ALBANY, N.Y. - Drugstore giant Walgreen Co. has agreed to change its practices as part of a settlement with 40 states to curb the sale of cigarettes to minors, state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said Wednesday.

The move by the Deerfield, Ill.-based company came after New York conducted undercover sting operations to determine if retailers complied with state law prohibiting the sale of tobacco products to people under 18. Spitzer led the effort with attorneys general for Arizona, California and Iowa. Of the nearly dozen stores targeted, Walgreens had the worst record by failing to ask for proper identification 11 out of 12 times from minors who tried to buy cigarettes. "If you were a child and you wanted to buy cigarettes, the place to go was Walgreens," Spitzer said. As part of the settlement, Walgreens will pay $320,000 to 40 states to cover the cost of the investigation. The chain also agreed to implement a training program for employees and use checkout registers that will prompt cashiers to check for identification. In a statement released Wednesday, Walgreens said it intends to "fully comply" with the agreement and noted that many of the guidelines already are included in its practice. "We want to address this issue in a consistent way chainwide and this agreement reinforces that both we and the state have agreed on the best way to address this," the company said. Walgreens also must hire an approved outside firm to do compliance checks at hundreds of randomly selected stores nationwide. The company has to meet a 90 percent compliance standard for two consecutive six-month periods or continue to be subjected to external reviews, Spitzer said. From April to June 2000, Spitzer's office conducted undercover investigations in over 20 cities in upstate New York. Out of 170 attempted buys, about 47 percent resulted in the sale of cigarettes to minors. In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) ruled that the Food and Drug Administration (news - web sites) lacked authority to regulate sales of tobacco products to minors and prevented the FDA from coordinating a national effort to diminish youth access to tobacco. Walgreens has 3,620 stores in 43 states and Puerto Rico, up from 3,276 at the start of 2001, and plans to have more than 6,000 by 2010. It has fewer stores than top drugstore rivals CVS and Rite Aid, but is No. 1 in sales. The 39 states that joined New York in the settlement were Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

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