Laws already on the books are sufficient to keep young people from getting tobacco products, store owners told the Davis County Health Board Thursday night.
But those laws need to be enforced and educational efforts redoubled, they said.The grocery and convenience store owners agree that young people under age 19 should be restricted from buying and using tobacco, they told the health board at a public hearing on proposed regulations restricting tobacco display and sales in the county.
But punishing store owners and putting another layer of bureaucracy onto business is not the way to do it, they told the board.
The health board is proposing that retail outlets which sell tobacco be licensed by the county. All tobacco products would have to be kept behind counters or locked up, with access restricted to sales clerks.
That would prevent young people under 19 from either buying or stealing tobacco products, the board believes. Violations of the sales ban would result first in a warning and then in lifting the license of a store, effectively putting the store out of the business of selling tobacco products.
Thursday's public hearing drew well over 100 spectators, from medical experts to store clerks and parents, as well as teenagers who say they are already addicted to tobacco and can't kick the habit. The hearing ran more than 31/2 hours.
A score of witnesses universally condemned tobacco use, citing it as the leading cause of preventable deaths in the United States today. About 400,000 deaths annually are attributed to tobacco use, according to testimony.
Most of the testimony offered at Thursday's hearing centered on the ill effects of tobacco use and the need to keep it out of the hands of young people. Only a handful of the witnesses, mostly grocery store owners or managers, directly discussed the board's proposed regulations and their effect.
Retailers told the board the regulations will put them at a disadvantage in the marketplace, adding another layer of paperwork and bureaucracy to an already overburdened commercial sector.
And the cost of remodeling to put tobacco products behind a counter or under lock and key could force small stores out of business, either because of the additional cost or because they would be forced to stop selling tobacco products, they said.
The theft rate of tobacco products is high, store managers said, and many stores are voluntarily instituting more restrictive display and sales procedures.
Jim Olson, president of the Utah Retail Grocers Association and the state association of convenience store owners, said his group is active in producing training material and seminars for store clerks on tobacco and alcohol sales laws.
Utah already has some of the best laws in the country restricting tobacco sales and access, and what is needed now is better enforcement, he said.
Olson challenged the health board's right to enact the regulations, saying legal opinions from the state attorney general restrict health boards to enforcing public health laws designated as such by the state Legislature.
There is also a state tax law restricting the right to license tobacco sales to the State Tax Commission, Olson told the board.
Dan Vaughn, Layton, owner of the Stimson's chain, said the regulations "will make a criminal of every retailer whose clerk sells a package of cigarettes to a teenager."
The age restriction on access to tobacco will also force retailers to fire all their sales clerks under 19, Vaughn said.
Clerks already undergo extensive training in how to handle tobacco and alcohol sales, the store owners told the board, and violations generally result in the clerk's being fired.
But a store owner or manager can't be there all the time to supervise every transaction, Vaughn said, and shouldn't be penalized for violations committed by a clerk.
Store owner Dennis Lawrence said North Salt Lake police issued one of his clerks a citation for violating the current law and the clerk had to pay a $150 fine. It had a profound effect on the other clerks, Lawrence said.
Lawrence also charged the county health department isn't capable of performing its current duties of inspection and licensing, much less take on tobacco law enforcement.
Sheriff's Capt. Bud Cox told the board that police agencies in the county are already stretched to the limit and don't have the resources to search out underage tobacco violators.
Health department inspectors could help ease that burden, putting violations in more of an administrative than criminal context, Cox said, which would also keep the courts from getting clogged with tobacco cases.
Paul Klatt, a district manager for 7-Eleven, warned that restricting tobacco access could have tragic results.
Young people often steal beer and cigarettes at the same time, Klatt said, and the 7-Eleven company policy bars clerks from confronting the thieves directly out of a fear of violence.
Clerks refusing to sell cigarettes to young people, combined with the restricted access, will bring confrontations, often involving a weapon, Klatt warned.
"If we totally deny access to cigarettes, the people doing the beer thefts - and cigarettes are involved in these thefts about 25 percent of the time, according to our research - we're going to have confrontations. And we're going to have clerks injured or killed," Klatt said.
The board took no action at Thursday's hearing. It will consider the regulation at its regular meeting on Tuesday, Feb. 4.