7 News Belize

A Crackdown On Cigarette Companies
posted (May 31, 2016)
This year's No Tobacco Day campaign was commemorated under the theme "Get Ready for Plain Packaging." That's legislation being enacted all over the world, which aims to restrict cigarette companies from adding lucrative advertisements to their packaging. The bill is still in its drafting stages, but what this year represents, according to Vellos, is a step in the right direction as it relates to the anti-tobacco movement.

Esnor Vellos, Director of NDACC, MOH
"Currently we already have Plain Packaging in the country of Belize whereas most of the products that are coming into the country have a specific design that calls for that message that says 'The Director of Health Services advises the public that tobacco smoking is harmful, kills or can cause cancer'. We already have that here in place and we also have some produce that are coming in because the product originated from a country who already has implemented plain packaging. Because of that we already have some products coming into the country. What the and the Belize Bureau of Standards at the National Drug Abuse Control through the Ministry of Health and through the National Tobacco Draft Bill is trying to do is making sure we have that on law and is actually regulated. So in practice we already have it in the country and we're just making sure that we can regulate it properly. With that regulation we can also regulate the sale to minors, have a threshold legal age of sale, because unlike alcohol, we already have a liquor licensing act. For tobacco we do not have a law that provides us that avenue to make that regulation."

The bill is being drafted by the CARICOM Regional Organization for Standards and Quality (CROSQ), through the Belize Bureau of standards and according to Vellos it is scheduled to go into full effect within next 5 years.

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