Today in History, 1962: Minot man charged under North Dakota law banning the sale of candy cigarettes

On this day in 1962, a Minot store manager was charged under North Dakota’s 1953 ban on candy cigarettes, setting up the law’s first court test over whether bubble gum cigarettes counted as illegal “confectionery.”

Here is the complete story as it appeared in the paper that day:

“I’d heard something about such a law but I thought they were kidding me,” the manager of the S. S. Kresge store in Minot said Friday after he was arrested and charged with displaying and possessing packaged candy cigarettes.

“I was the stock man in the Kresge store in Fargo when the law was passed in 1953, prohibiting the sale of candy cigarettes,” John H. Larson said.

“But I never paid any attention to it; I never knew it existed,” he added.

Larson, who lived in Moorhead and worked in the Fargo Kresge store from 1952 to 1959, said he had heard mention of the law but he didn’t think talk about it was serious.

Minot police Capt. Floyd Rouse had noticed a small girl in the business area of Minot with bubble gum cigarettes and a police investigation led to Larson’s arrest Friday.

It was, to any state official’s recollection, the first such charge made under the 10-year-old law, which attracted nationwide attention to North Dakota when it was passed.

Larson intends to plead innocent to the charge, because the article in question is a roll of white paper-covered bubble gum. He claims, therefore, that it is not a candy or a confectionery, which the law specifically states it is illegal to sell if designed to imitate cigarettes.

“Bubble gum is not candy or a confectionery,” Larson said.

The dictionary actually doesn’t help, because it says a confectionary is a sweetmeat, or something prepared and sold by a confectioner, or a candy.

And a confection, the dictionary says, is “a preparation of roots or fruits, etc., with sugar; a sweetmeat; preserve; confit.”

And a confit is a dry sweetmeat.

So it looks as if the law is headed for its first court test.

Larson was released on his own recognizance and is expected to appear on the charge next week.

The 1953 Legislature passed the law to do its part in keeping youngsters from smoking.

The bill stated the intent:
“…such candy or confectionery products and the purchase and use thereof by minors readily create a desire on the part of such minors to purchase and use genuine cigarettes or other tobacco products.”

The law provides a penalty on conviction of not more than a $1,000 fine, 90 days in jail, or both.

The bill was initiated in the state Senate under the sponsorship of state Sen. Agnes Geelan of Ransom, now a member of the Workmen’s Compensation Commission, and the late Sen. E. C. Stucke of McLean.

Larson said his store and all the other Kresge stores in the nation had received a carton of the imitation cigarettes through its nationwide chain store outlets. Minot police confiscated and held 19 packages of the gum.

Larson said he offered to throw out the merchandise, which was being offered as part of a store closing-out sale, but police refused to permit that.

“Those guys over there (the police) don’t know what they got into,” Larson laughingly told The Forum.

He said the gum was a popular item.

“They went like hot cakes,” he said.

The candy cigarette law wasn’t the only one of its kind the 1953 Legislature wrestled with by a long shot.

The session got more nationwide publicity than any other in many a year because of it and these other bills which were introduced, but which did not pass:

★ An anti-treat bill, designed to prevent the buying of a drink by a friend.
★ A bill which would have forbidden dancing in the dark.
★ A bill which would have made it obligatory that a beauty parlor close at 5:30 p.m. on the dot — whether or not a customer’s hair was ready. The reason for that bill apparently stemmed from an angry legislator whose dinner had been kept waiting because his wife was in a beauty parlor.

The Senate passed the candy cigarette law 41 to 7.

Among the few not voting for it was former Sen. Kenneth Pyle of Cass, who explained his vote by reading a telegram he said he had received that day and which was signed by all his grandchildren. It read:

“Dear Grandpa. Please don’t let them take our candy from us.”

The bill passed the House by a vote of 68 to 39 after long debate, some serious and some tongue-in-cheek.

Former Rep. A. C. Langseth of Eddy-Foster, among many others, spoke for the bill. He said:

“If the health and morals of our young people are not worth legislating for, I don’t know what is.”

Former Rep. Guy Larson of Burleigh observed:

“There is one ingredient lacking in the bill — common sense.”