Retailers Doubt Govt’s Smokefree Aspirations will succeed [Association of Community Retailers]

Yesterday’s pronouncement from the Associate Minister of Health Hon Tariana Turia that the Government supports a Maori Affairs Select Committee recommendation to make tobacco illegal by 2025 clearly demonstrates the Nanny State is alive and well in New Zealand.

The National Spokesperson for the Association of Community Retailers, Mr Richard Green, a tobacconist from Palmerston North, said it was doubtful that New Zealand would become a “smokefree nation” by 2025.

“At the time the Smokefree Environments Act was being implemented in 1990, there were calls for New Zealand to be smokefree by 2010. That hasn’t eventuated and there are still more than 500,000 Kiwi smokers today,” Mr Green said. “We would expect that there will still be hundreds of thousands of smokers in New Zealand in another 14 years’ time.”

Retailers sell only products that are legal, and tobacco remains a legal product. However, the rules and regulations surrounding the sale of tobacco have become more complex and confusing for retailers.

The government must get tobacco off the regulation rollercoaster in favour of a more coherent strategy around the sale of tobacco.

Mr Green said successive governments had implemented anti-smoking regulations in a reactionary and ad hoc manner usually in response to political pressure from anti-tobacco groups and consequently this has left retailers confused. This was apparent when the previous Labour Government passed regulations requiring retailers to have only 100 tobacco facings in display units per point of sale and again over requirements to have confectionery a minimum distance from tobacco displays.

“It’s fair to say that almost every couple of years in the last decade some new regulation has come into force requiring retailers to change the way they sell tobacco and changes to the product itself, with graphic health warnings. Changes to the law have been ad hoc, and it’s not an effective way to achieve good policy.

“The Government must get retailers off the regulation rollercoaster. Retailers need certainty and should not be expected to become to meet continual changes in the law,” Mr Green said.

Now the government is proposing to outlaw tobacco displays, and this law will have a direct economic impact on retailers throughout the country because they will be forced to make structural changes to the layout of their shops.

He said it made no sense for the government to ban tobacco displays when it’s clear there are plans afoot to force tobacco manufacturers to sell their product in plain white packages.

“If that’s the case, why hide displays and force retailers to spend thousands of dollars reconfiguring their shops to accommodate a ban?”

“It is my view that retailers and health officials alike are confused over the finer details of the Smokefree Environments Act. It’s time the Government undertook a comprehensive review of the law so that retailers can have certainty and not have to experience a new raft of regulations every year or so,” Mr Green said.

“It’s time for the Nanny State to go. If adults choose to smoke tobacco then that should be their choice because tobacco is a legal product, and retailers should be able to sell that product without continual attacks on their business. The latest ban on tobacco displays will not stop people smoking, but will place extra costs on retailers, reduce their income and put us at greater risk in our places of work,” Mr Green said.

Government Imposes more costs, higher security risks on retailers: http://acr.org.nz/media/pr/Govt-imposes-more-costs-higher-security-risks-on-retailers.htm

Government knows tobacco display ban won’t work: http://acr.org.nz/media/pr/Government-knows-tobacco-display-ban-wont-workhtm

ENDS

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