By Jonathon Brodie/London Community News
London convenience store owners educating the public about contraband tobacco are being asked to butt out.
Over 200 of the city’s convenience stores were recently asked by the Ontario Convenience Stores Association to put up posters inside their shops depicting the negative effects of contraband cigarettes on businesses and the community.
Within days of the posters going up, the stores were told to take them down.
Enforcing the Smoke Free Ontario Act, which prohibits tobacco promotions inside stores, Middlesex-London Health Unit (MLHU) officials ordered retailers to remove the contraband educational posters.
“They are promoting tobacco use. They are promoting a product. In essence the materials really say, ‘Don’t buy illegal tobacco, we here happen to have legal tobacco for sale’,” said Linda Stobo, program manager for tobacco control with MLHU.
The posters depicted a number of scenes looking at the problem of contraband tobacco: A closed convenience store; a school where students regularly get contraband tobacco; a rat, as RCMP lab tests have shown evidence of feces in contraband cigarettes; and syringes as police indicate many contraband tobacco smugglers are also involved in the drug trade.
President of the Ontario Convenience Stores Association, Dave Bryans, said he didn’t feel the posters were promoting any type of cigarettes.
“We took exception because we didn’t believe (the posters) had anything to do with tobacco promotion. They were more of a public education, especially when four million people a day visit a convenience store in Ontario,” Bryans said. “Contraband isn’t a problem created by retailers.
Retailers are part of the solution and have always tried to be. Why do you keep picking on us? I don’t think looking at a rat is going to make me, a non-smoker, want to smoke,” he added.
Contraband tobacco represents about 35 per cent of all cigarettes sold in the province, according to the Ontario Convenience Stores Association, compared to 10 per cent only four years ago.
No charges have been laid against any London store because of the posters.
“Being compliant retailers rather than get our small family stores in a pissing match, for lack of another word with Smoke Free Ontario, we took them down,” Bryans said. “What is a small family-run Korean businessman going to do? We walk out of there thinking we’re educating and he’s threatened with a charge and now he calls me all upset, some in tears.”
