ASKING AGE AND IDENTIFICATION MAY DECREASE MINORS ACCESS TO TOBACCO

Background. Many merchant education programs entail efforts to increas e cashiers' requests for minors' age and/or identification (proving th emselves old enough to purchase cigarettes) as a means of decreasing m iners' access to tobacco. However, whether such questions are actually associated with decreased sales to minors has never been investigated . We present the first investigation of the role of such questions in sales of tobacco to minors. Methods. Thirty-six miners, representing e qual numbers of girls, boys, whites, blacks, and Latinos and of 10-, 1 4-, and 16-year-olds, each attempted to purchase cigarettes once in ea ch of 72 stores, for a total of 2,567 purchase attempts. The frequency of asking the children their age and/or for identification (ID) was a nalyzed along with the role of these questions in subsequent sales. Re sults. The data revealed that requesting age/ID was rare (occurring 17 % of the time) despite the laws in California requiring clerks to do s o. When age was asked, however, miners were refused cigarettes 95.8% o f the time, and when ID was requested, they were refused cigarettes 99 .0% of the time. Asking for ID may be more strongly associated with de creased sales than asking age. For example, for 16-year-olds, asking a ge decreased sales from 57.2% (when no questions were asked) to 8.5% o f the time, and asking ID decreased sales to 2.4% of the time. Conclus ions. These data provide empirical support for the widespread belief t hat the success of interventions with retailers can be improved by enh ancing efforts to increase merchants' requests for children's ID. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.