Category: People

  • Lazy regulation

    Lazy regulation

    At least one manufacturer of cigarette alternatives has criticized the Greek Government for lumping heat-not-burn products and electronic cigarettes with combustible cigarettes when considering legislation, according to a story at ekathimerini.com.

    An urgent bill debated in Parliament yesterday provides for the alternative products to be treated in the same way as conventional tobacco products are treated.

    The story said that, under the provisions of the bill, the alternatives would have to carry warnings saying that they damage health, but it wasn’t clear from the report whether those warnings would mirror those carried by combustible products.

    In a statement, the Philip Morris International subsidiary Papastratos accused the Health Ministry of avoiding launching a dialogue and examining the scientific data relating to alternative products.

    It said that because the bill assumed cigarette alternatives to be equal to cigarettes [in respect of risk], eventually, smokers would choose the most damaging option – continuing to smoke.

  • La la la

    La la la

    Philip Morris New Zealand (PMNZ) is looking for a tax break on its heated-tobacco sticks, according to stories by Madison Reidy for Television New Zealand and Bonnie Flaws for Stuff.co.nz.

    Flaws quoted the PMNZ GM James Williams as saying that the combustible-cigarette excise taxes applied by the Government to discourage people from smoking and recoup the costs associated with smoking were not appropriate for non-combustible products, such as its tobacco sticks, which had less impact on people’s health.

    To motivate consumers to move to these alternative products it was necessary to provide them with information, access and a financial incentive.

    “Unfortunately, our heated tobacco product at the moment is still treated like a combustible product,” Williams was quoted as saying. “It still carries health warnings like it’s a cigarette.”

    Meanwhile, Reidy’s story quoted Williams as saying that PMNZ wanted New Zealand to become the first market free of [combustible] cigarettes.

    “There is no motivation, at all, from anybody within Philip Morris to keep selling cigarettes in New Zealand,” he said.

    But the National Tobacco Control Advocacy Service’s general manager Mihi Blair said the plan was just a bold public relations stunt.

    “If Philip Morris was very serious about it, they would just stop it [selling cigarettes] right now,” said Blair.

    “It is just swapping one addiction to another.”

    Williams said the company could not pull cigarettes from shelves immediately because that would simply force smokers to buy from other manufacturers.

    He said PMNZ wanted to help the government achieve its smoke-free-by-2025 goal, but that the Ministry of Health had refused to meet with him even after he had sent to the agency six binders of scientific information.

    A spokesperson for the Ministry would not say if it had refused a meeting with Williams.

    The Ministry was not aware of the details of PMNZ’s plan to pull cigarettes from New Zealand shelves, the spokesperson added.

  • Growers say prices too low

    Growers say prices too low

    The Philippines’ National Tobacco Administration (NTA) on Tuesday appealed to tobacco growers in the Ilocos Norte region to sell their tobacco only to licensed traders, according to a story by Leilanie Adriano for the Philippines News Agency.

    The appeal was purportedly made ‘to ensure [a] fair market price’.

    The NTA officer-in-charge, Luzviminda Padayao, said there were at least two NTA-licensed buying stations located in Batac city and Currimao town where growers could offer their tobacco.

    “We have no control over cowboys/traders who are going to villages to buy tobacco leaves,” she said in an interview on Tuesday. “These NTA-licensed buying stations are being monitored through the use of prescribed trading forms such as purchase invoice vouchers (PIVs) and certificate of purchase.”

    But as Padayao was speaking some growers in the province were coming together to appeal to the concerned authorities to increase the price of tobacco this season.

    The current tobacco price ranges from PHP60 to PHP75 per kg, but it was suggested that this should be increased up to PHP128 per kg as a result of the implementation of the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) law, which had affected production costs.

    Growers stretching across several regions are currently staging a five-day protest.

  • Caught on camera

    Caught on camera

    A study by researchers at the Limerick Institute of Technology, Ireland, has found that ‘diversity is ostensibly lacking’ in images used as part of the EU’s Tobacco Products Directive, according to a story by Sarah Burns for The Irish Times.

    Among 42 anti-smoking images used on cigarette packages and in campaigns, none ‘distinctly include’ members of a racial or ethnic minority, they found.

    ‘All visible models, or body parts of models, used in the campaigns are Caucasian,” the researchers concluded.

  • Threat to e-cigs, cigars

    Threat to e-cigs, cigars

    A congresswoman in Colorado, US, Diana DeGette, is introducing legislation that, if passed, would ban electronic-cigarette flavors on a national level, according to a story by Michael Nedelman for CNN quoting a Monday announcement by DeGette’s office.

    The bill was expected to be introduced to the House of Representatives yesterday.

