Two other laws were enacted in the 1996 session that affected youth access restrictions. HB 1416, sponsored by Del. Bill Mims was intended to require photo identification to prevent youth sales. As introduced, the law required a retailer to ask for photo ID unless the retailer had reason to believe that the purchaser was older than 30. Appearance was not to be a defense in the case of violation. The bill was heard in the House Courts of Justice committee, chaired by Del. Almand, where it was substituted with weaker language on February 10 by a vote of 15-7 that only required the vendor to ask for proof of identification “from an individual whom the person has reason to believe is at least eighteen years of age or whom the person knows is at least eighteen years of age.” Additionally, if the retailer had asked for and reasonably relied upon photo ID provided, the retailer could use this as a defense against an action brought for violation. In this form, HB 1416 passed both houses and was signed by Gov. George Allen in April. This weak bill represented a victory for tobacco retailers and the tobacco industry. HB 1231, introduced by Del. Connally, was also passed in 1996. As introduced, it required that any vending machine that dispensed tobacco products had to be located at a restaurant, hotel, private club, tobacco store, or a jobsite where there is an “insignificant portion” of workers under the age of 18. Vending machines in restaurants, hotels, and motels were required be located within the “line of sight” of the proprietor. Also, proprietors whose vending machines operated in restaurants, hotels, or motels had the option of converting the machines to accept only tokens, which required photo ID to purchase, and would override the other restrictions on placement. HB 1231 was heard in the same committee as HB 1416 and was also amended to remove the specific establishments that could utilize vending machines, and instead permitted vending machines in any place that was not open to the general public and not generally accessible to minors. If the vending machine was in a place open to the public,cannabis indoor growing systems line-of-sight placement was required, unless the machine was at least 10 feet away from a public entrance or required tokens to operate.

The Department of Agriculture was authorized to conduct compliance checks. In this form, the bill passed both houses and was signed by Allen in April. This represented a tobacco industry victory; research has shown that provisions like those of HB 1231 are ineffective in reducing youth access to tobacco products from vending machines; the only effective method to reduce access is to locate vending machines in adult-only areas venues.Both HB 1231 and HB 1416 were, according to a PM timeline of AAA activity, supported by the cigarette manufacturers and their allies, and that PM actively “worked for their enactment.”PM noted that “all segments of the [tobacco] industry” favored the enactment of both bills.We were unable to identify any role that the health advocates played in the enactment of either of these bills. Since youth access laws were first on the books in Virginia, enforcement had been the responsibility of local law enforcement agencies, which rarely acted. Tobacco Institute lobbyist and former attorney general Anthony Troy had first proposed the idea of using the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Board to enforce youth access laws in 1994, but it took until 1997 for the idea to gain traction. By that time, Gov. George Allen was in office and making youth access laws a priority of his administration. This was due in part to pressure from tobacco control advocacy groups like the Coalition on Smoking OR Health, which conducted petitions and media events in early 1995 as part of a campaign called “Kids Against Tobacco.”The campaign sought to publicize the areas that children were not completely protected from cigarette smoke, such as public schools where teachers were allowed to smoke in staff-only areas.In addition, it is likely that Allen was responding to publicity surrounding the federal Synar Amendment. The concern over youth access was also a product of the gubernatorial race between Republican Gilmore and Democratic Lieutenant Governor Don Beyer. Incumbent Governor George Allen  had appointed new members of the ABC board who supported their agency taking on an enforcement role. This action served to shore up Allen’s credentials in fighting youth smoking rates, and both Gilmore and Beyer competed to be the “toughest” on youth smoking issues.

Troy and Allen worked together on the ABC enforcement issue and agreed that Allen, and not Troy, would be given credit for the move if it came to fruition.Allen’s Attorney General, James Gilmore, was also strongly supportive of the ABC proposal, positioning himself with respect to Beyer on the campaign issue.Gilmore had close ties to the tobacco industry, having attended a Philip Morris fundraising event for his campaign on a Philip Morris corporate jet in March 1997, where he received a $20,000 check from Philip Morris.In 1996, he had accepted $12,000 from Philip Morris in campaign contributions. In 1997, the Tobacco Institute conducted at least one major fundraising even on his behalf.The legislative vehicle for the ABC legislation that Allen and Troy agreed upon in 1997 was HB 2530, introduced by Del. Bill Mims . As introduced, HB 2530 allowed members of the ABC and their agents to issue a summons for any violation of tobacco access laws. Tobacco control advocates were not impressed by HB 2530. While it was generally agreed on all sides of the issue that ABC agents were competent theoretically to enforce youth access laws, questions were raised by health advocates about whether resources existed to enforce the law. Concerning the former, Gilmore said that as governor he would ensure that the ABC agents would get additional funds to conduct enforcement activities if they requested them. Carter Steger of ACS welcomed that statement, but just after HB 2530 was introduced stated to the press that she was “extremely worried about the establishments that sell cigarettes but not alcohol. The smaller the store, the more likely the sale.”ABC agents responded by saying that they would study the costs of going into these retail outlets where they usually did not operate and would request additional funds if necessary. They also noted that the ABC board was self sustaining, generating more revenue on its own than it withdrew from the state’s general budget, which they felt would alleviate some the resource-scarcity concerns.As passed, the law changed very little. In its final form, the bill removed the word “member” from the language, simply stating that agents of the ABC were allowed to issue summons for violations. The bill was enacted with an emergency clause by the governor’s amendment, which meant the law took effect at the moment it was signed on April 2.

