Agenda Packets - 1995/04/03 - Laserfiche WebLink

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From:Julie Trude To:Mounds Yew Police Dept. 3130/95 at 13:15:28 Christina Thull, Mounds View resident and Dept. of Health employee working under a grant program to reduce youth access to tobacco: Christina came with stacks of literature. The attorney general's office has researched this issue and found that the current state law is not enforced because it involves city attorney time, criminal action and costly procedures. A civil penalty to vendors is easier to administer and enforce and is recommended by the Attorney General's office. She noted that DARE doesn't keep tobacco out of kid's hands and vendors need to be responsible for the products they sell. Tobacco is classified as a drug and it's sale is regulated just as the sale of alcohol is regulated. She encouraged vendors to continually work with employees to remind them of the rules and have ID's checked. Christina would like to see us prohibit sales of tobacco by employees under age 18. She suggest managers be called to the check-out for each sale-by a-minor. The Chief discussed how a similar ordinance in New Brighton has resulted in 100% compliance during a recent check. Before the ordinance, compliance was never that high. We discussed the recent compliance check and what went wrong and what could be learned from it. The managers of S.A. and Snyder's think our ordinance is fine if we remove the age restriction on sales by their employees. In addition, there's a concern about business reputations if we make public the names of the businesses who fail a compliance check. We should discuss our city policy. Confidentiality or not? I pointed out to Mr. Fedor that our ordinance provides for an administrative hearing where a vendor can come before the police chief and explain circumstances, etc. Past history, training, efforts to work with and educate employees, and other relevant facts would all be considered before a suspension of a license would occur. Also, the Chief explained that because we administer our own compliance checks our police dept. has control over who is chosen to go into businesses and attempt to purchase cigarettes. He does not intend to deliberately select a person who appears very mature to trick businesses;that's not the goal. The goal is to make sure stores are not deliberately selling to youthful customers with no regard for the law. I told the business people that I planned to recommend to the Council that we delete the restriction on the age of persons selling cigarettes and adopt the proposed ordinance with no other changes. The loss of 10 or more jobs to young people in our community would be a harsh impact for a law designed for another purpose. I explained to Ms. Thull that a S25 penalty to a store clerk would be like taking away a day's earnings for one of these young clerks and that should be incentive enough for them to follow the law. She agreed that put in that way, young clerks should be able to sayno to friends wanting to buy cigarettes. Before he let, Paul Fedor told me he was not against what we are doing and lie appreciates the opportunity to have his say and will work with us. The S.A.manager offered his training videotape to the Snyder's manager before they left. All the parties involved were invited to the council work session. Since the meeting Peg Myer called to state she supports us passing this ordinance. She thinks we should prohibit sales by employees under 18. She may attend the work session. -2-