Nigeria’s House of Representatives yesterday unanimously passed the second reading of an anti-smoking bill that includes provisions to prohibit smoking in public places, according to a story in the Premium Times relayed by the TMA.
If passed, the bill would ban too the sale of tobacco products to minors and regulate tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorships.
The house speaker referred the measure to the committees on health and justice for further input.
Customs officials in Victoria, Australia, have said that Melbourne is becoming the new hot spot for the arrival of undeclared cigarettes and loose tobacco from Asia and Europe, according to a story in the Herald Sun relayed by the TMA.
Shipments to Melbourne were becoming more frequent and the shippers were using increasingly sophisticated techniques to hide the contraband, Graham Krishof, the regional director of customs for Victoria, was quoted as saying.
The story said that in 2012, A$64.8 million worth of illicit tobacco products were found in containers in Melbourne, though it was not clear on what basis this figure was calculated.
Illicit cigarettes are said to sell for ‘almost half the price’ of licit products.
The World Health Organization has expressed concern that the Philippines could be encouraging smoking by hosting one of the ‘world’s biggest tobacco trade shows’, according to an Agence France Presse story quoting a health official.
The WHO had written to President Benigno Aquino citing the country’s treaty [Framework Convention on Tobacco Control] pledge to ban tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship, the WHO senior health adviser, Eigil Sorensen, was quoted as saying.
“If there is a government endorsement, it might be seen as a mixed signal,” he said.
The ProTobEx Asia industry event, which was not open to the public, started in Manila on Wednesday and ended today.
The editorial board of the New York Times said yesterday that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s latest tobacco control effort, to ban open displays of tobacco products in stores while still allowing their advertising, ‘is worth a try, though ‘[i]t is hard to know whether hiding the products would really work to discourage smoking’, according to a TMA relay of part of the editorial.
The editorial said Mayor Bloomberg’s hope was that keeping tobacco products out of sight would prevent young people from picking up tobacco use.
The ‘worth a try’ editorial stance, though seemingly admirable, seems to leave the paper vulnerable to supporting anybody professing a doctrine based on sufficiently plausible hokum.
The Tobacco Merchants Association will be hosting its 98th annual meeting and conference May 15–17, 2013, at the Kingsmill Resort and Spa in Williamsburg, Virginia, USA.
The conference will include opening remarks by Mitchell Zeller, the newly appointed director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products (CTP). Other speakers include David Ashley, director of the CTP Office of Science, and Michael Siegel, of the Boston University School of Public Health.
This year also features a pre-conference workshop dedicated to laboratory testing and clinical research. Riccardo Polosa, of the University of Catania, in Italy, and Konstantinos Farsalinos of Athens University, in Greece, will cover e-cigarette research and clinical trials.
Top securities analysts will discuss the state of the industry, with detailed analysis of all of the product sectors.
For more information, visit www.tma.org.
Researchers in the US have invented the first tobacco smoke sensor capable of recording second-hand smoke data in real time, according to a story in Medical Xpress quoting the Nicotine and Tobacco Research journal.
The sensor is said to be able to detect, too, ‘third-hand’ smoke, ‘or nicotine off-gassing from clothing, furniture, car seats and other material’.
The researchers, at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, expect soon to convert what is currently a prototype smaller than a cellphone into a wearable, affordable and reusable device.
The prototype is said to have proved successful in laboratory tests, while clinical studies will start in the summer.
‘The device would be more accurate and less expensive than current second-hand smoke sensors, which provide only an average exposure in a limited area over several days or weeks,’ the Medical Xpress story said.
The rebranding of Mild Seven to Mevius, currently being carried out around the world, was announced yesterday by JT International Korea, according to a story in the Korea Joongang Daily.
“Since Mild Seven is mainly sold in Asia, we changed the name in order to capture markets such as Europe and the United States,” said Park Pyung-kee, the company’s general manager, during a press conference in Seoul.
