FDA Working Harder To Prevent Smoking By Kids

The Federal Drug Administration is stepping up their enforcement effort to try to prevent tobacco sales to children.

More than a thousand retailers across the nation are getting a warning about selling tobacco products to kids.  It's not like these warnings have not come before, but now, Dr. Lawrence Deyton of the Federal Drug Administration says the most common problem his agency finds is when retailers don't check the ages of customers.  Many sales are attributed to retailers who could have stopped the sales simply by making sure they check id's.

Deyton says retailers are required to check ids, and verify the age of anyone under 27.  Deyton says 12-hundred retailers are getting letters from the FDA about violations of the regulations on selling tobacco products to kids.

Now, retailers who continue to violate the law could lose their right to sell tobacco products. He notes that over 80 percent of adults who use tobacco start as kids and says many of those kids buy the products from retailers.