Category: People

Party poopers
Police in Istanbul, Turkey, raided a vape party on Sunday at which there were at least 800 guests, according to a Hurriyet Daily News story citing the daily, Habertürk.
They detained three organizers and handed fines to all attendees for ‘smoking indoors’.
Vaping devices are deemed to be tobacco products in Turkey, and legislation that applies to tobacco products also applies to such devices.
After invitations for the ‘unlimited vape party’ were posted on Facebook, police put the location on İstiklal Avenue in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district under surveillance.
After the organizers had rented the terrace of a restaurant for the party, they announced that entrance was free and that various kinds of vaping devices would be available for attendees free of charge.
The Health Ministry has not yet licensed the import of any vaping devices, though such products do enter the country, where they are sold for between TL150 and TL450, over the Internet or through illegal trafficking.
September 20, 2017
Tobacco antis ‘gut-punched’
The surprise announcement by the former head of the World Health Organization’s Tobacco Free Initiative, Derek Yach, that he would head a newly-established organization called the ‘Foundation for a Smoke-free World’ to ‘accelerate the end of smoking’ was met with gut-punched disappointment by those who have worked for decades to achieve that goal, according to a BMJ blog by news editor, Marita Hefler.
The blog was headed, A ‘Frank Statement’ for the 21st Century?, and included the names of 14 people: Ruth E. Malone, Simon Chapman, Prakash C. Gupta, Rima Nakkash, Tih Ntiabang, Eduardo Bianco, Yussuf Saloojee, Prakit Vathesatogkit, Laurent Huber, Chris Bostic, Pascal Diethelm, Cynthia Callard, Neil Collishaw and Anna B. Gilmore.
‘Unmoved by a soft-focus video featuring Yach looking pensively off into the distance from a high-level balcony while smokers at ground level stubbed out Marlboros and discussed how hard it was to quit, leading tobacco control organizations were shocked to hear that the new organization was funded with a $1 billion, twelve-year commitment from tobacco company Philip Morris International (PMI),’ the piece said.
‘PMI, which has been working for decades to rebrand itself as a “socially responsible” company while continuing to promote sales of its top-branded Marlboro cigarettes and oppose policies that would genuinely reduce their use, clearly believes this investment will further its “harm reduction” agenda, led by its new heat-not-burn product, IQOS. But don’t worry, the Foundation assures everyone that “PMI and the tobacco industry are precluded from having any influence over how the Foundation spends its funds or focuses its activities”.
‘Except that is what a broad range of industry front groups, sometimes headed by respected and even well-intentioned leaders, have been saying since the “Frank Statement” of 1954.
‘The long and sordid history of the industry’s funding of “research,” a major part of the mission of this new foundation, is replete with exactly this sort of blithe reassurance, as Yach himself pointed out in an earlier time.
‘In reality, nothing has changed. The “research” really isn’t the point anyway. The mere fact of having landed Yach is a major public relations coup for PMI that will be used to do more of what the industry always does: create doubt, contribute further to existing disputes within the global tobacco control movement, shore up its own competitive position, and go on pushing its cigarettes as long as it possibly can…’
The full story is at: http://blogs.bmj.com/tc/2017/09/19/a-frank-statement-for-the-21st-century/.
September 20, 2017
Campaigns lack teeth
Anti-tobacco lobbyists in Kenya on Monday called for the enforcement of a 2007 law that bans smoking in public places, according to a News Ghana story.
Thomas Lindi, co-ordinator of the Kenya Tobacco Control Alliance (KTCA), said Kenya’s tobacco-related health burden was rising by the day.
Lindi told a stakeholders meeting in Nairobi that tobacco smoking remained a challenge among low- and middle-income Kenyans despite the country’s having anti-tobacco policies and regulations in place.
According to government reports, non-communicable diseases kill about 28,000 people in Kenya every year. Tobacco use and involuntary exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke is said to be partly responsible for the growing number of non-communicable diseases.
Lindi said it was unfortunate that since the Tobacco Control Act came into force in 2007, nothing had been done to reduce tobacco advertisements.
