Author: Staff Writer

Six members of the Iowa House and Senate have written to Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller and attorneys general in 22 other states, asking whether new international trade deals will affect the ability of states to legislate in the public interest—for instance in respect of tobacco.

According to a story in the Des Moines Register, the letter refers to deals being negotiated by the U.S. trade representative, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is intended to enhance trade and investment in the nine participating countries.

Thirty-seven legislators from other states have also signed the letter, which they said seeks insight into agreements they believe are being developed in a shroud of secrecy. The letter is addressed also to the National Association of Attorneys General.

One of the Iowa signatories, Chuck Isenhart said he had concerns whether Iowa’s continued support for the biofuels industry could come under outside attack under provisions of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In addition, questions had been raised about the defensibility of tobacco prevention policies and consumer protections, he said.

Geoff Greenwood, a spokesman for Miller, said Miller shared concerns about how the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement could, for example, impact Iowa’s ability to regulate tobacco products. “We will review the concerns that several state legislators have brought to our attention, and we look forward to discussing them,” he said.

Bommidala Enterprises, part of the BBM Bommidala Group, has won the award for being India’s top exporter of cut tobacco during 2013.

The group, whose business interests include unmanufactured tobacco, cut rag, cigarettes and duty-free goods, has now won the Certificate of Excellence for cut tobacco exports for seven consecutive years.

The award was presented at the Tobacco Board of India’s Formation Day, which was celebrated on Jan. 3.

The day saw awards presented, also, to tobacco growers, to the best unmanufactured tobacco exporter and the best packer, and for the company buying at auction the highest quantity of flue-cured tobacco.

The board has declared 2014 as the International Year of Family Farming.

E-cigarette company Logic Technology has opened its new corporate headquarters in Pompano Beach, Florida, USA.

It was previously based in Livingston, New Jersey, USA.

In a press note, Logic said its new headquarters would help it meet the growing adult smoker demand for its products.

“The new facilities will house the executive team as well as a sophisticated warehouse infrastructure for receiving and shipping product domestically and internationally,” it said.

According to Nielsen, Logic accounts for 22.6 percent of the e-cigarette market in the U.S.

American Snuff Company, which is part of Reynolds American and manufactures Grizzly moist snuff, has awarded donations totaling a quarter of a million dollars to two nonprofit outdoor conservation organizations.

Through the Grizzly Outdoor Corps promotion, the company is donating $130,000 and $120,000 to the Boone and Crockett Club and the FishAmerica Foundation, respectively.

Reynolds said in a note posted on its website that registered, age-verified adult Grizzly consumers had voted via the brand’s website, mygrizzly.com, on which organization should receive the larger donation.

“This is a way for Grizzly consumers to show support for organizations that value the outdoors,” said Sean Kinder, director of marketing for American Snuff.

A store owner who sells e-cigarettes is fighting an order from Health Canada to stop, according to a CBC News story.

Ryanne Pineda, whose business at Fredericton, New Brunswick, also produces e-liquids, says he has a growing clientele of more than 2,000 local and online customers for vaping kits, which are sold for between $25 and $200.

Health Canada, which has not approved e-cigarettes for sale, has ordered Pineda to stop such sales, but the store owner is standing firm.

“We actually refuted back, saying that the law states that under Schedule F of the Food and Drugs Act, nicotine is directly exempt with a dose of under four milligrams, from being classified as a new drug or a drug delivery system,” said Pineda, who has not received a reply from Health Canada.

Pineda was quoted as saying that his business imported e-cigarettes under the appropriate regulations, knew what was going into these products and applied quality control.

“We also have the ability to test each part of the product through an independent lab called Enthalpy Analytical Inc.,” he said. “They’re actually Health Canada-accredited; that’s why we use them.”

People caught breaking no-smoking regulations in public places in Bali could find themselves on the wrong end of an IDR50 million (US$4,000) fine or a jail term of three months, according to a baldidiscovery.com story.

The story said that the Smoke-free Areas Provincial Law No.7, 2013, was now in effect in Bali.

The regulations stipulate that tobacco smoking is not allowed in public places in Bali, including places of education, work places, places of worship, recreation areas or areas frequented by children.

The prohibition applies also to public transport, medical centers and sporting venues.

Businesses and those in charge of public places affected by the new regulations are being urged to create well-ventilated smoking areas.

Japan Tobacco Inc. said today that it was redesigning its Peace Lights Box and Peace Super Lights Box products.

The company said the new design was aimed at imparting a heightened sense of luxury to two products, but that their flavor and aroma would be unchanged.

