Friday, April 08, 2011



Reported back

The Health Committee has reported back [PDF] on the Smoke-free Environments (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Bill and recommended it be passed with amendments. The core provisions of the bill are unchanged, but there is one important amendment: massively increasing penalties for selling tobacco products to minors. Currently this stands at $2,000; the bill would increase it to $5,000, or $10,000 for a corporation. Its a good move, which has been a long time coming, and hopefully it will result in better compliance with the law.