Dec 11, 2007 2:54 pm US/Pacific
Smoking Just Got Pricier In LA County
Retailers Will Have to Pay To Sell Tobacco Products
LOS ANGELES (CBS) ―
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If your store has an aisle like this, it's going to cost you. (file)
AP
Soon it could get a little more expensive to be a smoker in LA County. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a measure to charge retailers $235 per year for a license to sell tobacco products, a cost that could be passed along to tobacco product users.
The ordinance prescribes that the added revenue from the licenses is to be used for efforts that discourage youths from smoking, including sting operations aimed at catching vendors who sell to underage customers.
Jennifer Forkish, of the California Growers Association, said in a letter to the board that this ordinance may help expand the black market for cigarettes and other tobacco products. Her recommendation was to only charge retailers who have previously been cited for selling to minors. The board disregarded the suggestion.
Although state law prohibits the sale of tobacco to minors, 10.7 percent of retailers statewide still sell to minors, according to a report provided to the Board of Supervisors. In Los Angeles County, about 30 percent sell tobacco products to minors, according to the report.
There was also opposition to the licenses from within the Board as Supervisors Michael Antonovich and Don Knabe called the licenses a "tax" and urged the board to instead use the money from the 1998 settlement of statewide litigation against tobacco firms to pay for anti-smoking efforts, instead of going after retailers to pay for them.
"Rather than initiate a new tax on the small business owners, who would be paying this, the Tobacco Settlement Funds ought to be used to address tobacco-related education and enforcement throughout our county," Antonovich said.
"This is the best way of moving forward on a very vital program. It does not tax the small businessman, the small businenesswoman and uses the funds that are available," he said.
But Antonovich and Knabe's plan to use $234,841 from the tobacco fund to program in its first year failed. The majority voted with Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.
"I think it would be a terrible precedent," he said. "If we began to use (tobacco fund) money to pay for the licenses of businesses to do business there would be no end to this.
"We did not use the general fund or any other source of tax money to pay for restaurant inspections; the restaurants pay for restaurant inspections. When you need a building inspection, the developer pays for the building inspections. When you want to sell tobacco products under this ordinance ... (that cost) ought to be borne by the business," he said.
According to a county report, most adults who tried smoking had done so at the age of 16. Minors consume 924 million packs of cigarettes each year nationwide, earning the tobacco industry $460 million in profit from underage smokers, the report said.
(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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