Category: News This Week

Tobacco smoking will be banned from social housing units in the Canadian city of Ottawa starting from June next year, according to the latest proposal from Ottawa’s Community Housing Corp. (CHC).

Writing in the Ottawa Citizen, Derek Spalding said that the new no-smoking policy was widely popular among residents who lived in the 14,800 units operated by the housing provider.

A survey of residents from 2012 showed that 69 percent of the 3,700 people who responded preferred to live in a smoke-free building, while 46 percent said they were bothered by secondhand smoke from a neighbouring unit.

CHC CEO Jo-Anne Poirier hopes the new policy will address the health hazards associated with smoking, including that posed by the risk of fire.

“We get a lot of complaints from people who live next to smokers,” she said. “There’s also a cost-saving aspect to it as well. Repairing a unit after a smoker moves out costs more.”

The new policy will apply only to new leases, so smokers who have leases already will be able to continue to smoke in their homes.

They will not, however, be permitted to smoke in common areas, including parking lots and parks.

A court in France ruled on Monday that e-cigarettes qualify as tobacco products and as such can be sold only by licensed tobacconists, according to a story by Sam Ball for France 24.

The ruling threatens to put specialist e-cigarette sellers across the country out of business.

It was made by a court in Toulouse following a complaint by a tobacconist in the nearby town of Plaisance-du-Touch against e-cigarette seller Esmokeclean after it set up shop close by the tobacconist.

The tobacconist claimed that Esmokeclean was violating France’s public health code through advertisements at its shop, and at its online store and on its Facebook page.

Tobacco products may be sold in France only at registered outlets under a state-imposed monopoly, and their advertising is banned.

The court decided that, in acting as a substitute for cigarettes, e-cigarettes constituted tobacco products, and therefore Esmokeclean was violating these laws.

It ordered the company to stop selling and advertising e-cigarettes, saying that doing so constituted “unfair competition” to registered tobacconists.

A lawyer for Esmokeclean said the company would appeal against the ruling.

Commenting on Monday’s ruling, France’s Electronic Cigarette Stakeholders Group (CACE) said that e-cigarettes comprised a consumer product and not a tobacco product, and it accused the court in Toulouse of having exceeded its powers.

There are an estimated 1.5 million vapers in France and about 140 e-cigarette stores, a number that had been estimated to rise to 300 by the end of this year.

There has been significant debate in the country over how e-cigarettes should be treated under French law and, in part, the trend has been to lump these products together with tobacco cigarettes. A report by a panel of experts earlier this year recommended that e-cigarettes should be banned in all places where traditional cigarettes are prohibited, and it recommended the imposition of a ban on the sale of e-cigarettes to minors.

Tobacco growers in the Indian state of Karnataka have sold more than 53.41 million kg of flue-cured at an average price of INR137.35 per kg, according to a story in the latest issue of the BBM Bommidala Group newsletter.

At the same stage of the 2012–2013 sales season, growers in the state had sold 43.52 million kg for an average price of INR121.45 per kg.

K. Narasimhaiah, regional manager with the Tobacco Board of India, said there had been complete transparency at the e-auctions and that growers were realizing better prices this season.

“CCTV cameras are being installed on all the platforms and the entire auctions are being recorded,” he was quoted as saying.

Average prices were as follows: bright grades INR164 per kg (INR140 per kg in 2012–2013); medium grades INR146.75 per kg (INR128 per kg); and low grades INR91.23 per kg (INR89.85 per kg).

Although the board had previously said it was going to try to complete the Karnataka sales in January, it now says the auctions will continue to about the end of February.

The failure to reach agreement during negotiations in Singapore on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is being seen as an interim victory for campaigns by the Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health (CPATH) and its allies.

CPATH said in a press note issued through PRNewswire yesterday that it wanted to extricate tobacco control measures and other public health protections from nullification by corporate trade rules.

It said that multinational tobacco companies were systematically exercising rights found only in trade agreements to challenge lifesaving public health protections. “Medical and public health organizations worldwide, and our legal advisers, explored the problems and possible solutions during the four years of TPP negotiations, and concluded that the only genuine solution would be to carve out (or remove) tobacco control laws and regulations from trade agreements,” the press note said. “Malaysia has advanced just such a proposal. This would set a standard in trade law that would complement the global consensus on fighting the tobacco epidemic enshrined in the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, to which all TPP countries are signatories.

“The U.S. Trade Representative has not agreed, nor exercised leadership towards a viable resolution. U.S. trade policy is set in secret, driven by 600 corporate advisers.”

CPATH’s co-director Ellen R. Shaffer paid tribute to the public health and medical community for consistent support. She said that partners and colleagues in the U.S. and in TPP countries, such as the South East Asia Tobacco Control Alliance and the Malaysian Council for Tobacco Control, had issued strong calls to protect public health.

“Their compelling statements on the domestic sovereign rights of countries to adopt and maintain measures to reduce tobacco use and to prevent its harm have helped make public health and tobacco a central issue in TPP negotiations,” Shaffer said.

CPATH said that other U.S. proposals for the TPP would jeopardize global access to affordable medicines, require that countries allow the patenting of surgical methods, place restraints on public health insurance programs and subject government formularies and reimbursement programs to greater interference from pharmaceutical companies.

“We must restore democratic practice and principles of economic and social sustainability to the trade negotiations process,” said CPATH co-director Joseph E. Brenner. “We need a 21st century trade agreement. Carving out tobacco could signal the dawn of that century.”

Japan Tobacco Inc. is to integrate four of its Less Smoke Smell products under the new name of Mevius Mode.

Two of the products are currently within its Mevius D-SPEC line, and two are within its super-slim Mevius Style Plus line.

