Check nets violators of tobacco-vending law

Clerks from two tobacco vendors were cited for selling to minors.
By WILLIAM K. ALCORN
VINDICATOR HEALTH WRITER
AUSTINTOWN -- Minors were able to buy tobacco products from 11 out of 38 tobacco vendors checked by the Mahoning County District Board of Health, and from three out of 23 checked by the Trumbull County Board of Health.
The health boards conduct compliance checks about twice a year. The most recent checks were April 13 in Mahoning County and April 13 and 15 in Trumbull County, said Nicholas Cascarelli, district health educator.
The Mahoning County Sheriff's Department assisted the county health board and issued citations to employees of two vendors -- Struthers Beer & amp; Wine, 850 Youngstown-Poland Road, Struthers, and the Shell service station, 1904 Oak St., Youngstown -- who violated Ohio law by selling tobacco products to people under age 18, Cascarelli said.
There was no information available Tuesday as to the fines or other punishments meted out to those vendors.
Other violators were not cited, Cascarelli said, because police were not present when volunteer teens bought tobacco products.
No citations were issued in Trumbull County, where the health board team was not accompanied by police, said Mel Milliron, board spokesman.
The compliance check shows that "youth are still able to purchase tobacco products with some degree of success" Cascarelli said.
Noncompliance rates
The Mahoning health board has been conducting compliance checks for 10 years, with degrees of noncompliance ranging from a high of 60 percent in 1995 to a low of 11 percent in 2003.
In Trumbull County, when compliance checks first began in the mid-1990s, the noncompliance rate was about 90 percent, compared with 13 percent this year, Milliron said.
Cascarelli said one of the objectives of the MCAT -- Mahoning, Columbiana, Ashtabula, Trumbull -- East End Tobacco Prevention and Control Coalition is to conduct at least two compliance checks per year in each county.
In 2003, the average percentage of noncompliance of vendors checked in the four-county area was 12 percent, compared with a statewide rate of 13.5 percent, Cascarelli said.