It's a given that teens ought not to be allowed to purchase cigarettes. Everyone knows it is an effective way to keep a cap on the rate of teen smoking.Raising the minimum age for buying tobacco is an effective way to combat teenage smoking, right?
If you think so, then reconcile these two stories. First, from Canada, the "success" of this sort of anti-smoking policy:
New figures released Tuesday by Statistics Canada show only eight per cent of teens report they smoked in 2005, down from 10 per cent in 2003 and 14 per cent in 2000-01.
"This is the first time that it's been in single digits, but there has been a steady decline since the 1980s," Statistics Canada analyst Jason Gilmore said Tuesday.
The data were contained in the Canadian Community Health Survey, a major poll aimed at assessing the health of Canadians. The survey is conducted every two years.
It is based on the responses of about 130,000 Canadians aged 12 and over from every province and territory in the country.
Sounds great, right? Thanks to policies like minimum purchase age, we're down to 8% of teens smoking.
Imagine how horrible it would have been if 16-year-olds could buy cigarettes.
Actually, we don't have to imagine. In the UK, 16-year-olds can buy a pack of smokes, though only for a few more months:
The government will raise the minimum age for buying tobacco to 18 from 16 in an attempt to reduce smoking by teenagers, it said on Monday.
The new rule will take effect in England and Wales on October 1, 2007, a government statement said.
The government says about nine percent of Britons between the ages of 11 and 15 smoke, and it is determined to reduce their number.
Wait a second. That rate of teen smoking in the UK is just about where it is in Canada, even though Canada has strict, even draconian, laws targeting store owners to keep teens from buying cigarettes:
Tobacco inspectors regularly monitor stores for compliance to the tobacco control act, by sending in teenage "test" customers to purchase tobacco. If the "test" customer manages to purchase tobacco, the sales clerk is fined $180. The store owners are fined up to $2000 each even if they were not physically present in the store during the time of the errant sale. After a second errant tobacco sale within a 5-year period, the store owners forfeit their tobacco license. Tobacco sales account for some 80% of the earnings of small convenience stores. Several small towns have already lost their only convenience and grocery store as a result of a tobacco infraction. The inconvenience caused to senior citizens living in small rural villages seems to be of little consequence to overzealous health officials determined to curtail teenage smoking.
A small percentage of minors may actually purchase tobacco from unsuspecting retailers, often using a variety of innovative and ingenious methods. They may even use the strategies of the tobacco inspectors' teenage "test" customers, making themselves appear much older than they really are except they may produce the identification of an older, but identical looking sibling. Two independent American studies done over the past decade estimated that 80% of under-aged teens actually acquire tobacco from friends, older siblings and sometimes even parents. Despite the fact that only a small minority of minors actually try to buy tobacco from retailers, store owners are regularly being scrutinized and monitored by tobacco inspectors.
That teens don't buy cigarettes is supported by this report from the University of Florida:
In addition to observing teen smokers in downtown Gainesville, other members of the group spent time staking out local convenience stores, hoping to see a young person attempt to buy cigarettes. "We sat outside for several hours at a time, and we never saw a young person go in the store and try to buy cigarettes," graduate student Lem Purcell says. "The teens told us that if they smoked, they got the cigarettes from friends. Sometimes older friends would buy them. In a few cases parents actually bought cigarettes for their kids."
My advice to the UK is this: don't beat up on the store owners too harshly. If teen smoking rates are below the 10% level, you are dealing with an essentially irreducible population of chronic smokers that are able to get cigarettes from any number of non-commercial sources. Teens this age probably don't have too much disposable income in any case, so they are not likely to be feeding their habits by purchasing heavily taxed cigarettes. The cigarettes are being acquired from irresponsible adult acquaintances and relatives, not from irresponsible store owners.
But here's the kicker. The UK government admits the new laws won't do much to affect teen smoking:
“There is little conclusive evidence that a higher minimum age alone has an impact on reducing smoking prevalence among young people,” the Department of Health consultation document admitted.
A report by the World Bank echoed this conclusion. It said: “There have been a number of attempts to impose restrictions on the sale of cigarettes to teenagers in high-income countries. In their existing form such restrictions have not been shown to be successful.
But then what would all those tobacco inspectors have to do to justify their salaries?
So we're left with two questions:
- If the UK government knows the new minimum age won't make a difference, then how will they deal with store owners who are tricked by inspectors selling cigarettes to a undercover minor?
- Will Canadian tobacco enforcement continue to target store owners in the face of evidence that these store owners have virtually no effect on the rate of teen smoking?
