Availability of Contraband Tobacco Puts Kids at Risk

Jacqueline Bradley is calling on all Canadians to educate themselves to this problem and pressure federal, provincial and local politicians to put an end to it. “I am the mother of two teenage daughters and one came home from a party and told me they were handing cigarettes out of zip-lock baggies,” Bradley said. “Some of them were being given away for a toonie each and some of them were being handed out like Pez. “I am a non-smoking family, generationally non-smoking. I thought I was safe given that the convenience stores have to keep them behind closed and locked (doors) and there’s quite a process for children to get cigarettes. There’s all sorts of regulations in place and I honestly thought that I was completely protected and so were my children.” Bradley began to research and realized that contraband tobacco is a real problem. “From there, my research shocked me and I think it should shock all moms and I think we need to do something about it,” she said. She said an Ontario study where researchers collected butts from around the schoolyard found 30 per cent were contraband cigarettes. In Quebec it was 40 per cent. “My theory is that if you take away 40 per cent of the access to children smoking, we have a really large chunk of kids who are safer and healthier,” Bradley said. “This is a national problem. It’s seeping into all areas of the country. This is a problem we need to bring forward to every politician. Bradley said contraband cigarettes allow children easy access because of the lower price. “Instead of paying $80 or $90 for a carton, it’s $8. That’s lunch money. Literally, they can get a bag of 30 cigarettes in a zip lock bag for a toonie and that scares me.” She said contraband cigarettes are being pushed on kids much like any other drug. “They’ll deliver them to the schoolyard in huge bags and let other kids distribute them,” she said. “It seems harmless but the reality is there are 175 identifiable organized crime groups that are benefiting from our kids’ lunch money. The more I learned, the more frightened I became. Clearly we need to crack down.” Regulations need to be put in place, she said. “They’ve identified things like mold and human feces in these cigarettes,” she said. “Because there are no regulations whatsoever, we have no way of knowing what’s in them. It is a crapshoot every time one of our kids lights one of these up. Cheap, easy access, all of these things are contributing to our children smoking.” “We all need to go to our representatives on a national and a local level and say what are you doing?” she said. “If there’s a smoke shack that you can drive up to and say ‘hey give me a bunch of contraband,’ that’s a problem. If there are people delivering cigarettes in zip-lock bags by the hundreds and thousands to the schoolyards from coast to coast, that’s a problem. She suggests that everybody dealing with or selling tobacco products be “mandated across the board. Everybody’s checked. Everybody’s looked at. Everybody’s regulated. Then we don’t have this problem if it is implemented countrywide, which it should be.”