Arizona stores are increasingly failing undercover tobacco inspections

Fighting for years to curtail the use of tobacco by minors, the Arizona Attorney General's office is seeing an uptick thanks to e-cigarettes.

BY TOM KUEBEL

Jun 1, 2019, 9:31 AM Updated: 3:52 pm

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A high school student uses a vaping device near a school campus in Cambridge, Mass. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

(AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

PHOENIX — Fighting for years to curtail the use of tobacco by minors, the Arizona Attorney General’s office is seeing an uptick thanks to e-cigarettes.

Katie Conner, a spokesperson for Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office failure rates of undercover inspections at stores in Arizona are rising.

“We have a tobacco enforcement unit here at our office and right now our team is seeing more stores across Arizona failing when it comes to selling tobacco to minors,” Conner told KTAR News 92.3 FM on Friday.

“During the fiscal year 2018 the failure rate dropped to 9.8 percent. That’s the lowest annual rate ever recorded by our office, but since then we have unfortunately seen a steady increase.

“By the end of last year it was at 13 percent and so far in 2019 more than 580 inspections have been conducted with a failure rate of 15%.”

The office conducts inspections through a program called Operation Counter Strike. If a store sells a tobacco product to a youth volunteer, the business can be fined up to $1,000.

Operation Counter Strike was started in 2002.

According to Conner, 51% of high school students have tried vaping. A press release by the Brnovich’s office said that e-cigarette use rose to 78% among high school students and 48% among middle school students from 2017 to 2018.

KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Ashley Flood contributed to this report.

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