Carreras strengthens programme to discourage early smoking

Carreras says it recently updated its Youth Access Prevention (YAP) programme geared at discouraging the sale of tobacco products to children.

In a release, the company said the move is in keeping with its parent company British American Tobacco’s (BAT) global campaign to discourage underage smoking. The campaign includes a lobby to have governments implement minimum-age laws, where there is no existing legislation, to prevent children from accessing tobacco products.

As part of the campaign, no cigarette brands will be advertised via social media.

“Where we do use social-media influencers for our potentially reduced-risk products, we have strict controls in place to ensure our partnerships are appropriate and only ever targeted at adults. To this end, we use analytic tools to ensure that followers and audiences of these influencers are majority-adult,” Carreras said, quoting its parent company.

RESPONSIBLE MARKETING

Speaking at the relaunch of the YAP programme at its Ripon Road headquarters, Carreras’ legal and external affairs manager, Ashleigh Arnold, said that the company was determined that none of its tobacco or nicotine products were to be marketed to youth.

“We take seriously our commitment to market tobacco products responsibly and only to adults,” she noted.

She explained that operations in Jamaica were required to observe marketing principles that were globally consistent and that demonstrated the ­company’s commitment to marketing appropriately.

“Beyond our strict requirement for adult-only marketing, we conduct youth access prevention activities for the sales of our tobacco and nicotine products. Our commitment to only market our combustible tobacco products to adult smokers has long been supported by our global Youth Smoking Prevention guidance and activities,” she said.

Carreras said BAT’s YAP guidelines now cover all its product categories and include markets in which its products are distributed through third parties. Arnold also noted that it is now mandatory for all markets, unless there is a government ban in place, to provide retailers with material on the YAP programme.

The local tobacco company said in support of the global campaign that it has rolled out new ­training for its trade, marketing and distribution employees and has strengthened governance procedures to ensure compliance.