Tobacco ban penalizes small business: convenience store owners

The Atlantic Convenience Stores Association is asking the McNeil government to allow store owners more time clear their inventory before the flavoured tobacco ban takes effect on May 31.

The association’s president Mike Hammoud says 14 days to get rid of flavoured tobacco products from store shelves isn’t enough time.

“It’s an extreme penalty against small business,” he told the Rich Howe Show.

“To think back, the provincial government gave electronic cigarette retailers six months to hide retail displays when they passed Bill 60 in the fall.”

Hammoud says it’s uncertain if retailers will be stuck with the leftover product or not, which he says could cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars.

He also says the industry has not received a list of banned items from the government — something that’s causing a lot of confusion.

“You’ve got wholesalers that are guessing what the list is, so they’re sending them out to retailers saying, ‘these gotta come off,’ and then manufacturers are saying, ‘no no no, that’s not part of the list, because that has no flavouring in it.'”

The ban includes menthol cigarettes, flavoured cigarillos, flavoured rolling papers, as well as flavoured chewing tobacco and snuff. Exempted from the ban are port, rum, wine and whisky-flavoured cigars that cost more than four dollars and weigh more than five grams, and all e-cigarettes and juice.

Echoing Imperial Tobacco’s legal challenge filed against the government, Hammoud is concerned that banning menthol cigarettes will drive smokers towards the illegal market.

“If you’re a producer of illegal menthols, you just got an exclusive market here in Nova Scotia thanks to the government’s decision,” he said.

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