Category: News This Week

Thousands of tobacconists marched on the EU headquarters in Brussels yesterday to protest against a planned crackdown on tobacco products that includes the imposition of graphic pack health warnings, according to a France 24 story.

The protesters were mainly from France and Italy, but also from Austria, Germany and Poland: 2,200 according to the police; 3,500 according to organisers.

They were protesting against measures they say harm small retailers and encourage cigarette smuggling.

“Brussels is hitting at official distribution networks while nothing is done against smuggling”, said the deputy head of the European Confederation of Tobacco Retailers (CEDT), Pascal Montredon, who heads the French branch.

He said the EU should ban cigarette sales on the internet and stop the continual increase in prices in some countries.

Six thousand of France’s 33,000 tobacconists had closed since 2004, he added.

Last month, the European Commission published details of it recommendations for the revision of the EU’s Tobacco Products Directive.

The recommendations included those on increasing the size of health warnings, banning characterizing tobacco flavors, banning slim cigarettes and banning packs containing fewer than 20 cigarettes.

They seek to leave in place the ban on snus outside of Sweden and to discourage the use of electronic cigarettes. The consumption of each of these products is seen by many people to be hugely less harmful than is the consumption of traditional cigarettes.

The market for licit cigarettes in Ukraine could shrink to 74-75 billion this year from 80 billion in 2012, according to a Kyiv Post story quoting the director for corporate issues at Imperial Tobacco Ukraine (ITU), Yuriy Kyshko.

Briefing reporters, Kyshko said that last year had seen growth in the domestic-market consumption of both smuggled and counterfeit cigarettes.

The further increase that was expected this year in the share accounted for by illicit products was linked to the introduction of new excise duties and changes in the structure of taxes from January 13, added ITU’s CFO, Volodymyr Antypenko.

Antypenko said that ITU and Philip Morris Ukraine had increased the prices of their cigarettes but that other companies had not, perhaps because they had large amounts of cigarettes in the supply chain or because they were hoping the law increasing excise duties would be not signed by the Ukrainian president.

Central revenue department officials in India have allegedly discovered unaccounted-for cash amounting to about Rs30 million during searches of cigarette manufacturers’ premises in the Punjab and those of their trading partners across the country, according to a Moneycontrol.com story quoting official sources.

The officials were said to have seized cigarettes worth Rs4.8 million during the searches.

Suspicions were raised when packs of 10 cigarettes, which should attract excise duty of Rs12.36, were found to be on sale for between Rs3.00 and Rs5.00.

British American Tobacco has joined the board of directors of the American Society for Cellular and Computational Toxicology.

A BAT press note issued yesterday said that Marianna Gaça, of BAT’s Group R&D had been voted onto the board of directors of the society, which was established jointly by the Institute of In Vitro Sciences (IIVS) and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), and launched at the IIVS Toxicology Forum, Maryland USA in October 2010.

“I know that I can speak for my fellow board members when I say that we are all looking forward to working together to increase the membership and impact of the society’s activities,” said ASCCT secretary, Kristie Sullivan of the PCRM.

The society has just over 100 individual members and 12 institutional sponsors, including scientists from the cosmetics, pharmaceutical, chemical and tobacco industries, ‘CROs’, ‘SMEs’, NGOs, federal agencies, journalists, regulators and animal welfare groups.

“We are thrilled to be involved with the ASCCT at board level and look forward to supporting the ASCCT vision in the coming years,” said Gaça. “We hope this opportunity will further encourage scientific collaboration and increase awareness of emerging areas of science.”

BAT’s Group R&D Centre has established an in-house research program including the development of in vitro cellular and computational methodologies to facilitate the understanding of the biological effects of tobacco smoke and, in the future, help support the assessment of conventional and modified risk tobacco products.

Sales of cigarettes in South Korea fell last year in the wake of price increases, an economic slowdown and widespread anti-smoking measures, according to a Yonhap News Agency story.

Ministop Korea, the local operator of the Japan-based convenience chain store, is said to have seen its 2012 cigarette sales fall by 7.6 per cent from those of 2011. Cigarette sales at Korea Seven’s 7-Eleven convenience stores dropped by 4.3 per cent, while those at GS Corp’s GS25 chains fell by 2.2 per cent.

Convenience stores account for nearly half of cigarettes sales in South Korea.

The sales decline was led by those of foreign brands. Sales of foreign-brand cigarettes at 7-Eleven stores, for instance, plunged by 11.3 per cent while sales of local cigarettes rose by 2.6 per cent.

