Category: News This Week

  • WHO snags Kosovo in its tobacco-control net

    The World Health organization announced it had snared Kosovo in its ever-growing tobacco-control net. The country has adopted a comprehensive tobacco control law in line with the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC). The measures include:

    • 100 percent smoke-free indoor public places, workplaces, and public transportation, as well as specified outdoor areas, with some minor exceptions;
    • comprehensive bans on tobacco advertizing, promotion, and sponsorship, including a ban on retail tobacco product displays;
    • graphic health warnings on both sides of the pack;
    • ban on misleading packaging, including descriptors such as ‘light’ and ‘low’;
    • prohibition on sales to and by minors;
    • ban on sales in health, education, and athletic facilities;
    • granting power to the Ministry of Health authority to ban ingredients;
    • constituents and emissions limits with reporting requirements for manufacturers; and
    • cessation and education measures, include 45 minutes each month of mandatory programming on public radio and television.

    Additionally, among the range of measures is the strongest protection against tobacco industry interference, based on Article 5.3 of the WHO FCTC.

  • Dalligate update: Kimberley denies asking for €60 million

    Defence lawyers of Sliema restaurateur Silvio Zammit yesterday pressed the police’s witness Gayle Kimberley on whether she was the one who came up with the €60 million figure at the heart of the Dalligate scandal.

    Kimberley denied it categorically, but lawyer Edward Gatt insisted on the point, reminding the young lawyer that she was testifying under oath, according to a story in The Malta Times.

    He then went back to a note that Kimberley had prepared for Zammit with a series of questions for the former European Commissioner John Dalli and asked why she had written down that Swedish Match made a turnover of €500 million, half of which was profit.

    She said that the figure was suggested by Swedish Match, adding that the intention was to relay the message to Dalli that the company was actually a modest trader in the tobacco industry.

    However, at this point, Dr Gatt and his colleague Kris Busietta pressed further saying that she had mentioned that figure because she was later going to ask for €50 million to lift the ban through her contacts with Dalli. She later suggested changing it to €60 million “so it would not be a round figure”, according to the lawyer.

    Kimberley also rejected this but the lawyer again reminded her that she was testifying under oath, adding that she had plans to use the money to set up a lobbying office in Brussels and buy property in Sliema with her former lover Iosif Galea. Kimberley also denied this.

    Shortly after this, Gatt stopped the cross-examination, saying he would continue at a later date because he needed time to review a lot of material, which the defence was analyzing, suggesting that they had material which was not available to the police or OLAF. Earlier, in fact, Gatt pointed out that Kimberley sent most of her emails through her phone. Nonetheless, when asked she said that neither OLAF nor the police had seized her phone, despite seizing her work and home computers.

  • Tobacco the crop of choice in Zimbabwe

    Zimbabwe had sold 107 million kg of flue-cured tobacco for a total of $400 million by the end of the 55th day of sales, according to a story in the Zimbabwe Herald.

    By the same stage of last season’s sales, 84 million kg of flue-cured had been sold for  $315 million.

    The Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board was said to be confident that this season’s 170 million kg target would be surpassed.

    And the Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers’ Union vice president, Johnson Mapira, was quoted as saying that tobacco production was expected to continue to increase because of favourable farm prices. Tobacco was the only crop where farmers were guaranteed good prices and instant cash.

    Mapira said the good payment method used in respect of tobacco sales meant that tobacco farmers did not have problems paying their workers. And he said that farmers were now using some of the proceeds from tobacco to support other projects.

  • Tobacco industry has little to fear from EU TPD proposals

    The European Commission believes that its proposed revisions to the Tobacco Products Directive would, if adopted, have limited adverse impact on the tobacco industry – and some positive impacts.

