Category: News This Week

  • Vaping is working in Southwest Florida

    A few businesses in Southwest Florida, U.S., are allowing vaping in the workplace, according to a story in the Naples Daily News.

    For instance, Safety Harbour Insurance, which serves Lee and Collier counties, is said to allow its employees to ‘e-puff’ away at work.

    “We absolutely love it,” said manager Candace Nichols, who has been using e-cigarettes for nearly a year after smoking tobacco cigarettes for 13 years. “It cuts back on the extra break time, so we are able to be more productive within the business.”

    Nichols, among others, said e-cigarettes helped them quit regular tobacco smoking.

    And for that reason, other companies, including Lee Memorial Health System, are considering changing their policies to allow vaping.

    At present, Lee Memorial’s policy against using tobacco products in any of its buildings includes e-cigarettes, but that ban could change.

    “The policy was written several years ago when e-cigarettes were much less common,” Lee Memorial spokeswoman Mary Briggs, wrote in an email.

    “We recognize that many people are using them to help them stop smoking, so we are going to review the policy this summer to see if it needs any changes.”

  • Smoking causes more than “just death”

    Australia was due yesterday to start a new anti-tobacco propaganda campaign aimed at preventing the suffering caused by smoking.

    According to an Australian Associated Press story, the campaign, called “Stop before the suffering starts”, will use television and radio, and the print, online and social media.

    The campaign is said to highlight the toll taken by smoking-related illnesses and the impact on smokers and their families.

    “Many medical conditions caused by smoking can result in not just death, but in living for years of suffering with disabling health problems,” said Health Minister Tanya Plibersek.

    The story claimed the “goal was to reduce smoking rates from around 25 percent of the population to 10 percent by 2018.”

  • International anti-tobacco conference to be staged in tobacco country

    India, the third largest producer of tobacco, is due to host an international anti-tobacco conference in Delhi later this year.

    The International Conference on Public Health Priorities in the 21st Century: The Endgame for Tobacco will take place on September 10–13.

    “The conference is a call for collective resolution to fight tobacco through global cohesion and integration of tobacco control into broader health and development agendas for the achievement of our common health and development goals,” said professor K. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India, speaking on behalf of the organizing committee.

    “With India making concerted efforts towards ending the tobacco epidemic, by banning [some forms of] smokeless tobacco and introducing strict tobacco control laws, we recognize this as an opportune time for hosting a confluence of multi-sector stakeholders to evaluate current global strategies to fight tobacco and develop a way forward collaboratively.

    “The premise for choosing the theme “The Endgame for Tobacco” was that while tobacco control has been identified as key determinant in the global public health agenda, there is a need to mobilize tobacco control measures in addressing the larger development agenda. It is imperative that tobacco control efforts be stepped up, at pace with progressive, ground-breaking and radical international measures moving towards a tobacco-free society …”

  • Hungary moves from open market to monopoly to zeropoly

    Smokers in some Hungarian villages will not have local access to cigarettes after a new law allowing only state-licensed tobacconists to sell cigarettes comes into effect in May, according to an MTI-EcoNews story quoting the opposition Socialist lawmaker, Csaba Toth.

    As was reported here on April 3, the country’s parliament adopted legislation in September last year for the establishment of a state monopoly of the retail sale of tobacco products on July 1, 2013.

    The National Tobacco Trade Non-profit, which is overseeing the establishment of the monopoly, said that 15,633 applications for the retail sale of tobacco had been submitted by the February 22 deadline stipulated in the initial tender.

    No applications were submitted in the case of 1,417 villages, however; so new tenders have been invited.

    But since the winners of the new round of tenders would be announced only on April 23, said Toth, there would not be enough time for the shops to open on May 1, the deadline after which only licensed tobacconists may sell cigarettes.

    This would encourage black market trading and result in a drop in excise tax revenues, he added.

  • Fewer smokers, more snuffers in Norway

    Norway’s smoking tobacco tax revenue last year, at NOK7.3 billion, was down by NOK170 million on that of 2011 and down by NOK750 million on that of 2009, according to an Esmerk Norwegian News story.

