She's no smoker, but Carli Seeba's desk is full of tobacco products. There's watermelon and cherry-flavored cigars, dissolvable tobacco strips and chewable mints laced with the stimulant. Seeba, 27, said she wasn't carded for most of her purchases in Summit County; one retailer even let her behind the counter to pick out what she wanted.

“It's so easy for kids to go to the store and just buy (tobacco products),” she said.

Seeba is a community prevention coordinator at the Summit Prevention Alliance, where she works to restrict youth access to tobacco products in Summit County. She's concerned about how the products are marketed to minors through the use of enticements like neon pink wrapping, fruit flavoring or pictures of animals on the package. She's also worried about availability: Many Summit High School students she talked to said it's easy for them to purchase tobacco.

Seeba has the numbers to back up her concerns. Over 60 percent of underage Colorado high schoolers were sold cigarettes when they tried to buy them, she said, and a 2008 study found Summit County has one of the highest rates of illegal tobacco sales to minors in the state. About 90 percent of adult smokers first tried tobacco before the age of 18, she said.

“If you can keep it out of their hands until they're of age there's virtually no chance that they'll ever start using it,” she said. “We really just want to protect the kids.”

An attendant at Farmer's Korner Gas, who didn't want to be named, said the kids at the high school behind the store know not to buy from him. He always points to one of two signs whenever he's asked — one on the wall behind him and the other on the counter — saying the legal age to buy is 18.

Licensing

Colorado is one of seven states that does not require tobacco retailers to have a license.

Seeba said this means there's no way to monitor or check who's selling the products; she has heard of people in Denver selling cigarettes out of their apartments. And most people she talks to about it, including retailers, aren't aware there isn't any licensing in place.

“To me it's just wrong,” said David Helmer, attorney at Helmer & McElyea in Frisco. Helmer is working with the alliance to see what licensing would look like in Summit County, a process started in the last few months.

Seeba said California recently passed a law allowing licensing, community by community. In Colorado, there are currently 10 counties working toward ordinances. Woodland Park passed licensing rules, but Seeba said it's not enforced and is in the process of being repealed.

“What studies have shown is if you do these compliance checks before a licensing law is passed, you get 60 -70 percent who are noncompliant, meaning they're selling to kids all the time,” Seeba said. “Once the licensing laws pass and there's compliance checks regularly, it drops down to about 4 -7 percent. In other communities around the country, it's proven to be very effective in preventing sales to youth.”

Seeba said the best way to keep tobacco products out of the hands of minors is to decrease the visibility of tobacco products in the store, restrict tobacco sales by underage clerks and restrict tobacco sales near youth-oriented facilities.

Helmer said while the process of exploring licensing is only in the very early stages, both he and the alliance have been circulating surveys to see what the community thinks. He recently did some limited, informal studies at the Rotary Club of Summit County.

“It was overwhelmingly clear they thought this kind of regulation of tobacco products was very, very much needed,” he said, “especially in Summit County.”

Seeba said she's currently working to educate the community about the problems she sees. She's also working to educate children in Summit schools about the health consequences of smoking, something she says they don't always see.

“We want to make our kids healthier,” Seeba said.

To take the SPA survey, or for more information, go to www.summitpreventionalliance.org.