When cigarette-puffing youths began socializing at a large rock near his home, Richard Porter took action.
“I hung a no-smoking sign on the rock,” Porter recalled during a recent Village Board meeting. “They took it down and kept smoking.”
Porter and other Village Board members learned at this week’s board meeting that there is little more anyone can do legally to curb youths’ smoking in Steger. State law controls the purchase of tobacco products but not their use, said Steger Police Chief Richard Stultz.
And unlike other towns, Steger cannot enhance the law, Village Atty. Franklin Burkey told the board: “We’re not a home-rule community. There’s very little in criminal law that we can pass.”
Village President Lou Sherman questioned the need to “burden” police with teenage smokers.
