Category: News This Week

Imperial Tobacco’s Smoke Spots website has been launched in London.

Already live in Germany and Austria, the U.K. version enables consumers to find bars, restaurants and clubs with smoking facilities, and outlets selling tobacco.

The new website has been expanded so as to build on social aspects, including a blog and forums to enable people to share their experiences. It has been fully integrated with social media platforms such as Facebook.

“This is an exciting opportunity to support U.K. smokers and smoker-friendly venues,” said Andy Henwood, head of digital and marketing communications.

“Furthermore, giving our consumers the chance to interact with each other and form an online community is a significant step toward renormalising the category.”

Smoke Spots is due to be rolled out to other major cities across the U.K. as well as other markets in the near future.

The number of 13-year-old Danes who take up drinking and smoking has fallen dramatically, but the decline has not been as pronounced among older students, according to a story in the Copenhagen Post.

Results from the “Copenhagen Barometer,” a poll of students in the seventh through ninth grades, found that consumption had dropped across the board.

The fall was particularly marked among the youngest group, however, where only three out of 10 of the youngsters polled said they had tried smoking and/or drinking.

But the percentage of ninth graders who had tried smoking and/or drinking was said to have fallen by only a few points.

The polling of Copenhagen students takes place every spring, but no comparative figures were included in the Post’s story.

Copenhagen’s deputy mayor for child and youth affairs, Anne Vang, called the numbers “terrific.”

“They mean that children can learn more effectively because they aren’t hung over or stoned,” she was quoted as saying.

Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Health has advised people that Ramadan is the best time to give up cigarettes, according to the Arab News.

The ministry’s spokesman, Dr. Khaled Al-Mirghalani, said Ramadan provided the ideal platform for people to quit smoking because Muslims abstained from the habit from dawn to dusk anyway.

The theory was that it would not be difficult for smokers to abstain, too, between the evening meal and breakfast, as much of the time was spent sleeping.

The official said that people who were interested in quitting could use the facilities and expertise available at the 55 anti-smoking clinics spread across the kingdom.

There were 10 such clinics in Riyadh alone, with one of them exclusively set up for women.

The clinics were set to remain open daily from 21.00 hours to 03.00 hours during Ramadan, the official added.

Saudi Arabia has an estimated 7 million smokers, 5.9 million men and 1.1 million women, according to a study by the Khair Anti-Smoking Association.

Sales of cigarettes in Oman slumped during the first week of Ramadan, according to a story in the Oman Daily Observer.

Such a fall in sales will not have come as a surprise to retailers, however, since smoking in public during the daylight hours of Ramadan is a punishable offense in the country.

Buying patterns during the fasting month are also disrupted as many smokers rush to buy their cigarettes after breaking the fast toward the end of the day.

However, the newspaper reported that sales of high-end cigars and shisha tobacco were unaffected; in the case of cigars because the consumer base was different to that of cigarettes, and in the case of shisha because this product was usually smoked late at night anyway.

The Pakistan Inland Revenue’s Directorate of Intelligence and Investigation has issued a toll-free number, 0800-77377, through which people can inform on the illicit cigarette trade.

The service will be available from 08.00 hours to 17.00 hours daily.

A directorate official said people could inform on the storage or sale of illegal cigarettes using the toll-free number.

“Once the identity of the caller is verified, we’ll send a team to raid the place where such cigarettes are stored or sold,” he said.

“The team can seize stocks and impose fine[s] and even imprison their owners.”

According to the official, the identity of callers will be kept secret.

The directorate is hoping to crack down on the sale of local non-duty-paid and smuggled cigarettes.

KT&G said yesterday that it would launch South Korea’s first low-ignition propensity (LIP) cigarettes later this month, according to a story in The Korea Herald.

The company says it has developed independently a “blue band” system for producing LIP cigarettes, a system that applies chemicals to the cigarette paper.

It has five patent applications submitted or pending in respect of the blue band technology.

The LIP paper is due to be used from July 23 on three of KT&G cigarettes within its The One brand of products.

It will then be rolled out to the rest of the company’s cigarettes.

Cigarettes in Korea are not required by law to have LIP paper.

The Nepalese government is looking to increase excise duty collection on tobacco products by 23 percent during fiscal year 2013-2014, according to a story in Republica.

In its 2013-2014 budget brought down on Sunday, the government said it expected to raise RS6.82 billion from excise duty on tobacco products during the year.

During the 2012-2013 financial year that ended yesterday, the government had targeted collecting RS5.54 billion.

In the meantime, the government has decided to require that excise duty stickers be included on tobacco products.

The U.K. government is coming under heavy fire for abandoning—for the time being at least—the idea of introducing standardized tobacco packaging.

The government put the matter out to public consultation and, following that consultation, decided to await the outcome of Australia’s pioneering adoption of standardized packaging.

