73 that followed it during December.
The ads will cost about $2,000 a month and are paid for with money the state is receiving from the 1998 settlement with the tobacco industry.
Julian Lipsher, who heads the department's tobacco prevention program, said the aim is to increase public awareness and vigilance by merchants.
"I think public praise and public shame or awareness is helpful," he said. "I think those merchants that don't sell to the kids will appreciate seeing their name in the paper saying, 'We did fine.'
"Those merchants where clerks were cited in their stores will not feel too good about seeing their name in the paper and perhaps that will cause them to take this issue a bit more seriously."
Stores that were cited range from mom-and-pop stores to large chains.
The department also is stepping up its education efforts, providing training materials and sessions for merchants.
