Candy cigarettes could earn big fines for General Pants store

The Health Department has threatened the General Pants store in Pitt Street with a $102,000 fine after last week receiving a complaint about it displaying a box of candy cigarettes for sale at its counter.
The cigarettes were displayed for sale in a box featuring an image of a man smiling with what appears to be a cigarette in his mouth and with the captions 'Makes you looks cool', 'Hey Dad, can I bum a smoke?', and 'Just like Dad!'.
Sydney mum Heidi Sumich said she was shopping in the store with her 13-year-old daughter when she saw the box last week.
"I thought it was really inappropriate to have that sort of thing where young people go," she told News Limited.
"I pointed it out to the shop assistant and she said they'd had a lot of complaints about it."
Angered that the store had failed to act on the complaints, Ms Sumich wrote to Health Minister Tanya Plibersek hoping she would have more clout. Cigarettes online at cheapest prices.
News Corp Australia understands the department has written to the shop warning it considered the box a breach of the tobacco advertising code.
It is also understood that General Pants was warned that the penalties for an offense under the Act are up to $20,400 for an individual and $102,000 for a corporation.
The manager of the General Pants Pitt Street store said she was not allowed to speak to the media.
Ms Plibersek said attempts to make smoking appear glamorous or attractive to young people were of particular concern to her.
"Thirty years ago, about 20 per cent of high school students smoked, but these days it's dropped to around four per cent," she said.
"The government is successfully reducing the number of young people who smoke, but this undermines our work and can put young people at risk.
"There is nothing glamorous about tobacco. It's the only product that if taken as intended will kill half its regular users."
Ms Sumich says when she grew up, candy cigarettes were a popular sweet for children.
"I get the nostalgia of them but it just isn't appropriate in this age," she said.
Smoking kills around 15,000 Australians a year and costs the country $31 billion.
The government aims to slash the smoking rate from 16 to 10 per cent by 2018.
It ramped up tobacco taxes by 25 per cent in 2010 and this week announced they would rise by 12.5 per cent a year for the next four years pushing up the price of a pack by $5.
From December last year all tobacco has had to be sold in drab green packaging with health warnings covering 75 per cent of the pack.