Smoked out: Undercover stings slash tobacco sales to minors

Shawn Doherty  —  9/12/2008 12:03 pm

One recent afternoon a young woman in a red T-shirt and jeans strolled into the Road Ranger, a 24-hour convenience store and gas station at a busy intersection in Sun Prairie, and asked for a pack of cigarettes.

"Sure!" replied the friendly clerk. "What kind?"

"Marlboro Lights," the customer replied, paying with a $5 bill. The clerk quickly handed her the cigarettes and some change and resumed chatting with her manager.

The clerk didn't know it yet, but she was in big trouble.

The young woman in the red T-shirt, Abbey R. Morgenroth, is a 17-year-old senior at Cambridge High School. She works as a decoy for the city-county health department, running undercover checks on local businesses to see if they're selling tobacco to anyone under 18. So while the clerk was talking with her boss about which beverages in the display case had reached their expiration date, Morgenroth was filling out an inspection report.

"When I was little, I walked to that gas station to buy snacks," she mused. "And now I just busted it!"

Over the past six years, teenage sting operations have been used with great success in Wisconsin to smoke out businesses that break state tobacco laws. Last year tobacco sales to minors reached an all-time low, according to the latest state survey, which found that only 4.5 percent of the businesses monitored in 15,000 undercover checks sold tobacco to young people.

Maybe that figure seems high, but it's a lot lower than 33.7 percent, the rate in 2001, the year before the Wisconsin Wins compliance program began. Wisconsin Wins is the name of the state's public health campaign aimed at reducing tobacco use among young people.

Figures released last month by the Madison and Dane County Department of Public Health report similar success locally. The undercover program Morgenroth and seven other teens are a part of conducted 352 checks of businesses in the city of Madison and Dane County in the first half of this year alone and made only 38 illegal purchases. That means that 10.8 percent of businesses investigated broke the law, compared to 31 percent in the city of Madison in 2001. But the statistic that makes public health advocates happiest is the state's youth smoking rate, which has declined steadily from 33 percent of high school students surveyed in 2000 to 20 percent in 2006.

"Without question there has been a dramatic decrease in the ability of kids to buy tobacco and a sea change in the degree to which society condones the sales of tobacco to minors," said Michael C. Fiore, director of UW's Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention. "This is a huge victory."

Teenage sting operations are one reason for the breakthrough.

Within minutes of the illegal cigarette sale to Morgenroth at the Road Ranger in Sauk Prairie, a tall, stern-faced investigator flashed a badge at the clerk.

"My name is Macklin Martin," he said. "I am an inspector with the Department of Health, and you just sold a pack of cigarettes to a minor."

The clerk's eyes widened and her mouth fell open. For a few seconds, she said nothing and stared. "I'm usually really good about carding people," she eventually said. "I don't know what happened. She just looked like a regular."

Martin asked the clerk for her driver's license, filled out some paperwork, and handed her a citation that would end up costing her $217 and her employer another $217. "Card everyone, Kim. Please," he said, and walked out. (Fines in the city of Madison are only $58.60, an amount some advocates want increased.)

Repeat offenders in both the city and county pay higher fines and frequently also lose their license to sell cigarettes for a few days. But the clerk paid the toughest penalty of all. The day after she made the sale, she was fired.

"I felt sorry for her," said her manager, Tara Hunters, who had been standing nearby during the sale. "But it is company policy."

Morgenroth has been working as an undercover agent for a year. "It does stink that most of them lose their job, but then the next time maybe they won't sell. All they have to do is card people," she said.

Which is what every other one of the dozen or so businesses did that same day in Marshall and Sun Prairie when Morgenroth stepped up to the counter. "Do you have a license?" Abbey was asked over and over as she pleaded for a pack.

"It's tempting to sell to them if you're a struggling businessman, but it's not worth the risk," said Al Fredenberg, one of the merchants who turned the girl away.

Fredenberg, the owner of Spirits et Cetera, a store in Marshall that offers not just tobacco and liquor but videos and tanning beds to customers, was rewarded for his compliance with a certificate of thanks and a Wisconsin Wins sticker for his front door. (Part of the reason for the low number of busts that day might be that at least one clerk got on the phone to warn that a sting operation had hit town, which Martin and Morgenroth suspect is not uncommon in smaller towns. Martin recalled that one Kwik Trip even posted a warning on the Internet.)

The city-county's compliance program employs eight teenagers between the ages of 15 and 17. In the course of an average year, Martin drives one or two of them at a time to all the bars, grocery stores, gas stations, bowling alleys, hotels, restaurants, tattoo parlors, and other businesses that sell tobacco in the area. Pay is $8.17 an hour, and hours are erratic -- whenever kids can fit them into busy schedules.

