Category: Regulation

Taxing smokers
ASEAN governments should try to make their tobacco tax policies more effective, not only for the health of smokers but also for the health of their revenues, according to a story in Vietnam News.
This recommendation was issued recently in a report by the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA).
SEATCA based its recommendation on a tobacco tax index that was made public during a regional workshop on strengthening tobacco tax administration.
The workshop was held in Siem Reap, Cambodia, and attended by tobacco tax experts from ASEAN countries, including Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.
The index tracked the ‘progress’ of tobacco tax policies against Article 6 of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
It showed that while some countries had made what was called significant progress in formulating and implementing tobacco tax policies, the region had advanced at a slow pace in the past few years, and had been outpaced by economic and income growth.
According to the index, cigarettes are becoming more affordable in ASEAN countries.
Thailand imposes the highest tax burden as a percentage of retail price, 70 percent, Singapore imposes 66.2 percent, Brunei 62 percent, Cambodia 25-31.1 percent, and Laos 16-19.7 percent.
Sophapan Ratanachena, SEATCA’s tobacco tax program manager, said most ASEAN countries had no long-term tobacco tax policies with regularly adjusted fiscal and public health targets.
“The major obstacles in some countries are the ineffective tobacco tax structures, such as Indonesia’s multi-tiered system or those with purely ad valorem tax systems, weak tax administration and tobacco industry interference to weaken tax policy or reduce tax collection efforts,” Ratanachena said.
Based on international guidelines, SEATCA urged ASEAN governments to implement long-term tobacco tax policies that included public health targets, to apply a uniform specific tax system or a mixed system with a minimum specific tax floor, and to tax all tobacco products in a comparable way.
SEATCA recommended that governments should ask tobacco companies to submit periodically detailed financial reports, to establish a tracking and tracing system, including fiscal markings with a unique identifier, to reduce the risk and assist in the investigation of the illegal trade in tobacco products; and to forgo tax-free or duty-free tobacco sales.
It recommended that governments should implement a code of conduct for all government ministries and officials that prohibits unnecessary interaction with the industry.
July 26, 2017
Setback for vapor products
In a 93-page ruling, US district judge Amy Berman Jackson has upheld the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to regulate vapor devices and cigars in the way that cigarettes are regulated, according to a story in the Washington Post relayed by the TMA.
Jackson concluded the agency had “acted within the scope of its statutory authority”.
She rejected arguments by Nicopure Labs and the Right to be Smoke-Free Coalition, which includes the American Vaping Association, vapor companies and trade groups, that said the FDA’s creation of the Deeming Rules exceeded its authority and violated the Administrative Procedure Act.
Under the FDA rule, she said, vapor manufacturers “are now required to tell the 30 million people who use the devices what is actually in the liquid being vaporized and inhaled”.
“We are still reviewing judge Jackson’s opinion,” said Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Association. “The legal and legislative processes are both long roads with plenty of bumps along the way. The fight to save vaping is far from over.”
Attorney Azim Chowdhury, representing the Right to be Smoke-Free Coalition, said in a tweet that they were considering appeal options.
July 25, 2017
An education in smoking
A school in Australia is permitting students as young as 15 to have a smoking break at lunch and other recess periods, according to an independent.co.uk story.
Carolyn Blanden, principal at The Warakirri College in Sydney, said she believed that relaxed rules would encourage the students to keep attending school.
“At my school, you can come with bright blue hair and metal in your face,” Blanden told Australia’s Daily Telegraph.
“And if you need to have a smoke, that’s OK too.”
Blanden said she would rather her students smoked cigarettes, with all the health risks that involved, than have them “floating around the streets or in detention”.
The principal has previously worked at fee-paying private schools but says her current job is the “most rewarding work I think I’ve ever done”.
Many of the school’s students are from broken homes, with many of their parents either in jail or battling drug addiction.
Under Wreaker’s curriculum, students can study three subjects per year rather than six for two years.
The school is said to be similar to an adult learning environment, with no fees or uniforms. There is a gym and students are allowed to leave the campus grounds when not in class.
Many of the children who graduated Year 10 (age 14-16) in 2016 were the first in their families to achieve a Record of School Achievement
July 25, 2017
Hard times for smokers
Already an ‘endangered species’ in the public realm, life will get even more difficult for smokers if Israel’s Health Minister Rabbi Yaakov Litzman has his way, according to a story by Dror Halavy for Hamodia.
Litzman is said to be seeking to impose more restrictions on smokers, including banning tobacco smoking from places where it is currently permitted, increasing taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products, and imposing bigger fines on people who smoke where smoking is banned.
Smoking in public was banned nearly a decade ago, with smokers restricted to specific areas of restaurants, bus stations, places of entertainment, banks, malls and offices.
