Author: Staff Writer

US states have spent less on tobacco prevention during the past two years than in any period since the national tobacco settlement in 1998, despite record high revenues from the settlement and tobacco taxes, according to a story by Sabrina Tavernise for the New York Times quoting a report due for release today.

The states are on track to collect a record $25.7 billion in tobacco taxes and settlement money in the current fiscal year, but they are set to spend less than two per cent of that on prevention, according to the report by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. The report’s figures come from state appropriations for the fiscal year ending in June.

The settlement awarded states an estimated $246 billion over its first 25 years. It gave states complete discretion over the money, and many use it for programs unrelated to tobacco or to plug budget holes.

Public health experts say it lacks a mechanism for ensuring that some portion of the money is set aside for tobacco prevention and cessation programs. “There weren’t even gums, let alone teeth,” Timothy McAfee, the director of the Office on Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP), said, referring to the allocation of funds for tobacco prevention and cessation in the terms of the settlement.

Tobacco use is the number one cause of preventable death in theUS, killing more than 400,000 people every year, according to the CDCP.

The full story is at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/06/health/antismoking-outlays-drop-despite-tobacco-revenue.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y&_r=0.

Officials in California have tapped reserves for payments on two series of state tobacco bonds due to the state’s receiving ‘insufficient’ tobacco settlement revenue, according to a Reuters story quoting notices filed with the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board on Monday.

The draws indicate how municipal bond issuers that sold debt backed by settlement revenue must contend with the effects of declining sales of tobacco products.

Moody’s Investors Service was said to be taking the decline so seriously that it said in July a majority of tobacco bonds sold by US states, counties and cities would default if cigarette consumption kept falling at a 3-4 per cent annually.

States, counties and cities have sold nearly $40 billion of bonds backed by the $246 billion in payments that US cigarette makers agreed to make to them over 25 years.

Settlement payments vary from year to year as they are based mainly on the number of cigarettes sold.

The full story is at: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/03/municipals-tobacco-bonds-idUSL1E8N3F2D20121203.

Birds in Mexico City are keeping their nests warm and pest-free by lining them with cigarette butts, according to a BBC Online story quoting a study by researchers at St Andrews University.

The nicotine and other chemicals in discarded filters are said to act as ‘a natural pesticide’ that repels parasitic mites.

At the same time, the cellulose butts provide useful nest insulation.

St Andrews University scientists studied the nests of house sparrows and house finches that contained from none to 48 stubbed-out cigarettes, and that averaged about 10.

In respect of both species, nests with larger numbers of butts were significantly less infested by mites.

Wild birds are known to protect their nests from mite invasion by importing certain chemical-emitting plants.

The full story is at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-20607413.

There is a downside to all of this. Stories in the past have told how building fires have been started by birds incorporating into their nests butts that have not been fully extinguished.

An appeals court yesterday denied theUSfederal government’s request to reconsider a decision blocking a requirement that tobacco companies put large graphic health warnings on cigarette packs to show that smoking can disfigure and kill, according to a story by Michael Felberbaum for Associated Press.

In its filings, the US Court of Appeals inWashington,DC, did not provide any reason for denying the request for the full court or a panel to rehear the case.

In August, a three-judge panel affirmed a lower court ruling blocking the Food and Drug Administration mandate, saying it ran afoul of the First Amendment’s free speech protections.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.

The government has 90 days to appeal the decision to the US Supreme Court.

The full story is at: http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-12-05/court-denies-rehearing-on-cigarette-warnings.

Zimbabwe’s Agriculture, Mechanisation and Irrigation Development Minister, Dr. Joseph Made, has said that the use of price ‘barriers’ during the 2012 tobacco sales season should not be allowed to continue next year, according to a story in The Herald.

In a speech read on his behalf at a National Tobacco Workshop to mark the end of the 2012 tobacco marketing season, Made said a cap of US$4.99 per kg was used in the most recent season, resulting in a number of tobacco grades of clearly different styles and quality fetching the same price.

“It is my hope that in the next marketing season this price barrier will be no more,” he said.

Made expressed concern also about the big difference that existed between auction floor and contract prices for similar grades. “It is again my trust that will be corrected before the 2013 marketing season opens,” he said.