The redesigned products are due to be rolled out across Japan from the middle of next month.

At the same time, the company will roll out redesigned versions of all four products in its Hope brand of cigarettes.

In this case, the new design is being put in place so as to emphasize brand consistency, but, again, there will be no change in flavor and aroma.

Smokers in Yorkshire, England, are facing pressure to give up their habit before undergoing routine surgery, according to a story in the Yorkshire Post.

The Stop Before Your Op program is being introduced in the Vale of York in the first part of a campaign by the local NHS (National Health Service) to tackle problems caused by tobacco and alcohol use, and obesity.

Smokers will be urged to attend an NHS course to help them quit before going under the knife in routine operations, leaving them facing a minimum 12-week delay before they are referred for surgery.

Doctors’ leaders say patients will not be denied surgery if they refuse but will be asked to sign waivers saying they “accept responsibility for any additional detriment to their health including complications arising from surgery or anesthesia attributed to their smoking.”

GPs say they are monitoring outcomes from smokers referred for help to quit services so as to be able to assess the success of the venture.

They claim already that there are significant benefits to be had from giving up smoking prior to surgery, among them reducing the risk of complications and improving post-operative recovery.

They claim the measure could also lead to savings for the NHS by reducing demand for intensive care, reducing readmissions for further treatment and relieving pressure on hospital beds.

Altria, Philip Morris USA, R.J. Reynolds and Lorillard are preparing a full-page mea culpa to run in the Sunday editions of the US’ ‘top’ 35 newspapers, as online notices for those papers’ websites and as prime-time television spots to run for a full year on CBS, ABC, and NBC, according to a story by Clara Ritger for the National Journal.

The tobacco companies are required also to run statements on their websites and cigarette packages.

This act of ‘self-flagellation’, as Ritger described it, stems from a 2006 federal court decision ordering the tobacco companies to correct the record on statements they made about the health effects of smoking.

On Friday, the companies’ lawyers and the Justice Department struck a deal on how they will issue the apology.

A mock-up of a notice that could publish as a full-page in The New York Times reads, ‘A Federal Court has ruled that Philip Morris USA, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, Lorillard, and Altria deliberately deceived the American public about designing cigarettes to enhance the delivery of nicotine and has ordered those companies to make this statement’.

It goes on to say that the industry ‘intentionally designed cigarettes to make them more addictive’, and that nicotine ‘changes the brain’, making it harder for smokers to quit their habit.

The tobacco companies could appeal against the language of the notices. But first, US District Judge, Gladys Kessler, is scheduled to review the agreement about how to issue the corrective statements on January 22.

The Justice Department first brought the case against the tobacco industry in 1999, arguing that tobacco manufacturers knowingly and intentionally misinformed the public about the negative health consequences of smoking.

According to Ritger, the statements would ‘correct misinformation’ about ‘the health effects of smoking, the addictiveness of smoking and nicotine, the false advertising of low-tar and light cigarettes as less harmful than regular cigarettes, the designing of cigarettes to enhance the delivery of nicotine and the health effects of second-hand smoke’.

The government of the Australian state of New South Wales is expected to ban cigarette smoking in multi-unit housing, according to an Australian Broadcasting Corp. story.

The story was carried, too, in the Newcastle Herald newspaper, where Matthew Kelly reported that the ban would apply to “common areas” of multi-unit housing.

The ABC piece said that a study by associate professor Billie Bonevski, of the University of Newcastle, had found that cigarette smoking “placed people at increased health risk,” though the Herald story indicated that Bonevski’s study had related only to exposure to smoke.

Kelly wrote that Bonevski, of the Hunter Medical Research Institute, had drawn on data from about 161,000 participants who took part in the 2012–2013 NSW study of people 45 and older.

“More than 12,000 people, including 8,000 nonsmokers, were routinely exposed to smoke in their homes for eight hours or more a week,” said the Herald story. “More than 7,000 were exposed for at least eight hours a day.

“Multi-unit dwellers were 19 percent more likely to be exposed than those living in houses, and more women than men were likely to be exposed because they [women] tended to spend more time at home.”

Last month, Daniel Fisher reported for Forbes that a large-scale study had found no clear link between secondhand tobacco-smoke exposure and lung cancer.

Fisher cites an article in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute that provided the results of a study of 76,000 women over more than a decade.

The study found a link between smoking and cancer, with lung cancer 13 times more common among current smokers and four times more common in former smokers than in nonsmokers.

But the study found no statistically significant relationship between lung cancer and exposure to passive smoke.