“We still lack serious awareness campaigns and cessation programs that are key to reducing the consumption of tobacco products,” Lindi said.
Meanwhile, Joel Gitali, the chairman of the KTCA, said the tobacco industry and its allies had continuously used various strategies and tactics to discredit, delay and derail the implementation of tobacco control policies through legislative and litigation processes.
“The government needs to join forces with stakeholders in educating the public against tobacco consumption,” he said.
September 20, 2017
Tobacco travel ban
In, Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, India, the Lucknow Metro Rail Corporation has decided to frisk all passengers at the entry points of stations from next week to prevent them from carrying tobacco products onto trains, according to a story in The Times of India.
The decision to frisk passengers was made apparently because requests to passengers to surrender tobacco products and paan before entering stations had been ignored, and because instances of littering and spitting inside Metro stations were ‘showing no signs of abating’.
Notices will be deployed at frisking points informing passengers that tobacco products are prohibited items within Metro premises.
September 19, 2017
Cigarette price matters
Researchers at Imperial College London have found an association between infant mortality rates and cigarette price differentials, according to a EurekAlert story citing a new study.
The authors were quoted as saying that eliminating budget cigarettes from the market might help to reduce infant deaths globally.
“Thanks to tax and price control measures, cigarettes in EU countries are more expensive than ever before,” said Dr. Filippos Filippidis, of Imperial’s School of Public Health and the lead author of the study. “However, the tobacco industry is good at finding loopholes to ensure that budget cigarettes remain available. In this study, we found that the availability of budget cigarettes is associated with more infant deaths.”
The study, published yesterday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, analysed nearly 54 million births across 23 EU countries from 2004 to 2014. The researchers obtained data on cigarette prices over this period and examined whether differences between average priced and budget cigarettes was linked to infant mortality rates.
And they found that during the 10 years under review, overall infant mortality declined in all countries from 4.4 deaths per 1,000 births in 2004 to 3.5 deaths per 1,000 births in 2014.
The cost of average priced cigarettes increased during this time in all the countries studied. The difference between average-priced and budget cigarettes varied from 12.8 percent to 26.0 percent over the study period.
The authors said that though EU governments had made cigarettes more expensive by increasing taxes, tobacco companies had responded with differential pricing strategies, where tax increases were loaded onto premium brands. This caused a price gap between higher and lower priced cigarettes that gave smokers the option to switch to cheaper products, making tax increases less effective.
September 19, 2017
New role for JT executive
Japan Tobacco Inc. says that Koji Shimayoshi will move from his current position as senior vice president, head of the Tobacco Business Planning Division on September 30, to take up his new role as senior vice president of Japan Tobacco International’s executive committee on October 1.
September 19, 2017
Vuse is boycott target
A farmworker labor group often at odds with Reynolds American Inc. voted unanimously on Saturday to conduct a national boycott of the company’s Vuse, the US’ top-selling electronic cigarette, according to a story by Richard Craver for the Winston-Salem Journal.
As of August, Vuse, which is sold at more than 111,000 US retail outlets, had a top market share of 29.8 percent.
Catherine Crowe, a spokeswoman for the Farm Labor Organizing Committee of FLOC, said the potential boycott of Vuse was designed to dent Reynolds’ revenue stream since “it is a fairly new product and market for Reynolds”.
“Reynolds has still not signed an agreement with FLOC that would affect real change on the ground by guaranteeing farmworkers freedom of association and implementing a grievance mechanism that farmworkers could use to resolve issues without fear of retaliation,” Crowe said.
Since 2007, FLOC has conducted occasional adversarial inquiries during the question-and-answer session of Reynolds’ annual shareholders meeting as well as peaceful street protests following the meeting.
The group was not able to protest in May because Reynolds did not conduct a shareholders meeting. At that time, British American Tobacco was in the process of buying Reynolds.
Reynolds said it had no comment on FLOC’s boycott discussion.
Craver’s story is at: http://www.journalnow.com/news/local/farmworker-labor-group-votes-to-boycott-vuse/article_83223678-26e5-5473-afe1-7353a2bed47c.html.
