THERE is never going to be a right time to try to ban the display of tobacco products in shops and pubs, according to Jersey’s head of Health Promotions.
Andrew Heaven said that Health was taking the wider economy into account, including the healthcare cost of treating cancers, when putting forward their proposals to ban retailers from displaying any tobacco products.
Responding to comments from Ray Shead, the vice-president of the Jersey Chamber of Commerce, who said that Health’s plans would harm small businesses in an already strained economic climate, Mr Heaven said: ‘I don’t think there will ever be a bad time to help people given the known dangers of tobacco and the harm it causes.
‘When you bring any regulations in such as smoking in the workplace, a lot of businesses said that it would adversely affect them and once we brought the ban in, many of the fears were not realised. From a public health perspective, we are looking at the economy in its wider sense and the profit of individual retailers needs to be balanced out against the harmful effects of tobacco further down the line. The message does not get much stronger than smoking kills.’
