Author: Staff Writer

Indonesia’s Health Minister, Nafsiah Mboi, has urged the media to take a greater role in the fight against tobacco by reducing cigarette advertisements, according to a story in The Jakarta Post.

Speaking during an editors’ forum in Jakarta yesterday, Nafsiah said that the media could prevent tobacco use, particularly among young people, by limiting such advertisements.

“Tobacco advertisements, including the ones in mass media, influence people to smoke,” said Nafsiah. “For the sake of the next generation, we urge you to limit it.”

It was not clear why the minister was appealing to the media rather than proposing further regulations.

Government regulations already restrict tobacco advertising. While tobacco companies may still advertise their products in outdoor places, for instance, the advertisements may not exceed 72 square meters in size.

Television stations are allowed to air cigarette advertisements, but only after 21.30 hours and before 05.00 hours.

And the print media are not allowed to place tobacco advertisements on their front pages.

Japan Tobacco Inc is aiming to make Mevius the number one global premium cigarette brand.

At the moment, it is probably fair to say that the name Mevius is not well known around the world, but it is guaranteed a considerable level of success because it is the new name of Mild Seven, one of the JT Group’s Global Flagship Brands.

The Mild Seven name is due to be changed to Mevius on the Japanese market from early next month and JT has promised that it will ‘continue to offer further added value and satisfaction to consumers by actively increasing investment to enhance its brand equity…’

No changes are being made to the flavor and aroma of non-menthol Mild Seven on its journey to becoming Mevius, but packs have been redesigned and a clicklock pack is being introduced in respect of 10-piece boxes.

And the two Mild Seven menthol product types, Aqua and Impact, will be merged into a new 100 per cent natural menthol product type, ‘’Mevius Premium Menthol’.

The TFWA (Tax Free World Association) says that its Asia Pacific Conference & Exhibition 2013 is set to be the largest such show ever staged in Singapore.

The week-long show is due to open on 12 May.

‘Exhibitor numbers have already exceeded 2012 levels with more than 7,500 m² of exhibition space booked,’ TFWA said in a press note.

The Suntec Centre venue, which is said to have been completely renovated, is set to host 50 new exhibitors, along with many regulars.

TFWA said that details of the conference and workshops would be released soon at tfwa.com.

In the meantime, ‘China’s century: The fast pace of change in China duty free & travel retail’, is due to be held at the Beijing Hotel on March 5-7.

Organised jointly by the TFWA and APTRA (Asia Pacific Travel Retail Association), the event is due to bring together ‘a wealth of international and local expertise, including some of the most influential figures in Chinese duty free and travel retail’.

More information about the conference program is at: http://www.tfwa.com/duty_free/Programme.233.0.html

The authors of ‘Ending addiction for good: The groundbreaking, holistic, evidence-based way to transform your life’ are offering a free download from January 23 to 27, according to a PRNewswire press note.

They are said to be hoping to spread the word about this addiction treatment program that has ‘already helped hundreds of addicts to achieve long-term recovery and thrive’.

The press note says that almost everyone these days is touched by addiction and that the book offers a ‘cutting-edge protocol’ for ending addictions to: drugs, alcohol, prescription painkillers, smoking, gambling, sex and pornography.

The methods outlined in the book are said to work also in treating conditions such as: depression, eating disorders, anxiety and sleep disorders.

In Ending Addiction for Good, Richard Taite and Constance Scharff, PhD, both former addicts, champion the Stages of Change model created by psychologist Dr. James Prochaska.

Tourists in China have complained that the souvenir Beijing brand cigarettes they have been buying in the Dashilan area’s tourist shops are fakes, according to a Global Times story.

Whether or not they are fakes is a moot point given that while the brand used to be made by the Beijing Cigarette Factory (BCF), production was stopped in 2009.

Certainly it seems that they are not quite what they claim to be because packs list BCF as the manufacturer and, as one unnamed BCF employee pointed out, it was unlikely that 3- or 4-year-old cigarettes would still be available.

Whatever the situation is, packs of Beijing cigarettes are openly on sale in many stores in Dashilan, Xicheng district, for Yuan10-23 per pack.

An unnamed employee from the Xicheng District Tobacco Monopoly Administration said they had received several complaints from tourists who had called their hotline.

“The Dashilan area is difficult to manage, because of its mobile population,” she was quoted as saying. “We’ll investigate, and the store owners will be prosecuted and fined if the case is confirmed.

“Based on previous cases, the source of the cigarettes might be from outside the city.”

Thousands of tobacconists marched on the EU headquarters in Brussels yesterday to protest against a planned crackdown on tobacco products that includes the imposition of graphic pack health warnings, according to a France 24 story.

The protesters were mainly from France and Italy, but also from Austria, Germany and Poland: 2,200 according to the police; 3,500 according to organisers.