September 11, 2017
Smokers have rights too
A consumer advocacy group in the Philippines on Sunday bewailed what it sees as the growing discrimination against smokers and appealed for a fair enforcement of new anti-smoking rules, according to a story in The Manila Standard.
“Smoking is not an illicit activity under our laws,” said Anton Israel, president of the Pro-Yosi group. “And smokers have rights too.”
Israel said that Executive Order (EO) 26, under which smoking bans were introduced, applied only to smoking indoors or in enclosed places. Smoking was allowed in open areas such as sidewalks and parking lots.
“It is wrong and irresponsible to say that the EO imposes an absolute smoking ban,” he said. “The restrictions are only for enclosed places.
“We recognize the responsibility of the state to protect non-smokers and minors from the harmful effects of second-hand smoke, but we also demand that the right of smokers to enjoy a legal product in a non-obstructive environment be respected,” Israel said.
Pro-Yosi praised the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) for saying that business establishments must have designated smoking areas and that smoking in open spaces was allowed.
And the organization expressed hope that the DILG would clarify the issue further with local government units, which are tasked with enforcing EO 26.
September 11, 2017
Don’t panic!
Four scientists have co-authored a study debunking some of the most pervasive myths about the dangers electronic cigarettes pose to young people, according to a piece by Guy Bentley published at washingtonexaminer.com.
Bentley says the study is a wide-ranging critique of former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s 2016 report on e-cigarettes and young people that had added fresh momentum to a moral panic over youth vaping.
Fears of young people experimenting with e-cigarettes had since been used as a justification for higher taxes, tighter regulations, and de facto bans on vapor products, Bentley wrote.
This was despite research showing that e-cigarettes posed just a fraction of the risks of traditional tobacco cigarettes and the growing body of evidence that they helped adults quit smoking.
By labeling youth vaping a ‘major public health concern’, Murthy’s report had given an air of credibility to the more extreme parts of the anti-vaping crowd.
But a study published on September 6 in the journal Harm Reduction had served as a much-needed corrective to the hysteria that had pervaded the public debate on e-cigarettes in the wake of Murthy’s report.
First off, the study conceded Murthy was correct to observe there were several hundred percent increases in the number of youths who had tried e-cigarettes from 2011 to 2015. But the authors point out this observation obscured the more important measure in terms of public health, which was how frequently youths were using e-cigarettes.
The data showed youth vaping was ‘either infrequent or experimental’. Only a tiny proportion of young people who reported using e-cigarettes were doing so on a regular basis.
Bentley’s piece is at: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/teen-vaping-is-not-a-public-health-crisis-despite-the-moral-panic/article/2633559
September 8, 2017
Deadlock over leaf prices
The Philippines’ National Tobacco Administration (NTA) has said that talks on tobacco floor prices for 2018 and 2019 had ended in deadlock because growers and the industry had failed to find ‘middle ground’, according to a story in The Business Mirror.
NTA administrator Robert L. Seares reportedly told the Mirror that tobacco farmers had wanted a P16.77-per-kg increase across all grades of all varieties, but that the industry had insisted on no increases.
Floor prices are government-approved minimum prices per grade.
Seares said that some industry players had indicated during talks on September 6 that they could not sell nor manufacture their current supply of tobacco because of a fall in demand for tobacco products.
However, the growers insisted on the P16.77-per-kg rise that was needed to offset increasing production costs.
The growers were willing to reduce their demand only if they were promised help, in the form of financial assistance or subsidies, in obtaining their planting inputs.
Due to the impasse, the NTA decided to abandon the second day – September 7 – of a pricing conference it had called and restart negotiations next month.
In the meantime, the NTA is to try to obtain government support for funding production inputs, and growers are to ask local governments for subsidies.
The NTA holds conferences every two years to decide on tobacco prices. The conferences are attended by NTA representatives, tobacco growers, and tobacco companies: cigarette manufacturers, tobacco dealers and exporters.
September 8, 2017