Maine has been awarded a $2.1 million three-year federal contract to help crack down on the sale of cigarettes to minors.

The Maine Attorney General’s Office is scheduled to formally announce the compliance and enforcement contract during a news conference Monday morning at the Calumet Club in Augusta. A representative of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which awarded the funding, will be in Augusta that day for a forum on tobacco compliance.

Anti-tobacco efforts and cigarette tax increases drove a 64 percent decline in Maine’s teen smoking rate between 1997 and 2007. But the percentage of teens who smoke in Maine started rising again in 2009.

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