Category: Covid-19

Emkon Files for Bankruptcy

Photo: Tobacco Reporter archive
German tobacco equipment manufacturer Emkon Systemtechnik Projektmanagement has filed for bankruptcy, according to a German press release issued by the liquidator company.
An internationally operating manufacturer of packaging machinery for the tobacco, food and nonfood cosmetics, hygiene and pharmaceutical industries, Emkon was already facing difficulties in 2019. The effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have led to a further slump in sales, which the company couldn’t compensate for anymore.
Currently, the liquidator is restructuring the company. Emkon will continue operations and its approximately 100 employees will be paid their salaries at least until the end of July.
The restructuring expert is cautiously optimistic that the insolvency proceedings will rehabilitate the company.
June 17, 2020
KT&G Donates Diagnostics Kits to Russia and Turkey

Photo: KT&G
KT&G has provided diagnostic kits worth KRW100 million ($84,136) to Russia and Turkey, where the new coronavirus infection has been spreading rapidly. In early May, the government provided 6,300 diagnostic kits to the Indonesian government.
“We decided to further support Russia and Turkey in order to help overcome the global disaster,” said Kyung-Dong Kim, KT&G’s head of social contribution. “We will fulfill our social responsibilities as a company.”
Headquartered in South Korea, KT&G has substantial operations in both countries.
KT&G has also supported coronavirus relief efforts in its home market. Among other initiatives, the company donated KRW500 million in emergency aid to the National Association for Disaster Relief and delivered KRW1,600 million worth of medical items.
June 10, 2020
South Africa Ordered to Overhaul Lockdown

Image by jessica45 from Pixabay
A South African court has found some coronavirus lockdown regulations imposed by the government “unconstitutional and invalid,” reports the BBC.
The high court in the capital, Pretoria, ruled that the measures were not connected to slowing the rate of infection or limiting its spread. The judge described rules around funerals, informal workers and amount of exercise as “irrational.”
Judge Norman Davis argued it was wrong to allow people to travel to attend funerals but not to earn their livelihoods by street trading, as many South Africans do.
South Africa initially had some of the world’s most restrictive lockdown measures, including a ban on tobacco sales.
Some restrictions were recently lifted but the ban on tobacco sales remains in place despite earlier indications that it, too, might be eased.
British American Tobacco and The Federation of International Trade Associations have mounted a legal challenge to the restrictions.
It was unclear if Judge Davis’ ruling also covered tobacco. The government was given 14 days to overhaul the regulations.
June 6, 2020
Caught off-guard by Covid, the U.K. raises RYO taxes
Struggling to contain a crisis that it ignored for a month, the U.K. government raises the tax on roll-your-own cigarettes.
By George Gay

