LICENSING AND TOBACCO

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12197, 23 July 1925, Page 4

LICENSING AND TOBACCO

At the first blush the demand from any tradesman to be sub-"* - jected to a license is apt to cause surprise. Here are the tobacconists of the Dominion asking that all sellers of tobacco may be forced to pay a license fee. Some of them have even explained that licensing will cost the trade an aggregate of a year. And the Wellington Chamber of Commerce—hard-headed business men—instead of asking why this rare and astonishing demand, gives it unanimous support. The fact that a trade which is contributing heavily to the public irevenue demands the curious privilege of adding to its contribution is really the best support for its demand. The tobacconists are taking this course because they want protection against traders making tobacco a side-line of their businesses—a profitable side-line—who are free in their trades from the restrictions of hours and holidays which tobacconists have to respect, and from others who are unscrupulous enough to disregard the conditions under which the law allows them to sell tobacco. As detection is difficult, the result is that the illicit traders in tobacco do a business considerable enough to cut seriously into that of the regular tobacconists, whose trade, unlike that of their unscrupulous rivals, is confined. entirely to tobacco. Ihe 'protective effect of a license to sell tobacco is obvious. It may be profitable to break the law by illicit sale, difficult to detect, and only mildly., punishable. But if detection involves forfeiture of the license to sell, the illicit trader finds himself up against an impossible wall. He will hesitate before risking, for a packet of cigarettes, his right to sell any tobacco at all. Cancellation of license being the best of all possible deterrents, the tobacconists ask for submission of all traders in tobacco to compulsory licensing-. The illicit traders have no ground of objection. As traders in tobacco—though merely as a side-line, but still traders in tobacco —they must accept a condition binding on all traders in tobacco. For them to object to licensing would be to assert a claim to unfair advantage. The consumer can have nothing to say, for he will not have to pay, under license, a penny more than he does now.