Retailers group against tighter law on tobacco products

Kiosks: Cigarettes have to remain on display

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“In its presented form, the amendment would be a total catastrophe to the kiosk businesses in the country”, summarised Hannu Ala-aho, marketing manager for Rautakirja’s Kiosk Operations - the country's R-Kiosks.
      Ala-aho is expressing the sentiments of small retailers in particular with regard to the coming autumn’s reform of the Tobacco Act, the purpose of which is to curtail in particular the smoking habits of youngsters.
     
The planned ban on displaying tobacco products would force shops to hide cigarettes and other tobacco products and complicate their selling in other ways as well.
      According to the amendment, a salesperson would have to produce at the customer’s request a list of all the tobacco products hidden behind the counter, from which the customer would then select the desired item.
     
The tight Tobacco Act would hit the 720-outlet R-Kiosk chain particularly hard, for according to Ala-aho a large share of the chain's sales consists of the selling of tobacco products. R-Kiosks reported current consumer goods sales of EUR 270 million last year, and as much as half of the kiosk sales can be cigarettes and tobacco.
     
“And small business entrepreneurs are being bullied”, added managing director Mika Hokkanen of Suomen Bensiinikauppiaiden Liitto SBL (“Finland’s Petrol Retailers’ Association”) at Tuesday’s Finnish Grocery Trade Association seminar in Helsinki, the purpose of which was to close ranks against the amendment, which is generally seen as absurd.
      “Small and medium-size businesses will have to rearrange their small premises, the quality of service will weaken, the risk of pilferage will increase, and the customers will go over to supermarkets”, Hokkanen estimated.
     
Ala-aho shared the small retailers’ fears that if the cigarettes are to be hidden under the counter, the customers will simply disappear and buy their cigarettes from larger stores – in which the service speed will also suffer.
      But the kiosks, in particular, have always been conceived as places for quick purchases, so their very trump card would be whisked away.
      Organisation Secretary Hanna Kuntsi of Service Union United PAM expressed her concerns over the safety of the kiosk salespeople who work alone.
      On weekend nights a group of youth may barge in, one wanting to buy cigarettes, another medium-strength beer, while a third one starts fiddling with a gambling machine.
     
In addition to amending the Tobacco Act, Parliament is also in the process of freeing the opening hours of shops to up to 24 hours and renewing the law on gambling in such a way that the salesperson will be responsible for supervising the gambling of the underage under the pain of penalty.
      For non-deliberate selling of cigarettes to a minor, a salesperson may be slapped with up to a four-month suspended prison sentence.
     
Canadian shopkeepers’ lobbyist Dave Bryans was also heard in the seminar. Bryans shared some horror experiences of the effects of a similar amendment in Canada in 2004.
      Small businesses have gone to the wall, the work safety has weakened, 33-50 per cent of the sold cigarettes are now smuggled “pirate products”, the business is now in the hands of organised crime - and the youngsters still smoke just as much as they did before, claimed Bryans.
      Rautakirja and the R-Kiosk chain belong to the Sanoma Group, which also publishes Helsingin Sanomat.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Ministry official: no blanket censorship of smoking images (9.2.2009)
  Finland considers further tightening of Tobacco Act (5.2.2009)
  Anti-smoking committee wants much heavier restrictions on all nicotine products and their substitutes (19.12.2008)

Helsingin Sanomat