Photo: zikamatej from Pixabay
In its March budget, and in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, the U.K. government increased the duty on roll-your-own (RYO) tobacco by inflation plus 6 percent. I am told that anti-smoker campaigners had been calling for an increase of inflation plus 15 percent.
I find it difficult to understand how the government and campaigners can act in such an unfair, discriminatory and callous way, especially at this time. Smokers are largely made up of the financially less wellvoff, and many RYO consumers are smokers who cannot afford cigarettes. At the same time, a lot of RYO smokers are elderly, perhaps lonely. Are they to be allowed no solace as they are forced by government diktat into isolation because of the threat that they may contract Covid-19? Having been told for most of their lives—wrongly as it turns out—that smoking will kill them, are they in fact to be killed by a type of virus nobody bothered to warn them about—and without the comfort of a final rollie? Is it not possible for those with power and influence to forget their alcohol (no duty increase, of course), cocaine (illegal, so ditto) and other apparently more acceptable habits for a while and imagine themselves in the shoes of the less well off?
The U.K. government proved to be woefully unprepared to protect its people from the perfectly predictable arrival of a deadly coronavirus that those people, individually, have almost no protection against. But it stands ready to fight any 70-plus-year-old who chooses to indulge in the legal habit of smoking an RYO cigarette.
In one of his statements, the U.K.’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, widely viewed as a libertarian, suggested that one of the reasons why the government was taking a “gently, gently” approach to curbing people’s ability to fraternize during the coronavirus crisis was that the U.K. was a bastion of liberty. Given that smoking tobacco, a legal product, is banned from public places in the U.K., the argument seemed to be that people should, in the name of liberty, be allowed to gather together to spread the deadly virus, which kills within weeks, whereas smokers should not be allowed to gather together because of the miniscule threat that secondhand smoke will kill a bystander within 40 years or so. Of course, as the “science changed,” (you couldn’t make this up) he was soon in full retreat from his defense of liberty and moving to his more usual stance of taking liberties.
The argument seemed to be that people should, in the name of liberty, be allowed to gather together to spread the deadly virus, which kills within weeks, whereas smokers should not be allowed to gather together because of the miniscule threat that secondhand smoke will kill a bystander within 40 years or so.
But one can expect no more. The government, run apparently by a bunch of self-styled weirdos and misfits and bent on undervaluing the country’s experienced, serious-minded and formerly internationally respected civil servants, found itself way out of its depth as it reaped the whirlwind of 10 years of austerity and the onward march of Covid-19 through a nation it had torn apart over Brexit. Covid-19, marching in lockstep with an economic meltdown and a financial panic, emerged on the back of the free market and proved unmoved by the prime minister’s only weapons: bluster and a pantomime-like imitation of Winston Churchill that surely would not earn him an Equity card.
The government couldn’t and, as I write, still cannot provide an efficient or anything like adequate testing regime for the virus. Indeed, a new cabinet, seemingly made up mainly of poodles and patsies who a few months earlier had bleated for the cameras how the government was going to build 40 new hospitals, couldn’t, even by the end of March, provide face masks for all frontline medical staff.
And this, of course, was the reason for the huge increase in RYO tax. It wasn’t about forcing RYO smokers to quit their habit (they are addicted, after all). It was about the government casting about among the financially poor to find the funds necessary to face up to the crisis that it appeared to have largely ignored for a month.
The government’s duty increases on tobacco products will, of course, have greatly pleased the World Health Organization (WHO), which advocates taxing poor smokers heavily (for their own good, of course), but the government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak went down less well with the WHO, which at times seemed nonplussed by the government’s approach, or lack of it. Still, what can the WHO expect? The U.K. is a fully paid-up member of the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, but there is, of course, no Framework Convention on Coronavirus Prevention and Control.
Prevention. Now there’s a thing. What are the chances that, with the world’s health defenses not reserved for tobacco all pointing at Covid-19, anyone is watching our backs for the arrival of the next deadly coronavirus? Not great, I would suggest. And it will arrive as sure as night follows day unless things change and prevention is pushed to the fore. We know what some of the main risk factors in respect of such viruses are, so even if we cannot prevent their outbreak, we can greatly reduce their likelihood. But we won’t; the free market, marching in lockstep with inept leaders around the world, will see to that.
George Gay is Tobacco Reporter’s European editor, but his territory spans the globe. Based in London, George has covered the tobacco industry since 1982, initially for a U.K.-based publication and since 2004 for Tobacco Reporter. George’s understanding of industry issues, combined with his keen sense of observation and dry wit, have earned him a loyal following among Tobacco Reporter’s readers.

June 4, 2020
South Africa Asks More Time to Defend Tobacco Ban

Blanks for Peter Stuyvesant cigarettes waiting to be transformed into cigarette packs at a South African tobacco packaging factory. Photo: Taco Tuinstra
South Africa’s government has requested more time to defend its cigarette ban in court.
State attorney Arista Wasserman has written the judge president of Gauteng to request that the initial hearing in the challenge against the ban brought by the Fair Trade Tobacco Association be postponed in light of the pressures facing the Ministry of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, including the coronavirus pandemic.
South Africa banned the sale of tobacco at the start of the nationwide lockdown in late March, citing health reasons. The ban was extended under level 4 and again under level 3 of the lockdown. The government has argued that smoking leads to more severe cases of Covid-19, and the ban is necessary to reduce strain on the country’s health system.
The Federation of International Trade Associations, whose members include Carnilinx and Gold Leaf Tobacco, petitioned the court in May to reauthorize the sale of tobacco products.
British American Tobacco South Africa (BATSA) last week lodged a separate legal challenge against the ban. According to BATSA, the ban has cost it between ZAR300 million ($17.64 million) and ZARR350 million in lost revenues per week. It estimates that about ZAR2.4 billion has been lost in tax revenue during the first eight weeks of lockdown.
June 4, 2020
Pandemic Boosts Interest in Cessation

Photo: Hans Benn from Pixabay
Thousands of Australians are using the coronavirus shutdown to give up smoking.
Between January and May this year, the My Quitbuddy app was downloaded more than 24,000 times—a 310 percent increase over the same time last year.
“These figures are very encouraging, and I congratulate those who have taken the first step,” said Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt, adding that there is growing evidence that smokers are more likely to develop a severe case of Covid-19 if they contract the virus.
The Australian government aims to reduce smoking to less than 10 percent by 2025 through its 10-year National Preventive Health Strategy and has committed $31.6 million over four years to reduce smoking prevalence.
Meanwhile, health authorities in Israel have observed increased interest in quitting smoking during the pandemic.
A new study by the Israel Cancer Association found that 51 percent of Israelis between the ages of 18 and 24 who smoke considered quitting during the coronavirus crisis. Additionally, almost half (49.2 percent) reported smoking less.
However, the study also found that nearly a third of Arab Israelis said someone in their family began smoking during the coronavirus. Only 8 percent of Jewish respondents reported that someone started smoking.

