Category: People

  • Marking five-year failure

    Marking five-year failure

    The UK smokers’ group, Forest, is calling for an independent review of the impact of standardized tobacco packaging.

    The call comes after what Forest says have been five years of failure following the imposition of standardized tobacco packaging in Australia.

    Commenting on today’s fifth anniversary of the introduction of standardised packs in Australia, Forest’s director, Simon Clark, said standardized packaging had been a “spectacular” failure in Australia.

    “We were told it would deter people from smoking but the effect has been minimal,” he said.

    “Data shows plain packaging has had no impact on the prevalence of smoking in Australia, which is the same now as it was in 2013.

    “In fact, because of population growth, more people are smoking in Australia than five years ago.”

    Clark said that smokers didn’t care about packaging. “It’s the product not the pack that matters,” he said.

    “Plain packaging is no deterrent to teenagers either. Few people ever started smoking because they were attracted to the pack.”

    The UK government followed Australia’s lead and introduced standardized packaging in 2016.

    And now Clark is urging the UK government to commission an independent review of the impact of standardized packaging as part of its new tobacco control plan that was announced in July.

    “Policies,” he said, “should be evidence-based. Plain packaging is based not on evidence but on wishful thinking.

    “The measure has failed in Australia and it will fail in the UK.”

  • Double or quit

    Double or quit

    The Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health has recommended that a tax hike should be used to push the price of cigarettes from about HK$57 a pack to HK$100 a pack, according to a story by Riley Chan for the Hong Kong Standard.

    The Council, described as a policy advisory body, called for the hike after it saw the results of a survey it commissioned from the School of Public Health of the University of Hong Kong (HKU): The Tobacco Control Policy-related Survey 2017.

    The survey researchers interviewed by telephone 2,002 people aged 15 and older from April to October this year.

    They were said to have found that more than 80 percent, 5.7 percent of them smokers, supported an increase in tobacco tax next year.

    More than 70 percent suggested that the tax should be increased annually.

    Of the 298 smokers, 47.3 percent agreed that an increase in the retail price would encourage them to quit smoking.

    The average increase in price suggested would take the price of a pack of cigarettes to HK$100.

    Currently, leading brand cigarettes are sold for HK$57 a pack, where tax accounts for 67 percent, or HK$38, of the price.

    To drive the price of cigarettes higher, the Council called on the government to double the tax, which is lower than the 75 percent recommended by the World Health Organization.

    Lam Tai-hing, chair professor of community medicine at HKU, said the current price was much lower than that in other developed regions.

    In Singapore, a pack of cigarettes was priced at the equivalent of HK$75, while in Britain and Australia, prices were HK$94 and HK$154 respectively.

    “Looking at the retail price in other countries and the tobacco tax increase in recent years, we don’t think doubling the tax is too much to ask for,” Lam said.

  • Plain packaging not working

    Plain packaging not working

    Fifty-nine percent of Australians believe that standardized tobacco packaging has been ineffective, according to a CanvasU poll commissioned by Japan Tobacco International.

    JTI said the recent poll had been conducted to provide understanding about Australians’ views on the country’s standardized-tobacco-packaging policy, five years after its implementation.

    The research found that while 59 percent of Australians believe that standardized packaging has been ineffective, 80 percent of them believe the government wouldn’t change or would be reluctant to change a preferred policy even if the evidence were weighted against it.

    According to a note posted on JTI’s website, even the Australian government’s data justified such public scepticism. The most recent figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare showed that ‘…while smoking rates have been on a long-term downward trend, for the first time in over two decades, the daily smoking rate did not significantly decline over the most recent three-year period (2013 to 2016)’.

    “Unsurprisingly, early data from France and the United Kingdom is pointing in the same direction”, Michiel Reerink, JTI’s global regulatory strategy vice president, was quoted as saying.

    JTI said that, according to a new report published by Europe Economics, the implementation of the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD2) and the introduction of standardized packaging requirements in the UK and France, had not had any impact on smoking rates or tobacco sales.

    Recent data published by the French public authorities confirmed that, after nine months, the level of tobacco-product distribution to retailers had remained stable.

    ‘Around the world, anti-tobacco activists and some health authorities are calling for similar experimental policies to be rolled-out on other product categories such as alcohol, sugary drinks and fast food, JTI said. ‘In December 2016, Public Health England published a report calling for plain packaging on alcohol, a topic which has been raised again this month by medical journal The Lancet. In Canada, the Ontario Medical Association has mocked up images of plain packaging on food and drink products.’

    JTI added that it was therefore no surprise that CanvasU’s research had found that at least half of Australians thought it was likely that standardized packaging would be introduced on alcohol and food & drink with a high sugar content in the future; or that it was already in place.

    In fact, a majority of Australians expected this policy to be just the start of an escalation in lifestyle regulation in the future.

