No more selling of loose cigarettes. If you sell or buy single cigarettes you will have to pay a fine of $12,000 and be imprisoned for six months.

This is one of the provisions of the Tobacco Control Bill which both Opposition and Independent Senators expressed serious difficulty with yesterday.

Speaking in the debate in the Senate, Opposition Senator Wade Mark slammed this prohibition. ’This is draconian legislation. It is legislation to imprison and kidnap the ordinary member of the population. How could it be a criminal offence for a small owner of a parlour to retail one cigarette to an ordinary member of the public?’ he asked. ’So you can sell me a pack (of cigarettes) so I can smoke myself to death, but not one or two cigarettes,’ he added.

Mark said if someone was trying to kick the smoking habit by buying cigarettes one at a time, the bill would be discouraging this-and doing the opposite of what it was intended to do, which is to curb the use of tobacco.

He added that with many people working for a $9 minimum wage, they could not afford to buy cigarettes by the packs, but only singly and that this practice was very prevalent at the grassroot levels of the society.

’When I tell people (about this bill) they cannot believe that there is a bill before Parliament banning poor people from buying one cigarette,’ Mark said.

Independent Senator Subhas Ramkelawan agreed with the position, saying that there was no way any reasonable senator would want to criminalise anyone earning a decent living (by selling cigarettes singly) nor could he support criminalising the gentleman who buys that one cigarette. He stressed that in many instances people would not even know such legislation exists.

Independent Senator Corrine Baptiste-McKnight said that the definition given to advertising means that West Indian Tobacco Company (WITCO) cannot sponsor her favourite band, Desperadoes. According to the bill, ’it prohibits tobacco sponsorships and tobacco advertising and promotion, where the name of a sponsoring entity is publicised’.

Noting that Despers had never identified with any of the many products of WITCO, she said: ’According to this definition, they would be denied their sponsorship.’

Noting that the bill also bans smoking within 15 metres of a school, McKnight pointed to Archer Street in Belmont, which has schools such as Providence Girls, Belmont Secondary, on the one side and residents on the other. ’So someone coming to answer his/her door with a cigarette in his/her hand is contravening this provision. She said she hoped that the bill did not meet the same fate as the breathalyser. She said even the person who chooses to kill himself by smoking has rights.

Government wrapped up debate on the bill after it became clear that it was not going to get the requisite support needed to pass the special majority legislation. Independent Senators each expressed problems with different clauses in the bill.

Controversial clause:

According to Clause 31 (2): ’No person shall sell single cigarettes or other smoked tobacco products, or sell any smoked tobacco product other than as part of a complete and intact package that meets minimum quantity requirements. Clause 31 (3) A person who contravenes this section commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine of $12,000 and to imprisonment for six months’.