Institute Contributes to Undercover Study about Tobacco Sales to Minors
Twelve percent of tobacco retailers in Georgia illegally sell these products to minors, according to the 2008 Annual Synar report conducted by the Georgia Department of Human Resources with assistance from the Vinson Institute Survey Research Unit and the Department of Revenue. The Synar study is an effort to determine the extent to which businesses in the state engage in unlawful tobacco sales to underage customers.
Twenty-three minors from high schools across the state were recruited by the Department of Revenue to gather data for the survey by putting tobacco retailers to the test. The teenagers visited stores and attempted to purchase cigarettes, chewing tobacco, or other tobacco products. If they were successful, the Department of Revenue recorded the results and fined the store $500. Results were also collected from stores that refused to sell the illicit products to the young customers.
The Vinson Institute randomly selected the establishments included in the study from the state's list of businesses with alcohol permits, with the assumption that those businesses were likely to sell tobacco products. In total, 993 stores were included in the sample. Of these, 43 percent were eventually deemed ineligible, either because they did not sell tobacco or because they presented safety issues to the undercover teens.
The Vinson Institute researchers compiled and analyzed the resulting data. They also tested the accuracy of the their sample by canvassing businesses in 11 counties and visually confirming if they sold tobacco products.
"We found that our sample frame was 78.5 percent complete," explained Rich Clark, who manages the Vinson Institute's Survey Research Unit. "We were pleased with that outcome. It was better than we expected."
The study was conducted in compliance with the Synar Amendment, a 1997 federal law requiring that states prohibit the sale of tobacco products to youth under the age of 18. As part of the requirements, states must perform unannounced, random checks annually of tobacco retailers and report the rates of noncompliance to the federal government. The Vinson Institute has been involved in the study since 2002.
The 12 percent rate of noncompliance in the 2008 study was an improvement from the 14.2 percent of Georgia businesses sampled in 2007 that sold tobacco to minors. The national average in 2007 was 10.7 percent, ranging from 22.7 percent noncompliance in Massachusetts to only 3.2 percent in Mississippi.
States are required to maintain a noncompliance rate lower than 20 percent. Conducting the study and reporting the results ensures that Georgia will receive federal money for tobacco prevention programs for minors.
