Just the Ticket to Fight Teen Smoking

Pleasant Plains, Ill., is part of a growing movement, from California to
Florida, to reduce underage tobacco use by trying something newpunishing
the kids.

PLEASANT PLAINS, Ill.The children responded quickly after the village
board, including its lone smoker, voted to levy $25 fines on minors caught
with a cigarette. In the tiny park across from the brick village hall,
youngsters gathered to light up and puff defiantly away. But the protests
were carefully timed. They occurred when the town squad car was gone from
its parking place, the single onduty officer obviously out on rounds. For
the most part, nicotine is now a furtive pleasure for the youths of
Pleasant Plains. They have grown adept at sleightofhand, dipping into
separate pockets for cigarettes and lighters, cradling burning sticks
inside cupped palms, directing tendrils of blue smoke toward the ground.
They walk far into fields of cornstalks that rise taller than their heads,
the better to conceal their tobacco habits.

For Police Chief Michael Forsythe, who requested the ordinance, that is
victory enough. "You don't see 12 and 13yearolds walking down the street
with their cigarettes anymore," he said. This town, situated between the
Illinois River and the state capital of Springfield, is among the most
recent converts to a fastgrowing movement in the fight to reduce teen
tobacco use. From California to Florida, local legislators are trying
something new: If the kids smoke, punish them. Nationally, studies show
25% of high schoolage children smokecompared to 21% of adults.

Concern rises ever higher, with cigarette companies pressured to change
youthoriented ads and President Clinton urging price hikes to push the
product out of teenallowance range. It long has been illegal for anyone
under 18 to purchase cigarettes, but generally the sellers were the ones
prosecuted, and they are rarely caught. Now, across large slices of
America, mere possessionfar easier to provecan land a kid in trouble
with the law.

The concept draws strong disapproval from many quarters. Some antitobacco
activists chorus that the measures "blame the victim" rather than
manufacturers and vendors. Some parents argue that if they let their
children smoke, the police have no business interfering. Some teens contend
that tickets won't deter them and that the grownups are hypocrites. And in
Medina County in northeast Ohio, juvenile court judges complained that
smoking tickets clogged the courts. Nonetheless, the juggernaut rolls on,
with some other laws making Pleasant Plains seem downright lenient. In
California, officers from Santa Ana to Pasadena, Modesto to Los Gatos,
since January have exerted statewide authority to write underagesmoking
tickets that carry a $75 fine or 25 hours of community service. In North
Platte, Neb., penalties approved in May range from $35 for a first offense
up to $100. In Texas, a convicted teen smoker now pays as much as $250and
must attend a tobaccoawareness class or lose his driver's license.
Smokingticket measures have been approved in at least five state
legislatures this year and have been introduced in at least 23 others.
"It's very hot stuff in the public health world," said Valerie Quinn, who
runs the tobacco control program for the California Department of Health
Services. In training sessions to acquaint 135 police agencies with the new
California law, "I was surprised to learn how many were already enforcing
it," Quinn said.

Justice officials say they are interested in these laws for reasons that
range beyond mere tobacco use. The Los Angeles Police Department, for
example, views the ticketing law as a crimeprevention tool, said
department spokesman Michael G. Partain. "If there's a group of kids on
Hollywood Boulevard, and they stand on a corner and smoke, an officer might
have just driven by in the past," Partain said. "Now we have a reason to go
talk to them and find out what else is going on."

Added William B. Young, law director for the city of Medina: "When we're
dealing with drugs, the kids almost always started out smoking. This is a
gateway situation. They may go onto marijuana and on from there."

Politicians who introduce legislation say they hope to keep youngsters who
don't smoke from starting. "We would give children an out, an ability to
resist their peers. They could say 'it's illegal' or 'I don't want to lose
my driver's license,' " said Steven Feren, the mayor of Sunrise, Fla., who
as a state representative cosponsored a 1996 smokingticket bill. (His
failed, but another version passed this year and takes effect today.)

