Category: News This Week

Holmen Skog, Iggesund Paperboard’s sister company and forest raw material supplier, is burning the forest on the island of Innerstön, one of the group of Baltic islands that lie offshore from the city of Hudiksvall north of Iggesund.

In a press note issued today, Iggesund explained that modern forest management tried to develop felling methods that resembled the effects of natural forest fires, which had served an important ecological function for millennia.

So by burning standing timber in controlled circumstances, Holmen was implementing an important nature conservation measure that would benefit a number of rare species of flora and fauna. Over the next 16 years all the forest on the island, totalling 380 ha, would be burned in stages.

“There’s not enough burned forest at present,” said Magnus Aretorn, who is in charge of caring for the Holmen Skog forests in the Iggesund region and responsible for nature conservation measures. “By having frequent and recurring fires we will create a mosaic of burned timber at various stages of decomposition. This will create an environment that is unique in Sweden and will benefit rare species which depend on the heat from the fires or on various stages of decomposed, dead or burned timber.”

Examples of Swedish species which benefit from these special conditions are the cranesbill plants Geranium bohemicum and Geranium lanuginosum, the lichen Hypocenomyce anthracophila, the black fire beetle Melanophila acuminata and various species of the powderpost beetle Stephanopachys.

For millennia, the forests have burned at irregular intervals, often as a result of lightning, but nowadays these fires are put out far more efficiently than before. The result is that few burned forest environments are created naturally.

Innerstön is surrounded by water and lies in a sheltered setting, making it a safer location than the mainland for a controlled burn.

The island has been divided into eight zones and burns have been scheduled so that by 2028 the entire island will have been burned. By 2030 the controlled burn will start again in the first zone.

“This might seem to be a long-term perspective but in our industry it’s not,” Aretorn said. “The raw material for the quality paperboard Invercote comes from our forests in this region. Here it takes between 80 to 100 years for a pine tree to grow. So to put it bluntly, we who are planting the trees now won’t still be around when the time comes to harvest them.”

Thailand’s Public Health Ministry is planning to file an appeal with the Supreme Administrative Court so that its requirement for bigger graphic health warnings on cigarette packs can be imposed as planned, according to a story in The Nation.

The Administrative Court on Monday suspended the ministry’s plan under which tobacco companies would have had to have increased the size of the warnings on the front and back of packs from 55 percent to 85 percent.

“I will consult with legal experts to find out about the appeal procedure,” the ministry’s permanent secretary, Dr. Narong Sahametapat, was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, Dr. Nopporn Cheanklin, deputy director of the Disease Control Department, said the proposed regulation would not create any burden on the tobacco companies.

But it would prevent young people from becoming addicted to smoking, he added.

Dr. Hathai Chitanont, director of the Thailand Health Promotion Institute, said he backed the ministry’s attempt to control tobacco consumption and to file an appeal with the Supreme Court.

He suggested that the ministry should collect evidence to prove that making the warning graphics bigger on cigarette packs would reduce the number of smokers and prevent nonsmokers from taking up the habit. However, he said he wasn’t aware of any research proving these assumptions.

The use of children as tobacco-farm workers is common in at least some regions of Tanzania, according to a story by Ludovick Kazoka for All-Africa.com.

Kazoka quoted the Urambo District (Tabora Region) senior community development official, Sabala Rukonda, as saying that most tobacco farmers opted for children because they were readily available to satisfy agriculture’s huge “manpower” demand. “These children use dangerous tools, are exposed to pesticides and chemical fertilizers, and carry heavy loads,” he said.

The story does not describe the age of the children working on tobacco farms, but the Sikonge District acting education officer, Ernest Simbamwene, was quoted as saying he was concerned about the poor attendance at most rural primary schools during the farming season. “Many children tend to abscond because they are being used as laborers by tobacco farmers,” he said.

Sikonge District Commissioner Hanifa Selengu said the government had taken note of the bad practice and had introduced committees tasked with tackling the problem at the ward level. Parents or guardians whose children were absent from school were being summoned for questioning before legal procedures were instituted.

But, according to the International Labour Organization, the causes of the worst forms of child labor in Tanzania’s tobacco plantations are linked to poverty. Eighty-four percent of the parents of children working on these farms come from poor and very poor socioeconomic backgrounds.

The full story is at http://allafrica.com/stories/201308270335.html.

The early opening time of one of Vienna’s traditional coffee houses, Café Drechsler, has fallen victim to a tobacco smoking ban, according to a story in the Vienna Times.

Café Drechsler has been forced to introduce a full smoking ban because of the combined effect of its own architecture and the country’s smoking regulations; so it is no longer opening its doors at 3 a.m., but at 8 a.m.

Manager Manfred Stallmajer was quoted as saying that most of the people who visited coffee houses late at night were smokers, and therefore a smoke-free coffee house didn’t work.

“It is a real shame as now this 90-year-old tradition has been forced to come to an end,” he said.

The full story is at http://viennatimes.at/news/Panorama/2013-08-27/29615/Smoking_Law_forces_change_in_Cafe_Drechsler_opening_hours.

