SHEBOYGAN COUNTY, WI (WHBL) - As 2015 comes to a close, the Lakeshore Tobacco Prevention Network has completed their annual check of Sheboygan County retailers who sell tobacco to ensure they are not selling to minors.
Coalition Coordinator Cath Pape tells WHBL News their checks, which have been going on since 2002 and are allowed by state statute, have teenagers trying to get businesses to sell them tobacco products. “Making sure that retailers who have licenses to sell tobacco are checking IDs and keeping tobacco out of the hands of youth.”
Pope says they work with local law enforcement to set up a date when checks are conducted. "We map out a route of retailers who have tobacco licenses. And then we bring two young people in. So one of the adult supervisors will be driving the two young people to the particular retail, and the two youth go in. One of them is identified as a purchaser, and the other one is an observer. So they go in as teams of two, one teen attempts to purchase the product.”
In 2015, the coalition ran checks at 80 retailers that sell tobacco products. Six of them did sell items to the teenagers, but that 7.5-percent non-compliance rate is consistent with recent years.
“And in most cases retailers do a good job checking IDs, especially when the product is behind the counter," says Pope. "But what we know is that other tobacco products, not cigarettes such as swisher sweets and Snus…we call them other tobacco products that are taxed differently, but they’re also the tactic that the tobacco companies are using to market products that look like candy, smell like candy, and are packaged like candy. And often those products are in front of the counter. So it’s take a pretty savvy retailer to notice ‘oh that’s actually tobacco, that’s not candy’ when it comes from in front of the counter.”
Pope says the purpose of their work is to ensure retailers are doing their job following the law. “Our job really is to be a positive reinforcement to those retailers, congratulate those retailers that didn’t sell. And then educate those that may have sold using our free retailer training called smokecheck-dot-org.”