Category: News This Week

Anti-smoking advocates have called on the Cambodian government to raise its taxes on cigarettes, claiming that such measures have brought health and revenue-generating benefits to other countries, according to a story in The Phnom Penh Post.

In a conference in Phnom Penh, the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance demonstrated that Cambodia had one of the region’s lowest tobacco tax rates as a percentage of retail prices.

The alliance’s director, Bungon Rithiphakdee, said that higher taxes meant higher retail prices and higher retail prices meant that people were unable to buy cigarettes and smoke.

According to the Asean Tobacco Control Atlas, only Laos beats Cambodia to the lowest rate of tobacco tax as a percentage of retail prices. Cambodia’s rate stands at 20 to 25 percent, while the rate in Laos stands at 16 to 19 percent.

The report singled out Thailand, which was said to have raised its tobacco tax rate 10 times between 1991 and 2012 and to have increased its revenue almost fourfold.

Without quoting any figures, the Post’s story said that smoking went down in Thailand between 1991 and 2012, though the tobacco tax rate had to be bumped up to 87 percent in 2012 to combat a slight increase in smoking.

Meanwhile, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam apply tobacco tax rates of 40 to 70 percent.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is likely to propose in October a ban on television advertising for electronic cigarettes, according to a story by Michael Sebastian for Advertising Age quoting a report from the financial services group CLSA Americas.

A ban would hobble the dissemination of information about these products, which are relatively new, which many people believe are hugely less risky than are traditional cigarettes, and which have proved successful in getting smokers to quit their habit.

It would also put the brakes on an emerging source of revenue for television networks, where spending on e-cigarette commercials climbed 17.9 percent between 2011 and 2012, according to a Citibank report earlier this year.

The Citibank report said, too, that print advertising spending among electronic cigarette marketers had increased by 71.9 percent between 2011 and 2012.

E-cigarette makers have said they plan to continue marketing their products across a range of media unless and until a ban is introduced.

The FDA is expected to issue a proposed rule in October that would allow it to regulate electronic cigarettes. At that time, the proposal will be open for public comments, a process that is expected to last for months.

Iggesund Paperboard recently invited international designers to take part in a week of activities in the forests around Iggesund to learn about forest management, paperboard manufacture and paperboard’s properties and possibilities. A similar event was staged last autumn, and it was so successful that the company decided to repeat it.

The Iggesund Design Experience 2013, which was held in August, brought together 13 designers from around the world. Participants visited the local forests and learned about modern forestry methods. They saw also how Invercote is manufactured and learned the differences between paper and paperboard. They discussed sustainability and the choice of materials, and they had the opportunity to question experts on silviculture, water purification, hygiene and the safety aspects of food packaging.

At the beginning of this year, Iggesund contacted almost 15,000 internationally active designers and offered them the opportunity to apply for the program. The response was considerable but perhaps not as great as the organizers had expected. “Maybe [it was] because the offer seemed too good to be true,” said Staffan Sjöberg, public relations manager at Iggesund. “We look after the group for a week and combine excursions into the forests and experiences of Swedish culture with a lot of information that can benefit participants in their daily work.” Sjöberg hosted the event together with Product Manager Johan Granås for the second year in a row.

This year’s participants included designers from Sweden and elsewhere in Europe, Argentina, the U.S. and India. They ranged from rookies eager to spread their wings to professionals with many years of experience.

“It’s a privilege to be able to spend a week together with colleagues from the whole world,” said Nadine Hajjar, a designer based in New York. “The chance to discuss common problems of the profession with people who are working along the same lines but in other cultures is a fabulous opportunity.

“In addition, the week as a whole, the program of events and the atmosphere were terrific. The event has been so good that I wish everyone who works with paper and paperboard could be given such an education.”