    The decline was attributed to the fall that has occurred in the number of daily smokers, which, according to the Norwegian Directorate of Health, now accounts for 16 percent of the population, down from 21 percent in 2009.

    But as the number of smokers has been falling, the number of smokeless tobacco users has been rising: from 6 percent in 2009 to 9 percent last year.

  • Davidoff to establish subsidiary in Austria

    The Switzerland-based cigar producer, Oettinger Davidoff Group, will be represented in Austria by its own subsidiary beginning in May, Davidoff of Geneva Austria GmbH, according to an APA Economic News Service story.

    Austria is the 10th biggest market for the group, which is said to have a presence in 150 countries and to employ 3,700 people around the world.

  • Tabacalera makes a comeback

    The Imperial Tobacco group has restored the Tabacalera name for its new premium cigar division in Spain, according to a Cinco Dias story.

    The move was said to be in line with Imperial’s strategy of reorganising some of its legal entities in Spain.

    The reorganisation process was said to have been started last year.

  • Manila FDA will not register e-cigarettes

    The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it will not register e-cigarettes, as health products as these devices are against the intent of the country’s tobacco regulation law, according to a story on MB.com.ph, a Minilan news website.

    In an advisory, FDA acting Director General Kenneth Hartigan-Go said e-cigarettes are “contrary to the intent and provisions of Republic Act No. 9211, otherwise known as the Tobacco Regulation Act of 2003.”

    He said the law aims to protect the youth from nicotine addiction and chronic respiratory ailments including cancer that are caused by inhalation of highly toxic substances found in tobacco and cigarettes. “Wittingly or unwittingly, the electronic cigarette promotes smoking among children and the youth. It makes them less fearful of hazards and risks of smoking. It is opposed to the DOH health goal to stop cigarette smoking and tobacco use,” he said, adding that the FDA has not registered any e-cigarette products and will not register these as health products under the FDA Act of 2009.

  • Fiji running out of places for smokers to smoke

    Smoking in Fiji restaurants will be illegal as of July 1st, and a $1,000 fine will be carried if any one business breaches the new law, which was implemented under the Tobacco Control Regulation of 2012. Graphical warnings on cigarette packets will also be printed as of July, according to a story by the Fiji Broadcasting Company.

    British American Tobacco corporate manager Rajeshwar Singh says the law has serious implications on their business.

    “It has implications on our business because there is no exemption we have to comply, and in order to comply we need to change the packaging label of the product, and as a result of that, there is cost associated to that.”

    Also under the Tobacco Control Regulations 2012 – any workplace where the public has access also becomes a no-smoking area. This includes stairways, passageways, entrances and the foyer.

    Bus stations, Internet shops and even water transports – meaning boats also are smoke-free zones starting in July.

  • FBI sting smokes out fake Marlboro men

    For more than a year, the system worked flawlessly. Containers of counterfeit cigarettes shipped from China to the ports of Newark, N.J., and New York City moved easily through customs and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security without inspection.

    From the docks, the cigarettes, falsely labeled as Marlboros and Marlboro Lights, made their way to a nondescript warehouse in South Jersey, where they were readied for the final leg of their trip, the sunny skies of California. The transport crew, responsible for smoothing the way through Homeland Security and making sure the cigarettes – nearly 2.3 million packs – got to California safely was none other than the FBI, accordibng to as story in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

    The elaborate logistics operation was part of a sting to stem the flow of contraband cigarettes into the United States, according to court documents filed this week in U.S. District Court in Camden.

    FBI undercover agents were paid “handling fees” of as much as $55,000 per shipment to deliver the cigarettes to four men in California. Three of the men were indicted in the case. The fourth was named in an earlier complaint but not in the indictment.

    The fake Marlboros typically sell for half-price on the street. A bargain, perhaps, for smokers, but not for the State of California, said V. Grady O’Malley, the assistant U.S. attorney handling the case, because it lost 87 cents a pack in taxes, or about $2 million, according to legal documents.

    “Were the defendants New Jersey residents and we arrested [them] here, the New Jersey tax loss would have been over $4 million,” O’Malley said. Cigarette taxes in New Jersey are about $2 a pack, he said.