Tobacco Sale Proof of Age Rules Begin Amid Enforcement Doubts

It’s official today: If you’re younger than 27 and want to buy cigarettes or chewing tobacco, you must produce a photo ID proving you’re eat least 18 years old.

The question is, how will the government enforce the first wave of its crackdown on youth smoking?

The Food and Drug Administration still hasn’t hired state inspectors to audit cigarette retailers’ compliance. That means, at least until summer, anti-tobacco volunteers will be the ones blowing the whistle on offenders.

“It’s going to take an army of citizens,” said John Banzhaf of Action on Smoking and Health, which is organizing thousands of people to report suspected lawbreakers to an FDA hotline. He plans to send teens early today to test the new law in Washington and suburban Virginia stores. State laws already outlaw the sale of tobacco to anyone younger than 18. Yet government figures show that minors buy $1.6 billion in tobacco annually, and 75% of teen smokers say they’ve never been asked to show identification--reports verified in such states as Indiana, which last summer discovered that 41% of stores were selling tobacco to teens.

The FDA, in the first of sweeping new tobacco regulations, ordered retailers to ask all tobacco customers younger than 27 to produce identification in order to keep mature-looking minors from buying it. Store owners caught selling tobacco to teens face federal fines of $250 per violation.

The FDA is contracting with states to use teenagers posing as customers to catch retailers. But the agency still hasn’t chosen the 10 states to share the first $4 million in enforcement funds, meaning federal stings won’t happen for at least a month, and it can’t hire states unless Congress forks over more money. FDA inspectors could target states that don’t do their own enforcement.

The National Assn. of Convenience Stores advised store employees to tell customers they’re just doing a job the feds have foisted on them. “I don’t know if I can do this,” said an Alexandria, Va., 7-Eleven clerk who would identify herself only as Janice. “People already yell when you card them for beer.”