Altria says that making it mandatory that all cigarettes sold in the US deliver very low levels of nicotine could cost up to 951,000 jobs, according to a story by Uliana Pavlova for Bloomberg News.
A rule proposed by the US Food and Drug Administration would require all cigarettes sold in the US to contain minimally or non-addictive levels of nicotine.
The proposal has been the subject of an FDA Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, to which comments have been sought.
Altria reportedly said that, if implemented, the proposal would cause a net loss, directly or indirectly, of up to 951,000 jobs, and that the nation’s unemployment rate could rise from 3.9 percent to 4.5 percent.
The company, which employed 8,300 employees at the end of 2017, estimates that tobacco growers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers and distributors would all feel the impact.
ITG Brands said that the proposed changes would create a robust black market.
Category: People
Nicotine down, job losses up
Juul launching in UK
Juul Labs is launching its vaping device in the UK this week, according to a story by Martinne Geller for Reuters.
Since launching in the US in 2015, Juul has transformed the market there, where it now accounts for nearly 70 percent of tracked electronic-cigarette sales.
The Juul device will reportedly be available in 250 vape shops across the UK by the end of this week.
A starter pack, including the device and four nicotine pods, will cost about £29.99 ($39.66).
Grant Winterton, Juul Labs’ president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, told Reuters that the UK had been chosen as Juul’s third market after the US and Israel, partly because it had the world’s “most supportive government” when it came to encouraging smokers to vape. Also on the radar are France, Germany and Italy.Sales down, revenue up
Sales of cigarettes in South Korea during the first six months of this year were down by 1.6 percent on those of the first half of last year, according to a Yonhap News Agency story citing data compiled by the finance ministry.
South Korean smokers bought 1.68 billion 20-piece cigarette packs from January to June, down from 1.71 billion packs during the same months of 2017.
But not everything was down. The Government collected 5.5 trillion won in taxes from cigarette sales during January-June, up 1.5 percent from the taxes collected during the same months of 2017, 5.4 trillion won.
It is not hard to see why these figures are as they are. In January 2015, the price of cigarettes in South Korea was increased by 80 percent, from 2,500 won (US$2.25) to 4,500 won per pack, almost entirely through a tax increase.
In 2016, the Government mandated that tobacco companies put graphic warnings on the upper part of both sides of cigarette packs.Not-so-fine particles
A French member of the European Parliament has asked the European Commission whether it is of a mind to encourage member states to assess the toxicity of the air in industrial areas.
Joëlle Mélin’s question was inspired by reports of poor air quality at Étang de Berre, which is in the south of France and which comprises one of the largest industrial areas in Europe, with more than 200 factories.
‘It turns out that, in 2010, the French Institute for Public Health Surveillance highlighted an excessive number of hospitalizations for cardiovascular conditions and for multiple illnesses west of Étang de Berre,’ Mélin said in a preamble to her question.
‘In January 2017, new information emerged from the community-based participatory environmental health survey (CBPEH), which noted the high likelihood of a link “between the illnesses and industrial pollution”.
‘However, in 2011, the Eco-citizen Institute launched campaigns to measure the air quality, which resulted in it noting that the air around the industrial area “was made up of 80 percent ultra-fine particulate matter and [that] the chemical composition of the air pollutants was extremely complex”.
‘Ultra-fine particulate matter is the most dangerous for our health because it gets deep into our bodies.
‘However, if Air Paca [a non-profit association that manages the air quality survey network in south-eastern France’s Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur region] does not measure it, it is because European legislation does not require member states to measure the levels of ultra-fine particulate matter.
‘Therefore, we would like to know whether the Commission wishes to encourage member states to measure the levels of ultra-fine particulate matter in order to assess toxicity of the air in industrial areas in more detail.’Britain quitting quitting
The number of prescriptions issued for drugs aimed at helping smokers quit their habit fell by 75 percent in England during the past decade, according to a story in The Guardian published ahead of the release of a new report.
