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Compliance Checks Every state in the U.S. has laws prohibiting the sale of tobacco to minors. Yet, each day, another 4,000 kids try their first cigarette. Somehow, in spite of the laws, kids manage to buy cigarettes. To deal with this problem, law enforcement agencies and researchers conduct compliance checks. They recruit kids to try and purchase tobacco and then they record the outcome (sale/no sale) of each purchase attempt. This data is compiled and used to calculate a compliance rate, the percentage of a given set of stores (usually the stores in a particular town or state) that are in compliance with the laws banning tobacco sales to kids. Two federal agencies, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), have collected data from each state regarding compliance checks. Their results indicate that the rate of tobacco sales to youth remains very high. From August of 1997 through March of 2000, the FDA conducted nearly 200,000 compliance checks. Their statistics showed an overall non-compliance rate of 27.7 % 1, meaning that more than a quarter of the stores in the survey sold tobacco to minors. The Synar Regulation, issued by SAMHSA in 1996, requires that states conduct inspections of tobacco vendors to measure compliance with the law. States must work toward lowering their non-compliance rate to 20% or less. Otherwise, they will risk reductions in the federal funding they receive for substance abuse prevention. In 2006, the non-compliance rates ranged from 2.2% in Arkansas up to 19.2% in Kansas.2 In this context, it's pretty clear that compliance checks can be an important tool in the ongoing effort to limit youth access to tobacco.  Footnotes:
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