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May 27, 2003 Contact: Jim Sellers (503) 945-5738 Program contact: Jeff Ruscoe (503) 945-5901 Radio ad campaign aimed at non-metro retailers starts June 2 An eight-week radio advertising campaign aimed at encouraging tobacco retailers not to sell tobacco products to under-age youth will begin June 2 on radio stations in Eastern Oregon, Southern Oregon and on the south coast. The radio campaign is the final initiative in a federally required effort for Oregon to reduce the rate at which minors can buy tobacco in the state. "For two consecutive years Oregon retailers have met the federal goal of selling tobacco products to minors less than 20 percent of the time," said Barbara Cimaglio, community prevention services manager in the Oregon Department of Human Services (DHS). "These ads remind tobacco retailers that by being careful they can operate legally and reduce the likelihood that under-age youth will get hooked on the nation's leading preventable cause of disease, disability and death." Federal legislation required states to check retailer compliance with federal goals to reduce under-age tobacco purchases beginning in the mid-1990s. After Oregon reported a sales rate of 29 percent for the 1997-98 year, federal officials required the state to invest $944,450 over three years to get the sales rate at or below the 20 percent federal target. The campaign included inspection visits --- an under-age youth accompanied by a plain-clothes retired state police officer tries to purchase tobacco --- to all 2,700 tobacco retailers instead of to a randomly sampled third of them; a merchant education packet for use by retailers with employees, published in English, Spanish and Korean; and recent one-on-one training of retailers where clerks had been cited for selling tobacco to minors. Cimaglio said the increased education and enforcement resulted in under-age sales rates falling to below 17 percent in each of the past two years, with a similar figure expected for this year when final figures are released in June or July. The radio ads are being run outside the Willamette Valley, Cimaglio said, because of a desire to put attention on under-age tobacco sales and to invest advertising dollars in rural areas, which typically have the highest sales rates to minors. The two ads, which will run weekdays on 40 stations, feature teens talking about how easy it is to buy cigarettes illegally and a retail clerk talking about avoiding illegal sales during a hectic workday. Cimaglio said federal officials reduced their original penalty of $1.7 million to $944,450 after giving Oregon credit for the DHS-managed tobacco prevention and education program. That initiative, supported by the state tobacco tax, was suspended in April to help balance the state budget, and its future is being debated by state legislators. "This gives retailers an even more critical role in helping Oregon to reduce tobacco use by under-18 youth, which is when most smokers take up the habit," Cimaglio said. Clerks who sell to buyers under age 18 are subject to a fine of up to $600. |
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