The report, based on an analysis of NHS prescribing data, was due to be published by the British Lung Foundation (BLF) under the name Less Help to Quit: What’s happening to stop-smoking prescriptions across Britain.
General Practitioners were said by the Guardian to be the most common first port of call for smokers who wanted to beat their addiction in England, with 38 percent of them choosing this route.
However, primary care prescriptions of nicotine replacement patches and gum and the smoking-cessation drugs bupropion and varenicline had fallen by three-quarters in England between 2005-06 and 2016-17.
The report is said to indicate also wide regional variations in the prescribing of such products across Great Britain.
In Scotland, there was said to have been a 40 percent drop in prescriptions for stop-smoking drugs, while in Wales prescription rates had fallen by two-thirds.
The drop in prescriptions had come about even though a combination of support and medication had been shown to be the most effective way to help smokers quit, the Guardian reported.
Such a combination, which was recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, was said to increase the chance of a smoker’s beating her addiction threefold, when compared with going “cold turkey”.
Alternative routes to getting help, such as specialist clinics, are also declining in some areas, the report finds.
In the English county of Worcestershire, for example, where 15 percent of the population smokes, the local authority decommissioned its stop-smoking services, and local clinical commissioning groups advised GPs in April 2016 not to prescribe stop-smoking aids for new patients.
As a result of these changes, the Guardian said, 98 people last year were helped to quit smoking across the Worcestershire council area, down from 2,208 the previous year. And there were no recorded attempts to quit through GPs and only one in a hospital setting.
The BLF was quoted as saying that smokers were bearing the brunt of government budget cuts and were being discriminated against.Nigeria e-cig launch plan
British American Tobacco plans to launch its electronic cigarettes in Nigeria in the near future, according to a story in the Nation, relayed by the TMA.
Chris McAllister, MD of BAT Nigeria and West Africa, reportedly said the stability of the exchange rate and the revival of consumers’ purchasing power had given the company “the confidence to continue to invest in our state-of-the art factory in Ibadan and our recently commissioned West African headquarters in Lagos”.
He added that the company planned to launch “our world leading range of e-cigarettes in Nigeria in the near future”.
McAllister said the company was aware of the health risks of smoking and was investing in products that had the potential to reduce harm.
He said also that BAT Nigeria had worked with the government to reduce the illegal trade in tobacco from 80 percent to about 20 percent. This was the result of having a local manufacturing operation that stimulated a value chain of local businesses.
Commenting on an amendment to the excise tax law, under which the current ad-valorem tax rate will remain at 20 percent while an additional specific rate will be introduced over a three-year period, McAllister said there should be collaboration and consultation between relevant stakeholders for tax policies to be balanced and reasonable, reducing the potential for unintended consequences in respect of both the economy and wider government objectives.New purulent warnings
India’s Supreme Court yesterday declined to stay the central Government’s new tobacco-packaging rules that require an increase in the size of pictorial health warnings from 40 percent to 85 percent from September 1, according to a story by Bhadra Sinha for the Hindustan Times.
The Cigarettes and other Tobacco Products (Packaging and Labelling) Second Amendment Rules, 2018, require the rotation of graphics and the replacement of current images. The image of a person’s throat with a hole in it, for instance, is to be replaced with more “gruesome pictures of a person’s lips with diseased and purulent growth”.
And in line with this change, the written warning, ‘Smoking causes throat cancer’ is to be replaced with ‘Smoking causes painful death’ and Tobacco causes cancer’, in white upper-case letters against a red background.
The rules require also that packs carry a quit number through which tobacco-product users can connect with online assistance.Vapor pressure building
Hong Kong’s Legislative Council has begun to debate a proposal to regulate vaping and heat-not-burn (HNB) products because of a push by pro-liberalization members including Helena Wong, according to a story by Alex Frew McMillan for Nikkei Inc.
Vaping and HNB products occupy a gray regulatory region in Hong Kong, which means that they are not readily available to people without access to overseas sources.
