Singapore is planning to impose plain – standardized – packaging on all tobacco products, according to a Channel NewsAsia story citing an announcement by the Ministry of Health (MOH).
The MOH said the proposed measures would apply to all tobacco products, including cigarettes, cigarillos, cigars, bidis, ang hoon (loose tobacco leaves) and other roll-your-own tobacco products.
The ministry intends to table the necessary amendments to current laws early next year.
If enacted, the new measures are expected to take effect from 2020.
A transition period, starting when manufacturers must begin producing standardized packs and ending when retailers must be selling only products in standardized packs, will be provided to allow a sell-through of old stock and to ease the implementation burden on the tobacco industry, the MOH said.
‘Tobacco use is a major cause of ill-health and death in Singapore,’ the MOH said in a press note.
‘More than 2,000 Singaporeans die prematurely from smoking-related diseases annually.
‘Daily smoking prevalence amongst Singaporeans has been fluctuating since 2004, with no clear pattern of sustained decline.’
Under the proposal, all logos, all colors but one, brand images and promotional information would be removed from the tobacco-product packs.
Packs would have to use a standard color in a matt finish.
Brand names and product names would be allowed, but only in a standard color and font.
‘Tobacco products must also display mandatory graphic health warning covering at least 75 percent of the packet’s surface, up from the current 50 percent,’ the NewsAsia story reported.
Much of this was foreshadowed earlier this year when the MOH said it would be conducting a public consultation on its Standardized Packaging Proposal from February 5 to March 16.
In its statement, the ministry said Singapore’s smoking rate had fallen from 23 percent to 19 percent between 1977 and 1984, and then to 12.6 percent in 2004.
But it said the rate of decline had slowed in recent years.
‘The smoking rates have been fluctuating between 12 percent and 14 percent in the last 10 years, with no clear pattern of continuous decline,” said the ministry.
‘A particular concern is the fact that there remains a sizable proportion of men (more than one in 5) who smoke daily.’
The ministry said that it was the government’s preliminary assessment that the implementation of the Standardized Packaging Proposal would, with other existing and future tobacco control measures, ‘constitute a significant step towards Singapore becoming a tobacco-free society’.
Category: Packaging
Future looks plain
ZYN factory going up
Swedish Match’s snus shipments in Scandinavia during the three months to the end of September, at 66.6 million cans, were increased by about eight percent on those of the three months to the end of September 2017, 61.7 million cans.
During the same periods, shipments of moist snuff in the US were down by about six percent to 31.7 million cans, while shipments of snus and nicotine pouches outside Scandinavia were increased by 97 percent to 6.9 million cans.
Swedish Match’s share of the Swedish snus market was down by 2.2 percentage points to 63.2 percent, while its share of Norway’s snus market was down by 1.1 percentage points to 51.0 percent.
The company’s US cigar shipments during the three months to the end of September, at 427 million pieces, were increased by about five percent on those of the three months to the end of September 2017, 405 million pieces.
During the same periods, the company’s chewing tobacco shipments, excluding contract-manufacturing volumes, fell by about seven percent to about 1,526,000 pounds.
Swedish Match reported that, in local currencies, sales increased by 10 percent for the third quarter, while reported sales increased by 16 percent to SEK3,388 million.
Also in local currencies, operating profit from product segments (excluding other operations and larger one-time items) increased by 13 percent, while reported operating profit from product segments increased by 19 percent to SEK1,317 million.
Operating profit amounted to SEK1,305 million, while profit after tax amounted to SEK959 million.
Earnings per share increased by 32 percent to SEK5.55.
In presenting Swedish Match’s three-month and nine-month results, CEO Lars Dahlgren (pictured) said that the company had delivered another quarter of very strong financial results. Sales and operating profit in local currencies had increased for the two largest product segments, snus and moist snuff, and Other tobacco products, while the Lights product segment had had a relatively stable year-on-year performance.
‘Snus and moist snuff product segment sales grew by 12 percent and operating profit increased by 17 percent in local currencies, with strength coming from both our Scandinavian snus business and our snus and nicotine pouches outside Scandinavia,’ he said.
‘Both the Swedish and Norwegian snus market grew at a robust pace compared to the prior year. In particular, we noted an acceleration of category volume growth in Sweden. Intense competitive activity and product innovations within the premium segment have been positive for the development of the snus category. We also believe that the exceptionally warm summer contributed to higher snus consumption this year.
‘The changeover to plain packaging in Norway has gone smoothly, but it is still early to assess if there will be any longer-term category implications.
We estimate that total Scandinavian snus market growth, measured on a volume basis, was close to seven percent during the quarter. On balance we are relatively pleased with the performance of our more recent product introductions in the Scandinavian snus market, but overall our portfolios have lagged category growth in both Sweden and Norway during the quarter. Despite the loss in market share, we estimate that the underlying (excluding V2 Tobacco and Gotlandssnus) volume growth for our Scandinavian snus business reached four percent, a strong growth rate relative to historical levels.
‘For international snus and nicotine pouches, we have now for two consecutive quarters reported positive operating results, stemming from strong volume growth for ZYN, improved pricing, and reduced marketing spending for US snus.
