Despite city claim in court filing - Ohio enforcing state tobacco laws

During a hearing last month before a Franklin County judge, the city of Columbus argued that one of the many reasons municipalities must be able to enforce local tobacco regulations is that the special state police unit tasked had last year stopped prosecuting for sales to minors.

The Ohio Investigative Unit, sworn officers empowered to enforce the state's tobacco, alcohol and food-stamp laws, in 2023 "did not make its statewide compliance checks to impose consequences on violators," the city also wrote in its complaint, filed in Franklin County Common Pleas Court as part of its successful bid to overturn a state ban on local tobacco regulations.

"Rather, it is funded by the federal government to conduct these checks for data collection purposes."

However, the state says that's not true.

The Investigative Unit hasn't halted its decades-old statewide tobacco stings, conducting thousands over the last several years, while issuing hundreds of criminal citations to any retail employees who sell cigarettes or other tobacco-related items to minors.

"We have not changed, we have not stopped," enforcing the state's criminal law against selling tobacco to underaged persons, said Enforcement Commander Eric Wolf, whose unit is under the state Department of Public Safety.

The unit issues its misdemeanor citations, which can result in up to 30 days in jail and a $250 fine to the seller. Ohio lawmakers in 2019 raised the age to purchase tobacco, including vaping products, from 18 to 21.

From 2021 to 2023 the Investigative Unit conducted almost 5,500 tobacco-sale compliance checks across the state and issued 873 citations to individuals who illegally sold tobacco to underaged purchasers, who are deliberately sent into stores attempting to make a tobacco purchase, Wolf said.

So far this year, the Investigative Unit has conducted another almost 1,100 compliance checks and issued close to 150 citations statewide, Wolf said.

At the April 19 hearing, where Columbus and other cities argued the state's ban on local tobacco regulations violated the Ohio constitution, city Solicitor General Rich Coglianese suggested to Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge Mark Serrott that the Investigative Unit had, for whatever reason, just stopped doing its job.

"You are correct in what you heard in Friday’s hearing," said Pete Shipley, a spokesperson for City Attorney Zach Klein, when The Dispatch followed up to clarify the city's position in court. "It is our understanding that the Ohio Investigative Unit conducts undercover buys and turns over that data over to the federal government, but no longer prosecutes these cases."

The city provided a news story backing up that assertion, which quoted Keary McCarthy, executive director of the Ohio Mayors Alliance, stating that "absent local compliance checks, there's really no state-level enforcement mechanism to ensure that minors are not being sold tobacco products.”

McCarthy said Friday he was referring specifically to local "tobacco retail licenses," or TRLs, that had been created by numerous city councils, and which gave city health departments enforcement responsibility over them, funded by permit fees. The city of Columbus noted in its complaint that it alone conducted with the city limits more than 1,900 compliance checks in 2023 — almost what the Investigative Unit did statewide.

Wolf acknowledged that there are holes in the state's enforcement plan, including that the Investigative Unit can't take action against a business license for illegal tobacco sales, only against the individual behind the cash register, and that "smoke shops" or other retailers that don't have liquor licenses fall outside of the unit's jurisdiction, and those employees can't be cited.

That's why the unit had slightly more "sales" to minors than citations issued, because the retailer turned out to not have a state license to sell alcohol, Wolf said.

"There are instances where we're completing checks outside of our scope of authority," Wolf said.

At the April hearing, Serrott issued a temporary restraining order stopping a state law from taking effect. And at a hearing Friday, he ruled the state law unconstitutional. The state has indicated it intends to appeal.

wbush@gannett.com

@ReporterBush

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Despite city claim in court filing - Ohio enforcing state tobacco laws