And while foreign-brand sales accounted for 51.4 per cent of 7-Eleven’s total cigarette sales during 2012, that figure that was down by 4.2 percentage points from that of the previous year.

British American Tobacco Korea posted a 17 per cent drop in its 2012 domestic sales and Philip Morris Korea saw its sales slide 11.2 per cent last year.

Market insiders were said to have attributed the sales drop to price increases on foreign brands. BAT Korea raised the price of its best-selling Dunhill brand by nearly eight per cent in 2011 and PM Korea raised its prices last year.

They also cited the economic situation and anti-tobacco activities.

Each cigarette sold in Malaysia could be printed with a health warning under proposals being considered by the country’s Health Ministry.

In addition, cigarette pack health warnings could be increased in size, according to a story in The Star.

Under the proposed amendments to the Control of Tobacco Product Regulations 2004, the ministry is proposing to have every cigarette imprinted with the words ‘Smoking is hazardous to health’; a message that currently appears on packs.

The proposals call also for an increase in the size of pictorial health warnings from at least 40 per cent to at least 50 per cent of each pack.

Meanwhile, according to Health Minister, Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai, maximum cigarette tar and nicotine delivery levels are to be reduced in June from 20 mg to 15 mg and from 1.5 mg to 1.3 mg respectively.

He said the tobacco industry would be given another two to three years to cut the tar delivery level from 15 mg to 10 mg and the nicotine delivery level from 1.3 mg to 1.0 mg.

The International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease is donating US$400,000 over two years to the city administration of Palembang, Indonesia, in an attempt to control the consumption of cigarettes there, according to a story in The Jakarta Post.

The authorities in Palembang, the capital of South Sumatra province, have issued a city ordinance prohibiting tobacco smoking in indoor public places, workplaces, places of worship, places where children are active, education and health establishments, and on public transport.
With the financial aid, the city administration is required to put up no-smoking stickers across the zones in which smoking is not allowed and to discourage the provision of ashtrays and special smoking rooms.

Implementation of the ordinance might take some time, however.

Palembang Health Agency head, Gema Asiani, said the agency was still struggling to disseminate information about the ordinance, which, anyway, was backed only by the threat of reprimands.

Bommidala Enterprises, part of the BBM Bommidala Group, has been recognized for its exports from India of both cigarettes and cut rag.

Each year, the Tobacco Board of India, as part of its Formation Day celebrations, awards certificates of excellence and medals to tobacco growers; cigarette manufacturers; exporters of unmanufactured tobacco, cut tobacco and tobacco products; and tobacco dealers and traders.

The awards for 2012, announced this month, recognized Bommidala Enterprises as India’s second-ranked exporter of cut tobacco and its third-ranked exporter of cigarettes.

This was the sixth consecutive year for which the group, which has interests in unmanufactured tobacco, cigarettes, cut rag and duty-free goods, had received certificates of excellence in the cut rag and cigarette categories.

An Ontario company is asking smokers to stop throwing out their stubbed-out cigarette butts and instead send them in for recycling so they can be turned into useful products, according to a Canadian Television report.

The butts sent to Terracycle are said to be treated with gamma rays to remove the toxins before the various components of the butts are turned into usable products.

The tobacco is composted, the ash is used in fertilizer and the filters are turned into plastic pellets for use in the production of industrial plastic products.

A company spokesperson, Jay Reyes, said the products made from the recycled butts were toxin-free.

Transparency, public health and tobacco control NGOs have written to EU Commission President, José Barroso, to complain about Commission officials having undisclosed meetings with tobacco lobbyists in violation of UN rules, according to a story in the Corporate Europe Observatory (CEU).

The undisclosed meetings were said to be particularly controversial in the context of the resignation, ‘under unclear and contested circumstances’, of John Dalli from his position as European Commissioner responsible for health and consumer affairs.

There was said to be growing discontent with the Commission’s handling of the case, including its refusal to answer key questions about what had happened in respect of Dalli.
The letter, a joint initiative of the Alliance for Lobby Transparency and Ethics Regulation, Corporate Accountability International, European Public Health Alliance and the Smoke-Free Partnership.

The NGOs call upon Barroso to ensure that the European Commission, as a whole, properly implements Article 5.3 of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).

This should include, they said, listing the meetings it has with tobacco industry lobbyists, and publishing the minutes of those meetings online.