2023 - Tobacco Reporter

Taiwan Mulls Cigarette Tax Hike

The government of Taiwan is considering raising cigarette taxes next year, reports the Taipei Times, citing the Health Promotion Administration (HPA)

Regulations require an expert committee to deliberate the tobacco tax every other year. During its most recent gathering, last year, the committee decided to leave tobacco taxes unaltered due the Covid-19 pandemic.

HPA Director-General Wu Chao-chun told the Central News Agency that “controlling consumption through cost” is a successful tactic for smoking prevention, and vowed to continue promoting other methods, such as labeling and banning smoking in more areas.

Smoking declined significantly after Taiwan raised the tobacco tax in 2009 and 2017, according to Lee Yue-chune, a professor of public health at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University.

Last year, a pack of cigarettes cost TWD116 (US$3.71) on average, with taxes accounting for 53 percent, below the WHO recommended minimum of 75 percent, she said.

Taiwan spends an estimated TWD80 billion annually on treating smoking-related diseases, Lee said, recommending that the government set a target for the tobacco tax as a percentage of cigarette cost.

July 26, 2023

Zimbabwe Seed Sales Hint at Larger 2024 Crop

Zimbabwe has sold 673 kg of tobacco seed with the capacity to cover 112,104 hectares as of July 20, 2023, reports The Herald, citing Tobacco Industry Marketing Board (TIMB) statistics. The country’s aim, formulated in the government’s Tobacco Value Chain Transformation Plan, is to reach 300 million kg of tobacco a season by 2025.

“This season, we are expecting an increase in hectarage, thanks to the coming on board of new growers and players in the industry as well as the decision by those who have already been in the industry to increase production,” TIMB public relations officer Chelesani Tsarwe said.

“We are currently exploring economically viable alternatives to tobacco through robust diversification programs,” Tsarwe said. “We are glad that we can now ride on the fact that TIMB recently became a certified member of global Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), and we have registered trainers and farm assurers who will work with farmers to ensure compliance with global standards for export crops.”

Tsarwe also noted that there is a focus on implementing the sustainable tobacco program and becoming environmental, social and governance compliant.

“Sustainable agricultural practices will reduce the negative effects of tobacco production, and our tobacco products will be better ranked on the global market,” said Tsarwe.

Tobacco accounts for a large margin of the country’s exports.

Zimbabwe’s tobacco growers produced a record 291.1 million kg of tobacco worth $882.2 million this season.

July 26, 2023

Red Algae Protein Doub Boosts Tobacco Growth

Researchers out of Cornell University have successfully transferred key regions of red algae into a tobacco plant using bacteria as an intermediary, resulting in doubled photosynthesis and plant growth compared to tobacco grown with the unaltered protein, according to a story in the Cornell Chronicle.

The study centers on Rubisco, the most abundant protein across ecosystems. The protein performs the first step of photosynthesis by fixing carbon, but it is slow and struggles to differentiate between carbon dioxide and oxygen, often limiting plant growth and crop yield.

The researchers found a species of red algae, Griffithsia monilis (Gm), that contains Rubisco that is 30 percent more efficient at fixing carbon than Rubisco in other organisms. Laura Gunn and her co-authors of the study used the 3D structure of GmRubisco to successfully graft a small number of regions from Rhodobacter sphaeroides (RsRubisco) into a bacterial Rubisco.

“RsRubisco is not very efficient, but it is very closely related to GmRubisco—they’re like cousins—which means that unlike land-plant Rubisco, it accepts the grafted sequences,” said Gunn. “RsRubisco also doesn’t need any special chaperones for it to fold and assemble in land plants.”

Using the altered Rubisco increased the carboxylation rate by 60 percent, increased carboxylation efficiency by 22 percent and improved RsRubisco’s ability to distinguish between carbon dioxide and oxygen by 7 percent. When transplanted into tobacco, it doubled photosynthesis and plant growth compared to tobacco with unaltered RsRubisco.

“We’re not at the point where we’re outperforming wild-type tobacco, but we’re on the right trajectory,” said Gunn. “We only need fairly modest improvements to Rubisco performance because even a very small increase over a whole growing season can lead to massive changes in plant growth and yield, and the potential applications span many sectors: higher agricultural production; more efficient and affordable biofuel production; carbon sequestration approaches; and artificial energy possibilities.”

The research was supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Translational Photosynthesis, Formas Future Research Leaders and the European Regional Development Fund.

