Category: Regulation

  • Campaigns lack teeth

    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.

  • Tobacco travel ban

    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.

  • WHO calls for more bans

    WHO calls for more bans

    The World Health Organization has said that South Korea should adopt more stringent anti-tobacco regulations that ban cigarette smoking in public places and restrict tobacco advertising and promotions, according to a story in The Korea Herald.

    In 2015, 39.3 percent of South Korean men and 5.5 percent of its women were smokers.

    The Herald story said the WTO had been publishing the results of a project that every other year assessed a country’s efforts in various anti-tobacco activities.

    According to the WHO Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic 2017, South Korea had not properly implemented policies on protecting the public from the effects of smoking, enforcing bans and raising taxes.

    This criticism was made even though the government increased taxes on cigarettes by 2,000 won (US$1.70) per pack from January 1, 2015, a move that increased the price of a pack of cigarettes from about 2,500 won to 4,500 won.

    The WTO calls on member states to ban smoking in all public places.

    But while South Korea has been expanding non-smoking zones in public places for the past few years such measures have fallen short of legislating a far-reaching ban.

    The WTO recommends also that member states ban all forms of advertising, promotion and sponsorship of tobacco, whereas South Korea allows such activities in some instances.

    Meanwhile, the government forced tobacco companies last year to include graphic warnings on their packs; and this year it introduced a new rule that requires the warnings to occupy more than 30 percent of the front and back of cigarette packs.

  • Smokers have rights too

    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.

  • Bigger is better in Taiwan

    Bigger is better in Taiwan

    Warning labels on cigarette packs sold in Taiwan are too small and not frightening enough to be effective, according to a story in The Taipei Times quoting academics speaking at a forum held in Taipei on Monday.

    The difference between the number of people who smoked in Taiwan, three million, and the number who smoked in Hong Kong, 640,000, might be due to the difference in the sizes of the warning labels, they said at the Tobacco Hazard and Prevention Forum for Cross-strait Locations, Hong Kong and Macau.

    This seems unlikely given that the population of Taiwan is about 23 million and that of Hong Kong is about seven million.

    There is a significant smoking-prevalence difference: about 15 percent in Taiwan and 10 percent in Hong Kong, but attributing this to health warnings seems to be a giant step.

    Warning labels in Taiwan took up 35 percent of tobacco packaging and were ‘a light reminder’, the academics said.

    On the other hand, warning labels and graphics take up 85 percent of tobacco packaging in Hong Kong. They include pictures of long-time smokers and the effects that smoking has on the body, and warning messages such as, ‘Smoking causes strokes and ‘Smoking kills’.

    University of Hong Kong professor Lam Tai-hing was quoted as saying that ‘pictures’ were thought to scare many young people off smoking.

    In Taiwan, the Health Promotion Administration said it was aware of the statistics, and that amendments to the Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act had been sent to the Executive Yuan.

    The amendments would increase the size of warning labels on cigarette packaging to 85 percent.

    And they would hike fines for the illegal distribution of e-cigarettes in a bid to deter sales and distribution of these devices.

    Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said it would convene a panel to discuss the kinds of pictures that would be a deterrent to smoking.

  • Smoking down in Ukraine

    Smoking down in Ukraine

    The incidence of smoking in Ukraine has fallen by 20 percent during the past seven years, according to the World Health Organization citing the results of the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS).

    The WHO said that the reduction in the incidence of smoking had come about because Ukraine, following WHO recommendations, had strengthened its anti-tobacco legislation.

    “Ukraine ratified the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in 2006, and since then tobacco control in the country has been strengthened, said Dr. Marthe Everard, WHO representative and head of the WHO country office in Ukraine. “This has helped to achieve a significant reduction in tobacco use. However, a lot of work still needs to be done. All tobacco control stakeholders – the government, politicians, experts, scientists, civil society activists – should strengthen and join up their efforts.”

    Speaking at the launch of the GATS findings, Everard said that using the GATS framework helped the country identify and understand the outstanding problems it faced in further reducing the number of smokers.

    The 20 percent reduction in the country’s smoking incidence between 2010 and 2017 was largely due to a reduction in smoking among men. No significant reductions were seen in the proportion of women who smoke.

    In 2017, 7.2 million adult Ukrainians smoked daily, including 35.9 percent of all adult men and 7.0 percent of all adult women.

    However, fewer adults were said to be considering quitting smoking, which, the WHO said, might be linked to a decrease in the number who reported having been exposed to anti-tobacco advertising. It might be linked also with the fact that smoking in public and tobacco advertising are still seen in Ukraine, despite their being banned.

    WHO said that the results of GATS 2017 would be used to develop Ukraine’s tobacco control policy further to fulfil the requirements of the FCTC.

    It identified what it saw as areas for urgent attention:

    • ‘using legislation to strengthen compliance with existing policy, in particular regarding the ban on smoking in public places and on the marketing of tobacco products;
    • ‘providing access to free or affordable services to support people in quitting tobacco use;
    • ‘strengthening measures warning people of the risks of tobacco use;
    • ‘maintaining regular increases in the price of tobacco products through effective tobacco tax increases.’
  • Flavored cigarettes ‘easier’

    Flavored cigarettes ‘easier’

    A recent study conducted in South Korea has shown that flavored tobacco ‘makes smoking easier and attracts new smokers’, according to a story in The Korea Biomedical Review citing the Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDCP).

    Professor Kim Hee-jin of Yonsei University led a research team to identify the role of smoking flavored cigarettes in smoking cessation and persistence. The study looked at 9,063 subjects aged 13 to 39.

