Author: Staff Writer

Some Russian teenagers are quitting cigarettes for a type of chewing tobacco popular in Central Asia, according to a BBC Online story.

Nas or nasvai is made of tobacco mixed with slaked lime and wood ash to form a pellet that, when held under the tongue, packs a powerful nicotine hit.

It has been banned in Russia, but migrants from Central Asia import it and the authorities are concerned that, because it sells at a fraction of the price of cigarettes, it ends up in the mouths of young people.

The Ferghana news agency, which covers Central Asian stories from Moscow, says nas is still flying off trestle tables at street-corner markets to the general indifference of local police, four months after the ban came into effect.

A report published yesterday by the U.K.’s Institute of Economic Affairs proposes cutting taxes on fuel, alcohol and tobacco by half, scrapping green energy subsidies and reducing VAT from 20 percent to 15 percent.

The report, Aggressively regressive: The ‘sin taxes’ that make the poor poorer, says that reducing taxes in this way would put money back in the pockets of those who are in greatest need of it.

“All told, the poorest households pay 37 percent of their gross income in direct and indirect taxes,” a report press note said.

“To put it another way, the single biggest expenditure for people in poverty is tax. This leads us to the conclusion that the most effective way for the state to lift people out of poverty is to stop taking their money.”

Christopher Snowden, the author of the report, is due to take part in Tobacco Reporter’s Global Tobacco Networking Forum at Cape Town, South Africa, next month.

The report can be accessed at http://www.iea.org.uk/in-the-media/press-release/poorest-hit-hardest-by-consumption-taxes-new-research-shows.

India’s tobacco exports got off to a good start in the first quarter of this financial year, which ended on June 30, according to a story in the most recent issue of the BBM Bommidala Group newsletter.

In total, 82,540 tons of tobacco and tobacco products worth INR17.10 billion were exported during the three months from April to June.

The total included 73,363 tons of leaf tobacco valued at INR13.96 billion, and 9,177 tons of cigarettes and other tobacco products valued at INR3.13 billion.

India exports its tobacco and tobacco products to more than 100 countries.

Online cigar vendors are undermining tobacco control policies in China, according to research published by Tobacco Control.

The researchers said they had identified 106 internet cigar vendors located in 16 cities, most of them “developed cities,” including Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong.

Only 6.6 percent of these Internet cigar vendors featured health warnings, and only 14.2 percent featured minimum age of sale information.

The researchers concluded that “new legislation and enforcement” should be used to address these issues.

The researchers were Junling Gao, Lulu Huang Pinpin Zheng and Hua Fu of the School of Public Health, Fudan University, Shanghai; and Carla J. Berg of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education, Emory University Rollins School of Public Health, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

White Cloud Electronic Cigarettes has signed a research partnership agreement with the University of South Florida’s (USF) marketing department under which researchers will look at the reasons why some consumers are opting for e-cigarettes rather than tobacco cigarettes.

The research will be conducted by USF’s College of Business and will encompass both qualitative and quantitative consumer studies via focus groups, interviews and surveys of adult smokers.

The project team at USF includes professor Paul Solomon, Carol Osborne and Dr. Anand Kumar, associate professor and chair of the marketing department. The faculty team’s research interests cover areas such as brand strategies, marketing communications’ effectiveness and consumer reactions to new technology products and services.

“From a marketing researcher’s perspective, this is an interesting time in the life of a product,” said Kumar.

“The e-cigarette product category is seeing an explosive growth right now.

“It is not clear whether this growth is the result of rapid adoption by innovators and early adopters that might soon level off or whether there is more widespread adoption by smokers.

“There is a lot of interest in understanding consumer motivations underlying adoption of this product and limited research that has been carried out on this aspect of the e-cigarette marketplace.”

New research carried out in Spain has shown that genetically modified tobacco plants are viable as raw material for biofuels, according to a Basque Research story.

In her Ph.D. thesis, Ruth Sanz-Barrio, an agricultural engineer at the NUP/UPNA-Public University of Navarre and researcher at the Institute of Biotechnology, had demonstrated for the first time the viability of using specific tobacco proteins as biotechnological tools in plants, the story said.

Specifically, she had managed to increase the amount of starch produced in the tobacco leaves by 700 percent and fermentable sugars by 500 percent.

“We believe that these genetically modified plants,” she said, “could be a good alternative to food crops for producing biofuels, and could provide an outlet for the tobacco-producing areas in our country that see their future in jeopardy owing to the discontinuing of European grants for this crop.”

The full story is at http://www.basqueresearch.com/berria_irakurri.asp?Berri_Kod=4745&hizk=I#.UlwFDShSXAQ.

Tobacco smoking among Alaska’s high school students has declined dramatically in recent years, according to an Associated Press story.

Comparing data from six years ago with that gathered from a spring survey, the number of “smoking” students was down by 40 percent.

This year, 10.6 percent of students were “smokers” compared with 17.8 percent in 2007. To be a smoker a student had to have smoked at least one cigarette during the 30 days prior to the survey.

“These are great numbers,” said the state’s chief medical officer, Ward Hurlburt, during a briefing in Anchorage. “It’s wonderful news.

“We also know that there remains much work to be done. The tobacco companies continue to aggressively target young Alaskans, and we need to remain vigilant in our fight to combat that message.”

The survey looked at nearly 1,250 students from 43 high schools that were said to have been randomly selected.

Swedish Match this week unveiled at the US NACS (National Association of Convenience Stores) in Atlanta, what is describes as smart, revolutionary new packaging for General snus.

“General Snus will soon be available in a premium brushed-metal can with a fresh foil seal,” according to a Swedish Match press note.

“The ergonomic design also features a hinged metal lid, a first for the smokeless tobacco category …”

In a much-trailed move, Filtrona Filter Products yesterday took on its new name, Essentra Filter Products (EFP).

The name change realigns the company with its parent, which in June changed its name from Filtrona PLC to Essentra PLC.

In a press note announcing the name change, EFP, which has its headquarters in Singapore, described itself as the world’s leading independent provider of special filters and scientific services to the tobacco industry.

At the same time, Essentra Packaging has become the new name for two Essentra PLC packaging companies: Payne and Contego Healthcare.

All Essentra PLC companies have now taken on the Essentra name.

The European Commission might put an end to the sale of snus on Finnish cruise ships even when they are sailing in Swedish waters, according to an Esmerk Finnish News story.

When the European Parliament voted on the commission’s proposed Tobacco Products Directive on Oct. 8, the status of snus was unchanged in that its sale remained banned throughout the EU, with the exception of Sweden.

The commission’s view is that the sale of snus is banned on ships that operate under the Finnish flag.

However, at the moment, many ships that operate under the Finnish flag sell snus when they are in Swedish waters.