"This is definitely better than flipping hamburgers or standing at a cash register," said Luke Atterbury, 17, a senior at Middleton High School who juggles the job with school and track practice. "It's fun, and we're helping lower the sale of tobacco."

Profit is not what attracts most kids to the profession. Like many of the teen agents, Atterbury has a personal stake in the battle against underage smoking. "My mom and dad both smoked, until the doctor told my mother she'd get lung cancer," he said. "Quitting was incredibly hard for them. I definitely didn't want to go down that path."

Likewise, making busts is one way Morgenroth battles a habit that she feels helpless to prevent at home.

"When I was 6 years old I was so upset about my mom smoking I would take her cigarettes and bury them in the sandbox," she said. "I didn't know then about addiction. My Dad and I buy my mom nicotine patches and gum, but it doesn't help."

Morgenroth's grandmother died of cancer, and she worries her mother could, too. Morgenroth is a member of a health club at school aimed at educating peers about the risks of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco.

Working as an undercover agent has risks. Teens report that they have been yelled at, laughed at, cursed, kicked out of stores, locked out of stores, and threatened. But they don't worry, they said. Martin takes care of them. Ramrod straight and soft-spoken, Martin spent 17 years as a Chicago police detective investigating gangs. He won't take any guff.

"I have a fear of God but not of man," he said.

Martin sees his job as more education about what he calls "the evil of tobacco" than about enforcement. "I try to explain to the clerks that by refusing to sell a young person tobacco they are perhaps stopping this young person from going down the wrong road," he said.

Indeed, statistics suggest that many youngsters who try cigarettes on a lark end up on a one-way road to addiction and even death. Their growing brains and bodies are especially susceptible, a vulnerability advocates accuse the tobacco industry of exploiting by manipulating the levels of menthol, a substance that makes cigarettes like the Marlboro Lights Morgenroth purchased in Sun Prairie appealing to young smokers. The tobacco industry denies the charge.

The statistics mark the grim road map of addiction, said Spencer Straub, a spokesman for the Tobacco Prevention and Control section of the state Division of Public Health. About 80 percent of smokers become addicted before the age of 18. Every day, more than 4,000 teenagers try their first cigarette, and 1,000 of them will become steady smokers. One third of them will die prematurely, Straub said.

Last month, even more powerful new evidence about the dangers of tobacco for teenagers was released in a report co-authored by UW researchers and published in the journal PLoS Medicine. Working with the University of Utah, UW researchers identified a sequence of genes that makes some teenagers especially prone to tobacco addiction. What was most important about the report, however, was the stunning finding that if a child -- even one with that genetic predisposition -- refrains from smoking until age 18, the danger fades.

"What's key is that the genetic locus for tobacco addiction is elastic," the UW's Fiore said. "If you possess the genetic risk factor and you start smoking before age 17, you have an incredible risk of being doomed to tobacco addiction for the rest of your life. But if you don't become a smoker before age 17, that vulnerability passes away."

The report has profound implications for public health policy, according to Fiore. "Our public policies must continue to focus on doing everything we can, like these sting operations, to protect children while they are at an increased risk," Fiore said.

Yet a high proportion of the buys the 100 teenagers participating in these undercover operations across the state make occur in stores near high schools and even middle schools. Leading culprits in Madison, before they shut down, were two Marathon gas stations near East High School that repeatedly violated the law, Martin said. Gas station convenience stores have higher rates of non-compliance than any other type of business, according to county figures. Last year, inspections of 752 businesses in Madison and Dane County resulted in 88 sales, 57 of which occurred in convenience stores.

Another predictor of which checks will result in buys is the income and poverty level of the surrounding neighborhood, Martin said. About 30 percent of households with an income of less than $25,000 are smoking households, compared to 18 percent of households that earn incomes of $50,000 and higher, according to the most recent Wisconsin Behavioral Risk Factor Survey.

Last year, there were seven repeat offenders. Those merchants might have made the cold-blooded business decision that the profits from selling smokes to eager youngsters is worth the risk of getting caught, conceded Lyle Burmeister, youth coordinator with the city-county's tobacco compliance program. But a more likely explanation for the repeat sales, he said, is that there is still an urgent need to educate and train businesses and the public. That is a daunting challenge given the local program's budget of $159,000, a paltry sum compared to the millions the tobacco industry spends on marketing every year.

The bust at the Road Ranger in Sun Prairie is just one more example of how, despite steady progress, advocates say there is still plenty of work to be done by Morgenroth, Atterbury and the other young agents. Too many clerks, they say, still look the other way -- or smoke themselves.

