By JONATHAN JENKINS, QUEEN'S PARK BUREAU
Last Updated: 18th January 2010, 7:24pm
Toronto Sun
Convenience stores want teenagers banned from possessing tobacco, a call timed to coincide with National Non-Smoking Week.
“It does work for alcohol,” said Wendy Kadlovski, chair of the Ontario Convenience Stores Association.
“You don’t see kids walking down the street with a bottle of beer. We’re just saying there’s a parallel here with alcohol and tobacco.”
Kadlovski said retailers already do 100,000 age checks every day to keep teens from buying smokes.
But in part because of that vigilance, kids are turning away from legal tobacco sellers and finding contraband smokes — which make up about half of all the cigarettes in Ontario — making it much harder to stop teens from smoking before they begin, she said.
“We are diligent about selling tobacco only to the age of majority. Our concern is that tobacco does find its way into the hands of youths through non-traditional, social sources,” Kardlovski said.
High taxes on legal cigarettes have helped to make smuggled smokes increasingly popular — especially with younger smokers.
An outright ban on youngsters possessing tobacco has been dismissed by Premier Dalton McGuinty as recently as last September.
“You’ve got a 13-year-old that’s smoking. If you’re the mom or the dad, you’ve got a responsibility to act on that,” he said at the time.
Ontario has already banned convenience stores from displaying the cigarettes they sell and made it illegal to smoke in a car while children are inside.
Smoking amongst students in Grade 7 to Grade 12 is now at its lowest level since 1977, a statement from the ministry of health promotion said.
“This government has done more than any previous Ontario government to address the harm caused by tobacco use,” Minister Margarett Best said in the statement.
“We will continue to work with our partners to encourage young people not to smoke; protect people from second-hand smoke; and help smokers quit. I congratulate all those who have quit smoking and would ask them to encourage any family or friends who smoke to quit as well.”