Quoting the government’s summary report of the public consultation, Forest (Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco) said that 665,989 responses had been received from 24 separate campaigns. Around two-thirds of campaign responses received were from people who were opposed to the introduction of standardized packaging (427,888 responses) and one-third of campaign responses received were from people who supported standardized packaging (238,101 responses).

But those in favor of standardized packaging have cried foul because of the presence in the corridors of power of Lynton Crosby.

Crosby works for the Conservative party, one of two parties in the ruling coalition, as an election strategist.

He is not employed to advise on policy, but some people are not happy that, according to The Times, his lobbying company, Crosby Textor (CTF), has been advising Philip Morris.

Nor are they happy that, according to a BBC story, CTF was employed by British American Tobacco in Australia; though the company was quoted as saying that the CTF did not work on BAT’s campaign against plain packaging in that country.

Since Dec. 1, Australia has required that all tobacco products be sold in packaging designed on behalf of the government to be as ugly as possible. Packs are hugely dominated by graphic health warnings, are otherwise a standard olive color, have no logos or other design features, and have brand and variant names in a standardized font and position.

As things stand, the EU could well adopt a new Tobacco Products Directive that would include a requirement that would render cigarette packs close to being standardized. Packs would have to carry graphic health warnings covering 75 percent of their front and back surfaces.

The European economic and social committee (EESC) has said that changes to the EU’s Tobacco Products Directive proposed by the European Commission would have serious consequences for jobs, the economy and tax revenues.

The committee adopted an opinion on the commission’s review of the directive following what was described as a heated debate at its July 10-11 plenary session.

In a press note, the committee said the tobacco sector employed almost 1.5 million people in the EU; it promoted rural and economic development and was one of the few major export sectors still to maintain a positive balance, both at the EU level and in many member states.

“The EESC today argued that the changes proposed by the Commission would have serious consequences for jobs, the economy and tax revenues, thereby breaching other fundamental EU objectives such as full employment and restored growth,” the committee’s press note said. “However, the European Economic and Social Committee is also fully aware of the risks that tobacco poses to public health. It is crucial that health takes priority over all economic considerations, though skepticism remains on how effectively the European Commission’s proposed measures help the gradual process of quitting.

“The Committee stresses the importance of school-based educational and counseling strategies at EU level to ensure that every child or young person is informed of the realities of smoking and its harmful effects. It is strongly in favor of promoting public education and awareness-raising campaigns concerning the serious health effects of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke.”

Disease prevention should not be neglected, said José Isaías Rodríguez García-Caro, rapporteur of the EESC opinion on “Manufacture, presentation and sale of tobacco and related products.” “However, as a player of the internal market, tobacco also involves jobs and the industry,” he said. “Health and economic considerations must both be considered.”

The press note made the point that tobacco production contributed to rural employment. “The current tobacco leaf harvest in the EU amounts to 250,000 tonnes of tobacco per year and provides employment to 400,000 people,” the note said. “The EESC acknowledges the threat that may be caused to employment in agricultural areas where no other alternatives have been developed and where CAP [Common Agricultural Policy] subsidies are no longer available. The cohesion and structural funds, regional funds and funds for research and innovation should be used effectively to minimize these labor market risks and implement training schemes for workers, together with scientific, technical and innovation support for enterprises and farms.

“The EESC notes that the proposal on the inclusion of health warnings, covering 75 percent of both faces of the cigarette pack, together with the new text covering 50 percent of the sides, is not based on definitive scientific evidence. In addition, this change in packaging may threaten jobs in the packaging industry, which remains a sector of great economic importance in several European countries. It would also undermine the legitimate intellectual and industrial rights of manufacturers to use their registered trademarks.

“According to the EESC, allowing differentiation only on the basis of price will reduce the attractiveness of producing high-quality tobacco in the EU, since all products will end up almost the same. Standardizing format and taste could likely lead to an increase in tobacco smuggling, satisfying public demand through unregulated channels. Member state tax authorities already lose 10 billion euro in tobacco tax receipts every year. In addition, the absence of any quality control of such products will severely compromise consumer safety.”

The revisions to the EU Tobacco Products Directive, as endorsed by the environment, public health and food safety committee, would ban almost 38 percent of Poland’s current cigarette sales, according to a Polish News Bulletin story.

The new directive is due be decided upon at a plenary session of the EU parliament in September, but, for the time being, Poland’s concerns center on the proposed bans on the sale of menthol and slim cigarettes.

MEP Malgorzata Handzlik believes that most menthol- and slim-cigarette smokers will simply switch to other formats and that the drop in sales due to the bans will be about 5 percent.

But some in the tobacco sector believe that the presence of illicit menthol and slim cigarettes will mean that the drop in licit cigarette sales could be as high as 30 percent of the market’s total value.

Under such a revised regime, it is expected the annual turnover of small- and medium-sized stores selling tobacco would be cut by PLN8.6 billion; tobacco grower sales would fall by PLN40 million, and tax revenues would drop by PLN8.85 billion.