TOBACCO STILL READILY AVAILABLE TO YOUTHS

Law Aimed At Ending Sales To Teens Not Enforced, Study Concludes

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A 1992 law aimed at ending sales of cigarettes and other
tobacco products to minors through rigorous state-level checking has not
been adequately enforced, a private analysis says.

Most states and U.S. territories have neglected to investigate properly if
their own laws prohibiting the sale of tobacco to minors are followed and to
prosecute when the laws are broken, said the study, released Wednesday and
published in The Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, a journal of
the American Medical Association.

"Very few states have implemented effective enforcement programs, and
national surveys confirm that there has been no measurable reduction in the
availability of tobacco to youths," said the study's author, Dr. Joseph
DiFranza, a professor of family and community medicine at the University of
Massachusetts Medical School.

The 1992 Synar Amendment -- named for its sponsor, the late Rep. Mike Synar,
D-Okla. -- required states to ban tobacco sales to anyone younger than 18.
States must outline how they have carried out the Synar Amendment in their
annual applications for block grants from the Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration.

And the Department of Health and Human Services must in turn withhold some
funding from states that have not complied.

But the study, which examined the applications filed in 1997, found 19
states or territories had failed to meet the Synar requirements yet were not
punished. The states were Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, the District of
Columbia, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana,
Tennessee, Virginia, Wyoming. The territories were Guam, the Marshall
Islands, Micronesia, Northern Marianas, Palau and Puerto Rico.