THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, January 3, 1997 TAG: 9701030571
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY WARREN FISKE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: 35 lines
Teen-agers who illegally buy cigarettes and the store owners who sell them smokes would be subject to a $500 fine under legislation that Attorney General James S. Gilmore said he will support in the upcoming General Assembly session.
The current maximum fine for teens under 18 and store owners is $50.
``It's a slap on the wrist,'' said Mark Minor, a spokesman for Gilmore, this year's presumptive GOP nominee for governor. ``We're trying to put some real teeth into teen-age-smoking laws.''
Gilmore also will propose turning over enforcement of laws on teen-age smoking to the state's Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. The laws are now under the domain of local police departments and are enforced unevenly around the state, Gilmore said.
The teen-smoking laws were on long list of bills that Gilmore said Thursday he plans to support in this winter's General Assembly session. The legislature will convene Wednesday. Gilmore reiterated earlier promises to reserve $250 million a year of the state's Literary Fund - collected from traffic and court fines - for school construction. Now, $80 million reserved for building schools.
The attorney general also proposed increasing penalties for church arsonists. He promised to push for such legislation last summer in the wake of a wave of fires at black churches. ILLUSTRATION: The attorney general wants the state to handle
enforcement oif laws on teen smoking, for consistency.