The selling of tobacco products in grocery stores and kiosks throughout the Kingdom has been outlawed by the Saudi Ministry of Municipalities and Housing.
As part of its efforts to improve the business climate and boost food safety standards to safeguard customers, the ministry updated the regulations for supermarkets, hypermarkets, and grocery stores.
All produced and packaged tobacco products licensed by the Saudi Food and Drug Authority are included in these items, per the specifications released by the ministry on Monday.
These consist of shisha and other comparable tobacco products, as well as conventional and electronic cigarettes. Grocery stores, which are authorized to sell packaged food items, personal care items, detergents, disinfectants, and similar products, as well as paper and plastic products, are not allowed to sell them, given that the establishment is at least 24 square meters in size.
The ministry emphasized that tobacco items must adhere to authorized standard criteria, which include keeping them in closed drawers and making them completely invisible to facility visitors. Selling them to anyone younger than 18 or as defined by the Anti-Smoking Law is illegal. The vendor is allowed to request documentation from buyers proving they are at least eighteen years old.
Four square meters is the minimum area required for kiosks in shopping malls, ten square meters for kiosks on commercial or mixed-use land, twenty-four square meters for grocery stores, one hundred square meters for supermarkets, and five hundred square meters for hypermarkets.
The changes further clarified licensing procedures, which include Civil Defense approval before issuing of the license and the filing of a valid commercial registration specifying the activity to be licensed. According to the modifications, the location must be inside business buildings or on property that has been set aside for commercial use, and it must be situated on a commercial street in compliance with rules and guidelines.
