County reviews 2024 tobacco sales violations
The Crawford County Public Health Department reviewed tobacco sales violation data during the county’s Public Safety Committee meeting on Jan. 14.
Adams and three youths conducted tobacco sales checks on Dec. 27 this past year, testing a total of 23 businesses. There are 37 licensed tobacco/nicotine product retailers in the county.
“We did have five sales. That is the same number of checks as last year and one less sale, which is good, but that’s still over 20 percent,” Public Health Specialist Dawn Adams said.
She called the results “a little discouraging,” even though the county performed slightly better than in 2023.
All five violations this past year came from businesses that were not checked the previous year. Four of the sales were for cigarettes, and one was for nicotine pouches.
The county sends out letters each October notifying businesses that the checks will take place sometime in the last quarter of the year, and the teenagers used for the sales checks do not use any kind of fake identification.
“My youth don’t even take IDs in with them, so they’re not even asking for IDs,” Adams said. “We don’t try to hoodwink retailers. We just go in with normal-looking young people dressed like teenagers.”
Sales violations have risen in the past three years, according to Wisconsin Wins, a statewide campaign to reduce youth access to tobacco products.
Between 2009 and 2019, only seven businesses sold tobacco products to an underage buyer conducting a sales check. In the last three years, that number has more than doubled to 15 businesses, averaging approximately 23 percent of Crawford County’s licensed retailers per year.
For further information, visit wiwins.org.
Communicable diseases
“Everything’s increasing,” Adams said. “Illness is very high in our portion of the state, and it looks like it’s going to keep increasing a bit.”
According to Adams, the county is seeing an upswing in COVID cases over the past month. Additionally, the county is “hearing about a lot of cases of norovirus” from nursing homes and other institutions.
She added that while there are not any reported cases of dairy cattle with bird flu (H5N1) or any reports of human-to-human contraction of the virus, the county is still monitoring the disease.
The Wisconsin Department of Health Services reported the first human contraction of the virus in Wisconsin this past December in Barron County. The virus has been found in commercial poultry flocks in Barron, Burnett and Kenosha counties.
Last week, CNN reported the first person to have a “severe case” of the virus in the United States died in Louisiana. That person was over 65 years old, according to the report.
Other business
• The county expected to conduct interviews for the county’s director of emergency management position on Jan. 21, according to Sheriff Dale McCullick.