Gilmore counted HB 2530 as a major legislative victory in his position as Attorney General.In the 1998 session, Almand presented a bill, HB 1368, which called for licensing tobacco retailers, the provisions that had been stripped from the AAA bill he had introduced in 1996 as HB 853. The bill was supported by officials at ABC, who recognized that licensing would allow them to identify more retailers to conduct compliance checks. In 1998, only 8,000 tobacco retailers were on the ABC roster,vertical racking system less than half of the total number of tobacco retailers in Virginia. This facet of the bill was also welcomed by health advocates, including Neal Graham, director of youth control programs at the Virginia Department of Health . Steger from ACS also welcomed the move, stating that it would increase the ability of Virginia to conduct youth enforcement activities.Additionally, with Master Settlement Agreement talks underway , the ABC and the Board already authorized to check for youth access compliance per HB 2530 which had passed in 1997, ABC favored by Gov. Gilmore as a potential tobacco control agency.Opponents, including Troy from the Tobacco Institute and legislators like Del. Eric Cantor , said that the licensing bill was premature and that Virginia should wait for guidance from the federal level before enacting anything.Retailers also opposed the bill. Initially, Gilmore opposed the licensing plan and suggested that instead of licensing retailers to gain access to information useful for enforcement and compliance checks, that the Virginia Tax Secrecy Act be amended to give ABC access to state information about tobacco wholesalers, which could be used to create a list of tobacco retailers.Tobacco control advocates pounced on Gilmore’s suggestion, with ALA executive director Kurt Erickson noting that licensing is “one of the best tools for cracking down on folks who sell tobacco to minors.” Erickson also questioned why Virginia needed to “go to the federal government to get a list of tobacco retailers in its own state? It makes no sense.”Eventually, the bill died after Gov. Gilmore created a compromise that satisfied most parties, including health advocates. HB 1368 was dropped and HB 1430 was introduced at the request of the governor. HB 1430 was carried by Del. Almand, and gave the ABC access to records formerly secret under the Virginia Tax Secrecy Act that allowed the ABC to use state tax records to compile a database of retailers. The bill also gave ABC the power to use the records for purposes of inspection and enforcement. However, the bill did not give VDH or the Virginia Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation, and Substance Abuse Services access to the information despite the fact that they were responsible for monitoring retailer compliance.Health advocates and the administration were enthusiastic about the compromise, which allowed them to strengthen youth sales oversight without dealing with the divisive licensing issue.

Kurt Erickson, director of the Northern Virginia ALA, said to the press that Gov. Gilmore should be “commended for such a swift and deliberate response” to the licensing issue.Ultimately, Gilmore signed the bill into law in April after it was approved by both houses. Speaking to the press just before HB 1430’s passage, Steger credited the evolution of the youth smoking issue on national events, mainly the settlement with the tobacco industry that was then being debated, saying “What’s happened on a national level has filtered down even to Virginia. It’s given legislators the cover they need to achieve things they probably wouldn’t have touched in the past.”She also said that while advocates had desired licensing, the compromise had given the state knowledge of who was actually retailing tobacco, which was desperately needed. Other advocates, like ACS lobbyist Sarah Bedard, said the compromise would give them political strength to push the following year for licensing and for vending machine bans.Cooperation between tobacco growers and the tobacco industry notably declined between 1997 and 2008 due to political and economic ramifications of changes made to the U.S. tobacco market during that period. Starting in 1933, the U.S. tobacco market had been regulated by the federal Tobacco Price Support Program operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The program was established to improve tobacco producers’ income through control of supplies, as well as to protect the market from manipulation by tobacco manufacturers trying to keep prices low as they had under the auction system prior to 1933. The program included two primary components: 1) an acreage allotment and an annually-set poundage quota for tobacco growing based on demand from tobacco product manufacturers, and 2) a price support system guaranteeing a minimal price for tobacco grown within the quota system not purchased at auction. This system created tobacco quota holders who had the exclusive right to grow tobacco; they could also lease that right to other farmers. The Tobacco Price Support System operated effectively through the early 1990s, but as tobacco manufacturers began to use more foreign grown tobacco and poundage quotas began to decrease correspondingly, tobacco grower organizations began to support eliminating the quota system. Growers argued that the quota system put U.S. growers at a competitive disadvantage because of the costs associated with leasing quotas to separate growers, that the price support system could be manipulated by tobacco manufacturers and that the acreage quota locked growers into producing tobacco with land that could be profitably used for other crops.In the late 1990s, several proposals circulated in the federal government to eliminate the quota system, all of which would have included a “quota buyout” to compensate existing quota holders .