[26 JUL 00] CRIMES, FIRES & ACCIDENTS
Tobacco Claims Send £19,000 Up In Smoke

Traders who said a £7 pack could help smokers give up the weed have paid £19,000 in court fines and costs in Leamington.

A catalogue claimed:

“You just place the nicotine habit breaker stick in the cigarette packet and it absorbs up to 78% of the nicotine”.

Warwickshire County Council Trading Standards officers prosecuted the catalogue firms after routine tests exposed the claim as untrue.

GUS Home Shopping Ltd trading as Kay and Company Ltd, and their suppliers HHS Trading (UK) Ltd both pleaded guilty to four offences under the Trade Descriptions Act about their claims relating to the powers of the Mild Ciga TC-88 nicotine habit breaker stick.

Trading Standards Officers became suspicious of a claim that the £7 anti smoking device could, if placed in the cigarette packet, absorb up to 78% of the nicotine.

The advert said that: 

“Once you have become used to consuming less nicotine, it gets markedly easier later on to give up smoking altogether”.

The product was sent to the Laboratory of the Government Chemist for examination. It showed there was no difference in the nicotine content of the tobacco from the control cigarettes and those treated with the Mild Ciga Device.

It was also stated there was no scientific reason why the material should be able to absorb nicotine, especially without physical contact with the leaf and that the device simply contained normal broken stone.

GUS Home Shopping Ltd trading as Kays and Company Ltd pleaded guilty to two offences at Mid-Warwickshire Magistrates Court on 6 June.

Their suppliers, HHS trading (UK) Plc pleaded guilty to two further offences today. GUS Home Shopping were fined the statutory maximum of £5000, for each of the two offences with cost of £1311.50. HHS were fined £4,500 per offence, and ordered to pay costs of £1311.50.

Noel Hunter, Director of Warwickshire Trading Standards said:

"This is as much a health issue as it is a consumer issue. The last thing that smokers who are trying to give up need is a product which falsely claims to do some of the hard work for them.

“We will continue to protect consumers from those companies who make false and misleading claims about the products they sell."

In mitigation GUS Home Shopping apologised and said that its normal procedure was to test products before they sold them but on this occasion regrettably it had appeared that the procedure may not have been followed.

HHS claimed that they had inadvertently imported the product