Despite this, they seem to have a big following.
As Council discussions began in June on the proposal, supporters presented Wong with a petition bearing 10,000 signatures. And Peter Shiu, who represents the retail and wholesale trade in the legislature, was quoted as saying that 10 percent of Hong Kong’s 600,000 smokers had switched to alternatives.
The government however is guarded about the legalization proposal. The secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan said in June that her department was “very concerned about the existence of e-cigarettes … [because] there are many unknown constituents or components,” some of which had been shown to be harmful. There had been little to no third-party research in Asia on their health effects.
McMillan reported that in much of Asia-Pacific, the sale of vaping and/or HNB devices was either illegal or, as in Hong Kong, occupied a regulatory gray area that kept them off store shelves. Now with users on the rise, consumers were joining together to pressure the authorities for explicit legalization on what they felt were healthier alternatives to traditional cigarettes. And they were starting to have some political impact.
In the past three years, consumers had formed vape-advocacy organizations in Australia, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Thailand. And the International Network of Nicotine Consumer Organisations, an umbrella group, was lobbying for change in places including Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore and Taiwan. Its Asian members had gathered last December in Bangkok to plan a concerted lobbying effort.
“There was an unprecedented feeling among delegates that they are no longer alone, that they are part of a regional and even global movement for change,” said Nancy Sutthoff, the president of INNCO’s board.
And help might come from an unlikely place – Australia, where laws differ from state to state but where, in effect, the sale of e-liquids containing nicotine is either banned or heavily restricted.
This is because Australian lawmakers are themselves under pressure now that New Zealand and Canada have both legalized vaping. “These are countries we compare ourselves with,” said Colin Mendelsohn, associate professor of public health and community medicine at the University of New South Wales and chairman of the Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association. “If Australia does make progress in this area, it will be very influential to other Asian countries. Drug policy in Australia has been very instrumental in Asia.”
Mendelsohn went on to say that allowing smoking and banning vaping was costing lives. “The government just needs to get out of the way and let people get on with leading their lives, as long as they are not harming anyone else,” he said.Records release ruled out
The Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) does not have to hand over the detailed health-care records of millions of people requested by Philip Morris International, according to a story by Catharine Tunney for CBC News reporting on a decision by Canada’s top court.
Tunney said that a unanimous Supreme Court decision on Friday morning had cleared a hurdle in the province’s quest to sue cigarette companies for billions of dollars in health-care costs.
Writing for the court, Justice Russell Brown found the health care databases PMI wanted contained information about individuals whose privacy the province was obligated to protect.
The ruling is the latest chapter in BC’s legal fight to force cigarette makers such as PMI to compensate the province for the cost of treating tobacco-related illnesses, a battle that started in the late 1990s.
PMI had argued it needed unfettered access to individuals’ health data to defend itself in court.
The province’s lawyers argued that releasing individuals’ health information – even anonymously – could violate privacy laws.E-cig information requested
The European Commission has been asked to provide information on the implementation within EU member states of the Tobacco Products Directive in respect of electronic cigarettes.
Roberta Metsola, a Maltese member of the European Parliament said in a preamble to her request that a top Greek court had decided that the advertising of e-cigarettes and their use in public places should be covered by the same laws as applied to traditional cigarettes and smoking.
Metsola said that, in its reply to a previous question, the Commission had stated that ‘Article 20 of the Tobacco Products Directive contained requirements relating to safety, quality and consumer protection of electronic cigarettes’.
The Commission had stated also that it was monitoring regulatory developments relating to electronic cigarettes. In this respect, it remained in close contact with member states to enable the exchange of available information and experience, by means of different forums, including the Expert Group on Tobacco Policy, its Subgroup on Electronic Cigarettes and the upcoming Joint Action on Tobacco Control.
Metsola asked whether the Commission could already provide information on the implementation within EU member states of the Tobacco Products Directive in respect of e-cigarettes.
The Commission is due to reply in writing.