    “The adoption of the proposal for a revised Tobacco Products Directive was preceded by a thorough impact assessment, including an assessment of the economic impacts on the tobacco industry, their upstream suppliers (e.g. growers, ingredients suppliers, paper industry) and downstream distributors (wholesale, retail),” the commission stated in a written answer to questions posed by the Czech MEP, Ivo Strejček.

    “It is estimated that the proposal will result in a reduction in the consumption of tobacco products of no more than 2 percent within a five year period following the transposition of the Directive. The adverse impact on the industry would therefore remain limited. Jobs lost in the production of cigarettes would be offset by the creation of jobs in other sectors, reflecting ex-smokers’ expenditure on such sectors.

    “In addition, the proposal is expected to lead to some benefits for the industry through reduced production costs as a result of harmonization (one … production line instead of different production lines to comply with different national rules) and through the expected reduction in illicit trade (as a result of the proposed measures on tracking and tracing of products). Even the most specialized tobacco retailers do not generate more than 50 percent of their revenues from tobacco products, thus the impact is not expected to be disproportionate.”

    The commission said that to avoid imposing an unnecessary burden on small- to medium-sized enterprises, pipe tobacco, cigars and cigarillos were exempted from the stricter labelling and ingredients rules that the revisions proposed for other tobacco products. The proposal, it added, was neutral in respect of the different types of tobacco, Virginia, Burley and oriental. This meant that smaller farms involved in Burley and oriental tobacco production would not be affected.

  • Dutch smoking ban does another U-turn

    The Netherland’s ban on tobacco smoking in bars and cafés will be reinstated across almost the entire hospitality industry in July next year, according to a DutchNews story quoting junior health minister, Martin van Rijn.

    Changes to the tobacco law would be presented to parliament before October so that all legal obstacles could be dealt with and the total ban properly anchored in law, the minister said.

    Once the ban was reintroduced, smoking would not be allowed in small cafés and bars run only by their owners, as was presently the case. But it would be permitted in separate sealed-off smoking areas without service.

    “We are doing what we can with controls, warnings and fines but our financial resources are limited,” the minister said. “Ultimately… not smoking in any bar of café should become the norm.”

    The minister conceded that the Dutch smoking ban been introduced to protect workers rather than the public and therefore small bars and cafés run by their owners had been exempted on the grounds that they had no staff. However, he said that the ban, brought in nearly five years ago, was widely flouted in bigger bars, cafés and nightclubs.

    No justification was given in the story as to why small cafés and bars run only by their owners were being punished because larger establishments were breaking the law and law enforcement agencies were failing to crack down on these businesses. And there was no explanation as to why it was thought that law enforcement agencies would be more successful at cracking down on all cafés and bars rather than just some of them.

  • E-cigarettes under threat in EU

    The European Commission has said that the majority of e-cigarettes sold in the EU would most likely fall under pharmaceutical legislation if the commission’s proposed revisions to its Tobacco Products Directive were to be accepted. The commission has proposed that e-cigarettes would fall under the legal framework for medicinal products if they contained levels of nicotine above certain thresholds.

    It is generally thought that, for cost or technical reasons, most e-cigarette companies would struggle to have their above-the-threshold products authorized under pharmaceutical laws, and that below-the-threshold products would be unacceptable to many consumers.

    “The nicotine threshold has been identified by considering the nicotine content of nicotine replacement therapies that have already received a marketing authorization by Member States,” the commission said in a written answer to two questions raised by the Polish MEP, Filip Kaczmarek.

    “For electronic cigarettes below the thresholds, the commission proposal foresees that they carry health warnings. They would also have to comply with the General Product Safety Directive as … is the case at the moment.”

  • PMI to webcast symposium presentation

    Philip Morris International is due to host a live audio webcast at www.pmi.com/webcasts of its remarks and question-and-answer session by CFO Jacek Olczak at the Goldman Sachs Consumer Products Symposium on May 14, starting about 9:05 a.m. Eastern Time.

    The webcast, which will be in listen-only mode, will provide live audio of the entire PMI session.