    “An increasing number of regulators are looking at extreme tobacco-style regulations on other product categories without considering proper evidence or research into the consequences,” said Reerink. “Brand owners should be worried about this domino-effect as policy-makers won’t stop with tobacco.”

  • Aging nicotine research

    Aging nicotine research

    Researchers are trying to treat early stage memory loss with nicotine patches to prevent those diagnosed from moving on to full-blown Alzheimer’s disease, according to a story on tennessean.com.

    Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) is collaborating with the University of Southern California on a two-year trial to see if mild cognitive impairment (MCI) can be treated, possibly preventing those people from moving into more progressive forms of memory loss.

    There are said to be more than eight million people in the US with an MCI diagnosis.

    “We believe that many if not most of the patients, if untreated, will go on to full-blown Alzheimer’s disease or something similar,” said Dr. Paul Newhouse, director of the Center for Cognitive Medicine at VUMC and national director of the study.

    Newhouse said his team would like to use the treatment to see if they can both reduce memory loss and prolong the period in which sufferers functioned well.

    The researchers are in the early stages of enrolling 300 people to take part in the trial.

    The study, funded by the National Institute on Aging, is following up on decades of such research.

    An earlier study showed the treatment worked for up to six months, while the new research is scheduled to follow people for two years to see if improvements are sustained.

  • Pollution like diluted smoke

    Pollution like diluted smoke

    “Air pollution is like diluted smoking,” according to Andrea A. Baccarelli, a professor of environmental medicine at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health; as reported by Nicholas Bakalar for the New York Times.

    “Smoking causes cancer, cardiovascular disease and bone mineral density loss. So does air pollution. Even at pollution levels the Environmental Protection Agency considers acceptable, there is still an increased risk.”

    Baccarelli is the senior author of a study published in Lancet Planetary Health that found that air pollution increases the risk for osteoporosis and bone fractures.

    ‘Investigators analyzed data from two studies,’ Bakalar reported. ‘The first tracked hospital admissions among 9.2 million Medicare recipients in the Northeast over eight years. The second looked at levels of parathyroid hormone, which aids bone health, in 692 middle-aged, low-income men in Boston.

    ‘The study … found that the risk for bone fractures among people over 65 increased steadily as levels of air pollution – specifically, particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers, or PM 2.5 – went up. Rates were almost five percent higher in areas with the highest concentrations of PM 2.5 than in those with the lowest.

    ‘The study in middle-aged men found that people living in locations with higher levels of air pollution had lower concentrations of parathyroid hormone and lower levels of bone mineral density.’

    The studies controlled for race and ethnicity, income, smoking, physical activity and other variables.

    Bakalar’s piece is at: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/well/live/air-pollution-may-weaken-the-bones.html?emc=edit_tnt_20171129&nlid=60534081&tntemail0=y.

  • Russia goes for DIY tobacco

    Russia goes for DIY tobacco

    Russia’s economy started growing this year after two years of recession, but many people aren’t feeling any richer yet and this is something that is reflected in the cigarettes they are smoking, according to a qz.com story.

    Apparently, some smokers have turned to smoking cigarettes made with home-grown tobacco; so that while official figures indicate that smoking in Russia fell by about 20 percent between 2013 and 2016, the reality is probably somewhat different.

    Russians’ real disposable income fell for the fourth month in a row in October – a 1.3 percent drop from that of the same month of last year.

    In September, real wages were 13 percent lower than they were in 2014, when, according to Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, the recession started.

    Meanwhile, tobacco tax hikes have caused cigarette prices to nearly double since 2013 – a challenge to one of Europe’s heaviest-smoking populations.

    Hence the interest in growing tobacco at home.

    “Several governors have told me that last year people started planting tobacco in their dachas and gardens,” Sergei Ryabukhin, the head of the Russian Senate’s budget and finance committee said last week.

    “When you go to a region, you realize with horror that people have turned to growing tobacco or shag. According to official statistics [tobacco production] has fallen 21 percent and people are smoking less. But in reality it’s not like that.”

  • Impacting the illegal trade

    Impacting the illegal trade

    Philip Morris International said yesterday that it had received 157 expressions of interest in its second funding round for PMI IMPACT, its global initiative to support third party projects dedicated to fighting illegal trade and related crimes.

    In a note posted on its website, it said the applications had come from a range of government agencies, public universities, private companies, and not-for-profit organizations across 56 countries of Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the EU, and the US.

    “The Expert Council is encouraged by the substantial number of responses to our invitation for expressions of interest in combatting illegal trade in all its forms,” said Navi Pillay, member of the PMI IMPACT Expert Council.

    “It is gratifying to receive such sustained support for the initiative taken by PMI IMPACT to get all relevant stakeholders to work together.

    “We will be reviewing the applications and will make a selection of the successful candidates shortly.”

    The second funding round of PMI IMPACT focuses on projects aimed at tackling converging forms of illegal trade such as the smuggling and counterfeiting of goods, human trafficking, and the trade in drugs, arms, and wildlife.

