SCOTLAND HAS taken its first major step towards introducing licences for shop owners selling cigarettes, after a private member's bill was launched by an SNP minister.

Christine Grahame's proposal has been met with angry criticism by business and retailers, who say the licensing scheme would be too costly, and have accused her of "grandstanding."

Grahame, convener of the parliamentary health and sport committee, will launch a three month consultation at the end of September. She said it was an "anomaly" not to have a parallel licensing scheme to alcohol when the legal age to buy cigarettes will be raised to 18 on October 1.

She said: "It will be a positive licensing scheme requiring a database from local authorities of retailers licensed to sell tobacco products. The trading standards would report them to the licensing board and retailers would be asked to appear before it."

Grahame said she would like to introduce a licence fee at a flat rate, but if retailers were found to be selling to underagers they would be fined in relation to the size of their outlet.

Grahame added: "I want to consult widely and with young people, secondary school pupils, get youth agencies involved and obviously organisations and individuals."

A spokesman for the Scottish Grocers' Federation, which represents some 5500 stores, said the costs of the scheme will be "disproportionate for smaller businesses".

He added: "It will effectively be an additional tax for community businesses. All positive licensing does is let politicians grandstand for a period of time without actually doing anything to impact on the problem of dealing with tobacco falling into the hands of young people."

Andrew Watson, a spokesman for Federation of Small Businesses Scotland, which represents around 20,000 businesses, said: "We support measures to crack down on the illegal sale of tobacco to underage customers, but I would question whether more legislation is the way to deal with this.

"The police and local authorities already have powers to fine or prosecute retailers who sell tobacco products to underage customers, but the low number of cases suggests that either there is a small minority of retailers routinely breaking the law, or that the authorities are not using the powers they have at their disposal to better effect.

Watson also said owning a shop was a "dangerous occupation", with many of owners being victims of crime. Challenging someone for proof of age, can be one of the "flashpoints" for violence. Watson said: "I hope MSPs think through some of the unintended consequences before rushing to regulate."

Anti-smoking group, Ash Scotland, welcomed Grahame's move. Chief Executive Maureen Moore, OBE, said: "It's important we don't take our foot off the accelerator. To me this is one of the most important steps in tobacco control."

It has called on the Scottish Executive to improve smoking cessation services to include young people. Moore added: "We haven't been very good at stopping young people stopping smoking, it's all been on prevention."

She advocated school nurses delivering smoking cessation classes, along with youth drug workers.

"We should train up drug workers to help young people who are perhaps using cannabis and let them intervene to help them deal with tobacco. Youth agencies, contraceptive services - where young people are - we need to make sure their cessation services are available," she said.

The Executive has also been criticised for its failures in not publicising the age rise for buying tobacco products.

Both Ash Scotland and the Scottish Grocers' Federation had asked it to introduce an aggressive publicity campaign before schools broke up for the summer holidays, but an Executive spokeswoman told the Sunday Herald it can't do anything until next month.

She said: "There are provisions within the Smoking Health and Social Care Act that would allow us to raise the age, but there's a parliamentary process that needs to be gone through that won't be done until September."

Simon Clark, director of smokers' rights group Forest said: "It sounds ludicrous that they can't advertise or publicise the change in law well in advance. It just shows this legislation is nothing more than a political gesture."

He added: "I think the Scottish Executive needs to give serious consideration on the impact this could have on local communities.

"It's like an unstoppable tank and it's simply riding roughshod over minority groups and businesses without any thought about the effect it will have on local community."