He was surprised when some of the most fervent opposition, enough to ground
his measure, came from the antismoking lobby. Many activists are indeed
suspicious. "The tobacco industry has long sought this," said Paul
Knepprath, assistant vice president of the American Lung Assn. of
California. "It takes the attention away from their marketing tactics which
aim to addict children." * * * Thomas Lauria, a spokesman for the Tobacco
Institute, said the Washingtonbased manufacturers' group endorses the
ticketing concept as an extra control on underage smoking. But he added,
"We aren't doing it publicly. We're voicing support privately because of
all the controversy."

Retailers make no secret of their support. The California Grocers Assn.
worked closely with state Sen. David G. Kelley (RIdyllwild) on
California's bill, according to Kelley's chief of staff, Nancy Newbill, and
the grocers' Sacramento attorney, Stan Van Vleck.

"We need to stop the demand," Van Vleck said. "Stop these kids from coming
in to buy. If we say, 'No,' at [checkout] counter No. 1, and . . . counter
No. 2, they keep going until someone says 'yes.' "

Certainly some public health professionals also favor ticketing. Sylvania,
Ohio, Police Chief Gerald Sobb said his Toledo suburb enacted a system of
youth smoking fines after pleas from a local chapter of the American Heart
Assn. and faculty from the Medical College of Ohio.

Many local officials say they discount the concerns about scapegoating
because they do not intend to let up on others who play a role in teen
smoking.

The Medina Police Department is actually finding it easier to enforce laws
against selling tobacco to minors now that the kids are being penalized. A
diversion program instituted this year allows cited underage smokers to
satisfy a community service requirement by acting as testers in "stings" of
the town's store clerks. In Pleasant Plains, population 1,000, the children
say the two stores in town won't sell tobacco without an ID. Yet they have
no trouble securing all they want.

"My mom buys me cigarettes," said curlyhaired Amanda Fulton, 17. She
smiled, baring yellowed teeth, the legacy of a packaday habit begun in
the eighth grade. Parents seem to be a common source here. "I'm not for
smoking at all, so I try to ration them out," said Kevin Kimmons, a
nonsmoking mechanic who provides cigarettes to his 14yearold son, Greg.

"If he didn't get them from me," the elder Kimmons explained, "he'd get
them from someone else or pick them up off the ground." Last school year,
before the law was passed, smoking was already against campus rules. Yet it
was common for students from both the high school and the adjacent middle
school to join bus drivers in an afternoon smoke before boarding for the
trip back home.

Other teens clustered by nearby houses and businesses, discarding so many
butts on private property that neighbors posted "No Trespassing" and "No
Smoking" signs.

This year, during the first week of classes, the principal called two
assemblies for the village president to explain the board's August vote:
$25 for a first offense, $50 for a second, a tobacco education class as an
alternative to a fine.

The police chief said he'd issue warnings for a while before ticketing
begins in earnest. A representative from the American Lung Assn. announced
phone numbers for kids interested in quitting.

Predictably, nonsmokerswho see themselves as a distinct minoritysupport
the new law. "It's real good. They ought to jack the fine up to $100," said
Derrick Butcher, a senior who plays soccer. "I've never had a cigarette and
I don't plan to, but I had to quit hanging around with my friends. They
wanted me to try it." Just as predictably, smokers hate the notion. "What
next? They're going to take our soda because it has sugar?" said Amanda
Eller, a 15yearold freshman.

Newports and Marlborostwo of the three most heavily advertised
brandsare the cigarettes of choice, as common here as silver fingernail
polish (for girls) and buzz cuts paired with gold earrings (for boys). The
name on the box definitely matters. When Greg Kimmons teased Eller by
calling her "Miss Salem 100 Lights," she snapped defensively, 'Those are my
mom's!' " That is not to say the smokers don't care about tobacco's impact
on their health.

"It bothers me a lot," said Fulton, who tried and failed to stop a year
ago. "But there's not much I can do about it." Erik LaFauce, 16, started
smoking in sixth grade and said he's trying to cut back: "I switched from
Newports to Marlboro Lights."