Author: Staff Writer

Thirty-three public health and medical organizations are urging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to make it a priority to regulate how cigarettes are manufactured and thereby stop tobacco industry practices that have made cigarettes even more deadly and addictive than they were 50 years ago, according to a Tobacco-Free Kids press note issued through PRNewswire-USNewswire.

In a letter sent this week to Mitchell Zeller, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, the health groups asked the FDA to take action in response to the new surgeon general’s report, The Health Consequences of Smoking—50 Years of Progress, released in January.

The letter is at www.tobaccofreekids.org/content/media_center/2014_03_28_Zeller.pdf.
“The new report found that, despite smoking fewer cigarettes, smokers today are at far greater risk of developing lung cancer than they were 50 years ago, when the first surgeon general’s report on smoking and health alerted the nation that smoking causes lung cancer,” the press note said.

“The new report also concluded that this outcome is the result of changes made during that time in the design and composition of U.S. cigarettes.”

The letter apparently said that no manufacturer of any other product would have been allowed to have made product changes that increased the risk of fatal disease to its users.

“It is imperative that [the] FDA respond to the surgeon general’s report by moving decisively to exercise its statutory authority to require cigarette manufacturers to make necessary life-saving changes in the design and composition of their products,” the letter said.

For every 100 cigarettes smoked in Wyoming, an additional 24 cigarettes are smuggled out, according to a story by Laura Hancock for the Billings Gazette.

Most of the “smuggled” cigarettes are probably bought legally in Wyoming and then taken for personal use to neighboring states with higher cigarette taxes.

According to a recent report about cigarette smuggling, Wyoming’s rate of “outbound smuggling,” or cigarettes leaving the state, is the second highest in the country.

The report was released by the Tax Foundation, which believes tax policy should be simple, transparent, stable and low, and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, which describes itself as doing economic research that draws support from market-oriented libertarians, moderates and conservatives.

The Mackinac Center used a statistical model to compare legal, per capita sales of cigarettes with smoking rates for Wyoming tabulated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to Michael LaFaive, director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center.

While cigarettes in some low-tax states end up on the streets of places such as New York City, where a pack costs upward of $14, Mackinac Center researchers believe the cigarettes leaving Wyoming aren’t controlled by organized criminal rings.

The researchers used a statistical tool to tease out casual versus commercial smuggling.

And since Wyoming isn’t close to the population centers where cigarettes are the most expensive, the researchers concluded that cigarettes were likely being taken to neighboring states by individual smokers.

The 2014 Coresta Congress is due to be held in Canada, in what the organizing committee describes as “the beautiful Old Québec City.”

It will be held at the Château Frontenac on Oct. 12–16.

The theme of the congress is “Building on experience to shape the future.”

More details are at www.coresta2014.org.

Swedish Match is due to hold its annual general meeting at Stockholm on May 7.

The board of directors has proposed a dividend of SEK7.30 per share and May 12 as the day of record for the right to receive a cash dividend.

The company published its annual report on March 25 and its annual results to the end of December on Feb. 19.

The Association of European Cancer Leagues has given Belgium a poor score for its anti-smoking policies, according to an Expatica.com story.

In fact, Belgium scored 47 percent, which put it in 13th place on a list of what was said to be “some 30 European countries”; so it was in the top half, but only just.

Luk Joossens, of the Belgian Association for the Battle Against Cancer, said that prices for tobacco products in Belgium were too low to serve as a deterrent.

“Prices are lower than in neighbouring countries,” he said. “This is especially the case for rolling tobacco, where price levels here are much below those applied in France.”

“In the past five years, no new initiatives were launched to stop people from smoking. I am thinking about publicity in places where tobacco is being sold. In many European countries, this is against the law, but not in Belgium.”

The swots of the European class were said to be Ireland and the U.K., though it wasn’t mentioned how highly they scored.

The Philippines Senate wants to summon cigarette manufacturers and officials of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) and the Bureau of Customs (BOC) to explain why the country’s year-old “sin tax” law has failed to reduce smoking among Filipinos, which was the rationale behind the law.

According to a story in The Philippine Star, Senator Juan Edgardo Angara, chairman of the congressional oversight committee on comprehensive tax reform (COCCTR), said he wanted the BIR and BOC to provide accurate data on tobacco importation, cigarette production, tobacco taxes and cigarette excise.

Angara noted that there had been persistent reports of alleged smuggling of leaf tobacco and other cigarette-making materials.

He said he wanted to get information from the BIR and BOC officials about why smuggling continued to proliferate and whether there was truth in reports that some cigarette manufacturers were evading payment of cigarette taxes.

Angara said that he and his fellow lawmakers were unhappy with the presentations given by the BIR and BOC during the last hearing of the COCCTR.

“It’s really important for the BOC and BIR data to match, because if tobacco used for producing cigarettes are mixed with undeclared imported tobacco leaves, then [tax] collection will suffer,” Angara said.

Smokers and non-smokers alike have lodged complaints about a non-tobacco-smoking parks plan in Taiwan’s Taoyuan County, which aims to increase their number to 376 by next month, according to a story in the Taipei Times.

The county government defended the move as following Ministry of Health and Welfare policy.

In theory, the new plan could impact about 300,000 people—the number of smokers in the county’s population, according to Taoyuan County Department of Health data.

On hearing the news of the parks-ban expansion, [unnamed] smokers lodged complaints saying that the parks were open, public areas, and that because the smoke dissipated quickly, air quality was minimally impacted.

However, [unnamed] nonsmokers were quoted as saying the parks were the equivalent of a city’s lungs.

They said citizens exercised there and that clean air was important for children and pregnant women, who often used the parks’ recreational facilities.

The group of nonsmokers were said to have accused the county government of paying lip service to the policy.

They said that, in the years since it established designated nonsmoking parks, not a single fine had been issued.

The organizers of the TFWA (Tax Free World Association) Asia Pacific Exhibition & Conference are opening up a second level of floor space at the Marina Bay Sands complex in Singapore.

The event, which is due to be staged May 11–15, will, as last year, occupy underground level B2, but it will, in addition, take in the street-level Hall A.

The organizers say that the 18.5 percent increase in floor space will help accommodate “the nearly 250 exhibitors confirmed to date plus others in the pipeline.” “Wider aisles between the stands, more restaurant facilities and additional seating areas will further enhance the experience for both exhibitors and visitors,” they added.

Philip Morris International said yesterday that it would hold its 2014 Annual Meeting of Shareholders at 9 a.m. on May 7 in the Empire State Ballroom of the Grand Hyatt New York for the following purposes:

• To elect 10 directors;
• To ratify the selection of PricewaterhouseCoopers SA as independent auditors for the company for the fiscal year ending Dec. 31, 2014;
• To vote on advisory resolution approving executive compensation;
• To vote on two shareholder proposals, if properly presented at the meeting; and
• To transact other business properly coming before the meeting.

Recent U.S. research that has been widely reported to have shown that e-cigarettes are ineffective for smoking cessation has been branded as “complete garbage” by a highly respected public health professor.

Researchers from the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at UCSF (the University of California at San Francisco) published a research letter in JAMA Internal Medicine that purported to show that e-cigarettes were ineffective for smoking cessation.

But a blog by Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences, Boston University School of Public Health, has debunked both the methodology used and the conclusions drawn.

Siegel’s blog is at http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/new-study-on-electronic-cigarettes-by.html.

Seigel was not the only person to attack the research. The American Council on Science and Health decried the fact that it was a “phony summary of a phony study” that got most of the attention.

The council’s verdict is at http://acsh.org/2014/03/jama-headlines-blare-gullible-press-swallows-hype-e-cigarettes/.