WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- A cigar supplier in New Zealand's largest city is crying foul after being told to block his site to the country's customers or risk being fined.
Tony Hart, owner of Havana House Cigars in Auckland, has been told by New Zealand's Ministry of Health that his website could breach the country's law against tobacco advertising.
"They say if anybody downloads it, we as the publisher can be fined," Hart said.
So he's put up a notice, which New Zealand users see when they access the site, asking readers to get in touch with the ministry "for an explanation as to why they are censoring the Internet."
For the past 10 years, New Zealand has banned the advertising of tobacco products. Anyone who breaches the country's Smokefree Environments Act faces a fine of NZ$50,000 -- approximately US$25,000.
Hart argues his website is a shop and not a publication, and therefore should not be subject to the section of the act banning advertising. The website is hosted in the United States, Hart says, and exists mainly for overseas customers.
Orders placed through the site account for as much as 70 percent of Hart's total business, he said.
Hart is not, however, going to take any legal action. Rather, he plans to slim down the website for Kiwi viewers. "It'll just be down to the basics. It'll just have a list of cigars and prices," he said.
And that is what the Ministry of Health wants. Product listings and prices can be displayed under the law, said Matthew Allen, a senior analyst at the ministry. "This means that other New Zealand-based sites are able to legally display tobacco products and prices for selection by customers over the Internet," Allen said.
"What they cannot do is promote tobacco products or smoking behavior, as is the case in the current situation."
Hart says the ministry is being pedantic in its pursuit of his website. However, Allen points out that only two tobacco advertising prosecutions have been taken since the law was introduced in 1990. "The ministry favors working with people to achieve compliance," he said.
This is not the first time the government has cracked down on cigar promotion. Guy Morgan and Jill Roddick, who own a magazine store in the capital city of Wellington, have battled for more than a year to be able to sell Cigar Aficionado.
The New Zealand censor cleared Cigar Aficionado, but the magazine still does not pass muster with the Ministry of Health. "We are not selling it but we're not giving up," Roddick said.
Roddick, like Hart, thinks the ministry's attitude is heavy-handed, especially since the magazine is hardly a bestseller. "We're not making any money out of it. It's the principle of the thing," Roddick said.
