While Government is seeking a complete ban on smoking in public and workplaces, it wants to make sure that private residences are not captured in the Tobacco bill which has penalties ranging from a $10,000 fine to $500,000 fine and imprisonment.

Government has therefore amended the definition of workplace to specify it only includes homes ’where such residences or vehicles are also used for commercial purposes’.

Speaking in the Tobacco bill in the Senate yesterday, Health Minister Jerry Narace stated: ’This amendment is to ensure that the definition of workplace does not capture domestic workers, as our policy is not to make private residents subject to this Bill, other than when such residences are used for commercial purposes’.

The original clause had provoked criticism that it would have allowed a domestic worker to report an employer for smoking in front of her, earning the employer both a fine and a jail term.

Under the bill there would be a complete ban on smoking in public transportation terminals, workplaces, retail establishments, including bars, restaurants and shopping malls, clubs, cinemas, concert halls, sports facilities, pool and bingo halls, publicly owned facilities rented out for events; and any other facilities that are accessible to the public.

The bill also prohibits any person from smoking within 15 metres of any place that caters primarily to children, such as schools, children’s playgrounds and amusement parks.

The bill also prohibits the publicising of the name of a sponsoring entity where tobacco sponsorships, tobacco advertising and promotion are present. ’As such, tobacco companies are permitted to sponsor events but they cannot take any overt credit for such sponsorship,’ Narace said.

Narace said that under the bill authorised officers shall have the power to carry out inspections and investigations and examine, open, test any equipment, tools, materials, packages or anything the authorised officer reasonably believes is used or is capable of being used for the manufacture, advertising or promotion of tobacco products.

He said customs and police officers shall have the power to enter the premises of any business place where tobacco is manufactured, sold, transported, received, distributed, supplied or otherwise found or is likely to be found, for the purposes of enforcing this Act.

Narace said the bill was necessary to prevent the many deaths which occur as a result of smoking. He said tobacco use is a high risk habit as it kills approximately 50 per cent of all those who use it. He said research done in 2002 by world renowned epidemiologist Sir George Alleyne in Trinidad and Tobago suggested that the cigarette habit was directly responsible for approximately 30 per cent of all male and 15 per cent of all female medical deaths. ’Research shows that cardiovascular disease as a result of smoking contributes to approximately 52.9 per cent of medical death rates in men and 49.4 per cent in women in Trinidad and Tobago,’ he said.

He said despite these statistics, the sale of cigarettes had been on the increase, notwithstanding the fact that increases in taxes were imposed intermittently.

Narace said a 2008 study undertaken by the National Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention Programme Secretariat and the Ministry of Social Development at Secondary Schools in Trinidad and Tobago showed among other things that more than one quarter of all students reported having tried cigarettes and the mean age of first cigarette use overall was 11.9 years and the median age 12 years.

He said the Tobacco bill, which requires a special majority, seeks to prevent tobacco use by children, regulate tobacco use by individuals, enhance public awareness of the hazards, protect individuals from exposure to tobacco smoke, prohibit and restrict tobacco promotional practices and prevent smuggling of tobacco.