Minors Easily Buy Cigarettes

A check of Missoula stores to gauge compliance with the state law against tobacco sales to minors found a violation rate of 50 percent, topping the results in Havre, Helena, Bozeman and Billings.

Twenty of 40 Missoula stores illegally sold chewing tobacco or cigarettes this month to people under 18, according to compliance checks for a state agency.

Compliance was greater than in April, when 67 percent of the stores checked sold tobacco illegally.

In Havre’s most recent compliance check, 14 percent of the stores failed. The numbers were 32 percent in Helena, 36 percent in Billings and 35 percent in Bozeman.

This month’s test also covered vending machines. Teenagers were able to buy tobacco at all of the five Missoula machines they tried.

In the compliance checks, teenage volunteers enter stores and try to buy tobacco. If clerks ask for identification, the teens say they have none.

An adult supervisor also is in the store, observing the exchange and noting whether clerks ask for identification, and whether they refuse to sell when none is provided.

In the case of vending machines, young buyers usually ask for change in the establishment and buy from the machine. Again, a trained adult is nearby to observe.

Clerks who do not ask for identification or who sell tobacco without seeing ID are fined $25 for each infraction. Store owners are not fined until the fifth offense.