HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS REGISTER		Author Keyword(s) Vol Page [Advanced]

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Submit a response Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when eLetters are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this link to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Add article to my folders Download to citation manager Request Permissions Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation

UK: BAD NEWS, GOOD PROGRESS

Many health advocates have mixed feelings about attention being focused on laws banning the sale of tobacco products to children, especially as tobacco companies are so fond of the topic. The industry’s interest lies in underlining smoking as an adult practice, thus reinforcing the forbidden fruit image that helps recruit children to smoking. However, all agree that if there is a law, then at least it should be properly enforced, whereas the industry, while advocating it in public, privately recognises that good compliance is against its commercial interests.

Over more than 3 decades, surveys have been carried out periodically in Scotland to measure the percentage of retailers who knowingly sell cigarettes to children. In the bad old days when industry was king, a steady eight out of 10 shops sold them to appropriately briefed children sent in to test the law. In separate surveys, retailers’ knowledge of the law was . . . [Full text of this article]