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Framingham Board Of Health Goes Easy On Cigarette Violators

He said he refuses to sell to minors, which can provoke angry responses. "The last thing I get is, 'Screw you' and they drop the F-bomb on me," Patel told the board.

Elias Mouawad, manager of Framingham Automotive, said a part-time worker at his business on Old Connecticut Path made an uncharacteristic mistake.

"He asks older gentlemen or older ladies for their IDs," Mouawad said. "Some take it as some kind of flirt."

The Board of Health showed leniency last night as it let more than a dozen establishments that were recently caught selling cheap cigarettes to a minor off with a $100 fine. Four others, that had a record of offenses, will lose their cigarettes licenses for two days.

Chairman Mike Hugo backed down from his call for stiffer penalties after hearing pleas from a crowd of businesspeople whose employees failed board-run compliance checks over Patriot's Day weekend.

"We screwed up," said Ernest Quintiliani, manager at Watch City Cigar. "We take full responsibility for it."

Twenty-one of the town's 77 cigarettes online license-holders failed the sting when they sold packs of Marlboros to a 17-year-old working for the board without checking his ID, said Health Director Ethan Mascoop. Under state law, it is illegal to sell buy cigarettes to anyone under 18.

At the start of the hearing, Hugo said he intended to ask fellow members to levy the maximum suspensions: seven consecutive days for businesses that had violated discount cigarettes sale rules and regulations twice within three years, and three days for those who were first-time offenders within that period.

"This is scary," he said. "It's angering. It's ridiculous. I'm sure you all feel like you've got egg on your faces."

"We take these offenses very seriously," said Mark Bakerly of Hurricane Energy, 22 Waverly St. "These are our kids that are smoking cigarettes and we take it very seriously."

Employees who sold the online cigarettes were fired or suspended, and some had to pay the business' fines: $100 for the first offense, $200 for second.

Harshil Patel of Store 135 on Hollis Street, which was on the list of re-offenders, told board members a weeklong suspension "will really hurt me."

David Zirlen, a Natick attorney who represents Watch City Cigar, told the board, like some of the other businesses caught, Watch City has "implemented a policy so this doesn't happen again."

"I am very swayed by a lot of what I've heard here," Hugo said.

On member David Moore's motion, the board voted 3-0 to have the first-time violators pay the $100 fine and serve no suspension.

"You all will have gotten away with a very minor penalty," board member Nelson Goldin told the business owners before the vote. "Keep that in mind."

He encouraged the businesses to do a better job of self-monitoring.

"You can run stings on your own employees," he said.

The board took into consideration that, because of clerical issues, some establishments didn't receive a notice of the failed sting for a month.

The board voted 3-0 for a two-day suspension for four businesses that had two violations within three years: Wine Vault, 2 Fairbank Road; Super Discount Liquors, 939 Worcester Road; Hess Express, 1701 Worcester Road; and Store 135, 41 Hollis St.

The June 7 and 8 suspension requires those four businesses to remove all cheap cigarettes products from the sales floor.

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