Alaska regulators, with the help of undercover teenagers, routinely check that store clerks aren't selling cigarettes to minors — but officials say the same checks aren't happening for alcohol or marijuana sales.
It hasn't been that way for long. Regulators about two years ago stopped actively enforcing laws against selling alcohol to minors, said Erika McConnell, director of the state Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office. She said funding from the U.S. Department of Justice dried up.
McConnell said she and her staff are discussing ways to bring back the underage compliance program. She said it's core to her agency's mission.
"One of the whole points of alcohol being a regulated substance is to keep it out of the hands of people who are underage," McConnell said.
McConnell said the agency may join forces with the state Tobacco Enforcement and Youth Education program, which already runs year-round undercover operations to catch clerks who sell tobacco products to minors. That includes the state's nascent vaping and e-cigarette industry, where there's currently no enforcement power despite evidence of loose control over sales to minors, according to Joe Darnell, the chief investigator for the tobacco program.
[New e-cigarette stores in Anchorage fly under state regulatory radar]
To get underage buyers, the state hires paid interns between the ages of 16 and 18, Darnell said. The jobs are posted in the first two months of the year. Interns work on an on-call basis during summer and the holiday breaks, in between sports and vacations, Darnell said.
"We do a training with them, then we take them out and actually go to a store and attempt to buy tobacco," Darnell said. "And we watch it."
The program is based in Anchorage and Juneau, but the agency flies students as far as Barrow and Kotzebue to run the checks, Darnell said.
Statewide, only a small portion of tobacco stores fail the checks and sell to the undercover interns each year, Darnell said. He said that statistic has fallen markedly over the years through outreach and education.
Darnell said his agency used to work more closely with the alcohol control office. But because of the difference in the minimum legal age for alcohol and tobacco, that cooperation ended almost a decade ago, Darnell said. A 19-year-old can legally purchase tobacco but can't buy alcohol or marijuana until the age of 21.
The two agencies are working now to draft a letter of agreement, Darnell said.
McConnell, who started her job in late March, also said she hopes to resurrect the program internally without tapping an outside grant.
Penalties for selling tobacco to a minor in Alaska include an immediate 20-day license suspension. The sale of alcohol or pot leads to a notice of violation on a store's license, which regulators or other officials review when deciding whether to renew the license.
Daniel George, a member of the Mountain View Community Council, said the halt on what's known as "compliance checks" is concerning for Anchorage neighborhoods that want to keep an eye on liquor stores.
George said he learned about the pause when he requested records associated with Brown Jug stores off Mountain View Drive. He said he was told that proactive checks around underage drinking stopped more than a year and a half ago.
The Mountain View Council has regularly protested the renewal of the Brown Jug licenses, and George said he had a record of a 2013 violation in which the store sold to someone who was underage.
"There's no way to show if they're acting better or not," George said. "And when they do poorly comply, there's no way for us to know."
The halt on active underage busts by state regulators also extends to pot shops. The first shop opened in Anchorage in October 2016, and dozens now exist statewide.
There's also no active enforcement against the state's nascent vaping and e-cigarette industry, though that's a problem of state law, said Darnell. He said the state has yet to adopt regulations that would give his agency the authority to enforce laws against selling nicotine products to anyone under 19.
In the absence of enforcement power, Darnell's agency ran a study this summer. Investigators pulled business licenses for 23 vape stores statewide, including 12 in Anchorage.
Darnell said he sent in 16-year-old interns to try to buy nicotine products. Half the stores in Anchorage, and a third of the stores statewide, sold to the underage buyers, Darnell said. There wasn't anything his agency could do about it, he said.
He said he's hoping the Legislature will pass regulations that would give tobacco regulators the authority to extend the enforcement to vape shops.