Riverside County May Act on Tobacco Sales to Minors

Hoping to curtail Riverside County’s high rate of illegal tobacco sales to minors, public health officials want the county to charge tobacco retailers a $350 annual license fee to help fund stricter enforcement.

Dozens of cities and counties statewide have enacted similar regulations, following the recommendation of state health officials. Pasadena has such an ordinance, and the city of Los Angeles is slated to vote on a similar measure soon.

State sting operations have shown that sales to under-18 tobacco buyers in Riverside County have jumped in the last five years, with 44% of would-be underage tobacco purchasers slipping past clerks, up from 16% in 2000, according to the county health department. A 2003 survey in the city of Los Angeles found a 40% rate. Targeted retailers include past offenders.

Statewide, when retailers are chosen at random, underage teens have a 10% success rate in trying to buy tobacco, state officials said.

The county Board of Supervisors today is scheduled to consider the ordinance.

“We are very concerned about young people starting to smoke,” said Susan Harrington, director of the county Department of Public Health. She said an estimated 5 million packs of cigarettes were sold illegally in Riverside County each year.

The program would require each of the county’s roughly 2,500 tobacco retailers to buy a $350 license every year. Those retailers are already required to buy a $100 one-time state license.

Pasadena’s tobacco license fee is $135, and Berkeley charges $303. The proposed fee in the city of Los Angeles would be $208, said Monty Messex, chief of policy for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services tobacco control and prevention program.

Forty-four cities and counties statewide have adopted such provisions, including Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage and Indian Wells in Riverside County, plus San Francisco, Sacramento and Contra Costa County, Harrington said.

In 2000, the city of Los Angeles passed a tobacco licensing ordinance that did not include a fee or enforcement personnel. Los Angeles County has no tobacco licensing rules. Orange County and cities there require no such permits, said Herm Perlmutter, program supervisor for the county’s Tobacco Use Prevention Program.

Since Contra Costa County mandated tobacco licenses in 2004, tobacco sales to minors there have plummeted, according to the American Lung Assn.

“Riverside County is a key next step in our efforts to reduce youth smoking,” said Paul Knepprath, vice president for government relations at the American Lung Assn. of California. With its proposed ordinance, the county has “got an enforcement program that has teeth in it.”

But some local retailers are not thrilled with the prospect of more government fees.

“I already have umpteen zillion state licenses,” said Kit McMullin, owner of Mission Tobacco Lounge in downtown Riverside. “I don’t know what another license is going to do.... Tobacco is already heavily regulated by the state as it is.”

The California Grocers Assn., a state group that represents 500 grocery and convenience retailers with 6,000 stores, agrees that the license is unnecessary.

“We are in favor of enforcing existing laws,” said Gilbert Canizales, the group’s director of local government relations.

Adult and youth smoking are declining throughout California; state surveys show 13.2% of high school students were smokers in 2004, compared with 21.6% four years earlier, Cowling said.

Repeat violators of the proposed ordinance -- such as those who sell to minors or fail to buy a license -- would face penalties as stiff as license revocation and a $10,000 fine.

Enforcement of the regulations would fall to a new 10-person office; the total collected in license fees -- $875,000 -- would cover operating costs.

A public hearing on the ordinance is scheduled for Sept. 13.