SHOPKEEPERS caught selling cigarettes to underage kids would be banned from tobacco sales under an SNP government.

In a keynote speech outlining SNP initiatives to improve health, Shadow Health Minister Nicola Sturgeon said more had to be done to stop young people smoking.

She called for a tough approach to shopkeepers who sold tobacco to under-16s.

Ms Sturgeon said the SNP would introduce a ”negative licensing scheme” prohibiting anyone caught flouting the law from selling tobacco.

And as she set out manifesto commitments for the Holyrood elections in May, she pledged the SNP would ban smoking in all public places.

She told a meeting of health professionals in Edinburgh the SNP would introduce better dental care for children but she rejected any plans to add fluoride to water supplies.

And she pledged to extend the free fruit in schools scheme, so every primary school child had a free piece of fruit every day, and to restore free dental check-ups for adults.

”Although dental checks for children are free, 40% of children are not registered with dentists, and that’s often caused by the charges their parents have to pay,” she said

”That acts as a disincentive for them to go themselves and so the children don’t go either.”

Ms Sturgeon also said the SNP would give mums-to-be on income support vouchers to buy healthy foods for six months before the birth, to improve babies’ birth weight.

The last major manifesto commitment is to provide everyone with an entitlement to an annual health check.

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*Note from FAN:

For a further understanding of the Scottish Childsmile program, which was created because of the Scottish Executive’s decision not to fluoridate, and a list of the news articles on Childsmile, go to http://fluoridealert.org/content/childsmile/

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