Made said his ministry would continue to review different pieces of legislation to ensure that every stakeholder was protected.

The Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) says that it is providing ‘the public and other stakeholders’ with another option for reporting ‘potential’ violations of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (Tobacco Control Act), and related regulations.

It is doing this by making available its new ‘Potential tobacco product violations reporting’ form.

‘By making it easier for anyone to report potential violations of the Tobacco Control Act and related regulations, FDA is better able to monitor compliance with the laws, help reduce the health burden of tobacco use on the American public, and protect America’s youth,’ the CTP said in a press note.

The form can be downloaded from: http://www.fda.gov/TobaccoProducts/ProtectingKidsfromTobacco/ucm330160.htm?source=govdelivery.

The licensing of smokers, the anti-tobacco movement’s latest proposal to ‘denormalize’ smoking, confirms that public-health elites suffer from Mary Poppins Syndrome: They won’t rest until we’re all practically perfect in every way.

So says the Cato Institute adjunct scholar, Dr. Patrick Basham, in a response to a piece in the journal PLOS Medicine by Simon Chapman PhD FASSA, suggesting that tobacco users should be required to obtain a ‘smoker’s license’ to buy cigarettes. Chapman, professor of public health at the University of Sydney, Australia, envisions a “smart card” system that would allow the government to limit smokers’ cigarette purchases and encourage them to quit.

‘This kind of paternalism assumes (incorrectly) that individuals are uninformed or irrational in their choices, and public-health considerations must take precedence over their liberty,’ Basham writes. ‘Accordingly, the state is obligated to force everyone to conform to the public-health consensus. The rights of otherwise competent adults must be restricted to protect them from their own insufficiently considered actions. So smokers are subjected to real-time experiments designed to change their consumption habits on the grounds that it’s “for their own good”.’

Later, Basham goes on to say: ‘But diminishing personal autonomy under the guise of improving health is still diminishing personal autonomy. As such, it’s unacceptable in a free society.’

Basham’s piece, which was published also in the Philadelphia Inquirer, is available in full at: http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/license-smoke.

Croner, part of the global information services business, Wolters Kluwer, says that it has seen a ‘substantial’ rise in calls to its advice lines from UK employers concerned about the use of e-cigarettes at work, according to a press note issued through PRNewswire.

“From a legal perspective as e-cigarettes are not lit then there is no reason why they cannot be used within the workplace,” said Basil Long, senior legal adviser at Croner. “This may be acceptable for some employers, but the ones calling our advisory service are concerned about the use of e-cigarettes and wonder if they can either discipline an employee for ‘smoking’ at work or ban it altogether.

“The majority of workplace smoking policies do not specifically define smoking, and in the absence of any specific definition, a court of law would defer to the Health Act 2006 which define smoking as ‘lit tobacco or anything lit that contains tobacco, or of any other lit substance in a form in which it could be smoked’. As a result it would not be safe to rely on such a policy to discipline employees using e-cigarettes in the workplace. Therefore employers wishing to ban the use of e-cigarettes will need to amend their policy.

“A workplace smoking policy can normally be adapted very easily to extend the definition of smoking to include the use of e-cigarettes, however as with any other changes to employment policies, care needs to be taken to ensure the change is effective and not challenged by employees.”

Tobacco growers in the Indian state of Karnataka had sold about 25 million kg of leaf at an average price of Rs121.92 a kg by the end of the first 45 days of auctions, according to a story in the latest issue of the BBM Bommidala Group newsletter quoting figures from the Tobacco Board of India.

Bright grades, which are generally preferred by the major tobacco manufacturers, were trading at Rs138.71 per kg, as against Rs118.00 per kg last year.

So far, the season’s highest bid was Rs148.40 per kg.

The ban on smoking in public places in Bulgaria could be eased during the first sitting of parliament next year, according to a story in the Standart.

Proposed new amendments to the Public Health Act, which would allow smoking in pubs and night clubs after 22.00 hours, are said to be supported by MPs from different political parties.

Pub owners would prefer to be allowed to create separate smoker and non-smoker sections within their premises, as was the situation prior to June 1, but this option, which has already been proposed a number of times, has been ruled out by the government.