Category: News This Week

Tests on the hair of mummies from the town of San Pedro de Atacama in Chile have indicated that the people in the surrounding region had a nicotine habit spanning from at least 100 BC to AD 1450, according to a story on LiveScience.com.

This finding rebuts the popular view that the group living in this region smoked tobacco for just a short time before moving on to hallucinogens.

Research has apparently shown too that nicotine consumption occurred on a societywide basis, irrespective of social status and wealth.

Zimbabwe’s 2013 flue-cured tobacco auction marketing season will close on July 5, according to a story in the Zimbabwe Herald quoting the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB).

Final deliveries will be accepted on July 4.

By the time it closes, the auction season will have run for 99 days, down from 145 days in 2012.

Shortening the auction season in this way is seen as a positive development, though, at the beginning of the auctions, the TIMB’s chief executive, Dr. Andrew Matibiri, indicated that, with Boka Tobacco Floors, Premier Tobacco Floors and Tobacco Sales Floor all operating, the season might have been reduced to 75 days.

Meanwhile, the flue-cured clean-up auction is due to be held on Aug. 6 and might be extended, depending on the volume of deliveries.

A researcher at the Centre for Tobacco Control Research at Stirling University in Scotland has incorporated into a cigarette pack a verbal health warning that is parroted every time the pack is opened, according to a piece in The Drum.

The research was apparently funded by Cancer Research UK in an effort to harness the “marketing tools of the tobacco industry” to help smokers quit.

“The tobacco industry buys a great deal of creative expertise to market its addictive and lethal products to new consumers, mainly young people,” ASH’s Sheila Duffy was quoted as saying in welcoming the development.

Meanwhile, Crawford Moodie said people thought his invention was annoying, “but that is a really good way to capture attention,” he added.

Perhaps, but not if too many people react in the same way as did the only person to have commented on the story by the time that TR read the piece by John Glenday.

Despite the anti-tobacco efforts of the World Health Organization, the Malawi government says tobacco will remain the country’s key strategic crop for years to come, according to a MaraviPost.com story.

The story quoted Agriculture and Food Security Minister Peter Mwanza, speaking at the opening of the 25th Annual Congress of the Tobacco Association of Malawi in Lilongwe.

Mwanza assured farmers that the government intended to support and sustain the industry for the betterment of the country’s economy.

Malawi was at one point the 12th biggest producer of leaf tobacco and the seventh biggest exporter of tobacco.

Mwanza spoke also, however, of some of the challenges faced by the industry, which included flaws in grower registration and the existence of unscrupulous associations that exploited farmers.

Tobacco control measures enacted in 41 countries between 2007 and 2010 will prevent about 7.4 million premature deaths by 2050, according to a HealthDay story quoting the results of a study published on June 30 in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.

A team of researchers led by David Levy, a professor of oncology at Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, District of Columbia, USA, was said to have used a modeling exercise to predict the number of lives that would be saved.

“It’s a spectacular finding that by implementing these simple tobacco control policies, governments can save so many lives,” said Levy.

The measures the countries implemented included protecting people from tobacco smoke; offering smokers help to quit; warning people about the dangers of tobacco; banning tobacco ads, promotion and sponsorship; and raising taxes on tobacco.

“In addition to some 7.4 million lives saved, the tobacco control policies we examined can lead to other health benefits, such as fewer adverse birth outcomes related to maternal smoking, including low birth weight, and reduced health-care costs and less loss of productivity due to less smoking-related disease,” Levy added.

The European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee has said that some of the European Commission’s proposals aimed at revising the Tobacco Products Directive raise significant legal concerns.

These concerns relate to the legal base chosen by the commission, to fundamental rights such as the right to property and to the principle of proportionality.

The committee said the commission had based its proposals on a provision that allowed for measures aimed at improving the conditions for the establishment and functioning of the internal market. However, some of the measures proposed by the commission did not aim to improve the internal market, but had as their only objective the protection of public health.

“For example, it is difficult to see how the proposed (de facto) ban on menthol and on slim cigarettes could improve the functioning of the internal market,” the committee said. The true aim of these measures was the achievement of a higher level of health protection, but, while the protection of health was of the utmost importance, it was up to the member states and not the European Union to take measures in that regard.

“Some provisions in the commission’s proposal also raise serious doubts as to their conformity with fundamental rights such as the right to property, the right to freedom of expression and information and the freedom to conduct business,” the committee said. “These rights are enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (“the Charter”) and may only be limited pursuant to Article 52(1) of the Charter if the limitation is necessary, genuinely meets objectives of general interest and is proportional.

“Certain of the proposed measures, especially regarding the packaging, do not meet these requirements.”

Later, in its opinion, the committee said that, bearing in mind the impact on intellectual property rights, it was more than surprising that the commission did not even consider less restrictive measures such as smaller health warnings.

