The planned 100 meter restriction on selling tobacco products would adversely affect medium scale eateries and retails shops, alleged the Tobacco Retailers Association in a press briefing yesterday in Colombo.
The association also said that the tobacco traders in Sri Lanka are finding it increasingly difficult to carry out their legal businesses, selling a legal product because of the various unfair laws and unlawful enforcements by various government authorities. The most recent, is the government’s proposal to introduce laws banning the sale of cigarettes within a 100-meter radius of schools and other establishments frequented by persons who are under the age of 21 and the sale of cigarettes in single stick form. Such a move will put many traders out of business and around 10,000 traders in Colombo alone would be negatively impacted s a result of this move.
There are around 125,000 retailers island wide who are involved in the sale of tobacco products, which include legal cigarettes and beedi. The Tobacco Retailers Association represents around 7,500 such retailers. The association was formed in 2017, in the face of many unlawful enforcements and other challenges, which impacted the businesses.
“We have been carrying out our businesses, which includes the sale of cigarettes among other consumer products, in a legal manner for many years. We have always operated our businesses in compliance with the law of the land, by ensuring that no one is allowed to smoke within our shops, don’t advertise cigarettes in our shops and we do not sell tobacco products to persons under the age of 21.
In the past, we could generate a good income, support many livelihoods and be successful businessmen in our own right within our own communities. However, this changed drastically in 2016, when the government decided to increase the taxes on legal cigarettes without taking the plight of our traders into account. Our sales fell drastically almost overnight and many of us felt the economic pressures of this increase, as many consumers started to shift towards illegal or smuggled cigarettes,” said K L S De Silva, President The Tobacco Retailers Association.
“You may wonder why the sale of tobacco/cigarettes is such an important part of our business. It is important not only as it generates direct revenue to traders but also because it creates sizeable foot traffic to our outlets. A consumer who walks into a shop to buy a cigarette often buys a cup of tea, a soft drink, a bun or any other food item, which means we generate more income than merely by selling a cigarette. Most consumers would come to an outlet 3 or four times a day. Losing this means that many of our traders will not just lose revenue, but most will go out of business,” said Nilasntha Costa Secretary.
He alleged that although they had spoken to the president and the prime minister, handed over petitions highlighting their plight, they have all fallen on deaf ears.
The association requested the government to stop the activities by vested parties to destroy their legal businesses by introducing impractical and unfair laws, stop all unlawful enforcements and harassment of traders who are involved in carrying out their legal businesses, take strict action against smugglers of cigarettes and traders that peddle these products to children.
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