Author: Staff Writer

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has no plans to ratify the global convention on tobacco control and will not rush to do so, according to a story in the Jakarta Post quoting a senior presidential aide.

At the end of February, a story on en.tempo.co quoting Health Minister Nafsiah Mboi indicated that the president had agreed to ratify the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).

At that time, Nafsiah was quoted as saying the president had supported ratification of the treaty from the beginning; and she expressed the hope that ratification would proceed without problems.

But on Friday, Cabinet Secretary Dipo Alam told reporters at the state palace that Yudhoyono had not said anything about ratifying the convention.

He added that his office, through which legislation, conventions and other bills were channelled before going to the president for signature, had not received anything on the FCTC from the Health Ministry or the office of the coordinating minister for people’s welfare.

Dipo stressed that Yudhoyono was “in no rush” to ratify the FCTC because of the impact it would have on the country’s tobacco growers.

“Tobacco farmers needn’t be overly concerned or start holding protests just yet,” he said. “I don’t believe the president is in any rush to ratify this convention.”

The smokers’ group Forest has launched a new website to fight plans to introduce plain tobacco packaging in Ireland.

Plain Packs Plain Stupid, which has a sludge-brown background to highlight the dull packaging proposed by Health Minister James Reilly, lists some of the consumer arguments against standardized packs.

It also features a campaign video, The Burning Issue, which features interviews with smokers in Dublin.

“The proposed legislation is not fit for purpose,” said John Mallon, spokesman for Forest Eireann.

“Advocates say plain packaging will deter children from smoking. People start smoking for many reasons, often peer pressure, but packaging isn’t one of them.

“I don’t know any smoker who began because they were attracted by the packet. It’s nonsense.

“Plain packaging is gesture politics. It won’t stop children smoking but it might encourage an illicit market in branded or counterfeit packs.

“We urge the government to abandon this reckless experiment that could do far more harm than good.”

British American Tobacco Kenya (BATK) has estimated that it will this year process nearly 41 percent more leaf tobacco at its plant at Thika, Kenya, than it processed there last year, according to a story in The Star.

The increase, from 27,000 tonnes to 38,000 tonnes, will be mainly down to the arrival of tobacco from two processing plants recently closed by BAT: one at Kampala, Uganda, and the other at Kinshasa, Democratic Republic.

BATK Chief Executive Chris Burrell said the closure of the two plants would cut operational costs.

“(It) will improve our efficiencies, reduce our unit costs and drive improvements in our frontier markets,” he was quoted as saying.

The Korea Military Academy plans to lift a decades-old ban on drinking, smoking and marrying to reflect social changes, according to a story in The Korea Times.

The army has prohibited cadets from drinking, smoking or marrying while attending the elite military academy since its establishment in 1952.

The bans are said to have been introduced to assist in the maintenance of discipline.
But the proposed new rules aim at relaxing the bans.

“The Army is considering improving the current system to apply separate rules on and off campus, taking into consideration the legal regulations, social trend and education purpose,” a senior Army official was quoted as saying. “Cadets will still be prohibited from those activities while on campus, on duty or in uniform, but they will be allowed on other occasions.”

Presumably, “those activities” refer to the drinking and smoking, unless marriage is being used here as a euphemism. It would not be possible to be married while in uniform or on the base but unmarried while out of uniform or off the base.

The U.S.-based Citizens’ Commission to Protect the Truth is urging Lorillard, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco and Philip Morris USA immediately to stop marketing and selling menthol cigarettes, according to a PR Newswire story.

The commission is described as a group of all “living” former U.S. secretaries of health, education and welfare; U.S. secretaries of health and human services; U.S. surgeons general; and directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from every administration, Republican and Democrat, since that of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

In a joint statement the former cabinet officers called menthol “the spoonful of sugar that makes the deadly medicine these companies are selling go down.”

And in letters to these tobacco companies’ chief executives, former Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare Joseph A. Califano Jr. and former Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis W. Sullivan, M.D., chair and vice chair, respectively, of the commission, said such action was imperative to avoid encouraging children and teens to start and continue smoking and to avoid the devastating impact of menthol cigarettes on the African-American community.

At the same time, the commission called upon the Obama Administration to allow the Food and Drug Administration to act on its Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee’s 3-year-old recommendation “that the FDA ban menthol as a characterizing flavor in cigarettes based on the distinguished Committee’s finding that removal of menthol cigarettes from the market would benefit the public health.”