“Other measures proposed by the commission regarding the size and appearance of unit packs and regarding the product description meet similar concerns regarding fundamental rights,” the committee said. “They deprive manufacturers of their intellectual property rights, reduce customer choice and do not contribute to a better functioning of the internal market.

“By prohibiting any labeling that suggests that a particular tobacco product is less harmful than others, the proposal causes an additional problem. The development and promotion of less harmful means of tobacco use is essential in order to support tobacco users to stop smoking cigarettes and the like. Manufacturers must be able to communicate that a certain product is less harmful than others if this is scientifically proven and if it is not misleading.

“This is not the only measure proposed that would make it more difficult to access reduced-risk products. Article 18 of the proposal prohibits nicotine-containing products (NCP) such as e-cigarettes containing a certain nicotine level if they are not authorized pursuant to Directive 2001/83/EC (the Medicinal Products Directive). It is, however, quite unclear if these products (which are much less harmful than tobacco products) even fall under the scope of the Medicinal Products Directive. For products which do not fall under the directive, this would effectively constitute a ban. Banning products which are less harmful than tobacco products and which can be a means of smoking cessation is certainly not in line with the public health aims of the proposal.

“Finally, the commission’s proposal contains a large number of provisions delegating powers to the commission. However, pursuant to Article 290 TFEU, a delegation of powers is only possible with regard to nonessential elements of the legislative proposal. Some of the proposed provisions providing for delegated acts do not fulfill this requirement. For example, Article 3(2) in conjunction with Article 2(19) would grant the commission to set the maximum yield of nicotine for cigarettes placed on the market to zero, effectively prohibiting cigarettes for good.”

China Tobacco International (CTI) has said that it intends to open an office in North Carolina, USA, according to a Southeast Farm Press story.

The office is expected to serve as the base for CTI’s North American leaf-buying operations, which is likely to include purchases from both leaf dealers and farmers.

“China Tobacco’s decision to open an office here is a major statement about how much it values North Carolina tobacco,” said Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler.

“My staff and I have been working to boost exports of tobacco for several years now, and we think CTI’s presence in our state will mean even more opportunities for our farmers.”

Meanwhile, Zhanhua Liang, president of U.S. China Tobacco International, said that while CTI had investigated setting up office in various U.S. states, it was decided that it was better to be in North Carolina and therefore close to the farmers. In addition, Troxler’s department and the local governments had helped CTI make the decision to move to North Carolina.

Patrons of a handful of bars and private clubs in Casper, Wyoming, USA, will once again be allowed to light up cigarettes inside these establishments following the loosening of Casper’s smoking ban, according to stories by the Casper Star-Tribune and Associated Press.

But their freedoms might be short-lived. Smoke-free advocates are starting to collect signatures for a referendum to overturn the change.

Casper’s city council voted 5-4 earlier this month to repeal part of an indoor smoking ban in effect since September. The vote lifted the ban for bars, but kept it in place for restaurants.

Bar owners had complained they were losing business to competitors in two nearby towns that allowed smoking. Repeal supporters also said it was an example of government getting too involved in civic life, citing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s efforts to ban super-sized soft drinks.

“Just like what Mayor Bloomberg has done, or tried to do, with sugared drinks,” said Pat Sweeney, owner of a hotel with a bar currently smoke-free because of the ban. “It’s just not going to stop unless somebody stands up and says, ‘Wait a minute,’ and ’Let’s use some common sense here,’” he said.

China Tobacco Hunan is this year donating CNY13 million to help students from financially impoverished families, according to a Tobacco China Online story.

This year, 500 new university students from financially impoverished families will receive aid under the 16th Furong Scholars program.

During the past 16 years—since the launch of the program—China Tobacco Hunan has donated CNY115.94 million to aid more than 20,000 university students in 28 Chinese provinces and provincial-level regions.

Animal rights campaigners in Britain have been banned from running a billboard campaign warning that eating meat increases the risk of cancer, according to a story by Mark Hennessy for The Irish Times.

A campaign picture showed a child smoking a cigar alongside the statement: “You wouldn’t let your child smoke. Like smoking, eating meat increases the risk of heart disease and cancer. Go vegan!”

Claiming that the “advertisement” was “misleading,” the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said claims that eating any kind of meat increased the risk had not been “proven beyond doubt.”

Reacting to the ban, a spokesman for the campaign group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said: “We are befuddled by the ASA’s ruling on our billboard highlighting the fact that eating meat increases the risk of heart disease and cancer. The link between meat consumption and the increased risk of heart disease and cancer has been repeatedly documented in studies and medical reports.”

Researchers from Oxford University had, he said, recently published an investigation into the diets of 45,000 people in England and Scotland, comparing heart disease rates between those who ate meat and those who didn’t.

The study, funded by Cancer Research UK and the U.K.’s Medical Research Council, “found that vegetarians had a 32 percent lower risk of becoming ill or dying from heart disease than [did] non-vegetarians,” even when adjustments were made to discount the effects of age, sex, weight and smoking habits.