‘With the acquisitions of V2 Tobacco, and more recently Gotlandssnus, we have expanded our portfolio to include a range of unique snus products that not only provide growth opportunities in Scandinavia, but also present an ability to expand our international snus portfolio. In September, we introduced V2’s Thunder Xtreme, a range of strong snus products in the US.
‘Construction efforts directed towards our new ZYN production facility in Owensboro, Kentucky, continue according to plan.
‘Other tobacco products (cigars and chewing tobacco) had another good quarter, with sales and profit growth in cigars more than offsetting declines in sales and profits for our US chewing tobacco business in local currencies.
Cigar shipment growth continued to be driven by our rolled leaf assortment despite the price increase taken earlier in the year.
‘Given the rapid growth within the rolled leaf segment, we are facing increasing challenges in securing certain tobacco supplies but we have implemented measures that we expect will improve the situation during the first half of 2019.
‘The acquisitions of V2 Tobacco and Oliver Twist (with their chew bags and tobacco bits) delivered positive contributions to both sales and operating profit…’Smoking incidence down
The Government of South Korea has credited the country’s anti-smoking campaign for having brought about a fall last year in the incidence of tobacco smoking among men aged 19 or older, according to a Yonhap News Agency story.
The incidence of smoking among men had decreased ‘substantially’ in 2017, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said yesterday, without providing figures.
The ministry is set to provide figures in its annual report in November.
South Korea’s population-wide smoking rate fell from 47.8 percent in 2008 to 40.6 percent in 2015. The smoking rate increased to 40.7 percent in 2016.
In January 2015, South Korea increased the price of cigarettes by 80 percent, from 2,500 won (US2.25) per pack to 4,500 won per pack, in an effort to curb smoking. And annual sales of cigarette packs duly dropped from 4.36 billion packs in 2014 to 3.32 billion packs in 2015; and though they rebounded to 3.66 billion packs in 2016, they dropped again to 3.44 billion packs last year.
In 2016, the government forced tobacco companies to include graphic warnings on the upper part of both sides of cigarette packs.
The Government has since said it plans to add 12 new graphic warnings, which, from December 23 will have to be included also on heated-tobacco products.Winning slowly but steadily
The solution to failure is not to redouble your efforts, but to change course, according to a story by Sinclair Davidson published in The Nation.
Davidson, who is a professor of economics at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, said that, during the past 10 years, Thailand had attempted to curb smoking by enlarging the size of picture health warnings on cigarette packs repeatedly. Now, the gruesome photos covered up to 85 percent of packs, yet the number of Thai smokers was increasing.
‘This incongruence ought to give Thai authorities pause to consider new ways to cut smoking,’ he said.
‘The most successful policies globally have usually been slow but steady – public education about health effects tends to discourage older smokers while cost and taxation tend to discourage youth from taking up the habit.’
Davidson said a better solution for Thailand would be to emulate Japan’s emphasis on education, teaching children from an early age about the dangers of smoking.
‘It is not a quick fix, of course,’ he said. ‘But if Thailand wants to lower the prevalence of smoking it should not follow the fashionable, but failed, plain packaging policies of Australia, France and the UK.’
But the UK was seen to provide one positive example. ‘The single largest contributor to reduced smoking rates in the UK – until the failed plain packaging policy was adopted – was the mainstreaming of electronic nicotine delivery devices,’ he said. ‘Alternate mechanisms to deliver nicotine to smokers sees many smokers substitute away from combustible tobacco products to safer products and in some cases to quitting altogether.’Warning: changes ahead
Graphic warnings on UK cigarette packs are expected to be replaced by Australian versions in the event of the country’s making a no-deal exit from the EU, according to a story at bbc.com.
Tobacco manufacturers have had to print images highlighting the dangers of smoking on all their products sold in the UK since 2009.
However, the government said in August that the images would have to change because the European Commission owned the copyright to those currently in use.
Now it says the Australian government has agreed to supply alternatives.
The change is one of many small ways in which a no-deal ‘Brexit’ could affect British life, and which are being flagged up by government departments via ‘technical notices’.Questions over e-liquids
A Spanish member of the EU Parliament has asked the Commission if it intends to change the requirements for e-liquids labeling, and to run campaigns to educate people about the ‘toxicity of liquids and flavoring substances’.
In a preamble to three questions the Commission is due to answer in writing, José Blanco López said the use of refillable e-cigarettes and the potential exposure to liquids from e-cigarettes that contained high concentrations of nicotine posed risks to public health.
Twenty percent of people aged between 14 and 18 had tried this ‘new system’.
‘The majority of them do not know that it contains nicotine and many others take another type of drug due to the different way that they use e-cigarettes, according to the latest data from the Spanish National Committee for Preventing Tobacco Addiction,’ he said.
‘In accordance with European regulations in this area, namely Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008, Directive 2014/40/EU and Report COM (2016) 269 final, can the Commission say:
1) ‘Is it considering the possibility of carrying out a greater number of investigations on certain aspects of e-cigarettes which apply to refillable models, such as emissions checks and studies on the safety level of the flavouring substances and their blends?