    An archived copy of the webcast will be available at www.pmi.com/webcasts until 5 p.m. on June 12.

    Remarks and slides will be available at www.pmi.com/presentations.

  • PMI celebrates performance at annual meeting

    Philip Morris International held its annual meeting of shareholders today. Louis C. Camilleri, chairman of the board and CEO, addressed shareholders and answered questions. Chief Operating Officer André Calantzopoulos gave the business presentation, focusing on PMI’s performance since its spin-off in March 2008, which has seen total shareholder return reach 135 percent through April 30, 2013.

    “I firmly believe that we still have great opportunities to continue to grow our existing tobacco business through the further expansion of our terrific brand portfolio, additional investments in consumer-relevant innovation and communication, the continued roll-out of our commercial approach, judicious pricing, and a continued focus on efficiency and productivity savings,” noted Calantzopoulos.

    He went on to describe the company’s mid- to longer-term additional growth opportunities of further geographic expansion, reducing the prevalence of illicit trade and the commercialization of “next-generation” products.

    Calantzopoulos also paid tribute to Camilleri, whom, as announced on March 13, 2013, he succeeded as CEO effective immediately following the meeting. He cited Camilleri’s “passion for the company, his vision and critical and insightful analysis, his regard for the wellbeing and development of our employees, and his devotion to the integrity and transparency of communications to investors and to enhancing shareholder value.”

    Camilleri will continue to serve as chairman of the board.

    An audio webcast of PMI’s shareholder meeting will be available until June 6 at www.pmi.com/webcasts.

     

  • Obama $0.94 smoke tax a ghost

    It’s never going to happen, apparently it wasn’t ever going to.

    The cigarette sin tax to generate $78 billion to fund a preschool education program vanished almost as soon as Obama announced it four weeks ago, according to the Washington, D.C.-centered  blog Politica.com

    The president hasn’t mentioned it. The White House didn’t coordinate with outside anti-smoking groups, and none of them spent any time pushing for it. Tobacco companies never worried about putting together a lobbying strategy to  kill it. Obama’s political arm hasn’t sent an email calling on Congress to  consider it. Not even Obama’s surgeon general, who calls curbing smoking “the  single most important issue for all the surgeons general of the past five decades,” put out a press release applauding the idea. The whole idea disapeared like a ghost in the night.

    That’s the attitude within the West Wing, too — rather than a marquee idea, aides say the $0.94-per-pack cigarette tax was in fact not a priority, and  there are no plans to build a public case for it. The tax was just the most politically palatable idea they could come up with to pay for their big new entitlement program — and in the context of a budget debate they never expected to get serious, that was enough.

    “If other people have other ideas, we’re happy to look at them,” a White House official said. “If there were another way to pay for this, we’d be open to  it.”

    White House officials described the cigarette tax as incidental to a larger  goal of funding the universal preschool program. And they wouldn’t discuss the proposal Obama called “the right thing to do” on the record at all.

  • Asia Marketing Services to represent Agio

    Royal Agio Cigars has appointed Asia Marketing Services as its agent for the Asia Pacific region. Asia Marketing Services will be responsible for coordinating the sales and marketing efforts of the Agio Cigars brands in the Asia Pacific domestic and travel retail markets.

    “This strategic partnership with Asia Marketing Services will enable us to continue growing the business together with our dedicated domestic and travel retail partners and pursue the opportunities that lie ahead of us in the region,” said Marcel Michels, chief sales officer of Agio Cigars

    “We are proud to represent Agio Cigars well known brands of cigars to the domestic and duty free/travel retail markets,” said Hans Rijfkogel, director of Asia Marketing Services. “This is a terrific opportunity for us and we are honored that Agio Cigars have chosen Asia Marketing Services as their agent.”

    Agio Cigars is a leading cigar manufacturers in Europe, offering brands such as Agio Tip, Mehari’s, Panter and Balmoral.