Category: News This Week

Anti-smoking activists inTaiwanyesterday blasted government bodies for sending lawmakers cigarettes as Mid-Autumn Festival gifts, according to a story in The China Post.

The Tung Foundation said it was ‘absurd’ that the Transportation Ministry’s liaison officials to the legislature were using tax-payers’ money to buy lawmakers harmful gifts for the upcoming festival.

Transportation Minister, Mao Chi-kuo, said he had known nothing about the gifts until he read about them in the news.

He agreed that the cigarettes were improper gifts and said he had already instructed everybody in his department to avoid offering such gifts in the future.

The foundation said the gift blunder clearly showed that the government had not taken anti-smoking policy seriously.

The property manager of the tallest all-residential tower inVancouver,Canada, Ken Armstrong says he receives as many as 20 complaints a month from residents upset about second-hand smoke; of those, about five or six usually relate to marijuana smoke.

But this problem should dissipate soon. According to a story by Mike Hager for the Vancouver Sun, about 70 strata members of the 42-storey, 237-unit Melville building voted to fine residents caught smoking, while about nine opposed the bylaw.

Strata president, Renu Bakshi, said that, once the bylaw was approved by the city, any resident caught smoking in the building would be given a warning. And on each subsequent time they were caught they could be fined $200, which would go towards the strata’s funds.

“Most of the population does not smoke,” said Bakshi. “Every citizen has a right to clean air, especially in their home. The two biggest complaints in condo living are cigarette smoke and noise, both of which penetrate numerous units. We have a right to fresh air and we have a right to live in peace in our homes.”

Teenagers who start smoking are fooling themselves if they think they can easily quit, according to a Deutsche Presse-Agentur story relayed by Tobacco China Online.

A study, the story said, had concluded that smoking just two cigarettes a day was enough to hook 13-to-17-year-olds on nicotine.

The study, which was apparently carried out by the University of California, was said to have found that the brains of adolescents who smoked as little as two cigarettes a day responded with as much pleasure to images of smoking as did the brains of ‘heavily addicted’ adult smokers.

The story gave advice from addiction counsellor, Matthias Brockstedt, on how parents should try to dissuade young people from smoking.

Tobacco-product names are being modified in Australia ahead of the December 1 imposition of plain packaging, according to a story by medical editor, Cathy O’Leary, for The West Australian.

From the beginning of December, all Australian tobacco products must be sold in packs designed at the behest of the government to look ugly. All brand names will appear in the same size and font.

Among the reported name changes, Winfield’s Optimum Night cigarettes are being called Crush Blue, while Dunhill’s Fine Cut is becoming Fine Cut Burgundy

An anti-smoking campaigner has accused tobacco companies of “sexing up” their product names to make them more appealing. Australian Council on Smoking and Health president, Professor Mike Daube, said tobacco manufacturers were introducing dozens of extended brand “descriptors” to meet the December 1 deadline.

Daube said too that there seemed to be a move to menthol branding on products, which he believed was because menthol made the taste of cigarettes smoother and more palatable, particularly to younger smokers.

Manufacturers say the new names will help retailers find the right product faster for their customers.

A tobacco company is warning that alcohol and other products could soon be subjected to the same advertising and packaging restrictions currently in force or pending in respect of tobacco products inAustralia, according to a Scoop story.

Imperial Tobacco New Zealand says reports fromAustraliaindicate that it is already seeing the flow-on effects of passing its tobacco-products plain packaging legislation.

The company’s market manager, Paul Warham, says theNew South Walesparliament is now debating a bill that would ban alcohol advertising.

This, along with a push by Australian health advocates for plain labelling on wine bottles and a ban on snack food advertising, should be troubling Kiwi trade mark owners.

“The writing is on the wall for many non-tobacco products if regulation continues to escalate,” Warham said. “We may well see alcohol and other products – such as snack foods – treated like tobacco on both sides of the Tasman.

// // “The situation with alcohol regulation now is reminiscent of what started happening to the tobacco industry inNew Zealand andAustralia 30 years ago – only now with alcohol, things are actually moving faster than they did with tobacco products.

“First there are concerns flagged about the impact the product has on society, which we’re already seeing inNew Zealand. Then come calls for restrictions of some kind to be imposed, and we’re seeing that here too. And then comes legislation that enforces increasingly punitive controls, including advertising restrictions and increased taxes and, eventually, proposals for plain packaging.”

