COLUMN ONE : Cigarettes for Sale, 20 Apiece : Although illegal in California, the sale of single cigarettes has become commonplace. The young and the poor are prime customers for ‘loosies.’

Although cigarettes cost as much as $2.45 a pack these days, two thin dimes are all it takes to get the nicotine monkey off 16-year-old Javier Rodriguez’s back.

That is because Rodriguez buys his smokes one at a time, from mom-and-pop stores near the San Fernando Gardens housing project in Pacoima where he lives.

Buying 20 “singles” or “loosies” is more expensive in the end than purchasing a 20-cigarette pack, but financial logic goes up in smoke when the craving hits. “It’s a habit, and you do what you can to get hold of it,” Rodriguez said.

The bodegas that feed his habit--and similar neighborhood and convenience stores throughout Southern California--routinely violate an obscure state law that bars the sale of loose cigarettes. And when they sell to people as young as Rodriguez, the stores are also violating California’s law against tobacco sales to anyone under 18, a ban that exists in 46 other states.

Store owners and health authorities say the sale of single cigarettes has become commonplace, even in the handful of places like California where such sales are banned.

The practice reflects the shifting demographics of smoking, increasingly a habit of lower-income Americans. Although single sales are widespread, they are most prevalent in poor neighborhoods--from Pacoima to the barrios of New York to Chicago’s South Side--where the rising cost of cigarettes may be a significant deterrent to smoking.

“They come in here with 20 pennies, and if you don’t give them a single cigarette, they get crazy because they don’t have the money for a pack,” said Paul Sing, operator of the 7 Seas Mini Market in Arleta, in the northeast San Fernando Valley.

Health officials are most concerned about the effect on cash-short adolescents, likening single sales to a starter kit that helps the young get hooked. They also see it as a symptom of a larger problem: illegal tobacco sales to minors that go virtually unchecked throughout the country.

“Access of minors to tobacco is a major problem in every state of the nation,” according to a report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Hundreds of thousands of stores “ignore the laws of their states because enforcement is almost nonexistent.”

According to health officials, smoking is the nation’s leading preventable cause of disease and death, contributing to more than 400,000 deaths per year. And teen-agers constitute the largest group of new smokers, replacing most of the 1.7 million smokers who quit or die each year.

Thus, to health officials, failure to enforce bans on sales to minors is a missed opportunity to combat a huge public health problem. Although acknowledging that youths’ access to tobacco will never be eliminated, they say that winking at the laws makes it easier for kids to experiment and become lifelong smokers.

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If lack of enforcement makes it easier for minors to smoke, single sales are making it easier yet. For youngsters accustomed to saving change for a burger or bargain matinee, buying singles is an affordable way to try smoking.

It “makes cigarettes more attractive to kids, who obviously have a lower disposable income than adults,” said Dr. Ron Davis, chief medical officer for the state of Michigan and former director of the federal Office on Smoking and Health.

Adopted last year, California’s ban on single sales was introduced by state Sen. Ralph C. Dills (D-Gardena), who said he had witnessed the sale of singles “to young people who could not afford to purchase a package, but could buy one or two cigarettes at a time.”

A handful of other cities and states, including Seattle, Chicago and Oregon, have also banned the sale of singles. Other jurisdictions, including New York City and the state of Michigan, are considering similar bans as part of broader restrictions on youth access to tobacco.

Industry critics contend that tobacco companies at least tacitly support the practice, pointing to ads that they contend are aimed at kids.

But the cigarette makers--who insist that they do not want youths to smoke--also say they oppose the sale of loosies. One reason: Smokers who start by buying singles may later claim in lawsuits that they were not exposed to the health warnings that appear on cigarette packs.

“You have no guarantee of freshness,” said Thomas Lauria, a spokesman for the Tobacco Institute, which represents the major cigarette makers. “Who knows how long it’s been out there? Who knows who’s handled it? Who knows who’s tampered with it?”

Sales of loose cigarettes, said Lauria, also violate “the spirit of the cigarette label warning act.”

Indirectly, both anti-smoking groups and the cigarette makers have fostered the sale of singles by jacking up cigarette prices. As part of their anti-smoking strategy, the smoke busters have pushed higher cigarette excise taxes--such as Proposition 99, the 25-cents-per-pack increase passed by California voters in 1988.

“We support economic barriers to the purchase of cigarettes,” said Peggy Toy, western regional director of the National Black Leadership Initiative on Cancer, which is co-sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles.

Interestingly, cigarette makers are boosting prices on their own. Despite declining demand, they have been able to impose sharp price increases because, according to analysts, most of their customers are hooked. As a result, the cost of cigarettes during the last decade has risen two to three times faster than the Consumer Price Index, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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Buying single cigarettes has been one way for the young and the poor to keep on puffing. Another is lower-priced generic smokes, which have captured about 28% of the market, according to John C. Maxwell, an analyst with Wheat First Securities, in Richmond, Va.

To many image-conscious youths, however, a few cigarettes of a heavily advertised brand are better than a whole pack of generic brands. “I only want Marlboro, or Joe Camel--he’s cool,” Rodriguez said.

As their wide availability illustrates, the ban on selling singles in California and elsewhere has largely proved a paper tiger.

In Chicago, the law against single sales was so widely ignored that an alderman recently proposed an ordinance to prohibit the practice--unaware that a ban was in place.

“It was sort of ironic,” said Stanley Watkins, administrative assistant to Bobby Rush, the alderman who proposed the ban. “It just shows you can put a law on the books, but it’s no guarantee it’s going to be enforced because police are swamped with violent crime.”

California’s law made the sale of loose cigarettes an infraction under the state Penal Code, punishable by a fine of up to $250. It is largely up to police or sheriff’s officers to ticket violators.

