These displays are just another form of advertising and to ban them will not result in the demise of the corner shop
The government will soon decide whether cigarette displays in shops should be banned. Health campaigners insist they should, believing this will reduce the number of young people smoking, while those who run convenience shops oppose the move, saying it will cost up to �1,000 to remove the displays and to fit under-the-counter trays to hold tobacco products. This, they warn, will increase queues in shops, levels of theft and smuggling.
Whether a ban deters young people from smoking is fiercely contested. Several Canadian provinces that introduced a ban have witnessed a significant fall in youth smoking. But provinces that did not introduce a ban have also seen falls.
What is clear is that in the Canadian example the smoking lobby vigorously resisted the move, advancing the same arguments against the ban now being made here, ostensibly by shopkeepers but with the tacit support, both financial and administrative, of the big tobacco companies.
The assertion that compliance with the ban will result in thousands of shopkeepers going out of business must be treated with suspicion. Even those who oppose the ban estimate the true cost of compliance will be only in the hundreds of pounds, a fraction of an average shop's annual turnover.
Perhaps the most useful exercise for the UK government is to look to Ireland, which introduced a similar ban in 2009. Independent research confirmed that the ban did not result in a loss of income for Irish retailers, while there was a dramatic decline in children's awareness that tobacco was sold in shops. Support for the ban also rose among the general population after it was introduced.
The researchers concluded the ban helped to "de-normalise" tobacco in the minds of children. The truth, long recognised by the tobacco industry, is that these displays are just another form of advertising and so, in the case of cigarettes, should be consigned to history.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/feb/27/observer-editorial-ban-cigarette-displays
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