The event will probably be repeated. Over the decades Iggesund has built up an extensive body of knowledge about paperboard and its use, and hosting visits by designers is one way to pass on this knowledge to others. “We don’t believe that everyone will go home and instantly start using our products, Invercote and Incada, for everything they do,” Sjöberg said. “But if we can encourage more designers to choose their materials with greater awareness based on knowledge rather than the latest fads, then we’ve made some progress.

“We hope the designers have left us with new insights into how they can make their creations stand out from the crowd, not only through their designs but also from a sustainability perspective.”

Estonian Minister of Justice Hanno Pevkur has said that a new bill that would make it illegal for pregnant women to engage in behaviors they know to be damaging to the fetus would not necessarily encompass smoking, according to an Eesti Rahvusringhääling (Estonian Public Broadcasting) story.

Previous press stories had indicated that the law was specifically aimed at women who smoked while pregnant.

While under current law, a person can be held accountable for killing a human fetus, Pevkur said the update of the penal code proposed that knowingly damaging the fetus by taking drugs or strong medicine would be illegal.

“Or if actions result in a disability that only surfaces at birth, and the mother knew that she was damaging the fetus, then that will also be punishable,” the minister said.

He added that that did not mean smoking a few cigarettes would result in criminal prosecution.

But what a lot of people will be asking is could the law be used to prosecute women because they smoke while pregnant.

Despite the passage of the sin tax law, the prices of cigarettes in the Philippines remain among the lowest in Southeast Asia, an antismoking group said on Monday.

A story in the Philippine Daily Inquirer quoted Emer Rojas, president of the New Vois Association of the Philippines, as saying the first edition of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Tobacco Atlas showed that the country continued to have some of the lowest cigarette prices in the region and even in the world.

“For example, local brand Fortune is pegged at 58 centavos and Marlboro at $1.16 a pack,” Rojas said. “But in Singapore, which is one of the Asean countries with good tobacco control policies, a pack of Marlboro is sold at $9.”

Rojas said the Philippines had been lagging behind its Asean neighbors in terms of tobacco control and that even with the sin tax law approved last year, the price increases were not enough for the country to catch up.

“We were only able to achieve a tax burden of 53 percent of the retail price,” he said. “This is still short of the recommended 70 percent tax burden of the World Health Organization.”

Farmers apparently disagree and believe that the new sin tax will have a devastating effect on their businesses, according to a story in The Philippine Star.

“This law will lead to the extinction of the tobacco industry,” Bernard Vicente, vice president of the Philippine Tobacco Growers’ Federation, was quoted as saying.

“Sales of cigarettes will drop drastically and will in turn bring down demand for tobacco by the cigarette manufacturers. They might even close shop.”

A new study on mentholated cigarette consumption in the U.S. has found an increase in menthol cigarette smoking among young adults, according to a Science Daily story. The study is said to conclude that efforts to reduce smoking are probably being thwarted by the sale and marketing of mentholated cigarettes, ‘including emerging varieties of established youth brands’.

“Our findings indicate that youth are heavy consumers of mentholated cigarettes, and that overall menthol cigarette smoking has either remained constant or increased in all three age groups we studied, while non-menthol smoking has decreased,” said lead researcher Gary Giovino, Ph.D., professor and chair of the University at the Buffalo Department of Community Health and Health Behaviors.

Giovino, one of the world’s leading tobacco surveillance researchers, estimated menthol and non-menthol cigarette use during 2004–2010 using annual data on nearly 390,000 persons 12 years old and older who took part in the National Surveys on Drug Use and Health. The data included more than 84,000 smokers.

The results, which were published online in the international journal Tobacco Control, were said to have shown that:

• Among cigarette smokers, menthol cigarette use was more common among 12- to 17-year-olds (56.7 percent) and 18- to 25-year-olds (45 percent) than among older persons (range 30.5 percent to 32.9 perent).

• Menthol use was associated with being younger, female, and of nonwhite race or ethnicity.

• Among all adolescents, the proportion who smoked non-menthol cigarettes decreased from 2004 to 2010, while menthol smoking rates remained constant.

