TOBACCO PRICES

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 106, 1 November 1934, Page 15

TOBACCO PRICES

CHANCES MADE TODAY

Fixed retail prices for pipe tobaccos and cigarettes operated as from today, as announced in "The Post" last; Friday. Tobacconists and others selling tobaccos and cigarettes 'must not sell at prices lower than those officially listed. Inducements o. concessions to buy in the form of gifts of matches, cigarette papers, or other articles, offering cigarettes or tobacco for salo with ' other articles, .or offering matches, cigarette papers, •or other articles will be regarded as tantamount to a departure from the sale at fixed prices below which cigarettes or tobacco must hot' be sold.

Some hundred's of varieties of "smoke:abjes" are now covered by the fixed price list which -{s'issued by! the -tobacco "manufacturers1 and agehts": in New Zealand. Some iines will :be cheaper, ■ others -will show an advance in retail prices.

As was stated in "The Post" on Friday "last, in removing tobacco and cigarettes from the schedule of the Commercial Trusts Act last session, Parliament signified its wish that the extreme cutting of retail-prices should cease, in order that the retailer, who is dependent upon this business, should be given a reasonable chance to live.' It was at that time suggested that all. sections of the trade should, endeavour to agree upon a standard of prices which would be fair to the handler and with due regard to the interests of the consumer. ■ Repeated representations had been made that retail prices were being quoted in some quarters at so low a i level that they .meant cost price or even less than cost to the ordinary tobacconist. "" ■*."."

The Auckland "Star" reports that the local trade view in- that city is that the new price-fixing system-will be strictly enforced by the' manufacturers, who are now entitled to take effective action _ in regard to any retailer who cuts prices. The same prices rule all over the Dominion.