But law enforcement officials and violators alike seem largely unaware the law exists, and a spot check failed to turn up a single citation for selling singles. A spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said he was unaware of the law. And Lt. John Dunkin, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department, said the police are too busy to enforce it.

“While smoking does pose health problems, as far as crime goes, it’s way down the scale,” Dunkin said.

“You ever seen a penal code?” he asked. It is “four inches thick, and we have to prioritize which rules we enforce.”

Most storekeepers who sell singles say they do it to accommodate their customers.

“Nobody ever told me it was against the law. How am I supposed to know?” asked Sam Kang, owner of the Arleta Liquor Market on Van Nuys Boulevard.

Besides, Kang said, “my customers tell me everyone else does sell singles. . . . They say if I don’t, they’ll go to another store for their milk and things.”

“I do it just to keep the customer happy,” said Ali Patel, owner of Pearl’s Liquor, also in Arleta. “As long as I don’t get in trouble, then it doesn’t matter if there’s a law against it.”

Loose cigarettes are also available in some chain stores and more upscale neighborhoods. At an Arco AM/PM mini market in Anaheim, a man who identified himself as the owner but would not give his name said he sells about 80 to 100 loose cigarettes a day although he knows it is against the law.

“Hell, if kids are going to smoke, it’s better for them to smoke one or two than a whole pack,” he said. Why would authorities “come down here and screw with me when there are people out there selling crack?” A spokeswoman for Arco said the company was not aware of California’s ban on sales of singles.

More affluent smokers also buy singles because they want to quit or cut down and do not trust themselves with a pack.

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The strategy may backfire, as it did for Joanne Russell of Los Angeles. A longtime smoker who recently tried to quit, Russell forced herself to stop buying packs, but found herself heading down to the corner store for a single nicotine fix.

“You can walk right to the store and buy one cigarette,” Russell said, as if she still did not believe it. “That kept me smoking.”

“Like everyone else, I try to fool myself,” said Ray Bianco, of Saugus. “If I only buy one, I’m quitting.”

The ineffectiveness of the state’s ban on single sales comes as no surprise to health officials because numerous studies have shown that bans on sales to minors are among the most widely flouted laws in the country.

In a nationwide survey covering 1989, the office of Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services found only 32 citations for illegal sales to youth outside of Utah, where more than 4,000 citations were issued.

Health officials and anti-smoking groups say things have barely improved since then. In Minnesota--a relative hotbed of anti-smoking activity, where dozens of store owners or clerks have been fined--youths still have an easy time buying cigarettes.

In an unofficial “sting” carried out last month in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, a 16-year-old girl--described as a “tiny, tiny person”--was able to buy cigarettes in most of the 60 stores she tried--including 76% of the pharmacies, said Jeanne Weigum, president of the Assn. for Nonsmokers-Minnesota.

And in New Jersey in July, a group of 13- to 17-year-olds working with the Perth Amboy Community Partnership for Youth bought cigarettes in 63 of 94 stores, or 67% of those they tried, said Dr. John Slade, associate professor at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey who works with the group.

Massachusetts’ ban on sales to minors is also routinely ignored, said Dr. Greg Connolly, head of the Office for Nonsmoking and Health of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. “We have 33 million violations in Massachusetts each year,” Connolly said. “The only law that’s probably violated more is jaywalking in Harvard Square.

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In California, the sale of tobacco to minors is punishable by a fine of $200 for a first offense, $500 for a second offense, and $1,000 for a third. But prosecutors almost never see these cases because local police officers and sheriff’s deputies do not refer them.

In San Diego two years ago, underage youths working with Project TRUST--Teens and Retailers United to Stop Tobacco--tried to buy cigarettes in 292 stores, and were successful 75% of the time, said Karen Keay, spokeswoman for the group.

Yet during the last two years in San Diego, enforcement of the law has consisted of a single summons issued to a sales clerk, who did not show up in court, said David James, assistant chief deputy for the San Diego city attorney.

And in Los Angeles, there is no record of a single case being filed, according to officials with the Los Angeles city attorney’s office.

Enforcement has been limited almost exclusively to four small cities near San Francisco--Benicia, Vallejo, Fairfield, and Vacaville--where police, working with local anti-smoking activists, have conducted several stings.

“The state law is basically unenforceable,” said Kevin Goebel, manager of legislative programs for Berkeley-based Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights.

“It relies on the police and the police have a lot of other things to do, and given how much the merchants make from selling to youth, it’s not that big of a fine,” Goebel said.

Some tobacco control advocates, including Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan, have proposed requiring tobacco retailers to buy a license that could be suspended or revoked for sales to minors. A few states and at least two dozen cities and counties have adopted such laws, although there are no such ordinances in California, according to Goebel’s group, which tracks anti-smoking laws.

However, a new federal law compels states to enforce laws on sales to minors, or risk the loss of block grants from the Department of Health and Human Services.

Offered by Rep. Mike Synar (D-Oklahoma) and signed into law in July, the measure requires states to show that they have an effective plan to enforce their ban on sales to minors. States failing to make an adequate effort would lose millions of dollars in federal funding for alcohol and drug abuse treatment.

Health officials, including Connolly, are optimistic that the law will spur a crackdown on illegal sales to minors.

“Right now, by ignoring the laws, we really undermine our scientific knowledge about the harm of tobacco products,” said Connolly. The new law “gives every . . . state health office . . . the excuse to do what they’ve wanted to do all along, and that’s enforce their state law.”

At the moment, however, there are no signs of such a crackdown in California, where single sales, along with sales to minors, continue unabated.

As the owner of a Newhall liquor store put it: “Everybody is broke, but they’re still dying for a cigarette.”