Stopping the draw of cigarettes

Cigarette displays could be banned

80 per cent of smokers pick up their first cigarette before the age of nineteen.

Quite often those young people are starting the habit of a lifetime.

It's already illegal to sell cigarettes to anyone under eighteen years of age. Now there are moves to restrict the sale of cigarettes even more.

Amendments to the Health Bill will see cigarette vending machines banned and force all tobacco products to be covered in shops.

There are 83,000 smokers in the North West. 13,000 people in this region die of smoking related diseases each year.

Under the counter

The proposals to prohibit point of sale displays of tobacco products would mean that in future cigarettes would have to be sold from under the counter.

The Centre for Tobacco Control Research at the University of Stirling have found evidence to suggest that tobacco marketing at the point of sale encourages young people to take up smoking.

For many newsagents and small shop owners this new legislation could prove disastrous.

A survey by the Tobacco Retailers Alliance showed that 77 per cent of corner shopkeepers believe the ban could,

'Directly threaten the viability of their business.'

Adequate laws

Likewise the second part of the Bill, to remove cigarette vending machines from pubs, has caused outrage among landlords who feel they have suffered enough under the smoking ban.

They say the current laws would be adequate if they were enforced. Under 18s should not be in pubs, unaccompanied, in the first place.

Smokefree Northwest claim that 10 percent of young people in the region admit to buying cigarettes from vending machines.

The trade group Noctis, the 'voice of the night time economy' claim that with proof of age schemes already in place the '£29 million negative impact' a clamp down on vending machines would have, 'simply cannot be justified'.