Nearly 46 percent of the nation’s retailers and small vendors do not comply with a ban on selling cigarettes to minors, with betel nut vendors the biggest violators, a Health Promotion Administration survey showed.
Although the overall violation rate was less than the 59.3 percent found in a similar survey conducted in 2012, there is still a lot of room for improvement, the agency said.
The latest survey was conducted for the agency by the Consumers’ Foundation between April and September last year, in which workers dressed in school uniforms were sent to 660 retail shops and vendors in the nation’s 22 municipalities and counties to buy cigarettes.
Nearly half, 45.9 percent, of vendors sold cigarettes without first checking the buyers’ identification cards to make sure they were at least 18 years old, the agency said.
By types of retailers, the violation rate was 60 percent among betel nut vendors, who often also sell cigarettes and a limited variety of cold drinks; 57.1 percent among traditional grocery stores; 30.5 percent among supermarkets and hypermarkets; and 24.5 percent among convenience stores, the agency said.
The agency estimated that there are 100,000 teenagers in Taiwan who smoke, citing the results of another survey it conducted last year.
That survey on teenage smoking found that 3.7 percent of junior-high school students and 9.3 percent of senior-high school students were smokers.
The results showed that more than 50 percent of junior-high school students and 67.4 percent of senior-high school students seeking to buy cigarettes on their own were not turned away by sellers.
Last year, local health authorities inspected venues selling cigarettes more than 330,000 times and discovered 502 cases in which cigarettes were sold to people younger than 18, the agency said, adding that those vendors were fined a total of more than NT$4.47 million (US$148,180 at the current exchange rate) for the violations.
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