Under current rules, the proprietors of establishments that choose to allocate spaces for smokers must ensure that no second-hand smoke escapes to bother non-smokers.
Setting up such spaces is not mandatory, and many businesses and offices ban smoking on their premises altogether.
The new regulations proposed by Litzman would ban such smoking areas, and that ban would apply also to open-air venues, such as stadiums.
Smoking outdoors would be banned within 10 meters from the entrance to a building.
Under Litzman’s proposals, more inspectors would be hired to ensure that no smoking takes place in hospitals, or government and public institutions, and fines for violating smoking bans would be increased.
In addition, tobacco companies that advertise their products in newspapers or online (advertising in broadcast media was banned more than a decade ago) would be required to place public notices of the same size pointing out the dangers of smoking.
Also banned would be toys or food that resemble tobacco products (such as candy cigarettes or cigars), and companies would be banned from distributing free cigarettes.
Halavy’s story is at: http://hamodia.com/2017/07/23/new-rules-make-life-even-harder-smokers/.
July 24, 2017
Itching to fine smokers
Cambodia is among the highest achieving countries in the Western Pacific Region in respect of having in place laws to protect people from tobacco smoke, according to a story in The Phnom Penh Post citing the World Health Organization (WHO) Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic.
Where the country falls down is in respect of enforcing those laws. The Post’s story quoted an official at the National Centre for Health Promotion (NCHP) as saying that no fines had been issued for violations of tobacco regulations.
Mom Kong, executive director of the Cambodia Movement for Health, said the government had been gradually implementing provisions of the 2015 Law on Tobacco Control and a 2016 sub-decree prohibiting smoking in public places.
But he said it was time to move beyond dissemination and education and into enforcement.
“I think it’s time for the government to take another step,” he said. “Everyone wants to see the violators get fined.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Yel Daravuth, who heads the WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative in Cambodia, said compliance with regulations governing graphic health warnings on cigarette packs had reached 70 percent, not 100 percent.
“We want to see the fines take place soon so [the regulations] can be more effective,” he said.
Ray Rany, head of the tobacco and health office at the NCHP, acknowledged that no fines had yet been issued.
“I can’t tell exactly when the fining will take place,” she said. “But it could be soon.”
July 21, 2017
2045 smoke-free target
Malaysia believes that it will be able to become smoke-free by 2045 through the implementation of anti-smoking initiatives and co-operation with other ASEAN countries, according to a story in The Sun Daily.
The Sun quoted the Deputy Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr. Hilmi Yahaya as saying that strategies being drawn up included ‘intensifying health promotion efforts in a comprehensive manner’.
“Cigarettes or tobacco are the biggest threat and main risk factor for non-communicable diseases, which contribute to more than half a million deaths in the ASEAN region each year,” Hilmi said.
“That is why Malaysia together with other ASEAN countries wish to co-operate and share views towards creating smoke-free nations. I believe Malaysia will be able to reach the target by 2045.”
Hilmi was speaking in George Town after opening the Regional Smoke-Free Cities Workshop and The Summit of Smoke-Free Leaders.
He was joined by the South-East Asia Tobacco Control Alliance chairman, Dr. Siriwat Tiptaradol, and the Malaysian Health Promotion Board chairman, Tan Sri Dr. Mohd Nasir Mohd Ashraf.
Hilmi said the Health Ministry aimed to reduce the number of smokers in Malaysia to 15 percent by 2025 and to less than five percent by 2045, in line with the target of becoming a smoke-free nation.
The deputy minister said the government had undertaken various initiatives such as raising the excise duty on cigarettes and requiring graphic health warnings on cigarette packs.
The government was making available free services at 944 quit-smoking clinics, through which 2,973 smokers, or 27.6 percent of the 10,791 smokers who had sought advice and counselling, had managed to quit smoking.
July 21, 2017
You can’t please everybody
A smokers’ group has criticised the targets set by the UK government in its new Tobacco Control Plan (TCP) and called on ministers to consult consumers before introducing any further measures.
According to the Department of Health, the objectives of the TCP are, by 2022, to:
- reduce the number of 15-year-olds who regularly smoke from eight percent to three percent or less;
- reduce smoking among adults in England from 15.5 percent to 12 percent or less;
- reduce the inequality gap in smoking prevalence, between those in routine and manual occupations and the general population; and
- reduce the prevalence of smoking in pregnancy from 10.5 percent to six percent or less.
“Setting targets encourages punitive measures,” said Simon Clark (pictured), director of the smokers’ group Forest. “The best tobacco control plan puts education and choice ahead of prohibition and coercion.”
Commenting on the commitment to extend smoking bans to all hospitals, mental health facilities and prisons, Clark said that in the 21st century tobacco control policies should focus on harm reduction products, not on prohibition and other restrictive practises.