Some state lawmakers in Washington, USA, want to levy a 75 percent tax on e-cigarettes, according to a story by Annaliese Davis for the Bellingham Herald.

Sponsored by Seattle Rep. Reuven Carlyle, a Democrat, H.B. 2795 would subject e-cigarettes and other tobacco substitutes to a 75 percent tax, though it would exempt e-cigarettes prescribed by physicians to aid individuals in quitting tobacco, should e-cigarettes be found to be a cessation aid.

Carlyle’s original proposal called for a 95 percent tax, but the rate was reduced to 75 percent in legislation that passed out of the House Finance Committee on Tuesday morning.

The proposed bill passed 7-6, with Chris Reykdal, a Democrat representative, siding with Republican committee members against taxation.

Reykdal said that without data from the Food and Drug Administration, it was hard for him to justify punishing individuals trying to make a potentially healthier choice.

The ousting of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich could have an impact on the battle against standardized tobacco packaging, according to a Reuters story.

In March 2012, Ukraine launched a case at the World Trade Organization to try to overturn the Australian law, a step seen by anti-tobacco campaigners as a stalling tactic by a government with little interest in the issue.

Later that month, Konstantin Krasovsky, the head of Ukraine’s Tobacco Control Unit at the Ministry of Health’s Institute for Strategic Research was quoted in an Australian newspaper as saying that his country had no economic interest in the issue at all. No one in Ukraine would suffer from Australia’s standardized packaging, he added.

Now Ukraine’s change of government and its empty coffers put the challenge against Australia into question.

“I think in the circumstances that are now created in Ukraine of course it may be very difficult to find money to continue this dispute,” Reuters quoted a source at Ukraine’s diplomatic mission in Geneva, home of the WTO, as saying.

“The mission has not yet received new instructions from Kiev, but Ukraine’s future trade policy is likely to focus more on concrete steps to help its ailing economy than on ‘theoretical’ questions about tobacco.”

However, if other countries helped to fund Ukraine it might continue, since the issue might have a bearing on curbs on other products, such as alcohol, the source said.

In its request for the establishment of a WTO disputes panel, Ukraine said that Australia’s measures “erode the protection of intellectual property rights” and “impose severe restrictions on the use of validly registered trademarks.”

Ukraine is not the only country to be challenging Australia’s standardized tobacco packaging regulation.

The sixth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control is due to meet in Moscow on Oct. 13-18, according to Convention News.

The provisional agenda for the meeting is expected to be finalized at a COP Bureau meeting scheduled for next month.

Invitations to Parties and accredited observers to the COP are expected to be sent out during May.

COP6 documents and further information on the session will be posted at http://www.who.int/fctc/cop “in due course.”

An anti-smoking activist and community-health specialist has urged the Hong Kong government to ban tobacco smoking in cars and homes so as to protect children’s health, according to a story by Emily Tsang for the South China Morning Post.

Professor Lam Tai-hing was speaking after a new study indicated that secondhand smoke could make children prone to heart attacks and strokes later in life.

Such conditions were in addition to other known risks such as lung cancer, middle-ear disease and respiratory disease.

Lam, professor of community medicine at the University of Hong Kong, said that while smoking in cars when children were present had been banned in some countries, so far no authorities had made a similar ruling for private households.

“Smoking in front of children should be seen as poisoning and abusing them,” he said.

Lam said Hong Kong so far had no legislation specifically to protect children from secondhand smoke.

The study, published in the European Heart Journal, said data from 2,401 people in Finland and 1,375 in Australia showed passive smoking led to a thickening of children’s artery walls, ageing blood vessels by 3.3 years by adulthood.

Smoking tobacco will be banned outside of designated areas in Taiwan’s national parks and scenic areas from the start of next month, according to a story on Focus Taiwan News Channel.

Not all parks and scenic areas will have designated smoking areas, in which case no smoking will be allowed anywhere.

Under the new policy, announced yesterday by the Ministry of Health and Welfare, smoking will be banned also at outdoor concerts.

Subjecting people to secondhand smoke was a violation of their basic human rights, the ministry was quoted as saying.

Those caught violating the new regulations will be subject to fines of between TWD$2,000 (US$68) and TWD$10,000.

Some smoking advocates claim that the regulations announced yesterday are unconstitutional.