SPRINGFIELD, Mass. -- Store owners, health officials and Springfield, Mass., city councilors fashioned a compromise on a plan to toughen penalties on businesses caught selling cigarettes and other tobacco products to minors, according to The Republican.
The change that drew not only support but praise from business owners, said the report, calls for the clerk who actually makes the sale to someone who is below the age of 18 to get fined $100.
Fining the clerk is key because it addresses the source of the transaction and some clerks [image-nocss] face enormous peer pressure from teenagers to sell them cigarettes, Robert L. Bolduc, owner of Pride gas station-convenience stores, told the newspaper. Until we go after the clerks, we will never solve the problem, and we are committed to solving the problem. This is fantastic.
The store also would get fined $100 for a first offense, a change from the current ordinance, which calls for only a first-offense warning. Other proposed changes are that the fee to obtain a tobacco sales permit increase to $50 a year from the current $15, and stores could have permits suspended or revoked for multiple violations, the report said.
Adopting the changes requires a vote of the City Council, and it was unclear when that would occur. It will probably come in August, but could be sooner if a special council meeting is scheduled, committee Chairman Domenic J. Sarno told the paper.
Not everyone agreed it made sense to fine clerks, said the report. Donald J. Wilson, tobacco control coordinator with the Massachusetts Municipal Association, said it is the store owner or whomever is issued the stores sales permit who is responsible for what happens in the store. Fining a clerk raises the odd circumstance of the city pursuing a $100 fine, possibly to court, after the clerk no longer works at the store because such clerks often get fired for selling to minors, Wilson said. It becomes more and more complex, he told the Republican.
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