TORONTO -- In a letter sent Monday to premiers across Canada, the Canadian Convenience Stores Association (CCSA) called on provincial governments to legislate a ban on underage tobacco possession and use as the next important step in reducing youth smoking.
Existing laws prohibit regulated retail outlets from selling tobacco to minors, but the "alarming and fast-growing" trade in illegal cigarettes means that young people are getting widespread access to cheap, unregulated and untaxed cigarettes, said the group.
"Banning on the possession and use of tobacco for anyone under the age [image-nocss] of majority would complement existing laws—and is just simply a good idea," said CCSA president Dave Bryans. "Some may think it's a drastic measure, but with the rate at which youth are bypassing government controls on the sale of tobacco and getting access to illegal, unregulated tobacco, sold from basements and cars, we think it's a necessary measure to protect our youth."
A study late in 2007 by the CCSA's We Expect ID program of cigarette butts collected from around 105 high schools in Ontario and Quebec showed an alarming presence of contraband tobacco. It revealed that in Ontario, 24% of high school smokers' cigarette butts were contraband, while in Quebec, contraband made up 35% of school yard cigarettes.
The results were punctuated by contraband rates of 50% in Newmarket and 47% in Aurora in Ontario and spikes of contraband in Quebec in the Anjou and Côte-des-Neiges regions, 74% and 60%, respectively.
"If it's illegal for someone under 19 to have a beer, the same rules should apply for cigarettes—it just makes sense," said Steve Tennant, director of We Expect ID. "And from a broader perspective, we think this kind of legislation would give authorities an important tool to help fight the sale of illegal contraband tobacco to youth. We know this is a growing problem and it's happening outside all government's current anti-smoking rules and regulations. There's no easy solution to this problem, but we think this ban is a step in the right direction."
Launched in 2007, We Expect ID is the CCSA's age-verification program to control the sale of age restricted products. Now in more than 5,000 stores in Ontario, the program takes a zero-tolerance approach to keeping restricted products away from youth. With this system, anyone that appears under the age of 25 who intends to purchase a restricted product must present their driver's license and have it swiped as proof of age. In each and every case, store employees must swipe customers' licenses through the lottery terminal. The terminal reads the age information from the magnetic stripe on the back of each license and presents the person's age prominently on the terminal's display. The small minority of OCSA members without terminals must, in every case, visually verify age from the consumer's license.
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