RETAILERS MAKE EFFORT ON TOBACCO SALES

An effort to educate store clerks on how to comply with a federal law that prohibits the sale of tobacco products to anyone under 18 will go a long way to assure that Missouri retailers do their best not to sell tobacco to underage users.

A coalition of retail and grocer associations last week conducted meetings around the state to educate clerks on the law and how to go about asking for identification and handling people who don't like being asked. Armed with a take-notice slogan called We Card, the Missouri Association for Responsible Tobacco Retailing conducted the meetings. About about 65 people turned out for the meeting in Cape Girardeau, and some of the clerks who attended offered some insight of their own on how to go about complying with the law.

Despite the federal law and all other efforts to curtail tobacco use by young people, teen-agers still make up the largest group of new smokers. An estimated 1.23 million people in the United under 18 became daily smokers in the United State 1996. That is an average of about 3,000 new smokers every day, an alarmingly high number.

Something must be done, and the federal law is a step in the right direction. But the law won't work unless all retailers join in to make sure they are complying with it.

The law requires that clerks ask for photo identification of anyone buying tobacco under the age of 27. The age of a person is not always easily determined, and there are customers who don't like being asked for an ID and can become belligerent. The meeting gave clerks some ideas on how to handle those people.

The risk of non-compliance includes fines of $200 for the first offense, $400 for the second and $600 for the third. The turnout at the meeting in Cape Girardeau shows that retailers want to comply and want information on how to go about it.

The We Card campaign gets the word out not only among retailers, but to those young people who would try to buy tobacco products over the counter. We Card displays in stores are fair warning that clerks won't sell to underage tobacco users. If a youngster is emphatically refused tobacco at a particular store, he or she won't return to try to buy it there again. He or she will find that getting hold of tobacco is much more difficult, and perhaps that it isn't even worth the effort.