The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Manitoba will follow Saskatchewan's lead by forcing retailers to hide their tobacco products from children's view. No timeline is in place, but the government plans to begin consultations with industry and retail representatives in short order. Out of these discussions will come a regulation on how businesses accessible to children must bar the display of cigarettes and other tobacco products. The Manitoba government actually passed a law to this effect last year but did not enforce it because the constitutionality of a similar law in Saskatchewan was being challenged in the nation's highest court. When the Supreme Court of Canada upheld Saskatchewan's law last week, it paved the way for Manitoba to go ahead with its regulation. "This gives us a green light," Healthy Living Minister Theresa Oswald told the Winnipeg Free Press. "It tells us the Manitoba law is constitutional and we're pleased about that... This is about getting (tobacco products) out of the line of sight and getting advertising out of the line of sight of kids." Saskatchewan passed a regulation to this effect in 2002, but the Saskatchewan Court of Appeals struck it down the following year, saying it was inconsistent with federal law. But after last week's ruling in the Supreme Court, it automatically became the law once again in Saskatchewan. "The purpose of the tobacco display provisions of our legislation is to de-normalize tobacco use so that young people do not grow up viewing smoking as a normal, or accepted, activity," Saskatchewan Health Minister John Nilson said in a statement to reporters.