July 26, 2023

Industry Mourns Tommy Bunn

Jessie Thomas “Tommy” Bunn, a distinguished leader in U.S. national and state level agricultural policy and marketing and the husband of North Carolina Secretary of State Elaine F. Marshall, passed away unexpectedly July 24 after suffering a traumatic brain event, the North Carolina Department of the Secretary of State reported.

A native of Zebulon, North Carolina, Bunn formerly served as president of the U.S. Tobacco Cooperative following a 21-year career as executive vice-president of the Leaf Tobacco Exporters Association and Tobacco Association of the United States.

In addition, he served as deputy director and acting director of the Agricultural Marketing Service Tobacco Division for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. and served under Commissioner Jim Graham with the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

At the time of his death, he was serving as a consultant to the tobacco industry.

Bunn was named by the North Carolina State Grange as Man of the Year in 1988 and was honored as a Distinguished Alumni with the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University in 2012, where he graduated with a degree in Agriculture Business/Crop Science in 1966.

July 26, 2023

Brief Supports Limiting ‘Chevron Deference’

Keller and Heckman has filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of members of the electronic nicotine-delivery system (ENDS) industry in support of petitioners in a case to overturn or limit the so-called Chevron deference.

Named after a landmark Supreme Court decision dating from 1984, the Chevron deference is a legal doctrine that generally requires courts to defer to an administrative agency’s interpretation of ambiguous statute so long as that interpretation is reasonable.

In practice, Chevron deference often gives agencies broad leeway to reach beyond the limits of a statute’s plain language, often bypassing the rulemaking process otherwise required under the Administrative Procedure Act and making it more difficult to challenge an agency action in court.

In the years since ENDS became subject to Food and Drug Administration regulation, the vast majority of courts reviewing ENDS industry challenges to premarket application denials, as well as FDA rulemakings and guidance documents, have rubber-stamped the agency’s interpretation of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (TCA) and the “appropriate for the protection of the public health” standard, Keller and Heckman wrote on its blog.

Critics contend that the Chevron deference has enabled the FDA to impermissibly interpret the TCA to implement a de facto ban on all nontobacco-flavored ENDS products without any requisite notice and comment rulemaking or congressional amendments to the TCA.

The filers on the amicus brief urge the Supreme Court to at least restrict the application of Chevron deference so that it is the exception, not the rule. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case in its fall 2023 term.

The petition to overturn or limit the Chevron deference was brought by a group of fishing companies challenging the National Marine Fisheries Service’s construction of the Magnuson-Stevens Act to require the industry to pay the salaries of federal monitors.

The ENDS industry amici include the American Vaping Manufacturers Association, the American Vapor Group and Bidi Vapor.

July 25, 2023

TPSAC Meeting Materials Available

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC) met on May 18 to discuss the “Requirements for Tobacco Product Manufacturing Practice” proposed rule. All the meeting materials, including the recording, transcript and summary minutes, are now available online.

The proposed rule, if finalized, lays out the FDA’s requirements for tobacco product manufacturers regarding the manufacture, design, packing and storage of tobacco products.

Comments on the proposed rule must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on Sept. 6, 2023.

July 25, 2023

Zimbabwe Records Best Ever Sales

Zimbabwe’s tobacco auctions will close July 31 after four months of record sales, according to Bulawayo24.

Final cleanup sales for the auction system will take place on Aug. 30, according to the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB).

“After consultations with all stakeholders, the board wishes to advise that the official date of closure for the 2023 auction floors is 31 July.

“However, growers will still be able to sell their auction tobacco through a mop-up sale. The final auction cleanup sales will be held on Wednesday, 30 August 2023,” the TIMB said.

“Contract sales will continue to operate until such a time when individual contractors have fully received all their tobacco,” the TIMB added.

“The closure was approved by the Minister of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development, Honorable Dr. Anxious Jongwe Masuka,” said the TIMB.

A total of 291.1 million kg of tobacco worth $882.2 million has been sold at an average price of $3.03 per kilogram. Of the total tobacco sold, 271.2 million kg were sold via the contract system.

This year’s sales volumes put Zimbabwe on track to achieve its target of 300 million kg by 2025, as formulated in the Tobacco Value Chain Transformation Plan, ahead of schedule.