They were protesting against measures they say harm small retailers and encourage cigarette smuggling.

“Brussels is hitting at official distribution networks while nothing is done against smuggling”, said the deputy head of the European Confederation of Tobacco Retailers (CEDT), Pascal Montredon, who heads the French branch.

He said the EU should ban cigarette sales on the internet and stop the continual increase in prices in some countries.

Six thousand of France’s 33,000 tobacconists had closed since 2004, he added.

Last month, the European Commission published details of it recommendations for the revision of the EU’s Tobacco Products Directive.

The recommendations included those on increasing the size of health warnings, banning characterizing tobacco flavors, banning slim cigarettes and banning packs containing fewer than 20 cigarettes.

They seek to leave in place the ban on snus outside of Sweden and to discourage the use of electronic cigarettes. The consumption of each of these products is seen by many people to be hugely less harmful than is the consumption of traditional cigarettes.

The market for licit cigarettes in Ukraine could shrink to 74-75 billion this year from 80 billion in 2012, according to a Kyiv Post story quoting the director for corporate issues at Imperial Tobacco Ukraine (ITU), Yuriy Kyshko.

Briefing reporters, Kyshko said that last year had seen growth in the domestic-market consumption of both smuggled and counterfeit cigarettes.

The further increase that was expected this year in the share accounted for by illicit products was linked to the introduction of new excise duties and changes in the structure of taxes from January 13, added ITU’s CFO, Volodymyr Antypenko.

Antypenko said that ITU and Philip Morris Ukraine had increased the prices of their cigarettes but that other companies had not, perhaps because they had large amounts of cigarettes in the supply chain or because they were hoping the law increasing excise duties would be not signed by the Ukrainian president.

Central revenue department officials in India have allegedly discovered unaccounted-for cash amounting to about Rs30 million during searches of cigarette manufacturers’ premises in the Punjab and those of their trading partners across the country, according to a Moneycontrol.com story quoting official sources.

The officials were said to have seized cigarettes worth Rs4.8 million during the searches.

Suspicions were raised when packs of 10 cigarettes, which should attract excise duty of Rs12.36, were found to be on sale for between Rs3.00 and Rs5.00.

British American Tobacco has joined the board of directors of the American Society for Cellular and Computational Toxicology.

A BAT press note issued yesterday said that Marianna Gaça, of BAT’s Group R&D had been voted onto the board of directors of the society, which was established jointly by the Institute of In Vitro Sciences (IIVS) and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), and launched at the IIVS Toxicology Forum, Maryland USA in October 2010.

“I know that I can speak for my fellow board members when I say that we are all looking forward to working together to increase the membership and impact of the society’s activities,” said ASCCT secretary, Kristie Sullivan of the PCRM.

The society has just over 100 individual members and 12 institutional sponsors, including scientists from the cosmetics, pharmaceutical, chemical and tobacco industries, ‘CROs’, ‘SMEs’, NGOs, federal agencies, journalists, regulators and animal welfare groups.

“We are thrilled to be involved with the ASCCT at board level and look forward to supporting the ASCCT vision in the coming years,” said Gaça. “We hope this opportunity will further encourage scientific collaboration and increase awareness of emerging areas of science.”

BAT’s Group R&D Centre has established an in-house research program including the development of in vitro cellular and computational methodologies to facilitate the understanding of the biological effects of tobacco smoke and, in the future, help support the assessment of conventional and modified risk tobacco products.

Sales of cigarettes in South Korea fell last year in the wake of price increases, an economic slowdown and widespread anti-smoking measures, according to a Yonhap News Agency story.

Ministop Korea, the local operator of the Japan-based convenience chain store, is said to have seen its 2012 cigarette sales fall by 7.6 per cent from those of 2011. Cigarette sales at Korea Seven’s 7-Eleven convenience stores dropped by 4.3 per cent, while those at GS Corp’s GS25 chains fell by 2.2 per cent.

Convenience stores account for nearly half of cigarettes sales in South Korea.

The sales decline was led by those of foreign brands. Sales of foreign-brand cigarettes at 7-Eleven stores, for instance, plunged by 11.3 per cent while sales of local cigarettes rose by 2.6 per cent.

And while foreign-brand sales accounted for 51.4 per cent of 7-Eleven’s total cigarette sales during 2012, that figure that was down by 4.2 percentage points from that of the previous year.

British American Tobacco Korea posted a 17 per cent drop in its 2012 domestic sales and Philip Morris Korea saw its sales slide 11.2 per cent last year.

Market insiders were said to have attributed the sales drop to price increases on foreign brands. BAT Korea raised the price of its best-selling Dunhill brand by nearly eight per cent in 2011 and PM Korea raised its prices last year.

They also cited the economic situation and anti-tobacco activities.