Warham said tobacco-products retail display bans and the proposed imposition of plain packaging inNew Zealandwere the thin end of a wedge that would increasingly affect other consumer products. Now that the regulation floodgates were open, many products currently enjoyed by many people would be at risk.

“If the recent history of the tobacco industry is anything to go by, it’s just a matter of time before consumers see more and more restrictions in place on products they use every day,” he added. “It would very naïve of people to believe that the current push for over-regulation and restrictions on smokers’ freedoms will only impact tobacco products in the future.”

Korean tobacco growers joined with protestors from other countries on Tuesday in Manila, the Philippines, to voice their opposition to measures that are expected to be announced at a tobacco control conference at Seoul, Korea, in November, according to a story in The Korea Herald.

Titled ‘Save Our Farms’ and led by the International Tobacco Growers Association (ITGA), the protest was said to reflect the views of millions of Asian tobacco growers who fear having their livelihoods destroyed upon the implementation of a series of ‘radical guidelines’, the Korea Tobacco Growers’ Organization (KTGO) said yesterday.

According to the KTGO, the guidelines were drafted in advance of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC)’s Conference of the Parties hosted in Seoul in November, where they will be presented.

The ITGA says that these regulations mandate shortened cultivating seasons; the abolishment of all governmental and private subsidies for tobacco farmers; and reductions in both the area planted to tobacco and tobacco production.

“The restriction will cause serious damage to farmers from Korea and other countries that adopt the FCTC,” KTGO chairman Lee Hae-kwon said. “Instead, countries like the US, Argentina, Indonesia and Malawi will take advantage of these
sanctions.”

Doctors in certain regions of China have been found to smoke tobacco at rates similar to or even exceeding those seen within the general population, according to a 7th Space Interactive story quoting the results of a study.

The study sought in part to investigate through an anonymous questionnaire the smoking habits of doctors at a teaching hospital inShandongprovince.

The overall smoking prevalence of doctors in the study was found to be 36.3 per cent: 46.7 per cent among male doctors and 5.3 per cent among female doctors.

The study concluded that smoking rates among doctors in Shandong province were higher than those among doctors in many other countries, a finding that was consistent with previous research conducted in some other Chinese provinces.

Eight US anti-smoking organizations that have called for electronic cigarettes to be removed from the market between them received $2.8 million from Pfizer alone during 2011 and the first half of this year, according to Professor Michael Siegel, of Boston University’s School of Public Health, quoting the drug maker’s financial contribution reports.

And these organizations, which insisted that smokers use drug therapy to quit smoking, had repeatedly failed to disclose their financial interests in Big Pharma, which stood to lose enormously if electronic cigarettes became increasingly popular.

When the anti-smoking groups submitted an amicus brief urging the DC District Court to allow the Food and Drug Administration to ban electronic cigarettes, they did not disclose their financial ties to pharmaceutical companies, Siegel said.

And the groups had not disclosed their financial conflicts of interest in public statements or on websites opposing electronic cigarette use.

The anti-smoking groups are: the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the American Medical Association, the American Legacy Foundation, and Action on Smoking and Health.

Siegel’s comments, which are at tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com, were relayed by the TMA.

The recently-chartered Smoke-Free Alternatives Trade Association (SFATA) is due to make its first public appearance when it attends a trade show in Las Vegas on October 8, according to a PRWeb story.

SFATA aims to use the Association of Convenience and Fuel Retailing Conference (NACS) to promote electronic cigarette self-regulation and attract new members.

SFATA says it is the only association in the smoke free alternatives industry that represents all stakeholders, including manufacturers, distributors, retailers and end users.

It says that it aims to address a wide variety of consumer matters including tobacco regulation and its possible extension to vaporizing devices.

Bulgarian tobacco producers and traders are predicting that this season’s leaf prices will be 10 to 20 per cent higher than those of last season because a smaller, good-quality crop has been produced this year.

According to a Sofia Globe story, tobacco yields in Bulgaria this year will be lower than those of last year because of a drought that affected tobacco-growing areas.

A tobacco trading company representative, Krassimira Nedeva, told Bulgarian National Radio that there were no concerns about a tobacco shortage this year despite the lower yields.