Local health clinic promotes tobacco sales reform

By: DAVID FRIED - Staff Writer

VISTA ---- Plastered among the ads for Marlboro's and other products, the poster in the window outside Tommy's Market on East Vista Way depicts a teenage girl tangled up in strings, attached to a box of cigarettes.

"Save a teen from a lifetime of addiction," the poster reads.

The way Thair "Tommy" Ismael sees it, that's exactly what he does as owner of the liquor store. He even has a letter from the Vista Sheriff's Department to prove it.

The letter, sent last fall, congratulates Tommy's for denying a teen decoy a pack of smokes.

"We try hard to keep things legal," he said from behind the counter.

A coalition of local health advocates wants to ensure that he does. The Vista Community Clinic and North Coastal Prevention Coalition recently proposed enacting a "tobacco license" for retailers in Vista, Oceanside and Carlsbad.

The proposal is part of a countywide effort by the San Diego Tobacco-Free Community Coalition, which last month sent a letter to all cities in the county outlining suggested ordinances.

In order to qualify for a license, retailers would have to pass surprise inspections to verify that they don't sell tobacco to minors, and pay an annual fee to fund the enforcement program. Those who are caught selling to kids would have their license suspended for a minimum of 30 days.

"We feel that selling tobacco is a privilege and should be looked upon as such," said Lyndsey Gemmell, a health educator with the Vista Community Clinic, which is meeting with city officials in Vista, Carlsbad and Oceanside to promote the idea.

More than 30 cities in California have similar ordinances, including Sacramento, which adopted the legislation earlier this year and charges store owners $300 annually for the right to sell tobacco products.

Under Tobacco-Free Communities' proposed legislation, each city would determine how much to charge retailers, but Gemmell stressed it must be enough to pay for the administrative and enforcement costs, even in troubled budget times.

Any local licenses in the three cities would supplement state legislation that took effect on January 1 and charges retailers a one-time fee of $100 in order to sell tobacco.

But Gemmell said anti-tobacco advocates found little to celebrate in the state's licensing system, which she criticized for lacking any enforcement measures beyond the current fine of $250 for salesclerks who sell tobacco to anyone under the age of 18.

Auday Arabo, president of California Independent Grocers and Convenience Stores, which represents more than 640 small stores throughout the county, disagrees.

"We don't think it's wise or really serves the purpose to have localities doing the same thing when the state already has a system intact," Arabo said.

Retailers have until June 30 to comply with the state's new law, and Arabo called any criticism at this point "premature."

Anti-tobacco advocates, he said, would better serve their cause if they stopped focusing on the "few bad apples" that sell tobacco to minors and worked constructively with business owners committed to upholding the law.

But the problem runs beyond "a few bad apples," according to Tobacco-Free Communities, which performed its own study of 246 North County businesses earlier this year, the results of which were published in March.

"Some of our best cities had more than 12 percent (rate of sales to minors)" said Gemmell, noting that the Legislature's licensing scheme only implements additional fines if the statewide average reaches more than 13 percent.

In Vista, 16- and 17-year-old decoys were sold tobacco in 27 percent of the stores they visited. In Carlsbad, that number jumped to 30 percent; in Oceanside, it dropped to 18.6 percent.

Those numbers have attracted the attention of Vista Unified School District's board, which is scheduled to adopt a resolution at its meeting on Thursday supporting the Vista Community Clinic's and North Coast Prevention Coalition's efforts.

Student trustee Cody Campbell, who also serves as vice president of the Prevention Coalition, brought the resolution ---- which is entirely symbolic ---- before the board in an effort to "create greater community awareness" about the availability of tobacco to local teens.

"The question is, How can we better our community by doing something that's not overly burdensome to businesses?" Campbell said.

But Arabo said that, despite the good intentions of those supporting additional licensing systems, local tobacco licenses were not the proper response to stemming tobacco use among teens.

"It makes no sense having law enforcement act as the tobacco police and have the financial burden shifted onto the backs of retailers," he said.

Contact staff writer David Fried at (760) 631-6621 or dfried@nctimes.com.

Paid for and authorized by Cody Campbell for School Board 2006, FPPC ID# 1290192