March 22nd, 2010:

First published: March 15, 2010

Source: CSP

Passage of bill to rein in online cigarette sales a “major win” for retailers, says NACS

WASHINGTON — Last Thursday, the U.S. Senate unanimously approved legislation to crack down on black market tobacco selling. The Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking (PACT) Act closes loopholes in current tobacco trafficking laws, enhances penalties for violations and provides law enforcement with new tools to combat the methods being used by traffickers to distribute their products. PACT, which addresses longstanding convenience store industry concerns, is a “major win” for retailers, according to NACS senior vice president of government relations Lyle Beckwith.

Authored by Senator Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) and co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of 20 senators, this legislation (S. 1147) would help combat online cigarette sales that have robbed states of badly needed tax revenues and that undermine state laws that prevent youth access to tobacco products.

“The PACT Act closes loopholes in current tobacco trafficking laws, enhances penalties for violations, and provides law enforcement with new tools to combat the innovative methods being used by cigarette traffickers to distribute their products,” said Kohl. “With its passage, we cut off a source of funding for terrorists and criminals raise more money, enhance states’ ability to collect significant amounts of tax revenue, and further limit kids from easy access to tobacco products sold over the internet.”
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First published: March 13, 2010

Written by: Simon Collins

4:00 AM Saturday Mar 13, 2010

Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia says she plans to ask ministers in the next month for a tax increase that will make cigarettes too expensive for young people to buy.

She told Auckland Cancer Society chief executive John Loof at a conference yesterday that she had been asked to postpone a proposal for the tax increase, and for restricting tobacco displays in shops, but had refused.

“I have been asked to delay those pieces of legislation. I have sent a note back this week saying no,” she said.

“I’m hoping we can get it through in the next month or so.”
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First published: March 15, 2010

Source: The New Zealand Herald

Maori Party MP Hone Harawira kept his word this week when he got stuck into a tobacco company executive on the first day of a select committee inquiry into the killer industry.

Harawira, who said last September, that he’d “like to lynch these bastards … who kill New Zealanders”, didn’t go as far as slinging a rope over the rafters of the committee room, but he did apply the metaphorical blowtorch to the general manager of British American Tobacco New Zealand, Graeme Amey. He read out a comment, plausibly attributed to a tobacco executive, that tobacco companies targeted “the young, the poor, the black and the stupid” and asked: “Is that a philosophy your company follows?”
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