Dover Board of Health suspends Dover Market tobacco license after compliance check

DOVER — May 11, 2026 — Dover Board of Health suspends Dover Market's tobacco sales license for one day and issues a formal warning to Dover Mobil following the town's first self-conducted compliance check. Chair Kay Peterson and members John Quackenbush and Stephen Kreskal voted unanimously on both actions after Public Health Agent Jason Talbot presented findings from an April 29 undercover operation in which a college-student operative born in March 2005 — subject to Dover's nicotine-free generation regulation — purchased cigarettes at both establishments. At Dover Mobil, the cashier checked the operative's ID but missed the birth-year restriction; owner Michael appeared at the hearing, acknowledged the error, and described corrective steps, prompting the board to issue only a warning. Dover Market's owner, Nirav, failed to respond to three outreach attempts before joining the Zoom meeting midway through deliberations; the board had already voted to suspend the license before hearing him, then reopened the hearing, found his explanations unsatisfactory — particularly his acknowledgment that employees had not been systematically trained to check IDs — and reaffirmed the one-day suspension, effective June 9, 2026.