A government-backed undercover survey showed that 26.9 percent of tobacco retailers did not check ID cards for buyers in school uniforms, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday.
The Consumers’ Foundation from May to November last year conducted its annual inspection by sending 20-year-old volunteers in high-school uniforms to buy cigarettes at 854 retailers across the nation, HPA officials told a news conference in Taipei.
Revisions to the Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act (菸害防制法) promulgated in March 2023 stipulate that only people who are 20 or older can legally buy cigarettes or other tobacco products.
Photo: CNA
Officials said that 38.6 percent of betel nut vendors, 26.9 percent of general stores, 23.4 percent of franchised supermarkets and hypermarkets, and 21.5 percent of franchised convenience stores failed to check buyer ID.
Compared with similar research in 2023, compliance with tobacco buyer ID laws was up 1.4 points for franchised convenience stores, but down 4.3 points for supermarket and hypermarket franchises, they said.
Noncompliance decreased 4.6 percent for betel nut vendors and 5.7 percent for general stores over the same period, they said.
Last year’s study showed that of the nation’s four major convenience store chains, 33.9 percent of Hi-Life outlets, 33.3 percent of OK Mart branches, 12.1 percent of FamilyMart stores and 16.7 percent of 7-Elevens failed to comply with buyer ID laws.
Among supermarkets, 40 percent of Carrefours, 35 percent of Showba outlets, 23.7 percent of PX Marts and 12.7 percent of Simple Mart stores did not check the age of the test buyers, they said.
The nation’s retailers were insufficiently vigilant in ensuring that clerks know and follow the law, foundation secretary-general Chen Ya-ping (陳雅萍) said.
Although the noncompliance figure for last year was down from 33.2 percent in 2021, 15 percent of the clerks interviewed reported not knowing that the smoking age had been raised to 20 years, Chen said.
High turnover in venues and inadequate employee training appeared to be the main cause of the failure to check IDs, she added.
Last year, retailers were fined a combined NT$1.15 million (USD$34,846) for 134 tobacco buyer ID citations, HPA Deputy Director-General Chia Shu-li (賈淑麗) said.
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS