August 9, 2000

With a few exceptions, Oakdale merchants are still taking the hard line against selling tobacco products to minors.

For the second straight year, the Stanislaus County Department of Health Services sent out county teens between the ages of 14 to 17 to attempt to buy tobacco products. As with last year, the action was spurred by state-released statistics showing tobacco sales to minors on the rise.

"We did the survey to see if we were following the state trend of increased sales to kids and we found we almost mirrored it," said Heather Gruenig Duvall, department coordinator of the department's Tobacco Education Program. "Unfortunately, it seems merchants have become complacent about checking IDs carefully."

That wasn't true for most Oakdale merchants contacted by the teens. Undercover students recruited from local summer school programs, youth organizations and the county health class system attempted to purchase the illegal items from 18 different merchants in the Oakdale area. They were successful twice, meaning 11 percent of the merchants contacted broke the law. In 1999, only one of 17 local merchants were caught selling tobacco.

Health Services personnel are still tabulating results of this year's survey, but preliminary indications are Oakdale came in below the county average, which is thought near the statewide average of 16.9 percent, for the second straight year. Last year, 12.3 percent of store surveyed in the county sold tobacco to under-age buyers.

Comparatively in Riverbank, two merchants out of 11 surveyed this year sold to undercover minors and one was not even on the hit list, but was added on by the buyers themselves.

The final breakdown for the year 2000 will probably not be released for another month, but the initial results are not encouraging, said Duvall.

"Our whole office was kind of disappointed we had this increase over last year because we worked really hard with the stores," she said. "We've provided one-on-one visits and a couple merchant education training seminars."

Even so, the results were much better than a 1994 survey where 54 percent of county merchants were caught selling tobacco to under-age teens. The statewide percentage of 16.9 percent this year represented a 29 percent increase over the previous year.

"The intent was not law enforcement but merely to see what our rates are," said Duvall about the survey. "Because they were up, we may look into getting law enforcement involved. We will be following up with all the stores in the survey letting them know the results. We'll also work with the merchants who were caught to try and educate them."

Reprinted by permission of The Oakdale Leader.