Law places unfair burden
on business community

Although well-intended, the Old Bridge Township Council’s new law forcing store owners to post signs if they are caught selling cigarettes to minors is simply the wrong approach, and is unfair to the business community.

The ordinance, which affects even stores cited for their first offense, was adopted recently by the Township Council at the request of a local resident.

The resident has a good cause — he wants to crack down on sales of cigarettes to minors. He felt that the penalties for businesses who sell cigarettes to minors — a $200 fine — was simply insufficient, and he’s right. It doesn’t fit the crime.

It seems that the obvious solution then, is to raise the fine. Better enforcement of existing laws could also be encouraged.

But don’t require signs that will turn away potential customers based on what may have been a single mistake. For many of these businesses, it is simply going too far.

You have to sympathize with the business owners when they say this one-of-a-kind ordinance — a "Big Brother" law, as Councilman Joe Hoff referred to it — is unnecessarily hurtful.

That said, their claim that the new law is discriminatory against people of Asian-Indian descent is far-fetched. The new law is simply designed to come down on those who sell cigarettes to minors.

In fact, the ordinance’s proponent, Louis Valentino, has lots of good ideas — he is campaigning against underage cigarette sales in a Web site and has plans for a nonprofit organization to fight for his cause. One of his ideas is to post the names of offending businesses on his Web site, and that, too, would be OK. It’s information that the people visiting his site will be interested in.

But it seems that the council needs to back-pedal on this one, perhaps having acted too quickly. As one resident put it, the six council members who supported the ordinance may have acted out of emotion, without considering the consequences on the numerous local businesses.