Author: Staff Writer

Smoking is back on the political agenda in the Netherlands with the opposition party, ChristenUnie, planning to launch a new effort to have smoking banned in all cafés and bars, according to a DutchNews.nl story.

The Netherlands banned smoking in cafés, bars and clubs in 2008, but since then bars smaller than 70 square metres and with no employees were exempted following a high court ruling. The ruling said, in part, that since the smoking ban was introduced to protect staff, it did not apply to cafés that had no employees.

Health ministry research is said to have found that the ban is ‘widely’ flouted, with smoking accepted in 43 per cent of the country’s bars and 39 per cent of its discos, though it wasn’t clear whether the 43 per cent of bars included those that were exempt.
Now ChristenUnie is trying to have the blanket ban re-imposed, the Telegraaf reported on Saturday.
The paper says a slim majority of MPs support a total ban on smoking, though the ruling VVD opposes the move.

Parliament is to discuss smoking policy at the end of February.

Smoking tobacco on apartment balconies will be banned if smoking bylaws are enforced by body corporate committees across Queensland, Australia, according to a Sunshine Coast Daily story.

Travis Schultz, of Schultz Toomey O’Brien Lawyers, said smokers were entitled to smoke within their own units but the body corporate was now able to pass a bylaw that prohibited smoking on balconies within an apartment complex or any part of the common property.

“The rationale for bylaws of that type is that unit balconies can be in very close proximity to each other and, as a result, cigarette smoke can easily drift and insult the nasal senses of an adjoining owner,” Mr Schultz said.

“There’s actually a suggestion in NSW that they’re going to move towards having strata legislation that might ban smoking on balconies and force smokers to go one step further and actually contain their smoke.”

Anti-tobacco lobbyists are unhappy that Bangladesh’s proposed Bill for Amending Smoking and Tobacco Products Usage (Control) Act, 2005, would provide designated smoking areas in restaurants and workplaces.

They don’t want any provision to be made for smokers.

The lobbyists were attending a five-day workshop on ‘enforcing anti-tobacco laws’, which was organised by the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease at the BRAC Centre for Development Management in Rajendrapur.

The proposed amendment bill is scheduled to be placed before Parliament during the current session, which was due to have begun yesterday.

It is now illegal to smoke water pipes in enclosed public places in Turkey, according to an Agence France Presse story.

The ban, which came into force yesterday, covers cafés, bars and restaurants.

Other forms of smoking were ousted from public places in Turkey in 2009.

Imperial Tobacco’s factory at Radom, Poland, has won international recognition for demonstrating best practice in energy management by gaining ISO 50001 certification.

‘Our Radom and Logroño manufacturing sites have been taking part in EnSave, an energy-saving pilot scheme with specialists Danfoss Solutions,’ Imperial said in a note posted on its website.

‘Energy and cost reductions have been achieved as a result of enhanced management processes implemented at both plants.

‘The EnSave project helped the Radom site to obtain the internationally recognised standard for showing effective use of energy and a reduced carbon footprint.’

Factory manager, Katarzyna Wolińska, was quoted as saying that the EnSave project had demonstrated that conscious energy management could result in significant energy and cost savings.

“And obtaining the ISO 50001 certificate shows that our activities are consistent with our goals as a responsible business to manage our energy usage effectively,” Wolińska added

Imperial said that the majority of its manufacturing sites were working towards achieving ISO 50001 as part of the company’s goal of a 20 per cent reduction in energy consumption by 2020 and a further reduction of its environmental impact.

Electronic cigarette vapers have called for the EU to drop plans to regulate these products in the way recommended by the European Commission, according to a story in The Sunday Times.

One of the Tobacco Product Directive revisions that the Commission has recommended would see a limit placed on the nicotine content of electronic cigarettes that had not been authorized as medicinal products.

Such authorization would require the owners of these products to put them through lengthy and expensive clinical trials.

An online community of former smokers who now use electronic cigarettes has petitioned members of the European Parliament for support.

The group wants vaping and the electronic cigarette industry to be distinguished from smoking and the tobacco industry.

“We’ve been studying a proposed EU tobacco directive and giving feedback to the HSE [Health and Safety Executive],” The Times quoted Shane Dowling, a vaper from Newmarket-on-Fergus, County Clare, Ireland, as saying.

“We see e-cigs as a safer alternative to tobacco. We are worried that EU legislation will reduce nicotine in these products and if that happens they might not work so well.”

The directive, due to take effect in 2014, is to be discussed during Ireland’s presidency of the EU, which runs through the first half of this year.

The Department of Health said Ireland intended to use the chair of the European Council to pursue measures to reduce the prevalence of smoking, particularly among young people.

// Laos has joined the ranks of Asean nations that have set up a fund to control tobacco usage, according to a story in the Bangkok Post.

Dr. Prakit Vathesatogkit, the secretary general of the International Network of Health Promotion Foundations, said on Wednesday that the Lao cabinet had established a tobacco control fund that would receive a contribution of two per cent of tobacco companies’ profits and the revenue from a Kip200 per pack price increase.

Prakit said Laos was the fifth Asean member to establish such a fund after Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam.

But similar funds have been set up in other Asian countries: South Korea, Mongolia and Taiwan.

Tobacco control funds are said rarely to be used to cover other government expenditure.

Smokers who quit before they reach the age of 35 erase the entire decade of lost life expectancy that is risked by smokers who continue with their habit, according to a story in The Washington Post quoting a ‘landmark study’.

Smokers who quit between the ages of 35 and 44 get back nine of those 10 years; those who quit between the ages of 45 and 54 get back six years; while those who quit between the ages of 55 and 64 get back four years.

The study was led by Prabhat Jha, an epidemiologist at the Center for Global Health Research in Toronto and published online on Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study linked surveys of 217,000 adults collected for the US National Health Interview Survey between 1997 and 2004 to cause-of-death records in the National Death Index.

The Washington Post said the message was that it was never too late to quit [or perhaps that it was never too early to quit], though it quoted Jha as saying that younger smokers should not be lulled into thinking they could smoke until they were 40 and then stop without consequences.

This was because the risks of lung cancer and other respiratory diseases lingered for years after stubbing out the last butt.

Most of the gains in life expectancy came because the twin risks of heart disease and stroke quickly dropped after smoking ended.

Imperial Tobacco says that it is due to hold its Annual General Meeting and issue an Interim Management Statement on January 30.

A new PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) billboard going up in Richmond, Virginia, US, equates eating meat with smoking in an effort to get more people to become vegans, according to a WWBT NBC12 report.

The group announced on Wednesday that it was erecting the billboard, which shows a toddler smoking a cigar next to the words ‘You wouldn’t let your child smoke. Like smoking, eating meat increases the risk of heart disease and cancer. Go vegan!’

“We all know how important it is to set a good example for our kids, and that means choosing habits – such as eating vegan meals – that will steer them toward a healthier life,” says PETA executive vice president, Tracy Reiman.

“PETA’s billboard will remind Virginians that, just as we should put down the cigarettes, we should also put down the drumsticks and pick up fiber-rich, heart-healthy plant-based foods instead.”