Legal quirk: Cigarette sales will completely end on Schiermonnikoog from July

When the Supermarkt Brunekreef grocery store stops selling cigarettes on July 1, there will no longer be a retail outlet legally allowed to sell tobacco products on the entire island of Schiermonnikoog. The national law preventing supermarkets from selling those items begins on that date, and the island does not have any convenience stores, reports Dagblad van het Noorden.

Eric Brunekreef owns the supermarket, now a Spar franchise, and told the newspaper he raised his concerns with the small town’s mayor, Ineke van Gent. “She doesn’t want anything to do with it. I have also submitted my views to the Ministry of Health three times. In vain.”

Brunekreef said he wasn’t looking to continue selling tobacco products himself, but he fears a growing gray market or the possibility of more illicit issues. Some unscrupulous huckster “will soon come from the mainland with a suitcase full of cigarettes to set up a business here. Offering cigarettes for one euro each, for example. Do you think they will ask buyers if they are 16 years old?”

“I hope that the new situation will not be abused on the island,” Van Gent told the newspaper in response. “I understand that it could be a problem if people here will soon be selling the already-expensive cigarettes at a profit of five euros per pack.”

Schiermonnikoog is mostly car free, and essentially only has a couple of fuel pumps, but it does not have a filling station with a shop attached. If it did, they would be allowed to keep selling tobacco until 2030, while convenience stores can continue tobacco sales until 2032. From then on, only specialized tobacco shops will be allowed to continue to sell the products. Online sales were banned last year.

Some 982 people called the island municipality “home” at the start of 2023, but the island north of Friesland and Groningen welcomes 300,000 tourists per year. Even in the small town, Brunekreef says inspectors check every two or three weeks on average to see if he is complying with tobacco laws, and making sure his customers are of the legal age.

Because of the seasonal market, a special tobacconist shop is unrealistic, he said. “But if you want a building here with only smoking products, you have to generate approximately one and a half million euros in annual turnover. That will never work.