Category: News This Week

Advisers to Ireland’s Joint Committee on Health and Children have said there is no legal impediment to tobacco industry representatives giving evidence at hearings on proposed standard-packaging legislation, according to a story in the Irish Independent.

Hearings, which are scheduled for the New Year, will be crucial to the progress of the Tobacco Plain Packaging Bill.

Anti-smoking groups had complained that allowing the tobacco lobby to give evidence would violate the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which restricts governments from interacting with the industry on health issues.

But legal advisers said the treaty did not preclude the industry from making oral representations to the committee.

Eastern Tobacco, Egypt’s monopoly cigarette producer, says that a new tax stamp that is being introduced is aimed only at reducing the black market in cigarettes and will not lead to a price increase, according to an Al-Ahram story.

Local cigarette prices have risen significantly during the past few years as taxes have been increased sharply.

Several brands of Chinese cigarettes are sold illegally on the Egyptian market and, during the three months to the end of September, Eastern’s revenue fell by 4.9 per cent to E£1.17 billion.

Eastern is said to have started introducing the new banderole on 50 per cent of its cigarette packs.

A new electronic cigarette developed in France allows users to monitor data about their vaping through mobile devices such as telephones and tablets, according to a story in the Jagran Post, India, quoting Gizmag.

The Smokio is said to use Bluetooth to connect to the user’s electronic device and thereby allow the download of a free app to monitor key data and manage some functions of the electronic cigarette.

The user can alter the amount of vapour given off with each puff and monitor the battery, which is said to last for seven hours.

And the user can monitor data about how often she’s been vaping, how long she has been vaping and how many tobacco cigarettes she would have smoked in the same period.

Ulster Unionist MEP Jim Nicholson has said that he will continue to do everything possible to defend local jobs in Japan Tobacco International’s Gallaher plant at Ballymena, Northern Ireland, according to a story in the Antrim Times.

Nicholson’s comments come as representatives of the European Parliament, Council and European Commission agreed to a compromise in negotiations over the EU’s Tobacco Products Directive.

The new directive has still to be formally adopted by the European Parliament and the Council. And once the directive is adopted, member states will have two years to transpose the new rules into national law.

One aspect of the compromise would mean that the minimum size of roll-your-own tobacco packs would rise to 30 g, which would effectively render a making line at the JTI plant obsolete, with possible implications for about 200-300 jobs.

“Given the well-known health implications of smoking, the EU’s Tobacco Products Directive had the laudable intention of discouraging young people from taking up the habit,” said Nicholson.

“Nevertheless, I believe these important concerns have not been sufficiently balanced with the implications for local jobs.

“This week in Brussels negotiators have agreed to a minimum pack size of 30 g for pouches of RYO tobacco. Production of … [RYO] packs is a significant part of the business at the JTI/Gallaher plant in Ballymena. This decision has major implications for the Northern Ireland economy as it will effectively remove a production line from the factory and threaten hundreds of jobs when it is implemented.

“That is why I will now work to secure the 40 signatures needed to table an amendment to help safeguard the jobs and livelihoods of the employees in JTI/Gallaher’s Ballymena plant – this is an important issue for Northern Ireland.”

Imperial Tobacco has installed at its Taiwan factory energy-efficient lighting that costs less to use and provides greater illumination.

Conventional lights using mercury vapour have been replaced at the Jhunan site with energy-efficient Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs).

LEDs have a typical lifespan of about 30,000 hours, compared to just 750 hours for traditional light bulbs.

The initiative is aimed at helping Imperial reduce its energy consumption as part of a group-wide strategy to cut energy consumption by 20 per cent by 2020.

“This is an excellent way to minimise our impact on the environment and cut back on our energy usage,” said Yip Hin Weng, engineering manager at Jhunan.

“The LEDs cost around 70 per cent less to run than mercury vapour lights whilst at the same time they boost lighting levels for our employees by 80 per cent.

“This investment will pay for itself within two and half years and eradicates the equivalent of around 400 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year.”

Philip Morris International says that proposed revisions to the EU’s Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) will be a gift to black market criminals but a blow to government revenues and to people working in the licit tobacco industry.

“The EU has ignored its own standards for proportionate, evidenced-based policymaking during the five years that the Tobacco Products Directive has been under consideration,” said PMI’s EU region president, Drago Azinovic.

He was commenting on an agreement reached between the European Commission, Parliament and Council on the proposed TPD revisions.

“Discussions in Council and the European Parliament might have marginally amended the original text, but the EU’s failure to do its homework will be a gift for the criminals profiting from the black market in tobacco, and a blow to the hundreds of thousands of people working in the legal industry and member state governments now faced with filling budget gaps,” said Azinovic.

“Instead of further harmonizing the internal market, a stated objective of the directive, measures in the TPD will further erode property rights that the EU Charter protects. This sends a worrying signal to other sectors of the economy that depend on legal certainty and a rigorous defense of intellectual property rights.”

The new directive has still to be formally adopted by the European Parliament and the Council, which will vote on it only after the legal-linguistic revision of the text has been finalised. And once the directive is adopted member states will have two years to transpose the new rules into national law.

Some of the key proposals for revision of the TPD were published here yesterday under the heading: EU to back ‘tobacco products that taste and smell like tobacco products’.

White Cloud Electronic Cigarettes has said that it is partnering with Big Green Box to offer a US recycling service for its products, including its batteries, according to a PRNewswire story.

Big Green Box is a federally-approved recycling company based in Anaheim, California.

The service will ensure that White Cloud meets the standards of electronic-waste disposal set by the US Department of Transportation and the United Nations.

It will provide customers with the opportunity to recycle their rechargeable electronic cigarette batteries and Fling disposable electronic cigarettes.

“Try to think about this for a moment: there are 20 to 50 million metric tons of electronic waste disposed off every year, worldwide,” said White Cloud’s managing director, Danielle Steingraber. “Right now, only 12.5 per cent of e-waste is currently recycled, but we can do our part to help change that.”

The PRNewswire story went on to say that while it might seem that a few electronic cigarette batteries in the trash could make any real environmental difference, as the number of electronic cigarette users continued to rise worldwide, it would quickly become critical that electronic cigarette users recycle.

The Supreme Court of Canada has refused to hear an appeal by foreign tobacco companies trying to extricate themselves from a lawsuit over health-related costs, according to a Canadian Press story.

The Ontario government is seeking billions of dollars in health-care costs that it alleges are attributable to tobacco-related illnesses.

The companies argued they were foreign entities and the Ontario courts did not have jurisdiction to determine claims against them.

The companies were listed as: British American Tobacco (Investment) Ltd., B.A.T. Industries PLC, British American Tobacco PLC, Carreras Rothmans Ltd., R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco International Inc.

Ontario’s lawsuit stems from a 2009 law that gave the province a statutory right to sue manufacturers over tobacco-related health costs.

The Supreme Court, as is usual, gave no reasons for refusing to hear the appeal.