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Managing Editor SPRINGFIELD Representatives of three local convenience store chains, city public health officials and City Councilors Domenic Sarno and Bruce Stebbins hammered out a revised city ordinance governing the sale of tobacco products in Springfield on July 10. The principal difference in the ordinance is that clerks who sell tobacco products to customers under the age of 18 can be fined along with the holder of the tobacco sales permit. The City Council must approve the revised ordinance and will not do so until August at the earliest. Springfield would lead the state in this provision, which is common in adjoining states such as Vermont, Maine and Connecticut. Both D.J. Wilson, the tobacco control director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association and Sarah McColgan, the tobacco control officer of the Massachusetts Health Officer Association, opposed the fining of the clerks and preferred the fines remain the sole responsibility of the permit holder. Robert Bolduc, the president of Pride stores, led the argument in support of fining clerks. "There's a lot of precedent and it works. Until we start to go after the clerks we will never solve the problem," Bolduc asserted. Although his employees go through a training program that outlines the laws regarding the sale of tobacco, Bolduc said the clerks, frequently teenagers, are "under very severe peer pressure to sell to their friends." Bolduc said that in states that have instituted fines for clerks the sale of tobacco to minors has decreased. Ray Cross of F.L. Roberts said his company has also advocated fining clerks for a long time. Mike McCarthy, the owner of B &D Petroleum, cited just how serious some teens are about obtaining tobacco. He said at his Holyoke store a teen, when asked for age identification, pulled a gun out of his pocket and placed it on the counter. Springfield Public Health Commissioner Helen Caulton- Harris said that 90 percent of smokers begin the habit under the age of 18 and that smoking is considered a "a pediatric disease." She noted the state in 2006 allocated $2.5 million for anti-smoking measures. During the same period the tobacco industry spent $234 million on advertising. Bolduc said an on-going problem is that when an employee is fired for selling tobacco to minors, he or she will frequently seek a job with another convenience store without disclosing that information. He said the fines should be like parking tickets and follow a person from job to job. A database of people who have been fired for this offense would be a valuable tool to assist employers making better decisions, he added. Caulton-Harris said her department does not have the resources to establish and maintain such records. There are about 300 locations in Springfield with permits to sell tobacco. The Department of Public Health runs a minimum of three compliance checks a year for each location to determine if tobacco is being sold only to adults. Stores that fail the test will have more checks scheduled. The group also revised the cost of a permit from $15 to $50. There are 60 communities in the state with permit costs over $100. The original suggestion was to raise the permit cost to $100, but Sarno, at the urging of Springfield Chamber of Commerce President Russell Denver, suggested dropping the new proposed cost to $50. Sarno argued there are many smaller individually owned stores he didn't want to penalize and that Chicopee, West Springfield, Westfield and Holyoke all charge $50. Currently there is a warning for the first failure of a compliance check, but under the new proposal within a 15-month period that has been replaced by a $100 fine for both permit holder and clerk. The second offense would be a $200 fine, while the third offense would be a seven-day suspension. The fourth violation would be a 30-day suspension and the fifth would be a consideration for the revocation of the permit. Storeowners have the right to contest the violations in Housing Court. Storeowners take suspensions seriously. McCarthy said that his locations regularly sell 200 to 300 single packages of cigarettes a day and are a major part of his business. With a suspension, he said, "we might as well shut down." "We need to have it [the ordinance] to have teeth in it," Bolduc said. |
