Kingston cigarette retailers need to do a better job when it comes to verifying the ages of tobacco customers, the local health unit says.

July 9. 2010 - Kingston

 In May and June Muis conducted a program called Who is 25? in which 19-to 21-year-olds went into stores to purchase cigarettes.

"Our compliance rates were really good in 2007 (during the first year of the program)," she said. "In 2009, we started to do checks at night and compliance rates went way down."

Since 2006 retailers have been obliged by law to ask anyone who appears under 25 years of age seeking to buy tobacco for identification. The operatives awarded retailers coloured cards to indicate their level of compliance.

"We send in somebody who is 19 or older and they would ask for cigarettes," she said. "If the retailer asks them for ID that shopper hands them a green card. If they didn't ask for ID then they would give them a red card."

Anyone who asked for ID but cannot calculate the age correctly got a yellow card. Twenty-one Kingston retailers received yellow cards this year.

A representative of Ontario's convenience stores says compliance might be better if health units worked more on education than on enforcement.

"The answer is training and education of young people and retailers," said David Bryans, president of the Canadian and Ontario convenience stores associations.

He said it makes more sense to train owners and clerks before they get to the job rather than waiting for them to get a red card or a ticket for selling to a minor.

"No one wants to teach you from the health board," he said, "but the next day they'll send somebody in to try and buy cigarettes off you and then hand you a ticket."

Muis said that unlike enforcement checks -- where the health unit will send minors into stores to try and buy cigarettes -- the Who is 25? program is purely educational and there are no penalties for red or yellow cards.

"This is still in the education stage," she said.

Bryans said the convenience stores association provides online training, a program called We Expect ID, to help clerks and owners understand their role and responsibilities, but he adds that even if minors couldn't buy cigarettes from retailers, they would still be able to buy them illegally from contraband vendors.

Many contraband cigarettes are manufactured on native reserves, he said, and since Kingston is so close to Akwesasne and Tyendinaga, there's a vast supply.

Muis said contraband smokes are a difficult issue for the public health unit to handle.

"We are dealing with it, but not as much as we would like because it's highly sensitive," Muis said.

"We will be coming out with a campaign to inform people (of the problems associated with contraband cigarettes), because a lot of people don't realize that it's funding organized crime."

Bryans said contraband cig - arettes are a complex issue, but that doesn't mean governments should shy away from action.

"Youth smoking is on the rise and that's basically attributed to contraband tobacco at very low cost with no rules attached to it," he said.

"There are 163 reserves in Ontario and every reserve has a minimum of 20 (contraband cigarette vendors) and some have 100 so ... with as many smoke shacks as that, it's probably (a bigger part of the problem) than the convenience store channel."

He said that while it is important to make sure minors cannot buy cigarettes in stores, if we don't address contraband cigarette sales, little headway can be made to reduce youth smoking.

"We've done three studies where we've swept up butts at high schools," he said.

One of the studies done last spring showed that 15% of cigarettes outside Bayridge Secondary School were contraband

"We showed the politicians and the public," he said.

"None of the heath boards will go onto the reserves to correct this."

Bryans said that the Ontario government pays $50 million a year to fund tobacco enforcement in the legal market, which is why they're so intently focused on it.

"Ask them to do the same test at the LCBO," he said. "I can tell you we age-test immensely better than they do ... but no one wants to talk about that because the health board doesn't have the money to do that."

He said that the Canadian Convenience Stores Association has a third party, Stopex, compile age compliance data. The convenience stores scored 93% compliance with checking ages, the Beer Store 91%, but the LCBO is much lower.

Bryans said that if we really want to reduce youth smoking, in addition to educating vendors, the government should make it illegal for minors to possess tobacco so that even contraband cigarettes would be of little use to them.

"If were really serious about age, then why don't we go the whole gamut?"

Written By: Rachel Kuper for The Whig Standard