July 25, 2023

Former China Monopoly Leader Arrested

He Zehua, former deputy chief of China’s State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, has been arrested on charges of alleged bribe taking, reports China Daily.

The Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the Liaoning Provincial People’s Procuratorate ordered the arrest. His case was investigated by the National Commission of Supervision.

July 25, 2023

Mayors Commit to Smoke-Free Future

Mayors from Bangladesh’s municipalities met for a two-day summit with national and international tobacco control experts, where they pledged to aim for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s vision of a tobacco-free Bangladesh by 2040, reports the Dhaka Tribune.

The goal of the summit was to discuss implementation of tobacco control laws and local government guidelines. The country’s tobacco control law was enacted in 2005 after ratification of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The law was amended in 2013, introducing pictorial health warnings and including smokeless tobacco. It took over three years to put the law into practice, and during that time, the health ministry drafted an amendment banning vaping products, lifting the provision of designated smoking zones to prevent secondhand smoke and controlling point-of-sale advertising. The draft is pending Cabinet approval.

Tobacco use is not declining as expected, according to anti-tobacco activists. The latest data shows that 35.3 percent of adults ages 18 and older used tobacco in any form in 2017. Experts warn that if the trend continues, the tobacco-free goal will not be met.

“The key is to have strong local leadership in terms of policy development, policy implementation and mobilizing funds at the local level for the prevention of tobacco use and noncommunicable diseases,” said Tara Singh Bam, regional director of The Union Asia Pacific, who spoke at the summit. “Mechanisms need to be established that ensure mayors are held accountable for safeguarding the development and implementation of public health policies from the undue influence of unhealthy commodity industries.”

“We, the Ministry of Local Government, issued tobacco guidelines for all the municipalities and cities to assist them,” said Joint Secretary Jasim Uddin. “We have distributed these guidelines.” He noted that the mayors attending the summit are “very committed” to preventing tobacco-related diseases and deaths.

The guidelines direct the mayors to improve tobacco control law enforcement, build public awareness, allocate funds for tobacco control and limit the availability of tobacco products.

July 24, 2023

Retracted Study Links Vapes and Liver Disease

A study linking nicotine vapes to liver disease was retracted from Gastroenterology Research after the authors failed to reply to concerns about the researchers’ methods and findings, reports Filter.

The retraction stated that “concerns have been raised regarding the article’s methodology, source data processing, including statistical analysis, and reliability of conclusions.” The study was published in June 2022.

A letter was sent to the editor raising concerns, and the authors were given time to respond but failed to do so. “As is our journal and publisher’s policy, because there was no response or rebuttal from the authors, the manuscript was retracted, and the letter to the editor was not published,” said Robert Wong, editor-in-chief of Gastroenterology Research. “Typically, if there is an author response or rebuttal, we publish both the letter to the editor and the response.”

“This is a greater problem than just one study,” said Gregory Conley, director of legislative and external affairs for the American Vapor Manufacturers Association, noting a 2020 retraction by the Journal of the American Heart Association of a study connecting vaping to heart attacks. The 2020 retraction letter to the journal was made public, but the issue with the Gastroenterology Research paper is less clear because “there is silence around why it was retracted,” said Conley.

It’s gratifying that the journal took the step to retract the paper. There’s just a lot of things going on with this study that make it seem kind of weird.

Ray Niaura, epidemiology professor at New York University’s School of Global Public Health

The 13 co-authors of the study drew from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey and analyzed participants’ responses for associations between liver disease and the use of cigarettes or vaping products.

They claimed the results showed “e-cigarette users … were associated with higher odds of having liver disease compared to nonsmokers.”

“I already have a bunch of questions just off the top of my head, basically, just looking at this paper,” said who studies tobacco dependence and treatment. He said there were issues with the data, noting that the only survey question on vaping is broad, asking “Have you ever used an e-cigarette?” Questions on combustible tobacco included “Do you now smoke cigarettes?” and if someone has smoked “at least 100 cigarettes” in their life.

“That’s kind of a weak variable,” Niaura said. “What does it mean? It doesn’t mean much.”

The data also didn’t allow for analysis around timing, which means it’s not possible to tell whether liver disease was developed before or after smoking/vaping. “What’s the resolution of the information in studies like this?” Niaura asked. “It’s tricky.”

“It’s gratifying that the journal took the step to retract the paper,” he said. “There’s just a lot of things going on with this study that make it seem kind of weird.”

July 24, 2023

Year: 2023