Author: Staff Writer

Most retailers in Ireland are to be forced to pay fees increased by ten-fold if they want to keep selling tobacco products, according to a story in The Irish Examiner.

As part of budget 2014, Finance Minister Michael Noonan will tell shop owners he is increasing the fee from €50 to €500, though slightly lower rates will apply to small stores.

The increase, which is due to be brought in next year, is expected to deliver an additional €5 million a year into government coffers.

The new fees will require specific legislation, but that is expected to be in place by the start of next year.

The Scottish government has said that it will press ahead with plans to require that cigarettes are sold in unattractive packs, according to a story in The Times.

It is understood that Scottish ministers want cigarettes to be sold in standardized packs along the lines of those found in Australia.

Since Dec. 1, Australia has required that all tobacco products be sold in packaging designed on behalf of the previous government to be as ugly as is possible. Packs are hugely dominated by graphic health warnings, are otherwise a standard olive color, have no logos or other design features, and have brand and variant names in a standardized font and position.

Earlier this year the U.K. government decided to hold off on any similar moves, but the Scottish government has said it will do what it needs to do, regardless of the situation elsewhere in the U.K.

Medical leaders have urged Scotland’s Celtic and Rangers football clubs to reconsider their links with an e-cigarette company amid concerns that such links will damage efforts to reduce smoking, according to a story by Lyndsay Buckland for The Scotsman.

Last month the E-lites brand said it had become partners with Celtic, allowing its products to be sold at the stadium and smoked in designated areas. A similar link-up with Rangers was revealed shortly afterward.

But the British Medical Association’s board of science has written to the clubs, raising its fears over the impact of allowing the products to be sold and used on their grounds.

In the BMA’s letter, general practitioner Dr. Andrew Thomson said sport was a health activity and clubs such as Celtic and Rangers “should be leading by example to encourage healthy living rather than advertising a smoking product, which contains the addictive substance nicotine.”

The doctor said the BMA wanted e-cigarettes to be included in the ban on smoking in public places, and encouraged organizations to prohibit their use.

Companies including ScotRail, Starbucks and the Wetherspoons pub chain were said by Buckland to be among those that had already announced bans on e-cigarettes.

The air people breathe is laced with cancer-causing substances and should be classified as carcinogenic to humans, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) cancer agency said last week, according to a Reuters News story.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) cited data indicating that in 2010, 223,000 deaths from lung cancer worldwide resulted from air pollution.

There was convincing evidence also that such pollution increased the risk of bladder cancer.

In a statement released after a weeklong meeting of experts reviewing the latest scientific literature, IARC said both outdoor air pollution and “particulate matter—a major component of it—would now be classified among its Group 1 human carcinogens.

That ranks them alongside more than 100 other known cancer-causing substances in IARC’s Group 1, including asbestos, plutonium, silica dust, ultraviolet radiation and tobacco smoke.

Air pollution, however, poses a unique problem in that is the only cancer-causing substance among the above list that individuals are not able to avoid to some degree.

Philip Morris International’s cigarette shipment volume during the third quarter, at 223,124 million, was down by 5.7 percent on that of the third quarter of 2012, 236,531.

Shipments were down in all of its regions: in Latin America and Canada by 0.2 percent from 24,007 million to 23,957 million; in the EU by 5.2 percent from 51,629 million to 48,969 million; in Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (EEMA) by 5.5 percent from 81,388 million to 76,902 million; and in Asia by 7.8 percent from 79,507 million to 73,296 million.

In reporting its third-quarter results, PMI said that volume was down principally due to a total industry volume decline. In the EU, the decrease in shipments was put down to the unfavorable impact of excise tax-driven price increases, the weak economic and employment environment, the share growth of the other tobacco products (OTP) category and the prevalence of non-duty paid products.

In the EEMA, the fall in shipments was attributed to the impact of price increases in Russia in the first and third quarters of 2013, an increase in illicit trade and a weak economy.

And in Asia the shipments downturn was said to be due to the unfavorable impact of the disruptive January 2013 excise tax increase in the Philippines, and lower share and the reversal of trade inventory movements in Pakistan following the excise tax increase in the second quarter of 2013, partly offset by the market in Indonesia.

In fact, PMI said that, excluding the effects of the January tax increase in the Philippines, its cigarette shipment volume would have decreased overall by 4.1 percent.

With the exception of Parliament, shipments of all of the brands reported by PMI were down, comparing volumes during the third quarter of 2013 with those of the third quarter of 2012. Marlboro shipments during the third quarter of 2013, at 75.2 billion, were down by 2.5 percent on those of the third quarter of 2012.

Shipments of L&M, at 24.1 billion, were down by 2.1 percent; while those of Bond Street, at 11.9 billion, were down by 7.2 percent; those of Philip Morris, at 8.8 billion, were down by 6.6 percent; those of Parliament, at 11.8 billion, were up by 0.4 percent; those of Chesterfield, at 9.2 billion, were down by 1.9 percent; and those of Lark, at 7.2 billion, were down by 11.9 percent.