    Nedelman described flavors as being at the center of the regulatory debate, with some people saying they were an important tool in getting adults to switch from combustible cigarettes, while others wanted to ban them entirely because in their view they appealed to young people and minimized how harmful and addictive vapes were perceived to be.

    “To me, there is no legitimate reason to sell any product with names such as cotton candy or tutti fruitti, unless you are trying to market it to children,” DeGette, a Democrat, said in a statement on Monday.

    “Most experts agree that the kid-friendly flavors that e-cigarette manufactures are selling with these products are one of the leading causes of this spike in use among our high school and middle school students.”

    If DeGette’s bill becomes law, it will ban these flavors within a year unless companies can prove to the US Food and Drug Administration that flavors are not implicated in the rise in vaping among young people.

    It would require companies also to show that flavors are instrumental in getting smokers to quit combustible cigarettes and that they don’t make vapes ‘more harmful to the user’.

    The bill could ban flavors in cigars on the same timeline.

  • Smokers get raw deal

    Smokers get raw deal

    Tobacco smoking costs the Irish state 140 times more each year than the amount spent trying to get people to give up the habit, according to a story by Sarah Burns for The Irish Times and quoting the Irish Heart Foundation.

    About €11.8 million was reportedly spent in 2017 on smoking cessation measures including medications, services, the national quit-line and media campaigns, while it was estimated that costs related to the impact of smoking totaled €1.65 billion.

    These figures, which were based on a reply to a parliamentary question and an assessment of the economic cost of smoking in Ireland commissioned by the Department of Health, were published by the Foundation on National No Smoking Day.

    The amount spent helping people to quit was less than one percent of the almost €1.4 billion smokers paid in tobacco tax during 2017, the Foundation said.

    “Nowhere near enough is being done to help the estimated 80 percent of smokers who want to quit,” said Chris Macey, the Foundation’s head of advocacy. “Tax increases have played an important role in reducing smoking rates in Ireland but could be even more effective if a higher proportion of the proceeds was spent on cessation services.”

    “It isn’t fair to place a large additional tax burden on people because of their addiction to nicotine and then fail to invest properly in helping them overcome it when many are desperate to quit.”

    Macey said that putting more resources into smoking cessation services would help to reduce the number of deaths from tobacco-related illness in Ireland, which he said was 16 per day.

  • Pointless gesture

    Pointless gesture

    Campaigners in the UK have criticised calls to raise the legal age for buying tobacco from 18 to 21.

    A press note issued by the smokers’ group Forest said this proposal had been included in a report by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health, which was run by the anti-smoking group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).

    Other proposals were said to include further restrictions on the portrayal of smoking on television and in films, and introducing a levy on tobacco companies that would be used to fund further anti-smoking initiatives.

    “These proposals infantilise young adults,” Forest director Simon Clark was quoted as saying. “If you’re 18 and old enough to vote, drive a car and join the army you’re old enough to make an informed decision to smoke.

    “Raising the current age at which you can buy tobacco, or censoring films and TV programmes that try to depict real life, takes paternalism to a new level.

    “The real sickness in society is not smoking, which is in long-term decline across all age groups, but the creeping prohibition that is removing our ability to make choices and take personal responsibility for our own lives.

    “Ultimately, if you treat adults like children, don’t be surprised if they behave like children.”

  • New actions by FDA

    New actions by FDA

    The US Food and Drug Administration says that it is taking new actions focused on retailers and manufacturers as part of its Youth Tobacco Prevention Plan.

    But, in large part, the actions seem to be focused on electronic cigarettes, which the FDA ‘deems’ to be ‘tobacco products’.

    In a statement about the actions, the FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, said the FDA had sent a letter to the corporate management of Walgreen, requesting a meeting to discuss where there was a corporate-wide issue related to its stores’ repeat violations of selling tobacco products to ‘kids’.

    ‘The company is currently the top violator among pharmacies that sell tobacco products, with 22 percent of more than 6,350 inspected stores cited for illegally sold tobacco products to minors,’ the statement said.

    ‘FDA identified 14 other national retail chains as well, whose rates of violative inspections exceed 15 percent of their total inspected stores since the inception of the FDA’s retailer compliance check inspection program in 2010. FDA plans to ask these companies to share what policies they have in place and what more they can commit to do to prevent youth tobacco sales.

    ‘Furthermore, FDA sent letters to more than 40 companies seeking information about whether more than 50 products – including a variety of flavored e-cigarette products – are being illegally marketed and outside the agency’s current compliance policy.

    ‘The agency also today sent the first warning letters to several companies for, among other things, selling electronic nicotine delivery system (ENDS) products and a waterpipe tobacco product with labeling and/or advertising that failed to include the required nicotine warning statement.’

