Choose your tyrant

When a debate in the Maine House of Representatives is rife with impassioned references to such monstrous tyrants as Hitler and Stalin, one could assume that (a) the very foundations of freedom are imperiled or (b) somebody’s overreacting a bit.

In the case of this week’s debate on LD 14, the correct answer is (b). The bill, sponsored by Rep. Paul Waterhouse, seeks to bar underage teens from participating in a program to check the compliance of stores with the law prohibiting the sale of tobacco products to anyone under age 18.

This program, initiated in all 50 states in 1997, has been part of a remarkably successful effort to reduce Maine’s nation-leading incidence of teen smoking. The participating youths are 16 or 17 years old and are all volunteers, most already are active in a school or community substance abuse prevention effort. After a period of training, they enter stores in pairs – always supervised by both an adult civilian and a police officer – and attempt to purchase tobacco. They do not lie about their ages, they do not present false identification, they merely ask for a pack of smokes. And since the law, state and federal, requires proof of age for anyone under 27, an illegal sale that might result can hardly be the result of an honest mistake.

More than 5,000 random unannounced inspections since 1997 have turned up 532 violations, led by a major case of 27 violations by two Big Apple stores last year. The program is administered by the Maine Sheriff’s Association, 20 to 30 youths participate at a time (a total of 131 since it began) and the compliance rate of stores has improved dramatically. Four years ago, a dreadful 44 percent of attempts to buy tobacco products illegally were successful; by last year, non-compliance was down to 6 percent.

Rep. Waterhouse and his supporters mentioned none of this when convincing their colleagues to make the law against underage tobacco sales essentially unenforceable. Instead, the program was described as something the aforementioned dictators would have dreamed up and, even worse, the volunteer teens portrayed as squealing, sneaky secret police trainees trying to entice innocent merchants into, as Rep. James Skoglund put it, “doing evil.”

All that orating left little time, apparently, for such points as these: with this new law, Maine would have the distinction of being the only state not actively trying to stop underage tobacco sales; the alternative enforcement approach called for in the bill does not exist, nor did its supporters even talk to the relevant health or law-enforcement officials about one; two states (Idaho and Wyoming) scrapped their versions of this program two years ago and now have reinstated them, as non-compliance soared and honest merchants complained.

Happily, the Senate solidly rejected LD 14, so, unless the upper chamber suddenly gets bit by the conspiracy bug (or by the tobacco lobby), this bill will languish and the sad little House debate nothing more than a momentary embarrassment.

Interestingly, this is the second time in two years such a House-Senate split on this issue has developed. Nothing prevents the House from doing this again two years hence, but before that happens, perhaps representatives would consider a few other details left out of their debate. Despite significant recent improvement, Maine still leads the nation in teen smoking. As health care costs soar, the link between this state’s poor overall health status and its difficulty in attracting new businesses becomes more clear.

Since the 1998 settlement between Big Tobacco and the states, the industry actually has expanded its increasingly subtle marketing efforts aimed at youth and now spends a whopping $8 billion a year trying to recruit new nicotine addicts. Call it tyranny of a different sort.