Where Tobacco Is Sold and How Contraband Is Defined

Most people who buy legal cigarettes in Canada buy them at the counter of a gas station or corner store. That one fact explains why retailers and the groups that speak for them sit at the centre of nearly every tobacco policy fight, including the fight over contraband.

Where tobacco is sold

Health Canada’s June 2025 discussion paper for the third legislative review says over 95 percent of tobacco products in Canada are sold in person through gas and convenience stores. The number of those stores fell 17.5 percent between 2017 and 2023, and in 2023 Canada still had more than 22,000 retailers where tobacco could be sold. The second legislative review adds that tobacco has virtually disappeared from hospitality venues and from outlets other than convenience stores, grocery stores, gasoline stations and specialty shops.

What the rules ask of a store

Retailers carry most of the practical burden of tobacco law.

• Packaging: plain and standardized packaging reached retail in stages. Retailers had until 7 February 2020 for the first requirements, and full implementation, including at retail, took effect on 9 February 2022.
• Display and promotion: provinces add their own limits. Alberta, for example, restricts advertising, display and promotion of tobacco and vaping products in convenience stores and gas stations.
• Age: federal law prohibits supplying a tobacco product to anyone under 18, and provinces may set a higher age.

The provincial detail is in our retail rules guide.

What “contraband” means officially

The word is used loosely, so it helps to start from a government source. Public Safety Canada’s archived status report gives no formal definition of contraband tobacco. It describes illicit tobacco as arriving by several routes: smuggled US-made cigarettes, unlicensed manufacturing (chiefly on First Nations land), diverted tax-exempt product, counterfeits and stolen product. The same report says the size of the problem is impossible to quantify with any degree of precision.

On the enforcement side, the RCMP describes the possession or sale of tobacco products that are not properly packaged and stamped as prohibited by law. In Ontario, the Tobacco Tax Act prohibits buying, possessing, selling or distributing any quantity of untaxed tobacco unless authorized, and public health unit inspectors are cross-designated to seize contraband and lay charges. Our contraband tobacco section covers the provincial rules.

How to read a retail or coalition campaign

Trade associations and coalitions on every side of this debate publish estimates, surveys and policy asks. That is normal. It is also why we do not take a figure from any of them at face value, and why this page names none of them: we cite only what a government body, court or Parliament has documented.

Before you rely on a number, run it through a few checks.

1. Is the estimate attributed to an official source, or commissioned by the group itself?
2. Does it say how contraband was measured, given that the federal report calls precision impossible?
3. Does the group declare who funds it?
4. Is the policy ask, such as delaying a packaging or flavour rule, one that changes industry sales?

The full checklist, with the WHO guidance behind it, is on the front groups and lobbying page. For the market itself, start with the Canadian tobacco market overview.