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Tobacco outlets frustrated by the ‘mucking around’
Tuesday, October 02, 2012
AT least two Gisborne business owners are frustrated by law changes to tobacco-product retail.

One vendor says plain-packaging would be a major inconvenience.

“It will just be a wall of khaki. We’ve got more than 100 tobacco products on sale here. Distinguishing between menthol and various brands will be a real hassle. I believe it’s political grandstanding. The display ban has not had any effect on sales at all.”

Another retailer wants the Government to make a decision one way or another about tobacco product retail.

“I wish they would just come out and say either sell them or don’t sell them, and stop mucking around.

“If they took out additives like menthol and saltpetre and made tobacco a natural product, they wouldn’t have these problems. Fast food causes more problems than cigarettes.”

Imperial Tobacco New Zealand’s market manager Paul Warham says retail display bans for tobacco and the proposed plain packaging in New Zealand are the thin end of a wedge that will increasingly affect other consumer products.

“The writing is on the wall for many non-tobacco products if regulation continues to escalate.

“We may well see alcohol and other products, such as snack foods, treated like tobacco.

“First there are concerns flagged about the impact the product has on society, which we’re already seeing in New Zealand. Then come calls for restrictions of some kind to be imposed, and we’re seeing that here too.

“Then comes legislation that enforces increasingly-punitive controls, including advertising restrictions and increased taxes and, eventually, proposals for plain packaging.”
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