    The second round is due to examine also the links between the illegal trade and related crimes, including corruption and money laundering, and organized criminal networks.

    “We would like to thank all applicants for their proposals,” said Alvise Giustiniani, PMI’s vice president illicit trade strategies and prevention.

    “Our hope is that PMI IMPACT will be a global enabler for innovative projects against illegal trade, and we are encouraged to see this initiative materialize and evolve year after year.”

    ‘Following the review of the expressions of interest, selected applicants will be invited to submit their full project proposals in early 2018 for further evaluation and final selection by the PMI IMPACT Expert Council, a body of external independent experts in the fields of law, anti-corruption, human rights, and law enforcement,’ PMI’s note said.

    ‘PMI has pledged US$100 million for three funding rounds of PMI IMPACT. 32 projects were selected for funding in the initiative’s first round, with allocated grants of approximately US$28 million.’

  • Suck it and see

    Suck it and see

    US federal officials considering new regulations on tobacco products should give more weight to the fact that a majority of smokers are unhappy about feeling addicted to cigarettes, and should put less emphasis on the theory that smokers who quit are losing ‘pleasure’ in their lives, according to a recent study by the School of Public Health at Georgia State University (GSU), the US.

    Researchers at the school’s Tobacco Center of Regulatory Science (TCORS) analyzed data from 1,284 adult smokers in the US and found more than 80 percent expressed discontent about their inability to quit, felt they were addicted to cigarettes and regretted they started smoking.

    A note on the GSU website said the Food and Drug Administration was required to perform an economic cost-benefit analysis of proposed regulations.

    ‘The agency has included a measure of the “lost pleasure” of smoking in its analysis of regulations on cigarettes, such as proposals to require visually graphic warning labels similar to those required in many other countries,’ the note said.

    ‘Some researchers have questioned whether smokers enjoy the habit and whether a focus on “lost pleasure” overstates the economic burden on smokers of regulations designed to encourage them to quit and to prevent others from taking up the habit.

    ‘Results of the study are published in an article titled Reassessing the importance of ‘lost pleasure’ associated with smoking cessation: Implications for social welfare and policy, in the journal Tobacco Control.’

    The study is at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2017-053734

  • EU looks at ‘stronger’ rules

    EU looks at ‘stronger’ rules

    The EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety has indicated that he is exploring the possibility of introducing ‘stronger’ regulations in respect of vapor products, according to a EurActiv.com story relayed by the TMA.

    Vytenis Andriukaitis was quoted as saying that he saw the possibility of encouraging “our agents to look into electronic cigarettes, and how to go in the direction of stronger regulation…”.

    ‘Stronger’ regulation here seems to equate with more restrictive regulation; so, for instance, stopping advertising and online sales of all vapor products.

    Andriukaitis pointed out that the tobacco industry was developing new electronic devices, including heat-not-burn devices, that were not covered by existing EU directives.

    He said tobacco companies were “already feeling the pressure” from the implementation of the EU’s revised Tobacco Products Directive and were allegedly exploring ways to bypass it and mislead consumers.

    Many market “deviations” had been noticed, he added.

  • Let them smoke cigarettes

    Let them smoke cigarettes

    Indonesia’s Trade Minister has suggested that people who are unable to access vapor products should simply turn – or more likely, turn back – to regular cigarettes, according to a story by Vincent Bevins on washingtonpost.com.

    Enggartiasto Lukita apparently issued his advice last week because the authorities are about to place prohibitive restrictions on the sale of electronic-cigarette ‘materials’.

    New vapor-product legislation, which is due to go into effect in the next few months, will require vendors to seek a combination of special government licenses, which could take years to acquire.

    “These are standards we’ll never be able to meet,” says Rhomedal, a spokesperson for Indonesia’s Personal Vaporizer Association, who, like some Indonesians, uses only one name.

    “It will really hurt both small businesses and consumers in our sector.”

    A growing number of Indonesians have been using e-cigarettes: people who, according to the minister – as reported by the local newspaper Kompas – can just “become regular smokers”.

    Bevins described this as a ‘seemingly puzzling statement for a government official in a country where over 200,000 people already die of tobacco-related causes each year’.

    ‘But observers of politics in the world’s fourth most populous country say this is nothing new, and that because of the power of the tobacco industry here, Indonesia lags far behind rest of the world in controlling use, and suffers from severe health problems as a result,’ Bevins said.

    Indonesia was the only country in the Asia-Pacific region that had not ratified the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, and more than five million children smoked cigarettes, said Dr. Widyastuti Soerojo, head of the Tobacco Control Unit in the Indonesian Public Health Association.

    However, this does not explain Indonesia’s puzzling stance on e-cigarettes given that the WHO has also opposed the use of these products; as is reflected in the negative attitudes to e-cigarettes of a number of countries in the Asia-Pacific region.