This focus is also derived from Tobacco Control Resource
Center’s (TCRC) Smokefree Communities Project, a community-based academic partnership
with four Boston-area health departments, whose tobacco control program TCRC manages. As
part of this project, TCRC developed the Tobacco Retailer Responsibility Training as an
alternative to punishment for merchants cited for illegal sales to minors. Compliance Monitoring (Executive Summary) describes
the compliance protocols and merchant education efforts of the project. In addition, it
points to the limitations of compliance testing alone as a means to prevent teenage
tobacco addiction and the necessary involvement of the public education and public safety
communities.
Frequent inspections of tobacco retailers improve compliance rates.
But the resources of many communities and states to perform compliance checks are often
limited; and the penalties for the sale of tobacco products to minors are often too small
to serve as significant deterrents. In 1987, TCRC launched a legal action on behalf of two
addicted teen smokers, which asserted that the convenience store chain which regularly
sold tobacco products to these two minors had – by violating MGL c.270, the ban on
tobacco sales to minors – also violated consumer protection law. Kyte v. Store 24,
which was settled in 1991, sought damages for
the harm caused by the minors’ tobacco use and resulting addiction, and changes in
Store 24 policy to prevent illegal tobacco sales to children.
obacco
etailer
esponsibility
nitiative
Overview and Update #1
One special focus of the Tobacco Retailer Responsibility Initiative
(TRRI) is the examination of more effective training, supervisory and point-of-sale
practices as a means of reducing illegal tobacco sales to minors. This was the emphasis of
This focus is also derived from Tobacco Control Resource
Center’s (TCRC) Smokefree Communities Project, a community-based academic partnership
with four Boston-area health departments, whose tobacco control program TCRC manages. As
part of this project, TCRC developed the Tobacco Retailer Responsibility Training as an
alternative to punishment for merchants cited for illegal sales to minors. 
Frequent inspections of tobacco retailers improve compliance rates.
But the resources of many communities and states to perform compliance checks are often
limited; and the penalties for the sale of tobacco products to minors are often too small
to serve as significant deterrents. In 1987, TCRC launched a legal action on behalf of two
addicted teen smokers, which asserted that the convenience store chain which regularly
sold tobacco products to these two minors had – by violating MGL c.270, the ban on
tobacco sales to minors – also violated consumer protection law. 
View the 