Category: People

  • Private baths, public spaces

    Private baths, public spaces

    People living in apartment blocks in South Korea are to face stricter smoking restrictions, according to a story in The Korea Herald.

    The Ministry of Health and Welfare and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said yesterday the government would increase smoking restrictions at multi-dwelling units through a legal revision that would take effect on February 10.

    Currently, common areas in such blocks, such as elevators, stairs and hallways, are designated ‘manageable spaces’, which the managing authorities, with the consent of half the residents, can declare non-smoking areas.

    The Herald reported that, under the existing regulations, ‘balconies and bathrooms in individual units’ had been out of bounds to the managing authorities, as they were designated private spaces.

    ‘With the revision, a resident, sensing that someone is smoking, can report the claim to the management authorities,’ the Herald said. ‘The authorities will have the right to investigate the matter by searching private dwellings.’

  • Tax debate heats up

    Tax debate heats up

    Anti-tobacco advocates in the Philippines have flooded the twitter and social media accounts of members of the bicameral committee deliberating on tax reform to oppose a proposed tobacco-tax rise they deem insufficient – five pesos per pack, according to a report on News5-InterAksyon.

    The rise was reportedly proposed by Marikina Rep. Miro Quimbo.

    “This is gross treachery on the part of the legislators,” was the reaction of Dr. Maricar Limpin, executive director of Action on Smoking and Health, Philippines. “The Quimbo Morris proposal adopted House Bill 4144 that is still pending in the Senate.

    “The senators rejected our appeal to include in the tax reform bill the proposals of Sen. Manny Pacquiao and Sen. JV Ejercito that are way better than the House Bill because they said it did not go through the committee hearing. And now this.”

    Limpin appealed to the senator members of the bicameral committee to keep their promise to discuss the Pacquiao Ejercito proposal in the Senate in January.

    Meanwhile, Rio Dayao, vice president of liaison at the University of the Philippines Economics Towards Consciousness (ETC), said the pro-tobacco legislators would suffer the consequences of adopting the proposal of Rep. Quimbo.

    “We will expose them to voters as responsible for the initiation of 200,000 youth to smoking,” Dayao was quoted as saying.

    “These additional new smokers will result in additional 2,000 deaths per year to the current deaths of 150,000 from tobacco-related diseases. They will have blood on their hands.”

  • New CFO for Swedish Match

    New CFO for Swedish Match

    Swedish Match said yesterday that Tom Hayes was to become its new CFO.

    This follows the resignation, for family reasons, of Marlene Forsell, who is due to leave her position on March 9.

    CEO Lars Dahlgren said Forsell had joined Swedish Match in 2004 and had become CFO in 2013.

    “Throughout her successful career at Swedish Match she has made many important contributions to our company,” he said. “We are very sorry that Marlene has decided to resign.”

    But Dahlgren said the company was fortunate to have a strong replacement in Hayes who had been with Swedish Match since 2006.

    “He already has experience in the CFO role at Swedish Match as he was acting CFO for nine months during Marlene’s parental leave in 2013 and 2014,” he said.

    Hayes is currently vice president business control and CFO at Swedish Match’s US Division.

  • Taxes on taxes on taxes…

    Taxes on taxes on taxes…

    Tobacco farmers and laborers in the Philippines yesterday appealed to a bicameral panel looking into tax reform to consider their plight before further increasing tobacco excise tax, according to a story in The Philippine Star.

    Past and ongoing tobacco-tax increases have been blamed for a fall in tobacco production, which, according to the National Tobacco Administration (NTA), went from 68 million kg in 2013 to 52 million kg in 2015.

    The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP), the PhilTobacco Growers Association, and the Federation of Free Farmers expressed their opposition to a further rise in tobacco excise tax, citing the significant reduction in production and huge job losses following the yearly ‘exorbitant’ hikes in tobacco tax since 2013.

    Under the current law, tobacco taxes automatically increase by four percent annually.