Not long ago, a teenage decoy asked a clerk working at Walgreens on Verona Road in Madison for a pack of Newports. The cashier correctly guessed that the young customer was underage. But then the clerk added: "I'll sell them to you if you give me one."

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Anti-smoking campaigns make progress, but work still remains

Undercover compliance checks are only one weapon in the campaign to stop Wisconsin kids from smoking. This year's $1 hike of the state cigarette tax to a $1.77 surcharge per pack is another -- and it seems to be working. Public health advocates report that the number of calls to the Wisconsin Tobacco Quit Line (1-800-QUIT-NOW) has quadrupled since the tax hike, and many of those calls are from young smokers.

Clean air ordinances banning smoking in public places are popping up all around the county. And then there are the infamous diseased pig lungs lugged around in a suitcase every year to Madison schools, a gross-out demonstration of the deadly effects of smoking.

Adults claim that these education and enforcement measures have lead to dramatic drops in the number of businesses that sell cigarettes to teens in our county and in the number of teens who smoke in our state.

But what do teenagers themselves say?

Depends.

Interviews with more than a dozen students over the past weekend paint a smokier picture than adults might wish. While high school students all reported that most stores now refuse to sell them cigarettes, all of them also said there's an easy way for underage smokers to get around the law.

Interviews with more than a dozen students over the past weekend paint a smokier picture than adults might wish. While high school students all reported that most stores now refuse to sell them cigarettes, all of them also said there's an easy way for underage smokers to get around the law.

"I just asked one of my older sisters or friends to get me a pack," Lauren Gale said last Friday evening as she and a friend hung out at Memorial High School during the first prep football game of the season.

Gale is a reformed smoker who credits new friends and joining track and cross country teams for helping her quit.

"It was really sad actually," she admitted about the time when she smoked. "I had a lot of problems back then and it was calming to me."

Her friend Caitlyn Slawny, also a sophomore and runner at Memorial, shook her head. "Smoking is disgusting," she said. "It doesn't look like fun to me."

That was pretty much the opinion of other Madison students interviewed Friday during the football game. "It makes me gag," said Meredith Paker, 14, a freshman at Memorial whose hair was still wet from swim practice. Her friend, Hannah Feinstein, also 14 and also a swimmer, said she would never even try a cigarette, and not just because she would get kicked off the swim team if she did.

"We learned in grade school about all the bad stuff that gets into your body from smoking. Why would I ever do it?" Feinstein said. Asked if she knew anybody at all who smoked, Feinstein said, "Not anyone who is my friend."

Students at Madison high schools can name the exact street corners right outside the school property lines where their peers hang out and smoke during school hours. Tobacco possession is illegal for people under age 18, but both police and public health advocates say enforcing that law is impractical.

"A certain group of kids are always standing at the corner smoking. I have to walk past them and it smells so bad," said Hannah Glowacki, a junior at West High. "Smoking is just not cool. It's so bad for you."

Saddled with many nicknames over the years by their non-smoking peers, several students said many kids who smoke are now called "emo," which is slang for someone with emotional issues. Madison students guessed that fewer than 20 percent of their peers smoke.

"It gives you a bad reputation if you do smoke," said Joe Meland, 15, a sophomore at Memorial. "It's gross."

Meland plays in a heavy metal rock band and said "I've already ruined my voice singing. I don't want to ruin it with smoke." Added his fellow sophomore and bandmate, Max Ducklow: "It's a waste of time and money. We have better things to do."

But several teenagers from Sauk City, in Madison to shop at West Towne Mall, described a very different culture around smoking in their small community, where the total population is less than the number of students attending West High and Memorial.

"Everybody goes for non-sobriety for entertainment in a boring, small town like ours," said Erin Burzynski, 16, who was sitting on a bench smoking with two friends outside the mall. The girls said many students at their high school smoke.

"Almost everybody does, except for the hard-core straight edges," Burzynski said.

"Straight edge" is slang for kids who do not smoke, drink, or have sex, the students explained.

Burzynski said she started smoking when she was 14 because her friends and parents did.

"My Dad smoked three packs a day, and my mom quit -- quote, unquote," she said. "She still has ashtrays all around the house."

Burzynski asked the next question herself. "Am I addicted? Yes," she said. "I get pretty stressed if I don't have my pack a day. I know what they say about health is all true, and I should worry, but "

The young woman didn't finish her sentence. Minutes later, she reached into her purse for another cigarette.

Shawn Doherty  —  9/12/2008 12:03 pm