June 2, 2020
Trump Cuts U.S. Ties With WHO, Cites ‘China’s Control’

President Donald Trump said Friday that the U.S. will be terminating its relationship with the World Health Organization. He said that the UN agency failed to adequately respond to the coronavirus because China has “total control” over the global organization.
He said Chinese officials “ignored” their reporting obligations to the WHO and pressured the WHO to mislead the world when the virus was first discovered, according to an AP story.
He noted that the U.S. contributes about $450 million to the world body while China provides about $40 million.
The U.S. is the largest source of financial support to the WHO and its exit is expected to significantly weaken the organization. Trump said the U.S. would be “redirecting” the money to “other worldwide and deserving urgent global public health needs,” without providing specifics.
May 29, 2020
The Global Forum on Nicotine 2020 Moves Online

Photo: Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay
The Global Forum on Nicotine (GFN) will take place online June 11-12, 2020, following the cancellation of the face-to-face event in Warsaw due to Covid-19.
The conference is free of charge and open to everyone with an interest in nicotine science and policy.
During the conference, experts will discuss advances in nicotine science, the ethical arguments in favor of tobacco harm reduction and the human rights issues for all those who advocate for the right to health will be explored.
“As always, and perhaps even more so in this critical year, GFN is open to everyone with an interest in nicotine science and policy,” said Paddy Costall, co-director of the conference.
“It is open to everyone who wants to reduce the toll of tobacco-related death and disease worldwide. And it is open to everyone who recognizes that global tobacco control will fail without the strategic addition of tobacco harm reduction, in the form of widespread access to safer nicotine products. We look forward to welcoming you on the 11 and 12 June—and hope to see many of you in Warsaw, where we plan to meet again in June 2021.”
Participants can register now.
May 29, 2020
BAT to Resume Legal Action Against South Africa’s Tobacco Ban

Photo: Sang Hyun Cho from Pixabay
British American Tobacco South Africa (BATSA) will resume legal action against the country’s government’s decision to extend the ban on tobacco sales during Level 3 of the nationwide lockdown, reports Polity.
“BATSA has made every effort to constructively engage with the government since the ban came into force, including making detailed submissions, along with other interested parties, to various ministers, as well as directly to the presidency,” the company said in a statement.
“To date, no formal response has been received from the government, and BATSA has also not been included in any of the government’s consultation processes so far.”
The Fair Trade Independent Tobacco Association has already taken the government to court to challenge the ban in a separate case.
Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, argued that, while Covid-19 is a relatively new disease, early studies support the view that using tobacco products increases not only the risk of catching the disease but also the risk of contracting a more serious form of the disease.
“This, in turn, increases strain on the public health system, by increasing the number of people who will need access to resources such as intensive care unit beds and ventilators,” she said.
BAT said the ban threatens the survival of South Africa’s legal tobacco sector, which employs thousands.
May 29, 2020
InterTabac Postponed, Organizers Working on Alternative Format

Photo: Messe Dortmund
The InterTabac and InterSupply trade fairs planned for Sept. 18-20, 2020, in Dortmund, Germany, will not be held in their customary formats this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The traditional versions of both fairs will be postponed to Sept 16-18, 2021
The decision was taken by agreement between the organizer, Messe Dortmund and the partner associations representing the tobacco industry, tobacco product wholesalers and retailers.
The parties involved have agreed to work on an alternative format to take place in autumn 2020 leveraging the strengths of the trade fair for tobacco products and smoking accessories and of the trade fair focusing on the manufacturing process for tobacco products, e-cigarettes, pipes and shisha tobaccos.
“Even though there have been signs of relaxation in Germany in recent weeks regarding the Covid-19 pandemic, and local authorities have again made it possible to hold trade fairs with limited attendance while observing appropriate hygiene measures, we as organizers continue to pay particular attention to our responsibility to protect the health of everyone involved”, explained Sabine Loos, managing director of Westfalenhallen Unternehmensgruppe, the parent company of organizer Messe Dortmund.
“As a result, working closely with our partner associations, we have decided to jointly develop a new concept for this autumn, and to present it in detail shortly.”
May 28, 2020