Cigar Weekly

Anybody wonder if they'll ever actually put smokers in jail?

Give them time because if you weren't already feeling like a pariah, wait until June 1!

You already have to smoke outside, will be fined if you smoke in your car with your kids -- and soon will no longer be able to see your brand of cigarettes on the counter thanks to a new law saying they must be covered from public view.

A routine purchase will become a clandestine operation -- something like buying contraceptives was before the AIDS crisis. No wonder people are flocking to the smoke shops on aboriginal reserves where the prices are often 50% lower and where the rules and regulations are less rigid.

But it will be interesting to see if the Smoking Cops will even dare to venture into some of the reserve smoking trailers and make sure they are complying with Ontario's new display ban. Or will they just nail the small retailers -- the ones who charge full price and collect the appropriate taxes.

UP TO $5GS

Neha Gor, at the Thomas Convenience store on Lake Shore Blvd. W., has not yet installed the customized cover for her "power wall" of cigarettes, which technically means -- as of June 1 -- she will be in violation of the new Smoke Free Ontario law. She could face a fine of $400 to start and it could eventually go up to $5,000. "We will be installing it," she says.

The problem is the installers are so busy right now. More than 5,000 of the province's 15,000 stores that sell smokes have not yet met the requirements.

The main point that needs to be made is if a law-abiding business person like Gor, who is selling a legal product, ends up being fined, the smoking fuzz better get out there and do the same with those who are not quite as law abiding -- specifically the illegal sellers who prey on children near schools with a van full of every cigarette brand available.

The ministry of health promotion insists nailing mom-and-pop stores is not their interest, but promoting health is. Hopefully, the smoke inspectors, employed by individual community health units, are hearing what is being implied and don't take the parking assassins' zero-tolerance approach.

These small stores are already being put through the wringer -- with the loss of the advertising revenue from big tobacco companies and the fact they have to pay up to $2,500 to make the changes to their stores. To nail them now could put some out of business and would not be a nice way to treat the very people who collect millions of tax dollars for the province.

Meanwhile, some stores are smartly ahead of the curve and have already started the clumsy practice of selling these hidden cigarettes that everybody knows they have. At the Holy Smokes location in a Loblaws plaza, along Queen's Quay, you'd almost think they were no longer in business. The closed shelves look just plain weird. And it's going to get worse, too, since their cigar humidor, as of June 1, will no longer be open to customers.

"They will have to choose their cigar from a list and we will go in and get it," said employee Tabatha Carey, adding that eventually the humidor will be covered too.

This is a smoke shop, for heaven's sakes. Everybody who goes in there knows what they sell.

"It's back door prohibition," says Arminda Mota, president of MyChoice.ca, a tobacco company-funded lobby group which is trying to fight this spirited onslaught of the powerful anti-smoking tree huggers. "They are treating us like kids, but still collecting billions in tax dollars."

She argues this is akin to putting alcohol back behind the counter at the liquor store on the grounds that booze kills people, which it does. And you could argue to hide away potato chips, pop and lottery tickets, too, since as Mota says: "They are all bad for you."

With the enormous cost of cigarettes, and with this latest bureaucratic remedy, the black market can only grow. Ontario Convenience Stores Association president Dave Bryans says that's the part that bothers him the most -- the fact that the people selling cigarettes legally are being treated worse than those who sell them illegally.

"This is a dumb law that only a moron could come up (with)," says occasional cigar smoker Cliff Goldstein. If I were a retailer of cigars I would not obey it. Retailers have a right to display their wares. I, as a customer, have a right to see what I'm buying before I buy it."

Not in healthy Ontario after June 1, buddy boy.