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Nova Scotia is making it illegal for teenagers to possess cigarettes under new anti-smoking legislation the province is touting as the toughest in the country.

People under 19 caught smoking will not be charged or fined, but police will have the power to confiscate the tobacco when the new regulations come into effect Jan. 1.

Although selling tobacco to minors is prohibited throughout the country, cigarettes are widely available and there is nothing police, parents and schoolteachers can do under the law to stop teenagers from smoking once they get them.

The legislation closes that loophole, said Jamie Muir, who was Nova Scotia's health minister when the government introduced the legislation earlier this year.

"If you're not old enough to purchase the product, you're not old enough to possess it," Mr. Muir said.

But because the ban does not come with any real consequences, many Nova Scotia teenagers are shrugging it off. Vicki Wentworth, 16, said the new law would drive her and her friends from smoking on the curb during breaks at her Dartmouth high school to a nearby wooded area that is out of view.

"I'll go in the woods," Vicki said. "I'll go smoke somewhere where there's no cops."

The new measure also faces strong opposition from some unlikely sources. Garfield Mahood, executive director of the Non-Smokers' Rights Association, says attempts to penalize smoking inadvertently make the practice more attractive to rebellious teenagers.

"The tobacco industry likes to position tobacco use as adult behaviour," Mr. Mahood said. "The cigarette becomes the badge that signals entry into adulthood. Nova Scotia is playing right into the tobacco industry's trap."

Mr. Mahood, an architect of the graphic warning labels Health Canada required cigarette manufactures to put on packages in June, 2000, said governments should instead step up efforts to stop the illegal sale of tobacco to minors as well as curb advertising from tobacco companies that makes smoking look like a cool, adult pastime.

His Ottawa-based group denounced Nova Scotia's anti-possession initiative in a letter to Gary Mar, the Health Minister of Alberta, whose department recently recommended similar legislation.

Bill VanGorder, CEO of the Lung Association of Nova Scotia, said his group supports the measure, although he said he would have agreed with Mr. Mahood a decade ago. "We used to be concerned about blaming the victim. We used to think it wasn't fair to go after the kids, when so many adults were plotting to sell cigarettes to young people.

"But now, we think that kids have to understand this is not something they can do with impunity."

The province will also have to convince police that enforcing the ban is worth the fuss.

Sgt. Don Spicer, a spokesman for Halifax Regional Police, said snatching cigarettes from teens will not be the force's top priority.

The restriction is part of an anti-smoking bill that bans tobacco in all public places attended by youth.

The law requires the owners of restaurants, bars, bingo halls and patios to build separate, ventilated smoking rooms if they wish to allow patrons to smoke.

The City of Ottawa rolled out a complete ban on smoking in bars and restaurants last year, despite howls of protest by bar owners who saw patrons head across the Quebec border. Toronto has pledged to follow Ottawa's lead in 2004.

Only Nova Scotia and British Columbia have enacted provincial anti-smoking legislation.

hsokoloff@nationalpost.com