by Marty Brown
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jan 27/97) -

Television shows, T-shirts, slogans and the smoking police are all working to discourage teenagers from smoking. And during national Non-smoking Week, things have escalated.

The entire "Alive" & Well" teen television program broadcast on TVNC Jan. 22 was devoted to teen smoking.

Hosts Peggy Holroyd and Michael Akitteq interviewed teen smokers and examined the pros and cons of the habit, the ways to quit and ways never to start.

They talked to adults wrestling with the addiction, opened the phone lines to concerned callers and showed a video -- Up In Smoke -- on the mind games smokers play with themselves.

The program was well received producer Ross Burnet said.

"When we went off the air, there were 12 calls waiting. People were watching."

The message, it seems, is getting across. But if it doesn't, there's always the smoking police.

Norm Tunke is a tobacco enforcement officer with Health Canada in Edmonton who travels to the Northwest Territories.

Recently he spoke to 37 cigarette retailers in Yellowknife about the Tobacco Sales to Young Persons Act.

"The act states it's against the law to sell tobacco to persons under 18. If in doubt, ask for picture ID," Tunke said.

A year after the Act became law, Tunge visited Yellowknife to see if the education process worked.

He hired individuals between 15 and 16 years old that look their age and sent them to attempt to buy cigarettes.

"It's not entrapment because they don't actually buy them, they just ask for them," Tunke said. "If the retailer doesn't ask for ID, we send them a warning letter."

The next step is to go through the process again with the same retailer.

This time the undercover teen actually buys cigarettes if the retailer will sell them.

Then charges are laid. Fines range from $1,000 for the first offence to $50,000 for the fourth.

In the latest test of 37 retailers in Yellowknife, six were prepared to sell to underage purchasers.

"That's extremely good: 83 per cent complied with the act in Yellowknife opposed to the national average of 60.5 per cent," said Tunke. "I was encouraged."

He's already done the educational end of the program in Inuvik and isn't sure where he'll be next. In other words, the smoking police could turn up anywhere.