Youth Access Tobacco Enforcement Program Report April 1, 2016 – March 31, 2017 1 Questions or requests for additional copies of this report: New York State Department of Health Bureau of Community Environmental Health & Food Protection Tobacco Enforcement Program Empire State Plaza - Corning Tower Room 1395 Albany, New York 12237 Telephone: (518) 402-7600 Fax: (518) 402-7609 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Special thanks go to the local health department enforcement officers, the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs and the youth who participated in the access compliance check surveillance program. For more than 19 years, these dedicated agencies and individuals have been the leaders in the State’s effort to increase retailer compliance with the public health law in our communities. Staff of the New York State Department of Health’s Bureau of Community Environmental Health and Food Protection, Tobacco Enforcement Program prepared this report with data provided from the local enforcement officers, other state agencies and programs within the Department of Health. The New York State Department of Health’s Tobacco Control Program and the New York State Education Department supplied information regarding tobacco use and trends among minors. The State Department of Taxation and Finance provided registration and revenue data. The Department of State’s Office of Fire Prevention and Control supplied data regarding fires. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ……………………………………………………………………………………….. 3 PROGRAM OVERVIEW………………………………………………………………………. 4 PROGRAM PURPOSE ………………………………………………………………………… 7 STATUS AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS …………………………………………………….… 7 APPENDICES ……………………………………………………………………………………17 APPENDIX 1: Number and Type of Investigations, April 1, 2016 - March 31, 2017. APPENDIX 1A: Sale to Minor Violation Rate by County, 5 year Summary APPENDIX 2: Penalized Tobacco Retailers and Vendors, April 1, 2016 - March 31, 2017. APPENDIX 3: Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) Comparison – New York State Results for, 2009, 2011, 2013 and 2015 APPENDIX 4: 2016 National Youth Tobacco Survey - New York State Results APPENDIX 5: Allocation of Tobacco Enforcement Program Funding, April 1, 2016 - March 31, 2017. APPENDIX 6: New York State Fire Reporting System Tobacco Related Fire Statistics, January 1, 2016 – December 2016. 4 PREFACE The purpose of New York’s Adolescent Tobacco Use Prevention Act (ATUPA) is to aid in reducing morbidity and mortality caused by tobacco use by reducing children’s access to cigarettes and other tobacco products. It has been well documented that most smokers begin before they are 18 years old and half before they are 15. Many people who start smoking as youth find it nearly impossible to quit during their lifetime. For more than 19 years, state and local enforcement officials have been increasingly successful at reducing youth access to tobacco products and improving retailer compliance with the Adolescent Tobacco Use Prevention Act, realizing a reduction in the rate of non- compliance by retailers from 19.0% in 1997 to 5.79% in 2016-2017. The Adolescent Tobacco Use Prevention Act requires retailers to obtain positive proof that the person buying cigarettes is over the age of 18. Retailers found in violation of this law are subject to fines and loss of their tobacco registrations and lottery licenses for repeated violations. The law also limits the location of vending machines and limits the venues in which free tobacco products can be distributed. These enforcement measures are aimed at making tobacco products less accessible to minors and are a part of the State's comprehensive anti-smoking program. This Annual Report is prepared by the Tobacco Enforcement Program, located in the New York State Department of Health’s Center for Environmental Health. The report covers the period April 1, 2016 to March 31, 2017. The report includes the following information: ▪ Number of tobacco compliance checks that were conducted; ▪ Names and addresses of tobacco vendors who sold tobacco products to youth and were penalized; ▪ New York State results of 2015 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS); ▪ Tobacco sales data from the State Department of Taxation and Finance; and ▪ Tobacco-related fire injury data from the Department of State’s Fire Reporting System. During the 2016 – 2017 program year, state and local enforcement officers conducted 29,552 inspections of tobacco retailers to assess compliance with the State’s Public Health Law (Adolescent Tobacco Use Prevention Act). Of these inspections, more than 22,395 included unannounced compliance checks where minors attempted to purchase tobacco and other restricted products under the direct supervision of the enforcement officials. An