The Division of Alcoholic Beverage & Tobacco Control is planning to issue a memo to all retailers in the CNMI allowing them to use common sense when applying Pubic Law 11-75 to cigarette buyers, most especially senior citizens.<\/p>\n
That law limits the sale of tobacco to persons over 18 years old and requires establishments to ask everyone\u2014regardless of age\u2014to present a government-issued identification card.<\/p>\n
ABTC director David R. Maratita told Saipan Tribune that they are currently working with the Office of Attorney General to come up with a memorandum to specifically address the issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlease understand that we are only enforcing what is written in the law. We are also addressing the issue by working with AG by issuing a memo to try and pacify complaints regarding this mandatory ID carding,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Maratita acknowledged that while the mandatory cigarette carding law has been in existence since 1999, ABTC only began implementing it this year by conducting its Responsible Alcohol and Tobacco Sales and Service Training. <\/p>\n
The workshop is required of all workers of retail outlets that sell alcohol and tobacco on Saipan, Tinian, and Rota.<\/p>\n
\u2018Ridiculous, insane\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n ABTC\u2019s 100 percent mandatory carding of all cigarette buyers caught Senate floor leader Pete Reyes\u2019 ire during a Senate session on Friday.<\/p>\n Reyes, who is retiring after the 18th Legislature, said retail staff should use common sense when carding individuals buying tobacco who are obviously more than 18 years old.<\/p>\n He also called on ABTC to clarify some sections of the law and even requested the Senate to hold a hearing to finally get to the bottom of the issue \u201cthat is coming to be a burden to the community.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cIt is very degrading if a person like me walks into a store and is required to produce an ID. Stores are required to do that or their license will be revoked. But I have yet to see a 17-year-old young man who is like me, with grey hair and aging, who walks into a store to buy cigarettes.\u201d<\/p>\n He also urged his colleagues from Tinian and Rota to support him on the issue because the mandatory 100 percent carding of all cigarette and alcohol purchases will also be applied on the two islands where ABTC will also be conducting its workshops.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is really tantamount to harassment. Are we going to just sit around and not react to this kind of stupidity? I don\u2019t think you should go out and ask a person who\u2019s visibly over 60 years old to produce an ID card. This is ridiculous! This is insane!\u201d<\/p>\n Community reaction<\/strong><\/p>\n ABTC\u2019s 100 percent mandatory carding of all cigarette and alcohol purchases has already created tension in the counters of retails outlets on Saipan.<\/p>\n For instance, a Twins Supermarket Dandan staff said they get shouted and berated almost everyday because of ABTC requiring them to finally apply the law.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s hard but we have to do it because this is what they told us to do during the workshop,\u201d the staff told Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n Department of Public Works staff Rita Ilal said she\u2019s in favor of stricter enforcement of PL 11-75 because it keeps underage youth from buying cigarettes.<\/p>\n The Chalan Laulau resident, however, said that you really couldn\u2019t blame senior citizens who get irritated if retail stores ask for identification cards.<\/p>\n Her 68-year-old father, for example, got worked up because a staff at Hannam store in Koblerville always cards him when he buys his favorite pack of cigarettes, although he already showed them his ID several times.<\/p>\n She said the enforcement doesn\u2019t make sense if staff already knows the person and when he or she is obviously more than 18 years old.<\/p>\n Sen. Paul A. Manglona (Ind-Rota) said he fully supports Reyes\u2019 stand on the 100 percent mandatory carding of alcohol and cigarette purchases. <\/p>\n He, however, confirmed what Maratita said that Attorney General Gilbert Birnbrich is already looking at the issue to come up with a \u201csolution so as not to unnecessarily burden senior citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Division of Alcoholic Beverage & Tobacco Control is planning to issue a memo to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[26,308,1158,38],"class_list":["post-182979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-cnmi","tag-id","tag-pl","tag-saipan-tribune"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182979\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}