The flavor and aroma of these products will remain the same, but they will be sold in updated packaging.

The company said that the changes were aimed at making it clearer to consumers that these products were all part of the Mevius Less Smoke Smell lineup.

They were also aimed at introducing more consistency into the packaging design of products within the Mevius brand.

The U.S. state of North Dakota currently spends $9.5 million a year on tobacco prevention cessation programs, a level of funding that meets that recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

But this level of funding represents only 14.8 percent of the $64.3 million revenue that this year the state will collect in tobacco taxes and payments from the 1998 tobacco settlement.

And yet North Dakota ranks in first place on the table of states protecting young people from tobacco,  according to the annual report on states’ funding of tobacco prevention programs titled A Broken Promise to Our Children: The 1998 State Tobacco Settlement 15 Years Later.

The report was released yesterday by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, the American Lung Association, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights.

The report assesses whether the states have kept their promise to use a significant portion of their settlement funds—estimated to total $246 billion over the first 25 years—to fight tobacco use.

North Dakota looks to be throwing money at the tobacco issue when compared with Missouri, which is in 50^th place on the table of states protecting young people from tobacco.

Missouri currently spends $76,364 a year on tobacco prevention and cessation programs, which is 0.1 percent of the $73.2 million recommended by the CDC.

This is despite the fact that Missouri will this year collect $183.5 million in revenue from the 1998 tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes.

Nationally, the report finds that most states are failing adequately to fund tobacco prevention and cessation programs.

It finds that the states this year will collect $25 billion from the tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes, but will spend just 1.9 percent of that amount—$481.2 million—on tobacco prevention programs. That’s less than 2 cents of every dollar of tobacco revenue.

And it finds that states are falling woefully short of the CDC’s recommended funding levels for tobacco prevention programs.

Altogether, the states have budgeted just 13 percent of the $3.7 billion the CDC recommends.

Only two states, Alaska and North Dakota, currently fund tobacco prevention programs at the CDC-recommended level.

As the final round of ministerial talks on the Trans-Pacific Partnership resumed on Sunday, Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote to each of the 12 participating nations, warning that the deal and the secrecy surrounding it presented “grave risks,” according to a story by economics correspondent Peter Martin, writing for the Sydney Morning Herald.

The Australian government has refused the Senate access to the text of the trade deal it is negotiating, saying it will be made public only after it has been signed.

But Australia’s delegate, Trade Minister Andrew Robb, has told Fairfax Media he is prepared to agree to so-called “investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions” in return for access to markets including those of the U.S., Japan and Canada.

The provisions, rejected by the previous Labor government, allow foreign corporations to sue sovereign governments.

Robb agreed to ISDS provisions in order to clinch the South Korea-Australia free trade agreement announced last week but with what he said were “carve-outs” in “areas such as public welfare, health and the environment.”

The governor of the U.S. state of Virginia has written to the Irish prime minister, Enda Kenny, urging him to reject proposals to introduce standardized cigarette packaging, according to a story in The Irish Times.

In a letter last week, Gov. Bob McDonnell said there were other proven ways to regulate the industry that were based on “sound science”; ways that did not undermine “the great Irish business environment.”

The governor’s letter, which has been seen by The Irish Times, made the case that McDonnell and Kenny had a mutual interest in fortifying their economies.

It said the standardized packaging initiative might undermine Ireland’s reputation as a country in which intellectual property rights were fully protected.

Six weeks ago, four senior congressmen wrote to Ireland’s ambassador to the U.S., Anne Anderson, urging her government to scrap the proposal.

“We are increasingly concerned that the Irish parliament may mandate plain packaging of tobacco products,” they wrote.

“The U.S. and Ireland are friends and strong trading partners. We encourage your government to consider more effective ways to regulate tobacco that do not jeopardize intellectual property rights.”

The sale of cigarettes from indoor and outdoor vending machines will be outlawed throughout Israel from the beginning of next year, according to a story by Judy Siegel-Itzkovich.

The law was originally passed in August 2011, but its implementation was postponed until the beginning of 2014 because vending companies said they needed time to adjust to the new regulations. Theoretically, cigarette vending machines could be retrofitted to sell other items.

In enforcing the law, Siegel-Itzkovich wrote, the Health Ministry was fulfilling Israel’s responsibilities regarding vending machines to the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which the country had approved and ratified.

Although Israel had ratified the convention in August 2005, it had not implemented all the FCTC’s provisions, she wrote.

And, according to Siegel-Itzkovich, even some anti-tobacco laws that have been passed are not enforced.

The European Public Health Alliance (EPHA) has called for the regulation of e-cigarettes as a matter of urgency, but insists that regulation should be framed so as to ensure these products remain available to smokers, according to an Agence Europe story.

The agency report said that, in the absence of health impact studies on e-cigarettes, the EPHA had called for the adoption of the precautionary principle in respect of all devices containing nicotine.

The EPHA’s intervention has come at a time when inter-institutional dialogue on the European Commission’s proposed revisions to the Tobacco Products Directive has essentially stalled in respect of e-cigarettes.

The EPHA has published a document in which it recommends the adoption of watertight European legislation for protecting public health.

Monika Kosinska, EPHA secretary general, said that without a robust regulatory framework in place in the EU, e-cigarettes were hanging in a legal limbo.

It was essential that this emerging range of products was urgently regulated to safeguard people’s health.

“To achieve this, Brussels has to make sure that strict rules on advertising and sponsorship as well as market surveillance and monitoring are the corner stones of new legislation, whilst ensuring that the products are accessible to existing smokers,” she was quoted as saying.