• Among all young adults, the proportion who smoked non-menthol cigarettes also declined, while menthol smoking rates increased.

• The use of Camel menthol and Marlboro menthol increased among adolescent and young adult smokers, particularly non-Hispanic whites, during the study period.

“The study results should inform the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] regarding the potential public health impact of a menthol ban,” Giovino says.

“The FDA is considering banning menthol cigarettes, or other regulatory options. This research provides an important view of the trends and patterns of menthol use in the nation as a whole. The FDA will consider these findings and findings from multiple other studies as it goes forward.”

Giovino is particularly alarmed that the findings show young people are heavy consumers of mentholated cigarettes, and the use of menthol is specifically associated with being younger, female and of nonwhite ethnicity.

“This finding indicates that mentholated cigarettes are a ‘starter product’ for kids in part because menthol makes it easier to inhale for beginners,” says Giovino. “Simply stated, menthol sweetens the poison, making it easier to smoke. Young people often think menthol cigarettes are safer, in part because they feel less harsh.”

KT&G was due today to put on sale in South Korea the latest version of its This brand of cigarettes, This Africa, according to a story in The Korea Herald.

This Africa’s blend is said to include African smoke-dried tobacco that gives a unique scent and a slight tint of sweetness to the product.

The new product delivers 5 mg of tar and 0.5 mg of nicotine, and retails for KRW2,500 a pack.

British graphic designer Papaboule and fashion magazine Cracker Your Wardrobe are said to have participated in the design of the new product’s pack.

Mitchell Zeller, director of the Center for Tobacco Products at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said recently that his organization knew that young people who started smoking did so disproportionately with menthol cigarettes.

However, he was reported by Jim McLean of the Kansas Health Institute News Service as saying the agency wanted to do more research on whether menthol made cigarettes more addictive and to gather public input before deciding whether to impose any new regulations. Zeller is scheduled to speak on Sept. 19 to members of the Kansas Public Health Association during its fall conference.

“As a regulatory agency, we can only go as far as the regulatory science will take us,” Zeller said. “So, we are making a major investment in better understanding how tobacco products work and better understanding the role of nicotine in the design and manufacture of tobacco products.”

That research, McLean reported, led the FDA to conclude in a July report that menthol cigarettes posed a greater health risk [than did non-menthol cigarettes], not because they are more toxic than regular cigarettes are, but because they are less harsh, which means people smoke more of them and which makes them a favorite among young smokers just picking up the habit.

South Korea’s National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) seems to be preparing to file lawsuits against cigarette manufacturers to seek compensation for the cost of treating smoking-related diseases, according to a story in The Korea Herald.

NHIS President Kim Jong-dae told a seminar last week that his organization had secured clinical data that proved the ill effects of smoking on people’s health.

At the seminar, the NHIS unveiled the findings of clinical research its team had conducted for the past 20 years.

For example, the team kept track of about 1.3 million people who had medical checkups between 1992 and 1995.

The data from this study showed that, among men, smokers had a 6.5 times higher risk than did nonsmokers of developing laryngeal cancer. The risk was 4.6 times higher for lung cancer and 3.6 times higher for esophageal cancer.

Among women, the chances of smokers getting laryngeal cancer, pancreatic cancer and colon cancer were 5.5, 4.6 and 2.9 times higher, respectively, than was the case for nonsmokers.

The team found also that, among men, smoking was the main cause in 79 percent of the laryngeal cancer cases, 71 percent of lung cancer cases and 64 percent of esophageal cancer cases.

Kim said the data would enable the NHIS to take a number of measures, including suing tobacco companies to compensate for the financial losses it had suffered due to smoking.

The NHIS says the medical cost of treating smoking-related diseases was KRW1.7 trillion in 2011, accounting for 3.7 percent of the KRW46 trillion the NHIS paid in insurance benefits.