Police Cite Salesclerks for Selling Cigarettes to Minors

Salesclerks at 41 of 78 markets sold cigarettes to minors working undercover for police after the department received a flood of complaints from parents who caught their children smoking, authorities said Thursday.

“It was so easy for these kids to buy cigarettes,” Anaheim Police Sgt. Steve Walker said. “We were all surprised at just how easy it was, especially the kids.”

A boy and a girl, both 16, entered convenient stores and doughnut shops near junior high and high schools Saturday and bought cigarettes, Walker said. They were told to tell the truth if the clerk asked their ages or asked for identification.

“But hardly anyone asked,” Walker said. “And every single one of them knew that you had to be 18 to buy cigarettes. It’s not as if they didn’t know the law. I guess they were just complacent about it.”

The clerks were issued citations with fines ranging from $200 to $1,000, depending on whether it was a first offense.

“Hopefully, this will scare people into obeying the law,” Walker said.

The Tobacco Decoy Program was a response to about a dozen calls over the past two months from angry parents who caught their children, mostly junior high school students, with cigarettes. One father followed his child into a doughnut shop where several other children had been buying cigarettes, Walker said.

“He confronted some people there, but apparently got no cooperation from them,” Walker said, “so he called us.”

During the undercover operation, the teen-agers also saw three clerks selling alcohol to other minors, Walker said. Those clerks also were cited.