    “What the proponents of a radical increase in sin tax fail to recognize is that every time a move to increase the tobacco sin tax is proposed, thousands of tobacco farmers and laborers are faced with the threat of losing their primary source of income and livelihood,” said TUCP president Ruben Torres, a former labor and executive secretary.

    Torres said that data from the NTA had shown that the number of workers in the tobacco industry had been reduced by 9,232 farmers in 2015 alone.

    Another related NTA report had shown there was also a decline in the area of the land planted to tobacco from 38,264 ha in 2014 to 32,761 ha in 2015.

    He said that the tobacco industry had already contributed greatly to the national coffers. Despite the tobacco farmers’ contribution to the national income, it was unfortunate that this sector was always targeted as the sole ‘big’ source of national revenues for the government.

  • Tobacco taxes healthy

    Tobacco taxes healthy

    Indonesia’s finance minister, Sri Mulyani, has suggested using revenue from the country’s tobacco excise tax to cover the health and social security agency’s (BPJS) annual funding shortfall of IDR9 trillion (US$664 million), according to a story by Coconuts Jakarta relayed by the TMA.

    The reason given was that tobacco-related illnesses contributed to the deficit.

    The story claimed that smoking prevalence in Indonesia might be as high as 70 percent among adult males.

    Indonesia is said to suffer more than 200,000 tobacco-related deaths a year.

    “Many people are sick due to smoking, so it’s logical that it should become one of the solutions, meaning using state revenue coming from tobacco products,” the finance minister said.

    Boediarso Teguh Widodo, a director general at the ministry, estimated that government revenue from tobacco was about IDR14 trillion (US$1.03 billion) and of that about IDR5 trillion (US$369 million) could be earmarked for BPJS.

  • End-game just over horizon

    End-game just over horizon

    Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), US, is again calling for an end to cigarette sales.

    “It is time for cigarettes to be regulated in a way that is proportionate to the harm they cause,” said ASH executive director Laurent Huber.

    “In the 21st century, society is facing numerous public health challenges to which researchers are still searching for solutions.

    “We must unite to end the tobacco epidemic which has a known and clear path to eradication: ending the commercial sale of cigarettes.”

    In a press note issued through PRNewswire, ASH said that in September 2017 123 public health organizations representing 43 countries had echoed this sentiment with a letter to the CEO of Philip Morris International demanding that PMI implement its former human rights partner’s recommendation by immediately ceasing the production and marketing of tobacco.

    ‘While many Americans may not face assault from second-hand smoke on a daily basis anymore, that is not an indicator of a decline in the tobacco epidemic,’ the press note said. ‘The toll of tobacco products has moved to marginalized populations in the US and abroad.

    ‘Today, one person dies every 4.5 seconds from a tobacco-related disease. In the US, over half a million fathers, mothers, and children are snatched from us before their time every year. This catastrophe is completely preventable.

    ‘Tobacco companies profit by intentionally addicting their customers, and have been given a “get out of jail free” card for all the death and disease tobacco products inevitably cause.

    ‘But ASH is determined to see the end of the tobacco epidemic. We will continue to press to hold tobacco executives criminally liable – several cases are already pending.

    ‘And we will work to take cigarettes, and other combustible tobacco products, off the market. A world where tobacco is no longer sold for profit is just over the horizon.’

  • Czech smokers on the rise

    Czech smokers on the rise

    The number of Czechs who smoke cigarettes daily is on the rise, according to a story in the Prague Daily Monitor citing the latest annual report of the National Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Addiction (NMS).

    About 27 percent of Czechs over the age of 15, or 2.4 million people, smoked every day last year. Five years ago, the proportion of daily smokers was 23 percent.

    At the same time, more Czechs are said to be drinking alcohol daily.

    Last year, about 600,000 people drank alcohol every day and 100,000 of them drank it ‘excessively, consuming five or more glasses’.

    NSM head Viktor Mravcik said that middle-aged people rather than young people had accounted for the increase in the number of smokers.

    In the case of drinking, however, all age groups had contributed to the increase.

    The deaths of nearly 30,000 people a year are attributed to smoking and drinking in the Czech Republic.

