Campaign Against Illegal Cigarettes Makes Durham Stop

Every day in this country at least one more convenience store closes its doors for good. Hannah Lee doesn't want hers to be one of them.

"I'm worried," Ms. Lee admitted Friday as she stood behind the counter of her Convenience Plus shop on Thickson Road in Whitby. "We don't know what's going to happen."

Ms. Lee, a convenience store operator for 20 years, has lent her voice to a campaign being undertaken by the Canadian Convenience Stores Association that calls for swift action to blunt the impact of contraband cigarettes on shop owners. The association claims a sharp drop in sales of legitimate smokes is having a negative impact on stores, which depend heavily on tobacco sales.

Ms. Lee said tobacco sales account for more than one-third of her shop's revenues, and that smokers coming in for cigarettes can often be depended upon to buy other items. But rising prices -- it costs more than $10 for a pack of premium smokes like Marlboro or Lucky Strike brands -- are luring more and more smokers to cheap contraband cigarettes.

And shop owners worry that the July 1 imposition of the harmonized sales tax, which will add another eight per cent to the cost of tobacco, will only exacerbate that situation.

That's why the association is calling on the provincial government to cut the taxes it imposes on cigarettes, one of a number of measures being touted as representatives undertake a 25-city blitz aimed at raising awareness about the issues surrounding contraband tobacco.

The group is pushing the provincial and federal governments to address the issue, Ontario Convenience Stores Association chairman Wendy Kadlovski said during a stop May 21 in Whitby. She said an estimated 2,400 convenience stores have gone out of business in the past few years.

"We play by the rules and we pay our taxes and we want to support our communities," Ms. Kadlovski said.

"Our government is losing hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes," to contraband cigarettes, she said.

The association is promoting a number of measures including taxation and stepped-up law enforcement to target smugglers.

The association cites statistics indicating up to half of the cigarettes smoked in Ontario are contraband, and that many of those smokes are winding up in the possession of young smokers; a recent study of butts found outside eight Durham Region high schools indicated one-fifth were contraband, Ms. Kadlovski said.

The availability of bogus smokes to young people troubles Whitby-Oshawa MPP Christine Elliott, the Conservative critic for health and long-term care, who said all levels of government can fight the problem by enforcing existing laws.

"We just shouldn't have contraband cigarettes available, period. They're illegal and we need to crack down on it," she said.