ROCKVILLE, Md. – The federal and state partnership aimed at ending illegal tobacco sales to minors has continued to exceed expectations, a new report on the Synar Amendment program by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) finds.

All states and the District of Columbia have continued to meet their goals of curtailing sales of tobacco to underage youth (those under 18). The SAMHSA report shows that the average national retailer violation rate of tobacco sales is 9.1% – significantly below the 20% target rate set by the program. While this rate represents an increase from the year before, it is the second lowest retailer violation rate in the history of the Synar program.

“Over its 16-year history the Synar program has made remarkable strides in lowering the levels of illegal tobacco sales to minors across the nation, but far more needs to be done to prevent kids and young adults from using tobacco, which is still the nation’s leading cause of preventable death,” said Frances Harding, director of SAMHSA’s Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, in a press release.

For the seventh year in a row, all states met their Synar required goals. In fact, nine of the 50 states achieved a retailer violation rate below 5%. Thirty-three states and the District of Columbia achieved a retailer violation rate below 10%. By contrast, when the Synar program kicked off in 1997, the highest reported state retailer violation rate was 72.7%.

“It is not a coincidence that the dramatic and continued improvement in compliance rates coincides with the advent of the We Card training program,” Lyle Beckwith, NACS senior director of government relations, told NACS Daily. “We Card remains the ubiquitous gold standard for employee training of age restricted products.”

The Synar Amendment (introduced by the late Representative Mike Synar of Oklahoma and enacted as Section 1926 of the federal Public Health Service Act) requires states and U.S. jurisdictions to have laws and enforcement programs for prohibiting the sale and distribution of tobacco to persons under 18. Under the regulation implementing the Synar Amendment, states and U.S. jurisdictions must report annually to SAMHSA on their retailer violation rates, which represent the percentage of inspected retail outlets that illegally sold tobacco products to youth.