    The report indicated that about one in three men and one in five women smoke every day, and about 30 percent of them smoke at least a pack of cigarettes a day.

    And it said that one fifth of smokers lit a cigarette within five minutes of getting up in the morning.

    Mravcik said the numbers of smokers and drinkers had gone up because tobacco and alcohol were easily available in the Czech Republic.

    And in the case of smoking, less-risky alternatives were not easily available in the country.

    Cigarettes could be bought everywhere even though they represented the most-risky use of nicotine, while the sale of snus was banned in the EU.

    At the same time, the risks of electronic cigarettes and other new products were emphasised so much that people viewed them in a distorted way, Mravcik said.

    Awareness of the risks should be better so that nicotine addicts could move from classical cigarettes to less risky products, he added.

  • Grower registrations up

    Grower registrations up

    The number of farmers in Zimbabwe who have registered to grow flue-cured tobacco during the 2017/18 season has increased by more than 36 percent on the number who registered for the previous season, according to a story in The Herald.

    More than 100,000 farmers have registered to grow tobacco during the 2017/18 farming season, up from 73,492 in the previous season.

    And registrations are still in progress.

    This sharp increase has occurred even though farmer flue-cured prices fell by almost 20 percent between 2013 and 2016, from US$3.67 per kg to US$2.95 per kg.

    Figures from the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB) show that 25,852 farmers have registered to grow tobacco for the first time during the 2017/18 season, which compares with the 13,842 farmers who registered the previous season to grow tobacco for the first time.

  • While we’re at it …

    While we’re at it …

    The Wilson Housing Authority (WHA) in North Carolina, US, is using public health as a pretense to limit personal freedom, according to an editorial in the Wilson Daily Times.

    A federal mandate requires public housing communities to go tobacco-smoke-free by July 31 next year, but Wilson officials have taken the requirement several steps further by banning the use of electronic cigarettes and smokeless tobacco along with that of lit tobacco products such as cigarettes, cigars, hookahs and pipes.

    Beginning January 1, the WHA will ban the use of tobacco and vaping products in all its homes and offices. The agency will prevent also tobacco use within 25 feet of its buildings.

    Violators will receive two written warnings, be hit with a $50 fine the third time they’re caught and be thrown out the fourth time, according to a lease addendum residents were required to sign.

    The restrictions stem, in part, from a US Department of Housing and Urban Development policy. But HUD considered and rejected blanket bans on smokeless tobacco and e-cigarettes, adopting a policy narrowly tailored to prevent second-hand smoke exposure, reduce the risk of residential fires and reduce maintenance costs.

    ‘Local officials adopted more stringent rules on their own,’ the editorial said. ‘As far as we can tell, the rationale has more to do with paternalism than environmental health.’

    The editorial is at: http://www.wilsontimes.com/stories/housing-authority-should-snuff-out-ban-on-smokeless-tobacco,106226.

  • But I never inhaled officer

    But I never inhaled officer

    Scientists at the University of Calgary (UofC) have found that a person can be affected by marijuana smoke without smoking marijuana.

    According to a Canadian Television report, a non-smoker can be affected by marijuana smoke just by being in the same room as a pot smoker.

    Researchers at the UofC’s Cumming School of Medicine were said to have conducted a four-month study into second-hand marijuana smoke and discovered that, in just a ‘short time’, non-smokers begin to absorb THC [tetrahydrocannabinol, the primary active ingredient in marijuana] while in ‘close proximity’ to a marijuana smoker.

    Exposures to second-hand marijuana smoke lasting for as little at 15 minutes could lead to THC being found in a person’s blood and urine at levels that would see her fail regular blood tests, said Fiona Clement, who worked on the study, though this would depend on the THC concentration of the marijuana, the number of joints being smoked and passed around, and the ventilation of the area being used.

    Clement said that people needed to be aware of the impacts of second-hand marijuana smoke as the imposition of legalization drew nearer.

    The findings of the study have been published in the Canadian Medical Association’s journal.