additional 7,157 visits were made to determine compliance with Department of Health signage requirements and Department of Taxation and Finance registration requirements, to educate retailers about the Public Health Law, to verify vending machine supervision and location compliance and to investigate complaints. A total of 985 enforcement actions were taken for sales of tobacco products to minors and more than $922,000 fines were assessed. In the last 19 program years, State grants totaling nearly $87.7 million have been awarded to local enforcement officials to implement the Tobacco Enforcement Program, which resulted in a decline in the rate of retailer non-compliance from 19.0 percent to 5.79 percent. From September 1997 to March 2017, more than $35.8 million in fines have been levied against 46,844 retailers for selling tobacco to minors. The Department of Taxation and Finance has suspended the registrations of 3,198 tobacco retailers as a result of multiple enforcement actions for selling tobacco products to youth. There were also 868 lottery agent licenses suspended for multiple sales to minors. Of the 685,103 compliance inspections that have taken place during the 19 years, 498,128 (72.7%) were conducted with the assistance of minors attempting to purchase tobacco products. 5 New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) Center for Environmental Health Youth Access Tobacco Enforcement Program Annual Report April 1, 2016 – March 31, 2017 Program Overview In March 2017, the NYSDOH completed its nineteenth program year of statewide youth tobacco access enforcement. As part of the State’s continued commitment to preventing youth access to tobacco, $5.27 million was awarded to local enforcement officers to determine and enforce retail tobacco vendor compliance with Article 13-F of the Public Health Law, also known as the Adolescent Tobacco Use Prevention Act (ATUPA). This report covers the twelve-month period from April 1, 2016, through March 31, 2017. The ATUPA enforcement program is part of the State's comprehensive tobacco control initiative, the New York State Tobacco Control Program (NYS TCP), administered by the Bureau of Tobacco Control (BTC) in the Division of Chronic Disease Prevention. In 2016-2017, the NYS TCP was funded through a state appropriation of $39.3 million and three grants from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) totaling $2.7 million. The goals of the NYS TCP’s comprehensive tobacco control program are to prevent the initiation of tobacco use among youth and young adults, promote adult tobacco use cessation and eliminate exposure to secondhand smoke, with a focus on populations disparately affected by tobacco use and related health consequences, i.e., those with low income, low educational attainment, poor mental health and/or substance use disorders. NYS TCP’s evidence-based, population-level and policy-driven interventions strive to accelerate tobacco control in New York State. BTC funds and manages statewide and community programs to work towards achieving environmental change on the state and local level and expand tobacco dependence treatment by medical and mental health care systems. Statewide and local level actions are used to change the community environment to support and reinforce the State’s tobacco-free norm and denormalize tobacco use through education and mobilization. BTC funds Advancing Tobacco-Free Communities grantees, which consist of two components – community engagement and youth action, branded as Reality Check. Community engagement entails educating local community members, organizations, employers, decision-makers and policymakers about the harms of tobacco use and secondhand smoke exposure to change public opinion about tobacco and tobacco use. Grantees implement a coordinated set of evidence-based strategies to build public and organizational support to foster environments that demand policy change to reduce the impact of retail tobacco product marketing on youth and eliminate secondhand smoke exposure in the places where people live, work, learn and play, including multiunit dwellings and outdoor spaces. Reality Check grantees engage middle- and high school-age youth from diverse economic and cultural backgrounds to change community norms about tobacco use. Reality Check aims to achieve this goal through activities aimed at deglamorizing and denormalizing tobacco use in the youths’ communities and by exposing the tobacco industry’s manipulative and deceptive marketing practices. Through civic engagement, youth program initiatives include community education linked to social action, media advocacy, community and media events, and advocacy with organizational decision-makers to advance tobacco-free norms through policy change. 6 Health systems transformation strategies address tobacco dependence treatment