2) ‘Does it intend to raise standards for labeling?
3) ‘Does it intend to launch informative and educational awareness-raising campaigns on the toxicity of liquids and flavouring substances?’Industry selling 'harm'
An updated edition of the Asean Tobacco Control Atlas captures in detail the continuing battle waged by the tobacco industry against public health, according to an opinion piece by the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA) published in The Nation, Thailand.
“The good news is that countries are fighting back to protect health and save lives,” Dr. Ulysses Dorotheo, executive director of SEATCA, was quoted as saying. “The bad news is that progress isn’t fast enough.”
Among Asean countries, male adult smoking prevalence is highest in Indonesia, at 66.0 percent, and lowest in Singapore, at 21.1 percent.
All 10 Asean countries have imposed graphic health warnings on cigarette packs, and four of these countries require huge warnings: Thailand (85 percent front and back of the pack), Brunei, Laos and Myanmar (75 percent).
Singapore and Thailand are said to be in the advanced preparatory stages of requiring standardized tobacco packaging.
Tobacco tax policies have been ‘strengthened’ in Brunei, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, and these have helped to reduce the affordability of tobacco products, according to the SEATCA piece.
However, cigarette prices remained affordable and relatively low (under $1 a pack) in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.
The tobacco industry continued to escape stringent regulation by interfering at all levels of tobacco control policy development and implementation, because only four Asean countries – Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand – had taken steps to protect their public health policies from such interference.
The tobacco industry was said to be constantly inventing new ways to sell harm through novel marketing schemes.
And tobacco companies were said to be producing electronic cigarettes and promoting them as less harmful than conventional cigarettes and as smoking cessation devices. Only four Asean countries – Brunei, Cambodia, Singapore and Thailand – had banned the sale of ‘all types of heated tobacco products, e-cigarettes, shisha and water pipes’.Warning size matters
The Canadian Cancer Society has published a report on the nine countries that have imposed standardized tobacco packaging and the 16 that are working on its introduction, according to a story by Manjari Peiris for the Asian Tribune.
The report is said to show that almost 120 countries and territories require graphic warnings on cigarette packs, and that there is a ‘tremendous international momentum for tobacco plain packaging’.
The number of countries imposing standardized tobacco packaging is expected to accelerate because of the World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling on June 28 that said Australia’s standardized tobacco packaging requirements were consistent with WTO’s international trade agreements.
The Canadian Cancer Society report, Cigarette Package Health Warnings: International Status Report, is said to document global ‘progress’ on standardized tobacco packaging.
It ranks 206 countries and territories on the size of their cigarette-pack health warnings, and lists countries and territories that require graphic warnings.
The report found that 118 countries and territories now require graphic health warnings on cigarette packs, up from 100 in 2016. Canada was the first country to require picture health warnings, in 2001.
“There is an unstoppable worldwide trend for countries to use graphic pictures on cigarette packages to show the deadly health effects of smoking, and to require plain packaging,” says Rob Cunningham, senior policy analyst at the Society. “For plain packaging, Australia was the first country to implement the measure, in 2012, and now the dominoes are falling.”Graphic warnings for Ghana
By the start of next month, Ghana’s tobacco-products suppliers are due to stop distributing products whose packaging does not include graphic health warnings, according to the Ghana News Agency.
The Tobacco Control Measures of the Public Health Act of 2012 (Act 851) and Tobacco Control Regulations of 2016 (LI 2247) mandated the inclusion of graphic health warnings on all tobacco-products packs within 18 months of the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) publishing the health-warnings source documents.
The FDA made the source documents available to the tobacco industry in April 2017.
The Vision for Alternative Development (VALD), a non-governmental, anti-tobacco organization, commended the FDA on the implementation of the graphic health warnings.
It said the introduction of pictorial warnings on tobacco products was essential for reaching smokers with low education and literacy, and would help to reduce disparities in health knowledge.
In a statement, VALD said health warnings on tobacco packages constituted an important method to informing and educating the public about the harms of tobacco use and exposure to tobacco smoke.THR as a package
Uruguay’s government will not back down on standardized tobacco packaging, according to a Xinhua Newswire story by Mu Xuequan quoting President Tabare Vazquez.
Vazquez’s remarks came on Thursday after a judicial decision suspended a presidential decree mandating such packaging.
“No tobacco company should think that this government is going to backtrack,” Vazquez told reporters after British American Tobacco filed a successful motion to block the decree, arguing that it was ‘impossible’ to bring in the packaging in the six-month period granted by the decree.
“Public health interests are above commercial interests,” said the president, adding: “the government is going to continue to categorically defend the health of the population”.
While the government “respects” the resolution, it has filed a motion of its own to continue its anti-smoking policies, said Vazquez, who is a trained oncologist.
A bill mandating standardized packaging has stalled in Congress.
The story said that since Uruguay had stepped up its anti-smoking drive during Vazquez’s first term as president (2005-2010), the country’s smoking incidence had fallen from 35 percent to 21 percent.
Last year, the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes dismissed a lawsuit brought against Uruguay by Philip Morris, which alleged that the country’s anti-smoking policies were harming revenue.