    The findings were said to have indicated that about 65 percent of the subjects used flavored cigarettes, and that usage levels were especially high among young people and women.

    ‘Among the research subjects, 73.1 percent of female smokers tended to smoke flavored cigarettes compared to 58.3 percent of male smokers,’ the Review reported.

    ‘By age, 68.3 percent of male subjects aged 13 to 18 and 82.7 percent of female subjects aged 19 to 24 smoked flavored cigarettes.’

    The reasons given by the subjects for choosing flavored cigarettes included pleasant smell, less odor, and little to no physical discomfort.

    Such characteristics were said also to have played a significant role in lowering perceptions of smoking hazards and health warnings.

    “The coarse and uncomfortable trait of cigarette smoke acts as a barrier in the initial stage of attempting to smoke cigarettes,” said Oh Kyung-won, a KCDCP official.

    However, he added, flavored cigarettes disguised these irritating properties, making it easier for people to try and maintain smoking than was the case in respect of non-flavored cigarettes.

    The Ministry of Health and Welfare plans to submit a bill to regulate flavored cigarettes after consulting with other related ministries and agencies.

  • Bans counter-productive

    Bans counter-productive

    Banning electronic cigarettes could deprive Indian smokers of a substantially-less-harmful alternative to traditional tobacco-cigarettes and cause adverse public-health consequences, according to an Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) story.

    Some states in India, including Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Punjab, Maharashtra and Kerala have prohibited the sale of e-cigarettes, though the sale of tobacco cigarettes remains legal.

    At the same time, the Union Health Ministry has reportedly ruled that e-cigarettes are unacceptable in the light of what it sees as the findings of expert research concluding that these devices have cancer-causing properties, are highly addictive and do not offer a safer alternative to tobacco-based smoking products.

    However, some health experts argue that such a stance creates a paradox because the government is allowing the sale of ‘lethal’ tobacco cigarettes while banning a substantially less harmful alternative.

    Konstantinos E. Farsalinos, a research fellow at the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Centre in Athens, Greece, and a renowned expert on e-cigarettes, said that in his opinion banning these devices would be detrimental to the cause of public health. Farsalinos said such a ban would have adverse consequences because it would deprive Indian smokers of a substantially-less-harmful alternative to tobacco cigarettes.

    Meanwhile, R.N. Sharan, professor at North-Eastern Hill University in Shillong, Meghalaya, said banning e-cigarettes was a hasty decision that could be counter-productive because the extent of e-cigarette use or its harm in India were not known.

  • Standard the new norm

    Standard the new norm

    Standardized tobacco packaging has been adopted in eight countries and is under consideration in at least 15 others, according to the Framework Convention Alliance (FCA).

    In July, Norway joined Australia, France and the UK as countries that had implemented standardized-tobacco-pack regulations, the FCA said, while Hungary, Ireland, New Zealand and Slovenia had set dates for requiring cigarettes to be sold in such packs.

    Ireland was set to implement regulations at the end of this month, and, while Hungary’s law required cigarette manufacturers to use standardized packaging from May 20, 2018, any new brands launched after August 20, 2016, have been required to be sold in standardized packs.

    At the same time 15 other jurisdictions had taken formal steps toward requiring standardized tobacco packaging.

    The introduction of standardised tobacco packaging, the FCA said, comprised one of the recommendations within the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).

    Countries were said by the FCA to have committed to standardized packaging despite predictable, costly legal challenges from the tobacco industry.

    The Australian government, which, at the end of 2012, had become the first country to require standardized tobacco packaging, was said to have faced multiple lawsuits from Philip Morris: lawsuits brought both within the country and via an international investment agreement. The government won them all.

    And earlier this year it had been reported that the World Trade Organization had rejected a challenge to Australia’s law as an illegal barrier to trade. A final ruling was expected soon.

    In May last year, a UK High Court had rejected a tobacco industry lawsuit against standard packaging. The judge had found that the industry largely “ignores or airily dismisses the worldwide research and literature base which contradicts evidence tendered by the tobacco industry; and, is frequently unverifiable”.

  • Small packs opposed

    Small packs opposed

    The Malaysian Pharmaceutical Society (MPS) has come out strongly against a suggestion that a ban on the sale of cigarette packs containing fewer than 20 pieces should be lifted, according to a story in The Edge.

    The MPS said that lifting the ban, as proposed by the Malaysia Singapore Coffee Shop Proprietor’s General Association, would be a step backwards and would run counter to Malaysia’s efforts to reduce smoking among young people.

    The association believes that the restoration of smaller packs would go some way to reducing the country’s rampant illegal trade.

    In a statement, the MPS said Malaysia was committed to reducing smoking across the country’s population. Countries such as New Zealand, Singapore and Bhutan had introduced similar initiatives.

    ‘In light of the government’s efforts to reduce smoking across the nation, the restoration of the “kiddie pack” would be a step backwards and does not carry any benefit for the people or for the country,’ the MPS said.

    ‘As one of the key stakeholders in the efforts to reduce smoking in Malaysia, the MPS believes that efforts implemented by the government in 2006 to ban “kiddie packs” should be carried on and supported by all.’

    Meanwhile, the MPS said it hoped the Malaysian government would implement stricter laws on the illegal trade in cigarettes so that heftier penalties might be imposed on those involved in the supply chain.

    “Due to the lower sale price of illegal cigarettes, the number of underage smokers has in turn increased,” the MPS said.