White River Junction
The customer bases of the convenience stores owned by several attendees include some of the 95,000 Vermonters who smoke. The advocates, who work for the state Department of Health, a local nonprofit and Dartmouth College, want to reach the 400 young Vermonters who begin daily smoking habits each year.
Those at the table were both knowledgeable and curious about the preferences, routines and tastes of Vermont’s current and future smokers.
That smokers put themselves at risk for myriad health problems is no mystery.
“Smoking harms nearly every organ of the body,” according to the National Institutes of Health website. “Cigarette smoking causes 87 percent of lung cancer deaths. It is also responsible for many other cancers and health problems (including) lung disease, heart and blood vessel disease, stroke and cataracts.”
Catherine Hazlett, executive director of Health Connections of the Upper Valley, convened Tuesday’s meeting and provided some numbers, including a 2013 survey that found that 1 in 5 Hartford High School students had smoked a cigar or little cigar in the previous 30 days.
Those in attendance expressed ambivalence about tobacco sales. Bruce Bergeron, co-owner of five New Hampshire and three Vermont Jake’s Market stores, said he was “very conflicted” about selling tobacco products, which account for about 18 percent of revenue. Sale volumes had been declining in recent years, but resumed an upward climb in the last 12 to 18 months, he said. Most tobacco purchases are by customers 30 years old and older, he said.
Tobacco remains on Jake’s shelves, he said: “We’ve never been able to make that final break.”
Ashley McEwan, owner of the Wilder Sandwich Shop, said that after purchasing her store, she did not stock tobacco, but eventually added a few brands in order to avoid sending customers to nearby retailers or into New Hampshire.
“There’s not a lot of profit in it for me,” she said of her cigarette sales, which total about a carton a week but require frequent inventory maintenance and spawn employee theft.
Cigarette sales, she said, “are an absolute pain in the butt to deal with.”
Sheryl Trainor, owner of the Quechee Mobil station, expressed discomfort at the sales of “Budweiser, scratch tickets and cigarettes” to people of limited means.
The Hanover Co-op in 2009 stopped a 17-year run of tobacco sales, said Cathy Maloney, manager of the White River Junction Co-op, yet when her store instituted a no-smoking policy on its premises, it had to beat a retreat.
As employees went elsewhere to smoke and left a trail of butts along the way, neighbors complained. So the store set up a smoking area.
Employees often are smokers, and need a place to do it, said Trainor, who noted it was “easier for me to replace a customer than it is to replace an employee.”
Stephen Washington, a student at the Hartford Area Career and Technology Center, showed a short video he helped make featuring cigarette advertisements outside local convenience stores and gas stations.
Washington urged the dozen or so people at the event to continue their conversation and to include more retailers.
And, McEwan said, perhaps the next gathering should hear from “a couple of kids who do smoke.”
Washington said he knew a couple of young people who were trying to quit and would be glad to talk.
Rick Jurgens can be reached at rjurgens@vnews.com or 603-727-3229.