‘Eat all you can’

Cigarettes and smoking not only pose risks to users’ health.

Illegal possession or puffing such products can send one to jail or result in fines.

When 25-year-old Vishavpreet Singh from Calgary drove a truck laden with 30 pallets of tobacco to a police weighing station along Highway 1 near Swift Current, Saskatchewan, Canada last 17 July, inspectors found the bill of lading for the cargo to be false and the load of 8.75 million cigarettes without tax stamps.

Saskatchewan Highway Patrol officers arrested Singh on the spot and charged the suspected smuggler with violating tobacco tax and trafficking laws.

In Singapore, 53-year-old Ramamoorthy Reddiar Jayaraman was drinking beer in a social area on Hougang Avenue 10 on the night of 18 March when he was joined by a teenager who lit a cigarette despite the prominent “no smoking sign,” CNA reported.

Officers enforcing the smoking prohibition approached the teen and asked for his name to ticket him. When the nervous boy did not answer, Jayaraman told the teenager to hand him the cigarette, according to CNA.

Jayaraman put the cigarette in his mouth, ate it and told the teen to run away. After the boy fled, the National Environment Agency (NEA) officers issued a citation fining Jayaraman 2,000 Singaporean dollars.

On 30 July, he appeared in court and told the judge he did not know that eating a cigarette was an offense. He justified his action, saying he wanted to help the teenager avoid having a “blemished record at a tender age,” and asked for a lighter fine.

District Judge Shaiffudin Saruwan clarified that he was not there because he ate a cigarette.

“You want to eat all number of cigarettes, that’s entirely up to you, the court has no issue with that. You are here for the offense of obstructing the exercise of an NEA officer’s power,” CNA quoted Saruwan as saying.

Jayaraman paid the fine in full.