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Display of tobacco products to be banned in Singapore from 2017

Xinhua, December 9, 2015 Adjust font size:

Retailers will not be allowed to display tobacco products in their shops from 2017, announced Singapore's Ministry of Health (MOH) on Wednesday.

MOH said the ministry will move to ban stores from displaying tobacco products after amendments to the Tobacco (Control of Advertisements and Sale) Act are tabled in Parliament.

To give retailers time to effect the changes and smoothen the transition process, there will be a 12 months' grace period after the legislation has been amended to comply with the regulations, which means the ban will take effect in 2017, said MOH in a statement.

Tobacco point of sale display (POSD) ban has been discussed in a few sessions since 2013. The authorities recognized that some adjustments have to be made to retailers' operational environment when the POSD ban takes effect, and have taken into account some of the retailers' feedback.

Singapore's Senior Minister of State for Health and Environment and Water Resources Amy Khor said that authorities will work with retailers to help them comply with the new legal guidelines when she met with tobacco retailers on Wednesday.

MOH also announced that a brochure which is prepared by the Health Promotion Board (HPB) in four official languages of the city state to explain the measure and possible ways to store tobacco products away from the public's line of sight will be offered to retailers in the next weeks.

POSD ban has been successfully introduced in several countries. Iceland is the first one to introduce the ban in 2001, followed by Canada and Thailand in 2005, and Australia and Ireland in 2009. Other countries such as Norway, New Zealand, Finland and the United Kingdom have a similar measure. Endit