“E-cigarettes and other harm reduction products are a game-changer because they offer consumers a pleasurable yet safer alternative to smoking,” he said.
“If however adults choose to smoke that is their right and it must be respected. Denormalising or punishing smokers is unacceptable.
“The most important stakeholder is the consumer yet they are routinely ignored by government. Ministers should stop lecturing smokers and engage with them.”
Meanwhile, the TCP report, Towards a smoke-free generation: a tobacco control plan for England, has been welcomed by the UK Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA), which says that it provides two key measures relevant to vaping:
- Public Health England will update their evidence report on e-cigarettes annually until the end of the Parliament in 2022 and will include messages about the relative safety of e-cigarettes within quit smoking campaigns; and
- the government will review where the UK’s exit from the EU offers opportunities to review current regulation to identify where the UK can sensibly deregulate [and] will assess recent legislation such as the Tobacco Products Directive, including as it applies to e-cigarettes.
In welcoming the TCP, Doug Mutter, a UKVIA board member and head of manufacturing & compliance at Vaporized, said the TCP contained welcome measures that the UKVIA had been calling for.
“Public Health England has stated vaping is at least 95 percent less harmful than smoking, and it is about time we made this clear to smokers,” said Mutter. “That’s why we are particularly pleased to see the commitment that from now on this will be highlighted as part of Public Health England’s anti-smoking campaigns, a missed opportunity to date.
“We also welcome the plan’s commitment to relook at the EU Tobacco Product Directive, and its impact on vaping products. The contradictory situation where vaping products are treated like tobacco, though they contain none, cannot continue.
“The UKVIA will be pushing government to turn these words into action. Britain is a world-leader in health policy, and it is about time we had regulations that reflect our country’s own public health priorities.”
The TCP report is at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/629455/Towards_a_Smoke_free_Generation_-_A_Tobacco_Control_Plan_for_England_2017-2022.pdf.
July 19, 2017
Plea for common sense
The Scottish Prison Service has been urged to put ‘common sense’ ahead of ‘anti-smoking politics’ and abandon plans to make Scotland’s prisons smoke free.
“The risks of second-hand smoke have been greatly exaggerated,” said Simon Clark, director of the smokers’ group Forest. “Allowing inmates to smoke in their cells poses no significant risk to prison officers.
“On the other hand, banning smoking in prisons risks inflaming a tense and sometimes violent environment.
“Tobacco is an important currency in prison. The removal of one of the few privileges inmates are allowed could also fuel the use of illicit substances.
“Prison inmates don’t have a right to smoke but issues like this require a pragmatic response that puts common sense ahead of doctrinaire anti-smoking politics.”
July 19, 2017
Casino risk lottery ending
Macau’s Legislative Assembly on Friday approved a revised bill on tobacco smoking that will require the ‘very-important-people’ areas of the city’s more than 30 gambling establishments to set up smoking lounges, according to a story in World Casino News quoting the GGRAsia news agency.
The background to the story is that, in October 2014, the government of Macau banned smoking on ‘mass-market’ casino floors as part of regulations that provided for the establishment of fully-enclosed and games-free smoking lounges.
These smoking restrictions did not apply to those parts of gambling establishments that were reserved for so-called ‘very important people’.
But Macau’s newly amended Regime on Tobacco Prevention and Control, which, it was reported, is due to come into effect on January 1, is said to give the city’s casinos one year to install smoking lounges, absent of gaming facilities, in their very-important-people areas.
Under the regulations, all the smoking lounges in the city’s casinos will be required to conform to enhanced technical standards, which will be determined by the government in a separate executive order.
The news agency reported Macau Health Bureau data as having indicated that, in the first half of 2017, 328 people had been fined for smoking in unauthorized areas inside Macau’s casinos.
Of those fined, 83.5 percent were reportedly tourists.
July 18, 2017
Quit-services remote
The Japanese health ministry has approved a rule change that allows doctors to treat remotely, through smartphones or personal computers, patients who wish to quit smoking, according to a story in Japan Today.
The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry has informed all 47 prefectures of the change, which took effect on Friday.
Under normal circumstances, the Medical Practitioners Act requires that initial examinations must be carried out face-to-face before treatment can begin.
But, under the change, no initial face-to-face examination is required in the case of a person seeking treatment to stop smoking, as long as the person undergoes regular medical check-ups.
Under the change, also, people will not have to see a doctor before getting a new prescription for drugs to stop smoking.
The ministry has approved doctors and smoking cessation patients communicating through emails, social network services, videophones, smartphones and personal computers, officials said.
National health insurance does not cover telemedicine consultations and treatment, but the ministry has said that it will ask the appropriate advisory panel to study the matter, the officials added.
July 17, 2017