SPOKANE -- It can be easy for children to get their hands on cigarettes. Our cameras were rolling as 15-year-old volunteer girls try to buy cigarettes at a dozen different places in Spokane and Spokane Valley.
The health district goes undercover more than 100 times a year to make sure stores are obeying the law and not selling cigarettes to minors. KREM 2 went along as four stores in our area were caught making the sale.
The health district's tobacco prevention team supervises the underage volunteers as they try to buy cigarettes in the store. Four out of 12 places sold to the girls. Three spots were just down the street from each other in downtown Spokane. Once the girls come back with the pack, it's taken as evidence. Afterward, the supervisor confronts the clerk. One clerk says he assumed the girl was 18. He was visibly upset he got caught.
Just across the street on Second and Division, the 7-11 also sold to the minors. The clerk claimed she typed the wrong birth date in the computer. The state hopes stores comply 80% of the time. In this undercover operation, compliance was just below that.
Each of the clerks who sold to the teens face a $75 fine and may have to take an education course. Some of them could even lose their jobs.
