Australia: Audit Smokes out Cigarette Breaches

Source from:  Sydney Morning Herald (au)  08/15/2013

One in four tobacco retailers has been caught breaking the rules on cigarette sales in a sting the Cancer Council says shows tobacco laws are failing.

It randomly audited 1700 tobacco retailers across NSW and found more than one in 10 do not display compulsory health warnings, with one in 20 illegally keeping cigarettes in full view. The breaches occurred across all retailers, from corner stores to the big supermarket chains.

Health experts say the government must introduce a licensing system for tobacco retailers similar to that for alcohol.

The president of the Australian Council on Smoking and Health, Mike Daube, said NSW and Victoria were the only states where a full licensing system was not in place.

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"These retailers are selling the most lethal consumer product on the market, yet anybody can do it and they have no means of controlling them," he said. "NSW really needs to catch up to the rest of the country on this."

Mr Daube said licences could raise $5 million a year to be injected back into the health budget, and would also be a strong first step to limiting the availability of cigarettes.

It was an "absurd historical relic" that tobacco outlets were not limited, when pharmacies, which sold nicotine replacements, were. There is about one pharmacy in NSW for every five tobacco outlets.

NSW tobacco retailers must register their businesses free online, but the Cancer Council audit found there was one unregistered retailer for every 13 registered. It also found unregistered retailers were more likely to break the rules.

Cancer Council director of cancer prevention Kathy Chapman said the audit showed the laws controlling cigarette sales were "flawed and failing".

"There are still 800,000 smokers in NSW, so we have got to be doing more," she said.

Ms Chapman said the vast majority of outlets on the list were "convenience" shops that were particularly dangerous for smokers trying to maintain will power to quit.

The audit found the outlets responsible for the biggest proportion of breaches of the tobacco laws were tobacconists, with 40 per cent. About 17 per cent of the breaches were by supermarkets, which also made up about 13 per cent of the unregistered businesses discovered. Enditem