Loophole Allows Cigarette Advertising Outside Shops

Source from:  3news.co.nz Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11/04/2008

A legal loophole means some shops selling cigarettes are able to flout the spirit of the Smokefree Environments Act, says the Smoke Free Coalition. One such shop is San's Cigarettes For Less in Wellington's Manners St. It is able to advertise cigarettes on outside signage because it is registered as a company under that name. Smokefree Coalition director Mark Peck said he had complained about the name of the shop to the Health Ministry, which is investigating. The Smokefree Environments Act 1990 prohibits advertising of tobacco products by retailers, except inside a shop. However, a retailer's name or trade name can be displayed outside, even when it acts as an advertisement for tobacco products, so long as it does not name any brands. "They may not be breaking the law but they are breaching the spirit of it," Mr Peck said The owner of the San's Cigarettes For Less, San Panchal, said the name was meant to distinguish it from his other shop, San's Jewellers. The name was perfectly legal - it described the shop and was not a deliberate move to get around advertising rules, he said. Wellington Regional Public Health smokefree officer Pam Smith agreed it was the loophole needed to be addressed. The public health unit had received complaints about other similar advertising, but not San's itself, she said. People breaching the Act would be ordered to change their advertising, but in such cases as San's they could slip through the net. She believed such shop names did breach the spirit of the Act. But there are no immediate plans to address the loophole. Ministry of Health chief adviser of population health, Ashley Bloomfield, said the issue would be looked at before the legislation was next reviewed. There was no firm date for that review. Mr Peck said this was not the only loophole in the legislation. Another example was where a dairy owner, who was barred from selling cigarettes because of sales to underage customers, could still get other staff to sell cigarettes. Enditem