    Gottlieb’s statement is here.

  • Billion-dollar award upheld

    Billion-dollar award upheld

    Quebec’s Court of Appeal has upheld a Quebec Superior Court ruling that awarded billions of dollars in damages to 100,000 people as part of two class-action lawsuits against tobacco companies, according to a CBC – Canadian Broadcasting Corporation – News story.

    In the 422-page ruling, the court said the Superior Court’s decision was correct, except for some small technicalities. The adjustment in damages amounts to about C$2 million of the approximate C$15 billion the companies were ordered to pay, the prosecution said on Friday.

    “It’s excellent news for the victims that have been waiting for this day for a long time,” said Philippe Trudel, one of the lawyers representing the smokers.

    “We are calling this a total victory on all fronts.”

    The prosecution estimates the damages the companies will eventually pay out to the smokers will amount to more than C$17 billion. Interest on the damages continues to accrue as the case moves through the court system.

    The CBC story said that, in 2015, a Quebec Superior Court justice ruled in favour of two groups representing Quebec smokers, which argued the companies didn’t warn their customers about the dangers of smoking.

    Imperial Tobacco, a subsidiary of British American Tobacco, Rothmans Benson & Hedges, a subsidiary of Philip Morris International, and JTI-Macdonald, were ordered to pay for punitive and moral damages. The companies appealed the decision in 2016.

    In a Saturday, website announcement of the appeal court’s decision, Japan Tobacco Inc. said the court had substantively upheld the decision of the Superior Court, finding JTI-MC liable for C$1.77 billion.

    ‘JTI-MC is currently reviewing the judgement and is considering all options, including asking for permission to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada,’ the announcement said.

    ‘The decision follows an appeal by JTI-MC and other Canadian tobacco manufacturers to a judgment released in June 2015 by the Quebec Superior Court. JTI-MC was ordered to pay about C$2 billion in the judgment.

    ‘JTI-MC is the only JT Group company that is a party to these proceedings.

    ‘JT will issue a statement concerning JTI-MC’s response to the decision once it has had an opportunity to review the judgment in detail.’

    Meanwhile, a spokesperson for BAT said that the company was extremely disappointed that the Quebec Court of Appeal had not overturned the trial court’s judgment against its Canadian subsidiary, Imperial Tobacco Canada.

    “We are still of the view that this decision is wrong – ignoring the reality that both adult consumers and government have known about the risk associated with smoking for decades, the spokesperson was quoted as saying, as part of a note posted on BAT’s website. “As a result, we believe it should be overturned.

    “Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd. needs to review the court’s decision in more detail and will decide on next steps over the coming days and weeks. Given the significance of the judgment, they have said that they fully intend to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada.”

    BAT said that, following the release of the judgment from the Quebec Court of Appeal, the plaintiffs had requested immediate release of the funds on deposit, which was refused. They had then filed a formal motion to release the funds. Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd. filed a motion to prevent the release of the funds in question.

    ‘British American Tobacco was not a party to the proceeding and is not a party to the judgment, only its Canadian subsidiary, Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd,’ BAT said.

    The CBC story said that Rothmans, Benson & Hedges had confirmed in a statement that it would seek leave to appeal the ruling with the Supreme Court of Canada.

  • Age-old problem

    Age-old problem

    A Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker in Taiwan said on Sunday that the government should reduce the tax on tobacco because the public was deeply dissatisfied with the current rate, according to a story by Matt Yu, Wang Cheng-chung, Ku Chuan and William Yen for the Focus Taiwan News Channel.

    Hsu Chih-chieh said he had spoken to Premier Su Tseng-chang about this issue because of the public backlash that had erupted after the tax on cigarettes was raised in June 2017 by NT$20 (US$0.65) per pack following the Legislature’s passage of an amendment to the Tobacco and Alcohol Tax Act.

    According to Ministry of Finance data, the amendment allowed the tobacco tax to be raised from NT$590 per 1,000 cigarettes to NT$1,590, which added an extra NT$20 to the price of a pack of 20 cigarettes.

    Hsu said that while he did not encourage smoking, he recognized that it was one of life’s pleasures for some people.

    The tobacco tax went toward the nation’s long-term care of senior citizens, but smokers should not be the ones to fund that, he said.

    In response, the Cabinet said it would seek the opinions of various sectors of the society on the issue.

    The Cabinet spokesperson Kolas Yotaka said Premier Su has received thoughts from DPP lawmakers on the tobacco tax issue but had not yet responded.

    Also commenting on the issue, Kuomintang lawmaker Hsu Chih-jung said the tobacco tax was increased as a deterrent to smoking, and that cutting it now would be counterproductive.