Tobacco sales to kids drop

Fewer Iowa retailers were willing to sell tobacco products to underage Iowans last year according to a year-long state health department study. Janet Zwick is director of the Division of Substance Abuse and Health Promotion.Zwick says last year’s survey of hundreds of retailers statewide found a three-percent drop in the number of retailers who’d sell to minors, which Zwick says is a step in the right direction. The latest compliance check found 33-percent of retailers breaking the law.The compliance checks were performed by undercover law officers who would enter or monitor stores as underage recruits tried to buy cigarettes and other tobacco products.More than five-thousand Iowa retailers sell tobacco products. The compliance checks last year involved about 500 of them.