NORTH SUBURBAN TOBACCO COMPLIANCE PROJECT

North Suburban Tobacco Compliance Project (NSTCP) offers law enforcement, decision makers, vendors and communities a proven and comprehensive method to ensure youth don’t have access to tobacco. NSTCP recruits, trains and maintains all youth buyers. All youth are trained, follow a specific protocol, are professional and continually receive feedback after each time they assist. Each student receives a gift certificate to reimburse them for their time or verification of service hours completed.

NSTCP Trainings

NSTCP holds two scheduled tobacco vendor trainings per year open. These trainings are open to all vendors in participating cities and cost nothing to the vendor. Program coordinator Katie Engman is also available to provide onsite vendor trainings when requested and has done this multiple times. This allows for all employees to be present at the training, provides individualized attention and also offers flexibility to the vendors. Training materials are also available for vendors.

After the tobacco compliance check is completed, a certificate is sent by NSTCP to notify vendor management the store has passed a tobacco compliance check. This saves time for law enforcement, as they do not need to go in after each check and notify the vendor.

All tobacco compliance check results are tracked to create a longitudinal look at trends. Each city receives its results, so it can identify problems and celebrate success in reducing youth access to tobacco. All results are communicated to city, county and state elected officials.

The cost of the program is based on a per vendor ratio. State law allows for cities to charge a tobacco license fee large enough to cover all enforcement and administrative costs. The only limitation is that the fee should not exceed the direct and indirect costs in issuing the license and policing the licensed activities. The fee for participation in the North Suburban Tobacco Compliance Project could fall under this category. The project continues to receive a grant from the Association for Nonsmokers-MN to offset each city’s cost to participate in the program.

Learn how to conduct compliance checks during the COVID-19 pandemic here.

For more information:

Katie H. Engman
Project Coordinator

(651) 646-3005 x314
katie@ansrmn.org