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Access to Tobacco

Basic facts and stats

• If you are caught supplying or selling tobacco to youth you can be fined hundreds or even thousands of dollars for breaking the law.
• In Canada, it is illegal:
  • For adults to buy, give or sell tobacco to youth.
  • For strangers to buy tobacco for youth when asked outside stores.
  • For underage youth to give, sell or lend each other tobacco products.
  • For retailers to sell tobacco products to youth in stores
• The Tobacco Act (1997) prohibits the provision of tobacco to young people under the age of 18. British Columbia, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Nunavut have increased the age to 19.^[1]

Social sources such as friends and family members:

• In Canada, 90% of children in grades 5 and 6, and 73% of those in grades 7 to 9 obtain cigarettes from friends and family,^[2] usually without paying for them.^[3]
• Younger teens sometimes steal tobacco from their parents.^[4]
• Both smokers and non-smokers often exchange cigarettes for money. Some underage smokers use this practice to fund their own smoking habit.^[5]
• Young people often stand around convenience stores or gas stations and ask strangers to buy tobacco for them.^[6]

Retail sources near home and in neighboring communities:

• Although over 80% of Canadian retailers comply with laws against selling tobacco to children,^[7] as teens get older, commercial sources of tobacco become more accessible to them.^[8]
• Teenage store clerks often sell tobacco to other teenagers.^[9]

Other retail sources:

• More and more young people are purchasing tobacco over the internet.^[10]
• Although federal law limits youth access to vending machines and these are accessible in adult-only establishments, sometimes youth are still able to get cigarettes from them.

A note about retail display bans

• Many provinces have banned the display of tobacco products in retail outlets.  Retail display bans help to denormalize tobacco because they remove tobacco products from Big Tobacco’s most favored advertising placements, point of sale (or Powerwall) displays that are in plain view of children and adults.
• As of February 2009, retail displays of tobacco products were banned in four Canadian provinces: Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nunavut and Ontario.