The shipment volume of OTP, in cigarette equivalents, fell by 1.7 percent between the third quarters of 2012 and 2013, which meant that the total shipment volume for cigarettes and OTP in cigarette equivalent units decreased by 5.5 percent.

Despite these falls in volume, PMI was able to report share increases in a number of markets, including those of Algeria, Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, France, Greece, Indonesia, Italy, Kazakhstan, Korea, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine and the U.K.

Meanwhile, PMI’s reported diluted earnings per share (EPS) during the third quarter of 2013, at $1.44, was up by $0.12 or 9.1 percent on that of the third quarter of 2012. And adjusted diluted EPS, at $1.44, was up by $0.06 or 4.3 percent.

Reported net revenues, excluding excise taxes, at $7.9 billion, were up by 0.1 per cent.

Reported operating companies’ income, at $3.7 billion, was down by 1.0 per cent, while adjusted operating companies income, at $3.7 billion, was down by 1.9 per cent

“Our strong EPS and cash flow performance this quarter primarily reflected robust pricing,” said CEO André Calantzopoulos. “Our share momentum, particularly in the EU, partially offset weaker industry volumes.

“While the evolution of the macro-economic environment and tax-paid cigarette industry volume remain a challenge, our business fundamentals are solid and we continue to anticipate a strong final quarter.

“Our confidence in these fundamentals was further reflected in our announcement during the quarter of an increase in our regular quarterly dividend of 10.6 per cent. Since the spin-off, we have increased the dividend every year by an accumulated 104.3 per cent to reach an annualized rate of $3.76 per common share.”

Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy has pledged that his state will soon put a stop to the advertising of tobacco products in line with India’s Tobacco Control Act 2003, according to a story in the most recent issue of the BBM Bommidala Group newsletter.

A directive seeking enforcement of the advertising provisions of the act was reportedly sent by the union health secretary to all of India’s state chief secretaries.

Kerala recently declared that retail outlets selling cigarettes may not provide matches or lighters to people wishing to smoke in the vicinity of the outlets.

What is going on?

A day after the U.K.’s Institute of Economic Affairs suggested that tobacco taxes should be halved, a report from India indicates that the Bihar state government has decided to make tobacco tax-free.

According to a OneIndia.com story, the Bihar government’s decision has made a “complete mockery” of the anti-tobacco drive on which the Union government has spent tens of millions of rupees.

The decision was apparently taken after tobacco farmers met with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.

They were said to have complained to him that tobacco production was their only source of income and that, of late, “their product was seized and they were fined.”

Kumar subsequently took the decision to make tobacco tax-free.

The move, dismissed by some as a troll for votes, had earned criticism because it had come at a time when every second person in the state (more than 63 percent of men and 30 percent of women) was addicted to tobacco, the OneIndia story said.

It was assumed that the decision would encourage the state’s smoking-incidence figures to shoot up further.

Anti-tobacco activists in Ireland have condemned as inadequate the latest tobacco duty rise of 10 cents, according to a story in Northern Ireland’s Belfast Telegraph.

The Irish Cancer Society accused the government of applying a “tokenistic penalty,” according to the Telegraph, and the Heart Foundation branded the increase a missed opportunity.

The increase was less than had been expected by Health Minister Dr. James Reilly, who has said he wanted to see 50 cents added to the price of a pack of cigarettes in every budget.

Nevertheless, the increase leaves Ireland as one of the most expensive places in which to smoke licit cigarettes, and the second most expensive country in Europe.

Only Norway has more expensive cigarettes in Europe.

Bulgaria’s Socialist Party, part of the ruling coalition, has tabled an amendment to the Health Act that would ease the ban on tobacco smoking in enclosed public places, according to a Novinite story.

The draft amendment has been signed by nine Socialist members of parliament in a move that is seen in some quarters as highly controversial but that has the support of people working in sectors hurt by the ban.

If the amendment were passed, the ban would become a restriction in night clubs, restaurants, cafés, bars, airports and casinos that could provide designated, separate smoking areas.

The smoking ban was introduced in June last year by the GERB government of former Prime Minister Boyko Borisov.

Spas Panchev, deputy chair of the parliamentary group of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, said last week that the full smoking ban in enclosed public places had to be dropped before winter.

This sparked a wide public debate on the issue.

President Rosen Plevneliev has threatened to veto the amendment if it is passed by parliament.

Health editors at the BMJ, Heart, Thorax and BMJ Open have said they will not consider the publication of studies that have been funded in part or wholly by the tobacco industry, according to a story in The Information Daily.

The editors were reported to have said their new policy was consistent with that of other journals.

It aimed to show that they were committed to publishing work that only improved knowledge of health and disease, and that had no links to a product with a detrimental effect on health.

“Critics could argue that the publishing of research funded by these companies does not equal endorsement, but the editors believe that this view ‘ignores the growing body of evidence that biases and research misconduct are often impossible to detect,’” the Daily story said.

“It has been argued that instead of improving knowledge, the tobacco industry ‘has used research to deliberately produce ignorance and to advance its ultimate goal of selling its deadly products while shoring up its damaged legitimacy.’”

The full story is at http://www.theinformationdaily.com/2013/10/15/tobacco-industry-funded-research-shunned-by-some-health-publishers.