Akash Sama­roo

Some su­per­mar­kets may stop sell­ing cig­a­rettes at their es­tab­lish­ments af­ter a law pro­hibit­ing how to­bac­co prod­ucts are dis­played is be­ing en­forced af­ter many years.

Cig­a­rette dis­pensers ad­ver­tis­ing each brand avail­able would have been a reg­u­lar fea­ture at any of the cash reg­is­ters in some of the big­ger su­per­mar­kets.

This gave the con­sumer the op­tion of mak­ing a pur­chase no mat­ter which reg­is­ter they chose.

How­ev­er, smok­ers would have no­ticed that since Mon­day, those prod­ucts are now on­ly avail­able at on­ly one dis­penser in the store.

This fol­lows a memo sent on Sep­tem­ber 22, from the West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (WIT­CO) to re­tail stores which said, “Please be ad­vised that with ef­fect from Mon­day 26th Sep­tem­ber 2022 all re­tail out­lets are pro­hib­it­ed from hav­ing more than one cig­a­rette dis­penser in use at each lo­ca­tion.”

The mes­sage went on to site Sec­tion 9 (4) of the To­bac­co Con­trol Act which states, “No more than one cig­a­rette dis­penser shall be pro­vid­ed per out­let.” This Act was amend­ed in 2012 and there­fore is by no means a new law. WIT­CO ad­vised the stores to not on­ly re­move the prod­ucts from the oth­er dis­pensers but to en­sure that the lo­gos and posters of the com­pa­nies be re­moved as well from the emp­ty dis­plays.

Guardian Me­dia sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the Min­istry of Health’s To­bac­co Con­trol Unit as to why the law is now be­ing en­forced. How­ev­er, all calls to the Unit went unan­swered as did ques­tions sent via text mes­sage to Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh.

A cigarette dispenser at a Port-of-Spain grocery.

ANISTO ALVES

But while the stores Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed yes­ter­day were al­ready com­pli­ant, the Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (SATT) has some con­cerns.

“This has im­pli­ca­tions to frus­trate the sale to con­sumers and it will dri­ve a thriv­ing par­al­lel trade with road­side ven­dors, su­per­mar­kets may find it very hard to push sales be­cause re­mem­ber, these cig­a­rettes are par­tic­u­lar­ly ex­pen­sive and when have con­cerns about pil­fer­age and shrink­age, we would not want to sit on stock,” SATT pres­i­dent Ra­jiv Diptee told Guardian Me­dia.

Diptee said some of his mem­bers are con­sid­er­ing com­ing out of the busi­ness of sell­ing cig­a­rettes al­to­geth­er if this con­tin­ues.

Mean­while, WIT­CO be­lieves this law will cre­ate the per­fect breed­ing ground for il­lic­it prod­ucts.

“The like­ly ef­fect is that en­force­ment will not make smok­ers stop smok­ing, but rather, push con­sumers away from those re­tail out­lets who are sell­ing le­git­i­mate prod­uct to oth­ers with­in the in­dus­try who do not ad­here to the law,” said Ex­ter­nal Re­la­tions Man­ag­er, Ger­von Abra­ham.

Abra­ham said while the com­pa­ny ful­ly sup­ports the Gov­ern­ment in its ef­fort to reg­u­late the in­dus­try, “we do not be­lieve that this rule will have the over­all de­sired ef­fect which is a re­duc­tion in the de­mand for to­bac­co prod­ucts gen­er­al­ly.”

The WIT­CO man­ag­er said the peo­ple who will ben­e­fit the most from the mea­sures are sell­ers who evade tax­a­tion and the reg­u­la­tions as it re­lates to health warn­ings.

WIT­CO said dis­cus­sions with the Health Min­istry are on­go­ing.