The Maharashtra State Food and Drug Administration (MSFDA) commissioner, Mahesh Zagade, has called on his counterparts in India’s other states to consider enforcing bans on the manufacture and sale of gutkha and pan masala, according to a story in the most recent issue of the BBM Bommidala newsletter.

At the same time, Zagade has reportedly written to the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India urging it to convene a meeting of all of the FDAs in the country to ensure “proper implementation of the law on smokeless tobacco products, and to follow the leaf of the [Maharashtra] state and outlaw all processed and packaged [smokeless] tobacco in whatever form.”

The state recently became the first to impose a blanket ban on all chewing tobacco (zarda, khaini, kharra, masheri, mawa, etc.) and scented supari (pan masala and supari mix). It has moved to shut down all manufacturing units within the state and to stop these products entering the state from outside.

About half of Japan’s underage smokers have admitted to having bought tobacco products illegally using a borrowed Taspo card, the age-verification smart card used to purchase cigarettes from vending machines, according to a Yomiuri Shimbun story quoting the results of the research.

The findings were reported by Takashi Oida, the professor at Nihon University who headed up the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry research team.

The Taspo card, which is issued only to adults, was introduced in July 2008 to help prevent underage smoking.

And though the number of underage smokers is on the decline, the team’s survey shows that teenagers often borrow Taspo cards from adults.

The research group distributed a questionnaire on smoking to 140,000 students at 264 middle and high schools, and 100,000 of them in 179 schools responded.

The results showed that 2,851 students, or 2.8 percent, had smoked within the previous month.

Forty-eight percent of respondents said that price hikes had affected their purchase of cigarettes, while 44 percent said the introduction of Taspo cards had made it difficult to purchase tobacco from vending machines.

However, the survey found that 49 percent of the students who had smoked in the previous month had purchased cigarettes using a Taspo card belonging to someone else. Fifty-six percent of those who had used a Taspo had borrowed the card from someone outside their family; 21 percent had borrowed a card from a family member; while 14 percent had used a card that had been left at home.

Altria is due to host at altria.com a webcast of its business presentation to the Barclays Back-To-School Consumer Conference in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, on Sept. 3, starting about 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time.

The webcast, which will be in listen-only mode, will feature a presentation by Executive Vice President and CFO Howard Willard.

Pre-event registration is necessary at altria.com, where an archived copy of the webcast will be made available.

Philip Morris (Thailand) (PMTL) has welcomed Friday’s decision by the Bangkok Central Administrative Court to suspend the implementation of a Ministry of Public Health requirement for enlarged graphic warnings on cigarette packs until the case against this measure has been heard.

“We welcome the court’s recognition that this regulation should be suspended until this case is considered on its merits, and we are grateful to the court for listening to our concerns,” said Onanong Pratakphiriya, manager communications and external affairs for (PMTL). “This is a welcome departure from the Ministry of Public Health, which willfully, and in violation of Thai due process requirements, ignored the voices of thousands of retailers, manufacturers and many other impacted stakeholders when it first issued this notification. Today’s decision now clears the way for us to show the court that this measure is not only illegal but also unnecessary, given that the health risks of smoking are universally known in Thailand.”

PMTL took legal action against the health ministry on June 26, asking the court to invalidate the ministry’s notification that would increase the size of graphic health warnings from 55 percent to 85 percent of the front and back of cigarette packs.

“PMTL claims that the Ministry acted beyond its legal powers and failed to consult with thousands of impacted stakeholders in violation of Thai due process requirements,” according to a note posted on Philip Morris International’s website. “It also claims that the measure substantially impairs the ability of manufacturers and importers to use their trademarks to differentiate their products from competitors’ products and is unnecessary given that the risks associated with smoking are known universally in Thailand. In addition to the lack of credible evidence to prove the effectiveness of such large health warnings, the notification exempts cheap, roll-your-own tobacco, which already makes up half of the Thai market, and is likely to boost smuggled products from outside Thailand, which often have smaller health warnings, no warnings at all, or are counterfeit.

“The Administrative Court based its decision on its finding that the notification was potentially illegal and that allowing enforcement before a full decision on the merits could cause irreparable harm to PMTL.

“While today’s decision was related to the Philip Morris filing specifically, others have also taken legal action against this unnecessary and illogical regulation, including the Thai Tobacco Trade Association (TTTA), representing more than 1,400 retailers across Thailand, an individual retailer and a wholesaler.

“The request for an injunction was the first step in a process that is expected to take more than one year.”

Meanwhile, according to a Bangkok Post story, during the court hearing, the ministry argued that the regulation was in line with the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which supported the use of health warnings to prevent the young and nonsmokers from trying tobacco products.

And the ministry pointed out that the National Tobacco Control Board had said that on-package health warnings were the most effective means of reminding consumers of the dangers of smoking.

Urban patrol officers in Changzhou, China, have started to distribute portable ashtrays in an attempt to reduce the number of cigarette butts littering streets, according to a China Daily story quoting the Modern Express Daily.

The first 5,000 portable ashtrays were distributed free of charge on Friday in Nandajie, the city’s busiest commercial street.

More than 3,000 cigarette butts are said to be dropped daily in a 600-meter stretch of Nandajie.

But while many people think the portable ash trays could help protect the environment and reduce fire hazards, some have questioned whether they encourage smoking in public areas.