Convenience stores push back on B.C. nicotine pouch ban

Richmond, B.C. -

You can get all the essentials at a Richmond convenience store run by Tam Do.

Lottery tickets, candy cups and a gas station staple: cigarettes.

But one thing you can’t get is flavoured nicotine patches or pouches, which are marketed as smoking cessation products.

B.C. opted to move the products fully into pharmacies earlier this year.

Tam’s son Trevor Do – who runs his own convenience stores – feels he and similar retailers are being unfairly targeted.

"I myself am a user of nicotine pouches,” the younger Do told CTV News on Thursday.

“I was able to kick my cigarette habit after a long time, and I see a lot of goodness and value in being able to offer this."

The father and son duo aren’t the only convenience store owners upset about the situation.

There’s a larger push by the sector to make this an election issue, with claims the change is hurting small businesses.

"We're calling on the government to recognize that convenience stores are responsible retailers,” said Sara MacIntyre with the Convenience Industry Council of Canada in an interview with CTV News Vancouver.

“We handle a lot of age-gated products, including lottery and cigarettes."

MacIntyre claimed youth are still getting their hands on similar nicotine products, they’re just doing it through the black market and funding organized crime, rather than that money going to small businesses.

The underlying logic behind the government’s approach is that kids can more readily get their hands on the products when they’re sold in convenience stores.

But Tam and Trevor Do say at their seven stores, they never had an issue with inspectors catching them doing anything wrong, and ask why they should take the financial hit.

In some cases, Trevor claimed, people have come into his stores trying to buy smoking cessation products, only to walk out with cigarettes instead when they found those products weren't available.

But the NDP government isn’t backing down, insisting these products can get kids and others hooked, including – perhaps – people who otherwise wouldn’t have touched nicotine.

"It's important to note that we want to protect young people in the here and in the now,” B.C. Health Minister Adrian Dix told CTV News in an interview Thursday.

“The impact of nicotine addiction is high on people's lives their entire lives. It's important for the health-care system, but it's mostly just important for children and youth."

The B.C. government covers 84 days' worth of smoking cessation products annually for those trying to quit smoking through its pharmacare program.

CTV News asked a handful of people about the issue – some outside one of Tam Do’s stores in Richmond – and people mostly sided with the government’s approach to restrict sales to pharmacies.

Further crackdowns could be coming, with the federal government pushing for marketing restrictions on flavoured pouches over concerns they’ll make nicotine products more attractive to children.