Teens and tobacco

Earlier this year, the Baltimore County Health Department dispatched two 18-year-old police cadets to 80 local stores where cigarettes are sold. Want to guess how often the teenagers were asked to show some form of identification?
A miserable four out of 10 times.
When county officials surveyed stores close to county middle and high schools, the results weren't much better: ID was requested less than half the time. Whenever the sole female cadet purchased cigarettes from male store clerks, the results were even more troubling - not once was she aske to show her driver's license or any other form of identification.
The stores didn't violate the law, at least not yet. It's still legal for 18-year-olds to buy or be sold cigarettes, but unless all Baltimore County retailers are omniscient or blessed with superpowers that allow them to discern age at a glance, the persistent failure to ask for ID is an alarming reality.
In that light, the Baltimore County Council's recent wrangling with (and confusion over) legislation to require vendors to request identification of anyone under the age of 27 looks rather silly. Stores ought to require identification of anyone buying cigarettes, period.
Why? Because the consequences of selling tobacco products to minors are substantial. Health studies show that 90 percent of smokers started puffing before they turned 18. Shutting off access to tobacco would go a long way toward ending nicotine addiction.
In 1996, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration adopted regulations that required stores to request ID of anyone under age 27. Remember the "We Card" campaign that tobacco companies financed in response? But those regulations were thrown out by the Supreme Court in 2000 on the grounds that the FDA had overstepped its authority.
Legislation signed into law by President Barack Obama in June is expected reactivate those regulations nationwide next summer. One way or another, all retailers will be expected to comply.
The requirement puts no undue hardship on stores or smokers of legal age. Sales clerks regularly require ID for all kinds of transactions. (Just try cashing a check without one.) And while age 27 may seem an arbitrary cutoff, the point is that stores shouldn't sell to anyone who looks remotely under-age.
If Baltimore County wants to get serious about protecting its teens, the council will not only pass a mandatory ID regulation that meets or exceeds FDA standards, it will instruct county health officials to start enforcing existing law more aggressively. Instead of sending 18-year-olds to buy a pack of cigarettes from a local store, the county should dispatch actual minors - and issues fines to stores that sell to them.
That's what other Maryland counties do. Baltimore County may be the only jurisdiction that conducts pain-free "stings," a concession to the retail community that avoids $300 fines but which fails to adequately protect the county's youth.