JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Monday, May 26, 2025

Supermarkets, WITCO concerned over Tobacco Law

by

970 days ago
20220928
Empty cigarette dispensers at Xtra Foods Supermarket in Grand Bazaar. Since Monday, all retail outlets regardless are mandated by law to only have one dispenser per store.

Empty cigarette dispensers at Xtra Foods Supermarket in Grand Bazaar. Since Monday, all retail outlets regardless are mandated by law to only have one dispenser per store.

MICHAEL RAMSINGH

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.

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.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored