The European Commission has said that it is aware of the limitations of currently available methods for the measurement of cigarette deliveries of tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide.
It said that this issue was carefully considered during the revision of the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) and that it was concluded there was insufficient evidence that would support the revision of the existing provisions.
The Commission was responding to a question that was based on a study by the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM). The RIVM researchers found that the amount of tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide delivered was at least twice as high as manufacturers claimed it was.
The Commission said the results presented recently by the RIVM were in line with the measurements conducted by Hammond et al. in 2006, which indicated that ‘none of the smoking regimens currently in use adequately “represent” human smoking behaviour and none are significantly associated with measures of nicotine uptake among human participants’.
‘As the Commission pointed out in its replies to written questions E-003557/2017 and E-001317/2018, Article 4(3) of TPD empowers the Commission to adopt delegated acts to adapt the measurement methods, based on scientific and technical developments or internationally agreed standards,’ the Commission said. ‘The Commission will report on the application of the TPD by 2021.’
Category: Regulation
Fictional deliveries
US public misinformed
The US public has become mostly unaware that smokeless tobacco is much less harmful than cigarettes, according to a story by David J. Hill for the University of Buffalo.
In 1986, Hill said, the US government passed legislation requiring a series of warnings for smokeless tobacco products, one of which advised “This product is not a safe alternative to cigarettes”.
That warning, however, obscured an important distinction – that cigarettes were much more harmful to health than were smokeless tobacco products.
And over the 30-plus years since, the US public had mostly been unaware that smokeless tobacco use is much less harmful than smoking cigarettes, Hill said, quoting one of the nation’s leading tobacco policy experts writing in a paper published recently in Harm Reduction Journal.
“It is important to distinguish between evidence that a product is ‘not safe’ and evidence that a product is ‘not safer’ than cigarettes or ‘just as harmful’ as cigarettes,” said the paper’s author Lynn Kozlowski, professor of community health and health behavior in the University at Buffalo’s School of Public Health and Health Professions.
“The process at the time of the establishment of official smokeless tobacco warnings in the 1980s paid no attention to this distinction,” Kozlowski adds. “The American public has become mostly unaware that smokeless tobacco is much less harmful than cigarettes.”
Kozlowski was quoted as saying that as long as cigarettes remained legal in the US, US consumers should be provided with proper information on the relative risks of tobacco/nicotine products that are ‘less lethal’ or otherwise less harmful than cigarettes. In addition, consumers should receive information on the ways in which a product causes harm, he said, adding that none should be viewed as harmless.Smoke control speed-linked
Nearly 90 percent of Chinese railways are subject to anti-smoking regulations, but enforcement remains poor, particularly on slower services, according to a China Daily story quoting the results of new research.
State and local tobacco control policies require that station waiting areas, platforms and train carriages are smoke free.
But compliance is far from satisfactory, according to research released on Monday by Yang Jie, deputy director of tobacco control for the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.Time for urgent action
The US’ National Tobacco Reform Initiative (NTRI) is calling on the Food and Drug Administration actively and expeditiously to pursue the course of action the agency announced in July 2017 ‘with respect to its proposed tobacco and nicotine regulatory framework that would focus on nicotine and support innovations to promote tobacco harm reduction based on the continuum of risk for nicotine-containing products’.
On July 28, 2017, the NTRI said, the FDA commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, and the director of the agency’s Center for Tobacco Products, Mitch Zeller, announced new policy directions on tobacco and nicotine that called for a ‘comprehensive regulatory plan’ that would accelerate efforts in winning the war against cigarette smoking.
In a letter to the commissioner on the one-year anniversary of his announcement, the public health leaders who are part of NTRI said that while they had seen progress during the past 50 plus years in respect of declining smoking prevalence, an estimated 32 million US adults still smoked cigarettes. ‘Cigarette smoking remains this nation’s leading cause of preventable disease and death, responsible for about 480,000 deaths each year and costing this country approximately $300 billion in health care costs and lost productivity,’ the NTRI said in a press note. ‘With so many lives on the line each year, there must be an urgency to take bold, visionary actions immediately to reduce the disease burden that smoking addiction inflicts on the health of Americans.
‘While the NTRI fully supports the FDA’s announced visionary initiatives, we are concerned that the FDA is/will become mired in overly bureaucratic processes that will delay taking necessary and obvious steps to protect the public’s health. While some attention is being focused on the priority to consider reducing nicotine levels in cigarettes, the other equally important priority to establish a more workable and flexible regulatory framework to regulate all tobacco and nicotine products based on their risks and relative risks (continuum of risk) is nowhere to be seen.’
“[I]f prudent product standards and reasonable guidelines for making truthful modified risk claims are not available before introducing a product standard for reducing nicotine’s addictiveness in combustible cigarettes, the opportunity to accelerate a mass-migration away from smoked tobacco products, relegating cigarettes to the ashtray of history, will be lost,” veteran tobacco and nicotine researcher and NTRI member, David B. Abrams, PhD, was quoted as saying. Abrams is a professor at the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, NYU College of Global Health, New York University.Support for prohibition
A quarter of US citizens would support making smoking illegal, according to a piece in the Brevard Times based on the results of a new Gallup Poll and relayed by the TMA.
This support is one percent higher than has been measured previously by Gallup.
The proposal has garnered between 11 percent and 24 percent support during the nearly three decades that Gallup has been tracking it.
Meanwhile, the Gallop poll, from a July 1-11 polling, found that 59 percent of people supported banning smoking in public places.
The poll has particular significance now because the US Department of Housing and Urban Development is preparing to enforce a smoking ban in all public housing across the country.
The Smoke-Free Public Housing Rule was finalized on December 5, 2016, and became effective on February 3, 2017.
All public housing associations must comply with the rule and implement smoke-free policies within 18 months of the effective date, no later than July 31, 2018.Tenants fight smoking ban
Tenants are challenging a Housing and Urban Development rule that requires local public housing authorities across the US to prohibit people from smoking in their homes, according to a story by Jacob Sullum for Reason magazine.
A policy that is scheduled to take effect on Monday prohibits smoking in and near public housing throughout the country, affecting 1.2 million households in units managed by about 3,300 local agencies.
Sullum quoted a 2016 Observer editorial, as saying the policy ‘may be the most far-reaching, intrusive and over-reaching executive order of the entire Obama administration’.
In a lawsuit filed yesterday, six smokers who live in public housing argue that the ban violates their rights, exceeds the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s statutory authority, cannot be justified as a regulation of interstate commerce, and unconstitutionally commandeers state and local officials by ordering them to carry out federal policy.
The smoking ban, which covers low-income housing that is federally subsidized but owned and operated by local public housing authorities, applies to living units as well as common areas and extends to a zone 25 feet around each building.A cautionary tale
The New Nicotine Alliance (UK) has welcomed ‘the bold vision’ a UK MP in highlighting the increased role that tobacco harm reduction could play in the future of tobacco control policy.
In a press note issued on Friday, the Alliance said that, in a debate on the Government’s Tobacco Control Plan in the House of Commons on July 19, Sir Kevin Barron had highlighted the gulf between the UK and Ireland, two countries with identical traditional tobacco control policies but with differing approaches to electronic cigarettes. Between 2012 and 2016, smoking had dropped by nearly a quarter in the UK, while in Ireland, where e-cigarettes were viewed with suspicion, the smoking rate had risen.
‘Sir Kevin, who has 20 years’ experience of government policy surrounding tobacco, suggested that a “proper harm reduction strategy” which further welcomed the advent of innovative nicotine delivery products could deliver significant further benefits to public health in the UK,’ the press note said.
‘The NNA applauds Sir Kevin’s bold vision of the increased role that tobacco harm reduction could play in the future of tobacco control policy and calls on Under-Parliamentary Secretary of State, Steve Brine, to be less cautious and to commit to promoting a better understanding of risk-reduced products amongst health authorities under his charge.’
“E-cigarettes are a proven safer alternative to smoking and the UK boasts 1.5 million former smokers who have converted from combustible tobacco to exclusively vaping instead,” said NNA chair Sarah Jakes (pictured). “Sir Kevin’s comments are most welcome, but it is continually disappointing that Steve Brine is reluctant to recognise the part that recreational use of these products can play. Instead of adhering to a goal of total nicotine abstinence, it would be better to install policies which would encourage long-term use of alternatives.
“As mentioned during the debate, many smokers genuinely enjoy smoking and view giving up smoking as giving up on an enjoyable part of their life. Devices that can deliver the nicotine they enjoy without the harm of combustible tobacco are a perfect solution for huge numbers of people. Government should be more understanding of the pleasure that nicotine can deliver and of the reasons that current smokers continue to smoke.
“Pleasure should not be a dirty word when it comes to nicotine, just as it isn’t when talking about a pint in the pub or a welcome coffee in the morning. It is the combustion of tobacco which causes the harm, and if smokers are more confident in trying reduced-risk products, there will be even more future public health successes, like the ones highlighted by Sir Kevin yesterday [July 19].
“The UK is regarded worldwide as a global leader in tobacco harm reduction and the results speak for themselves, therefore we hope that Mr Brine will show more leadership, and less caution, towards safer nicotine products to better enable him to achieve the ambitious targets that he has set in the government’s Tobacco Control Plan.”US using child labor
In the US, where people under 18 are barred from buying tobacco and vapor products, children as young as seven are hired to work on tobacco farms, according to a National Public Radio story relayed by the TMA.
Melissa Bailey Castillo, outreach co-ordinator at the Kinston Community Health Center in North Carolina, was quoted as saying that during the tobacco harvest season, some small farms in the state hired children as young as seven because the Fair Labor Standards Act, which governs child labor, made exceptions for small farms.
The Act allows big farms to hire children as young as 12.
According to a 2013 study conducted by Human Rights Watch, growers say they need the extra labor during the harvest season, while children from rural North Carolina say they must work to help support their families.
However, Castillo said loose federal regulations and tobacco industry policies had made the children vulnerable to the health risks from nicotine and pesticide exposure.
“Either your neighbor owns a farm, or a relative owns a farm,” Castillo was quoted as saying. “Tobacco obviously is part of that heritage, and kids have been working in it, farmers will tell you, for generations.”
The federal Government has acknowledged the health risks of tobacco farming, but it is still legal for children aged 12, with parental permission, to work on a tobacco farm of any size.
And there was no minimum age for children to work on small tobacco farms or family farms.
Tobacco is North Carolina’s most valuable crop, generating about $725 million in 2017.Don't say a word
The UK Government has said it will take Philip Morris to court unless it stops illegally targeting UK consumers with tobacco adverts, according to a story by Katie Morley for the Electronic Telegraph.
Earlier this week the Department of Health reportedly sent a formal order to Phillip Morris telling it to remove poster adverts for ‘healthier’ tobacco products from shops around the UK.
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, the public health minister, Steve Brine, warned that the department was prepared to take legal action against Phillip Morris to protect UK consumers from being targeted by the adverts.
Advertising tobacco can result in a financial penalty or custodial sentence of up to six months.
Phillip Morris denies the adverts are illegal and says it wants to help smokers by providing them with better tobacco alternatives.Smoking ban passed
Japan’s Diet yesterday passed an amendment that will ban smoking in public facilities, according to a story by Tomohiro Osaki for the Japan Times.
The ban will be implemented in stages, coming into full force by April 2020, just ahead of the staging in Tokyo of the 2O20 Summer Olympics, which are due to start in July of that year.
The revision to the Health Promotion Law has been watered down from the health ministry’s original proposal, falling short of a comprehensive smoking ban in restaurants and bars.
Under the updated law, an estimated 55 percent of eateries nation-wide will end up being exempt.
This has prompted criticism from some quarters that though the amendment is a step forward, it is a far cry from the anti-smoking ordinance adopted by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government last month, which is expected to make more than 80 percent of eateries across the capital effectively smoke-free.
The revised national law will make smoking in some designated institutions illegal for the first time, penalizing non-compliant operators and smokers with fines of up to ¥500,000 and ¥300,000, respectively.
The measure, according to the health ministry, is expected to raise the World Health Organization’s grading of Japan’s anti-smoking efforts by one rank – to the second-lowest level.
The Times story reported that the amendment had been watered down after facing fierce resistance from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and industry groups. Japan had long been soft on smoking due largely to vested interests and pork-barrel politics, a system in which the tobacco industry had thrived, it said. Even corporate giant Japan Tobacco Inc. was partially owned by the finance ministry.
The amendment makes the premises of public institutions such as schools, hospitals and municipal offices non-smoking. That is, smoking will be prohibited both indoors and outdoors in principle, though smoking spaces may be set up outside those buildings.
A less rigorous measure will apply to other public facilities, including restaurants and bars, where only indoor smoking will be outlawed. But even inside, smoking will be allowed in segregated, well-ventilated rooms, where no drinking or eating will be permitted.
Smaller restaurants will be exempt altogether.
People under the age of 20 will be prohibited from entering these establishments.
Newly established bars and restaurants will be obliged to ban smoking, regardless of size.
Under the amendment, users of heat-not-burn devices will be allowed to dine and drink in ventilated smoking rooms.
