The Register-Herald, Beckley, West Virginia

Today's Front Page

March 10, 2010

Bill stiffens fines for tobacco sales to minors

By Mannix Porterfield Register-Herald Reporter

CHARLESTON — And underage consumers buying cigarettes and smokeless products could face steeper fines and more hours in community service.

Judiciary panelists learned from Chuck Hamsher, a lobbyist for the American Heart Association, that West Virginia already has lost federal funding for non-compliance with existing law.

Retail outlets are checked in a program known as Synar, named after a congressman who added an amendment in the 1990s to substance abuse and mental health legislation.

Basically, it’s a compliance tool, not a sting operation, Hamsher emphasized.

If as many as 20 percent of outlets examined are in conflict with the law, the state loses federal behavioral health block money, he explained.

“A lot of that money goes into behavioral health systems, local mental health centers in the state,” he said.

Within the past five years, the non-compliance rate has fluctuated between 13.5 percent and 17.9 percent.

Six years ago, West Virginia paid a $200,000 penalty because it wasn’t in compliance with Synar, Hamsher said.

“Our concern is that kids are having access to tobacco,” he said.

“All it takes is for one retailer in a community to be willing to sell tobacco to kids, and 100 percent of the kids in that community have access to tobacco products.”

Hamsher applauded the proposed higher fines on store clerks, but said the increased penalties on minors is “the area we’re least comfortable with.”

That, he told the committee, hasn’t been shown to be an effective deterrent.

“Frankly, what we’re really talking about there is increasing penalties on parents because that’s who’s going to be paying it,” Hamsher said.

Delegate Tiffany Lawrence, D-Jefferson, told the committee she actually began working on the legislation before her election to the House.

The groundwork was laid in her contacts and work with the Jefferson County Focus Coalition, an anti-substance program in her district.

Children struggling with alcohol and drugs met with her, and from those talks, the idea was born to impose some tougher penalties to go after illegal tobacco sales, she said.

What impressed her was the candor of the students, especially about the existing $25 fine for underage purchase of tobacco products, Lawrence said.

“That really is not going to do anything to us,” she quoted the students as saying.

“That’s merely a slap on the wrists. They asked, ‘Can we increase them?’ I thought that was strange, coming from a group of students.”

Under the legislation, penalties generally are doubled. A first offense by either a clerk or a minor fetches a $50 fine.

Clerks would get hit with a $100 fine for second offense, $500 for a third offense, and for a subsequent crime within two years, the fine could soar to $750.

A second offense for purchasing tobacco by an underage person means a $100 fine, along with 16 hours of community service. Eight hours of such toil is attached to a first offense.

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