Category: News This Week

Tasmania could be the first state in Australia to ban the sale of tobacco products to people under 21, reports The Advocate.

A bill introduced last year by representative Ivan Dean will be debated when Parliament resumes on August 6.

Under the legislation, the legal age for Tasmanians to buy tobacco products would be increased from 18 to 21 incrementally over three years. It would be an offence for a retailer to sell tobacco products to people aged under 21 and for a person to provide false proof of age.

“This is about saving lives, preventing people getting sick and dying prematurely,” Dean said. “We would be the first state in Australia to do this and I’m told everybody is sitting back watching us.”

African-American health experts and activists are denouncing Juul’s $7.5 million grant to Meharry Medical College because they don’t want black youths becoming addicted to nicotine through vaping, reports The New York Times.

Research into the health effects of tobacco products, including newer nicotine delivery systems such as Juul’s popular vaping devices, was to be the first order of study for the new center at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, USA.

“Juul doesn’t have African-Americans’ best interests in mind,” said LaTroya Hester, a spokeswoman for the National African American Tobacco Prevention Network. “The truth is that Juul is a tobacco product, not much unlike its demon predecessors.”

Meharry officials stressed that the college approached Juul, not the other way around. The college’s president, James E.K. Hildreth Sr., has said he was confident that the new center’s work would be free of Juul’s influence.

Sri Lankan Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne said he will not allow the import of foreign cigarettes into the country, reports Daily FT.

Senaratne said that allowing imports for the benefit of one expatriate community would serve as a precursor to enabling imports from other countries, which would undermine and destabilize the efforts taken to control cigarette smoking in the country.

Senaratne’s statement comes after Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera announced two weeks ago that the government was considering allowing cigarette imports, in order to meet demands of expatriate workers in the country.

The World Health Organization praised efforts taken by the Sri Lankan government, and identified the country as a leading nation in the effort to ban tobacco use.

Profits for major U.S. tobacco companies could be cut in half if the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) adopts a “maximum nicotine” rule, according to analysts at Morgan Stanley.

The FDA is set to publish in October its proposed rule regulating the amount of nicotine allowed in cigarettes and other tobacco products “so that they are minimally addictive.”

The regulation, if adopted by 2035, would cost the tobacco industry roughly $165 billion in lost profits, Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a research report. Morgan Stanley has also rated the stock of Imperial Brands and Altria as underweight, and downgraded British American Tobacco to underweight.

The proposed rule change would shave an estimated 20 percent off of Altria’s market value, 13 percent off British American Tobacco and 5 percent off Imperial Brands.

The government of Namibia has approved a proposal by Namibia Oriental Tobacco (NOT) to produce tobacco on one of Namibia’s most fertile pieces of land in the Zambezi region, despite opposition from some quarters, according to a report in The Namibian.

NOT plans to grow tobacco worth $945 million on a 10,000 hectare farm.

The Affirmative Repositioning movement (AR) has publicly objected to any proposal to grow tobacco in Namibia at the expense of food crops.

In a letter to President Hage Geingob, AR leader Job Amupanda said that the cabinet’s decision to allow the Chinese company to grow tobacco was unlawful and in violation of existing laws. Amupanda said the decision could be reversed by a court of law.

Oman started levying a 100 percent selective tax on tobacco products on June 15, reports The New Times.

The move follows an agreement among the Gulf Cooperation Council countries to impose such taxes to cope with the decline of oil prices and its negative effects on public revenues.

The Omani government hopes that the implementation of this tax will help maintain the treasury revenues.

The impact of these taxes on suppliers and distributors are already being felt with the distributors having to raise prices to the consumer.

“I bought a pack of cigarettes for about OMR2.8 ($7.27), but today it has doubled in price,” Wahab al-Zadjali, a private sector employee, was quoted as saying.

The Colorado Department of Revenue has generated more than $1 billion in revenue from $6.56 billion in recreational marijuana sales, reports Big Think.

The revenue, coming from taxes, licenses and fees, helps fund public education programs and health services throughout the state.

“[The marijuana] industry is helping grow our economy by creating jobs and generating valuable revenue that is going towards preventing youth consumption, protecting public health and safety and investing in public school construction,” Governor Jared Polis said in a statement.

Last month, Polis signed two bills that legalized cannabis delivery services and social-use areas, which will be “kind of like cigar lounges, which also help get the smell out of neighborhoods,” Polis said.

Colorado currently has nearly 3,000 licensed marijuana businesses, which have sold a total of US$ 6.56 billion in marijuana products since January 2014.

Indonesia’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has banned all online cigarette advertisements in a bid to suppress the number of youth smokers, reports The Jakarta Post.

The decision was made following a request from Health Minister Nila Moeloek to take down all tobacco-related ads on social media platforms, and also on online games and websites. The ministry will use a special web crawler, which costs nearly IDR200 billion ($14 million), to detect and block accounts that violate regulations.

Moeloek said that teenage smokers take up the habit because of high exposure to online cigarette ads, citing a study by the London School of Public Relations showing that three in four Indonesian teenagers know about cigarettes from advertising on the internet.

Nielsen Indonesia says tobacco firms spent IDR1.6 trillion on television ads last year compared with IDR5.4 trillion in 2017, leading to the belief that part of the spending has shifted online.

“Because of this, I ask the communications and information technology minister to immediately [take down online cigarette ads] to save our children from tobacco addiction,” Moeloek said. “An addict will continue smoking throughout their life and have a high risk of contracting catastrophic illnesses.”

22nd Century Group has appointed Michael J. Zercher as its chief operating officer.

He will oversee and direct 22nd Century’s efforts across marketing, sales, business development, research and development, regulatory affairs and operations.

Zercher joined 22nd Century in October 2016 as vice president of business development. Among other contributions, he has led the company’s efforts to develop a comprehensive hemp/cannabis strategy that the company believes will create rapid future growth.

In addition, Zercher has supported the company’s efforts to continue creating meaningful partnerships using 22nd Century’s proprietary very low nicotine cigarettes to help reduce the harm caused by smoking.

From 2003 until 2009, Zercher served as vice president and managing director of Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co. international business. Under his leadership, the Natural American Spirit brand’s annual revenue outside the U.S. grew from $8 million to more than $100 million while achieving double-digit profit growth each year, despite declining global industry sales.