The name Mild Seven would seem to run foul of legislation in some countries that ban the use of descriptors such as ‘light’ and ‘mild’.
In any case, the Joongang Daily story made the point that the name change would make little difference to sales of Mild Seven/Mevius in Korea because of government proposals to increase steeply the tax on cigarettes – perhaps from about WON2,500 per pack to WON5,000 per pack over time – and because of boycotts aimed at Japanese goods.
In the meantime, the price of Mevius will remain the same as that of Mild Seven: WON2,700 per pack.
Sadi Bruegger, regional communications director at JTI Korea, said the company understood that tax increases had to be imposed in order to reduce smoking in Korea. “However, what we wish for is a transparent, predictable and moderate increase that will not disrupt the market,” Bruegger added.
Responding to the question of boycotts of Japanese products, the JTI Korea communications manager, Christie Kang, said sales had hardly been affected. “Korean consumers are mature enough to consider quality and service over political issues when it comes to spending,” Kang said.
The US government has abandoned its attempts to require cigarette manufacturers to include on their products the big graphic warnings designed by the Food and Drug Administration, according to a number of news reports.
The FDA introduced its graphic warning requirement in 2011, but some of the country’s cigarette manufacturers successfully sued on the grounds that the warnings violated the companies’ First Amendment rights.
The FDA said yesterday that it would look into new rules consistent with the Tobacco Control Act, the 2009 law that requires the agency to find ways to reduce the annual death toll attributed to tobacco use.
But it did not indicate how long it might take to introduce new warnings.
Researchers at The Cancer Institute of New Jersey, US, have found that a trend of smokers relighting cigarettes is related to economic factors, according to a Science Daily story.
The results of the study by the researchers were given at a poster presentation during the 19th Annual Meeting of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco held last week in Boston.
The story said that ‘in these difficult economic times’ increasing numbers of smokers were smoking fewer cigarettes per day but were relighting the end portion of the cigarette that is typically discarded.
Investigators explored this behaviour among a cross-sectional sample of 496 smokers seeking treatment from the Tobacco Dependence Program (TDP).
The researchers found that 46 per cent of the sample reported relighting cigarettes. This group was found to smoke on average fewer cigarettes per day – 16 versus 20 – than the group that did not relight.
Science Daily said that while a reduction in the number of cigarettes smoked per day might sound positive, there was more to the story, according to Michael Steinberg, MD, MPH, FACP, a member of The Cancer Institute of New Jersey and director of the TDP, who was the senior author of the research.
“Despite those engaging in the relighting practice smoking fewer cigarettes, there is no estimated reduction in their exposure to toxins,” Steinberg was quoted as saying. “In fact, smokers who relight cigarettes may be at higher risk of lung cancer and chronic bronchitis. That is something of which policy makers need to be aware.”
Significantly higher rates of relighting were found among females, African-Americans, and smokers who were divorced, widowed or separated. The behavior was more prevalent also among smokers who started at a younger age, smoked fewer cigarettes per day, smoked menthol cigarettes and woke up at night to smoke. Other factors significantly related to relighting included being unemployed, sick or disabled, or having a high school degree or less.
“While the relighting of cigarettes is a relatively unexplored smoking behavior, it was anticipated that certain economic characteristics, such as lower education and lack of employment, would be related to a higher level of relighting,” said Steinberg.
“We were, however, surprised that women are more likely to engage in this practice than men. This needs further study.”
The practice of relighting cigarettes is thought to have implications for tobacco dependence treatment.
Shops in the Saudi Arabian city of Makkah (Mecca) are selling tobacco products despite a ban by local authorities, according to a story in the Saudi Gazette quoting local residents.
In fact, residents said more than 80 percent of shops in the city’s Al-Otaibiyah neighborhood sold cigarettes.
The residents said that the ban was not being monitored by the local authorities but a source at the Makkah municipality denied this.
He asked residents to inform the municipality of any shops that were violating the ban.