Tobacco Licensing Is Merely a Ruse

* I read with great interest Jerry Hicks’ July 5 column about tobacco licensing being considered by Marilyn Pritchard, head of the Orange County Tobacco Use Prevention Program.

I enthusiastically applaud Pritchard’s important initiative. Hicks also mentioned the tobacco licensing ordinances enacted last year by San Mateo and Contra Costa counties, as well as the 14 states with tobacco licensing laws.

What you need to know is that through these tobacco licensing ordinances, the boards of supervisors and officials from the public health departments of San Mateo and Contra Costa counties are perpetrating a cruel fraud on the citizens of both counties, especially their young people.

Officials from both counties have loudly claimed the ordinances will reduce illegal tobacco sales to minors and help curb teen smoking. In truth, the ordinances will do neither.

Under political pressure from tobacco retailer groups, county elected and health officials secretly ensured the ordinances will not result in the active enforcement of the 107-year-old state law prohibiting tobacco sales to minors, the only proven way to significantly reduce tobacco sales to minors over the long run.

They achieved this masterful piece of political deception by making sure the ordinances will not result in increased tobacco sales enforcement operations. This is exactly what the retailer groups wanted.

RICK KROPP

Chico