Underage Smokers Targeted Communities Across Nation Shift Crackdown From Cigarette Suppliers To Young Offenders
As Congress prepares to consider landmark legislation intended to reduce underage tobacco use, a growing number of states, cities and schools are taking measures to crack down on what they see as a major cause of the problem: young people themselves.
Over the past year, states such as Idaho, Florida, Minnesota, North Carolina and Texas have passed laws that could result in stiff penalties for minors who try to buy or possess cigarettes or chewing tobacco. Those convicted of such offenses could lose their driver’s licenses, face fines of up to $1,000 or even be imprisoned for up to six months.
Meanwhile, some cities are using undercover police officers to catch youths who smoke, and some schools that test students for substances like marijuana are also screening them for nicotine.
The new measures follow the failure of repeated efforts in recent years to use educational programs and other measures to halt the growth in the number of minors who use tobacco. But while some anti-smoking advocates support a toughened approach toward young people who smoke, others see the new state laws, many of which are backed by the tobacco industry, as a Draconian response to a custom that was once considered a teenage rite of passage.
“These sound like a fairly stringent attack on the problem,” said Kenneth Warner, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and an expert on youth smoking.
Proponents of the proposed $368.5 billion settlement reached in June between tobacco companies and state attorneys general say that the settlement contains several measures that are expected to reduce the number of young people who smoke.
Those include bans on tobacco advertising on billboards and in some magazines, removal of cigarette vending machines, an end to tobacco companies’ sponsorships of sporting events and concerts and an end to the sale of products like clothing that bear cigarette or chewing tobacco brand names.
But many anti-smoking experts have also said that teenage smoking rates will fall only if the cost of cigarettes rises far more steeply than the 70 cents a pack called for under the proposed settlement. Some authorities, such as Warner, have put that increase at $2 a pack. President Clinton said several months ago that he wants prices to rise by $1.50 a pack over the next decade.
Teenage smoking rates are still lower than they were three decades ago. However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that 35 percent of high school students are cigarette smokers, and the University of Michigan’s Monitoring the Future Survey, which follows teenage smoking trends, has found steady increases in recent years in the number of minors who regularly use tobacco.
Every state and the District of Columbia have laws that ban the sale of tobacco products to minors, although public health experts have said that such laws are ineffective because they are poorly written, rarely enforced, or both. In the past, cities and states have also fined minors caught with cigarettes, though the penalties have been small.
But some of the new state laws, which also stiffen penalties on those who sell tobacco products to youths, now hold young people as responsible as adults for violating tobacco laws, said Sarah Perez, a policy analyst with the National Conference of State Legislatures.
“The laws we have seen this year flip things upside down and penalize the minor as well as the retailer,” Perez said.
Some anti-smoking advocates argued that the tobacco industry, after years of making cigarettes attractive to youths, was supporting the new laws to blame young people for using their products. However, other experts, while not endorsing the statutes, say some blame for youth smoking must fall on all involved.
“My personal point of view is that there has to be some responsibility on the part of the kids,” said Bill Novelli, president of the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids, an advocacy group in Washington.
For example, in North Carolina, which has one of the nation’s highest smoking rates, a new law took effect recently under which youths under 18 who buy tobacco and those who sell it to them could face fines of up to $1,000 and be sentenced to up to 30 days of community service.
Mike Easley, the state’s attorney general, said that the new law had initially been aimed only at retailers but that store owners had lobbied legislators hard to increase the penalties on minors. “They wanted parity, so we ended up with the same penalties for kids,” he said.
A minor convicted of a first tobacco offense would have sentencing deferred, Easley said, but youths who are repeat offenders might not be so lucky. “No one in this state wants kids smoking,” he added.
Under statutes passed this year in Florida, Minnesota and Texas, minors who repeatedly violate tobacco laws could face suspension of driving privileges. In March, Idaho passed one of the nation’s most stringent laws. Offenders face fines of up to $300 and imprisonment in a juvenile detention center for up to six months.
Lt. Jim Tibbs, a spokesman for the police department in Boise, said that he did not expect that enforcement of the new law would be a high priority, given the serious crimes that the police face.
In other communities, though, lawenforcement officials are going undercover and using surveillance operations to catch underage smokers.
In July, Gothenburg, Neb., a farming community of 3,800 residents in the central part of the state, adopted an ordinance that would make it illegal for anyone under 18 to possess tobacco. Since then, undercover police officers have staked out areas where high school students gather to smoke, or have filmed them with hidden cameras, Chief Brian Soucie said. The law was passed, Soucie said, because young smokers were littering in areas where they congregated and were creating a public nuisance.
Those caught smoking or possessing tobacco can be fined from $35 to $100. The town police have issued about 30 tickets over the last five months, Soucie said.
“I don’t know if this is a deterrent to smoking,” he said. “But after a couple of $56 tickets, they may rethink the habit.”
Soucie said that other Nebraska towns had adopted similar ordinances in recent months and that he had received inquiries from 90 communities around the country requesting copies of the town’s law.
Schools have long banned students from smoking, but a growing number are employing drug tests to detect whether pupils are using tobacco. In 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of public schools to require student athletes to submit to random urine tests for drugs and alcohol as a condition of participating in sports.
Schools that use the test typically look for drugs like marijuana and steroids. But some schools are also screening athletes and other students for nicotine. In October, Ross Volbrecht, an 18-year-old senior at Brown County High School in Nashville, Ind., was barred from playing his final football game after a random drug test detected nicotine.
Volbrecht said that he was embarrassed not only to miss the game but to have his father find out that he chewed tobacco.
His father, Ronald Volbrecht, said he was annoyed to learn of his son’s habit. But he was far angrier that school officials penalized his son for using a product that he was legally old enough to buy. The family has sued school officials over the incident.
Randy Barnett, the school’s principal, said that Ross Volbrecht’s age was irrelevant because all athletes, as a condition of participating in sports, signed pledges that they would not use drugs or alcohol. He added that his school and others also administer tests for alcohol and drugs like nicotine to pupils who drive to school. Only athletes face penalties, though, because they are supposed to be role models, he said.
Ross Volbrecht, who also plays on his high school baseball team, said that with the season coming up, he expected that his tobacco use would soon end.
“I could definitely get another test,” he said, “and if I don’t quit I won’t pass it.”