Anti-smoking advocates also dislike the smoking bans, asserting they are ineffective and counterproductive.

State Superior Court Judge Stephen H. Womack heard arguments on the case on Monday. A ruling is pending.

If Womack scrapped Ridgewood's ordinance, that would not automatically invalidate laws in other towns. But such a ruling would make those laws vulnerable to similar challenges, especially if upheld on appeal.

It could also derail a proposed state ban, passed by the Assembly this month and heading for the Senate.

It is already illegal in New Jersey to sell tobacco to minors. The bipartisan bill would forbid them from possessing tobacco in public places like streets, parks and shopping centers. It makes exemptions for minors who go undercover to help law enforcement authorities expose retailers who illegally sell to children.

First violators would have to enroll in a tobacco education class. Minors who are caught again would have to perform 15 hours of community service.

The Ridgewood case began April 23, when the teen and a girl were given a citation for smoking. The boy was then searched, the town maintains, because the officer saw a cigar case and suspected marijuana might be inside.

Priore said the search was improper because the teen was not told he could decline.

The evidence is also inadmissible, he maintained, because it stems from a flawed ordinance: The law does not provide for judicial review of the first four citations, and is prone to selective enforcement.

''It really gives the police too much leeway,'' Priore said. ''This is really a health and educational issue. It's not a police issue.''

Ridgewood Police Chief Louis Mader said first offenders get a warning from the officer writing the ticket. If caught a second time, the teen and a parent must speak to officers at the station. A third violation sends the teen to a weeklong program at a hospital. Community service can be imposed after the fourth violation, he said.

Jail is not a penalty. ''There's no punitive action here at all,'' Mader said.

Mader said his 42-officer department issues about one or two smoking citations a day, but over the two years that the law has been in effect, only a handful of teens have been cited more than three times.

He declined to discuss the details of the drug case against the teen, but said the boy was charged with a disorderly persons offense, which carries up to two years in juvenile jail, but a likelihood of probation.

Teen tobacco bans find no fan in Regina Carlson, executive director of New Jersey Group Against Smoking Pollution.

''There are no scientific studies that it stops kids from smoking,'' she said. ''If towns want to do something, they should go after the purveyors of tobacco, not the victims, who are the kids.''

Such laws only push children to smoke in ''secret places,'' where illicit activities could occur, she said.

Better laws are those that ban smoking in government buildings and public places, as some towns have done, Carlson said. She would also like to see smoke-free restaurants, but said only one town, Glassboro, has done that.