GREAT BARRINGTON — Stiffer penalties are in the works for local stores that get caught selling tobacco to minors, and store clerks who make the sale also will be fined, if a new regulation is passed by the Board of Health next week.
The new regulations, which need a majority vote by the three-member Board of Health to go into effect, also will require anyone who sells tobacco to become “certified” by the Tri-Town Health Department’s Tobacco Awareness Program.

“Our whole effort is in reducing (tobacco) access to minors,” said Peter J. Kolodziej, Tri-Town Health Department’s director.

Summer enforcements

Kolodziej said Pittsfield and Monterey already have amended their tobacco sale regulations, and the towns of Egremont, Lenox, Lee and Stockbridge are in the process of amending theirs. The new rules will be enforced beginning this summer, and retailers will have six months to get their employees certified after the amendments are passed.

The certification classes are two hours long and will be held at Town Hall, according to Health Agent Mark Pruhenski.

Pruhenski is confident that the amendment will be passed Thursday, and eight certification sessions have been tentatively scheduled for the year. He said all local tobacco retailers were notified in advance of the public hearing.
A hinderance for retailers

“I hope (the retailers) show up,” Pruhenski said.

For one store owner, the new regulations, at least in part, are a hindrance.

“We’ve never violated, so why should I have to take a class?” asked John Tracy, the owner of Gorham & Norton Inc., a package store on Main Street. “I know how to read a driver’s license.”

Tracy suggested that the classes be mandatory only for those retailers who have been caught selling tobacco to minors. He said that, although the tobacco awareness classes are free and funded by the state, as a store owner, he will have to pay his employees — six in all — to attend the class.

However, the new fines, which carry maximum penalties of $150 for clerks, $750 for stores and one-year tobacco sale suspensions for both, were met with approval by Tracy.

“(The fines) put teeth into the punishment,” he noted.

Pruhenski said the new regulations are a way to “shorten the leash” on the stores that sell tobacco to minors, and that the current laws, which have been in place for the past eight years, are nothing new.

“There’s no excuse (for selling tobacco to minors),” Pruhenski said. “You just can’t say ‘I forgot the regulations.’ ”

Still, violations happen: Eight of the 16 retailers licensed to sell tobacco in town have been busted once or twice during compliance checks run by the Tri-Town Health Department, and those checks have shown that tobacco sales to minors have increased in the past year, according to Kimberly A. Kelly, the tri-town program administrator.

By making clerks shoulder some of the blame, Kelly surmised, sales to minors may be reduced.

“By putting it on the clerk, they’ll have to think twice before they make the sale,” she said.

The first certification session in Great Barrington is scheduled April 17 at 10 a.m. at Town Hall.

To reach Jessica Willis: jwillis@berkshireeagle.com, (413) 528-3660