Stop Teens from Smoking, Ontario News

In its recent article, The Windsor Essex Community Health Centre provided some excellent information about keeping our teens smoke-free. But there was an important component missing - calling for a ban on youth possession of tobacco. Convenience stores play a vital role in keeping tobacco from teens. In fact, Ontario Convenience Stores Association (OCSA) members perform well over 100,000 age-checks every day. Our We Expect ID program technology allows stores to accurately verify the age of customers by reading data off the magnetic strip on driver's licences. But when it comes to something as serious as stopping kids from smoking, we believe more needs to be done. Particularly since more than one-third of cigarettes in Ontario are sold illegally by contraband tobacco merchants and smugglers who, unlike convenience stores, do not comply with the Ontario Smoke Free Act and do not check the age of their customers. In Ontario, while it is illegal for someone under 19 to possess alcohol, the same doesn't go for tobacco. Government could offer much greater protection against teen smoking by simply extending the same rules for alcohol to tobacco. More and more jurisdictions are adopting this restriction, including Alberta and Nova Scotia, and many U.S. states.