Australians in prison need better support than they are currently getting to help them quit smoking tobacco and improve their long-term health, according to a story on theconversation.com. They deserve the same quitting services as those available in the community.
Smoking has been banned in all prisons in Queensland, the Northern Territory, Tasmania, Victoria, and New South Wales since 2015. South Australia is due to introduce such a ban in 2019, while smoking is still permitted in prison cells in Western Australia and the Australian Capital Territory.
The Conversation story said that smoking bans had been well received by most Australian prisoners, with most saying they wanted to stay off cigarettes.
However, besides making nicotine lozenges available for purchase (and patches before that), Australian prison or health authorities had not implemented any formal program to help people in prison quit smoking, or to stay off cigarettes when they were released.
The story said that about 74 percent of people entering the prison system were smokers. This was partly because groups who smoked at higher rates in the community – such as people who were financially poor and disadvantaged, who identified as Indigenous, or who experienced mental-health or substance-use disorders – were all overrepresented in prisons.
But despite not having access to regular cigarettes while incarcerated, 94 percent of former prisoners resumed the habit on release, and many went on to develop smoking-related illnesses.
Simply providing nicotine lozenges wasn’t enough to change the entrenched behaviour of long-term smokers.
Tag: Australia
Prison isn't working
Nothing new there then
With the Australian federal and Victorian state elections in sight, this week a coalition of twenty-four public health and medical organisations have called for the virtual elimination of tobacco smoking by 2025, according to a story by Terry Barnes on spectator.com.au.
Barnes, who is a fellow of the UK Institute of Economic Affairs, with a special interest in ‘nanny state regulation’, was scathing about the strategy outlined for achieving this goal, particularly the absence of any mention of the use of modern, reduced-risk products.
He said that all that was on offer to achieve the ‘do-good’ manifesto’s aims were five ideas that amounted to more of the same of the past four decades.
‘There is no recognition in this election-motivated manifesto that there are new technological weapons capable of disrupting the traditional cigarette and tobacco market, helping smokers to reduce or quit, and of leading to the sorts of real reductions in the number of lives to smoking the Pooh-Bah bullies dream of but, because of their arrogant bone-headedness, can never achieve,’ Barnes said.Missing even a no-brainer
The debate about whether to legalize electronic cigarettes in Australia is unfolding all over again, according to a story by Luke Grant for 4bc.com.au.
Grant said that a recent report suggested the push for e-cigarettes was coming from tobacco companies that were eager to lure another demographic into their market. ‘On this reasoning, vaping is presented as being a “gateway” activity,’ Grant said. ‘It supposedly leads or prompts consumers towards conventional smoking products.’
But Dr. Attila Danko, the medical director of Nicovape and the former president of the New Nicotine Alliance, Australia, was quoted as saying this was not the case.
“If it was true that e-cigarettes were a massive gateway to children becoming addicted, I wouldn’t be on the side of legalizing it,” Danko said.
“But the truth is, the use among young people is mostly experimental. They have found that teenagers who tried e-cigarettes also tried smoking. They’ve said that because they tried e-cigarettes and then they tried smoking, the e-cigarettes must have led to the smoking. But it’s just not the case.”
Danko said he could not understand the resistance around legalizing e-cigarettes, given that, comparatively, vaping was far less dangerous [than was smoking].
“The Royal College of Physicians, which has to be one of the most authoritative medical bodies in the world; they did one of the most extensive studies on the whole field, looking at all the research,” Danko said.
“They concluded that vaping almost certainly represents less than five percent of the risk of smoking.
“It’s just a no-brainer. Why would you allow the most harmful product to be freely sold everywhere and ban the far safer product?”$10,000 fine for quit attempt
Health authorities in Queensland, Australia, are targeting people who vape as an alternative to smoking tobacco, according to a story by Helen Spelitis for the Queensland Times.
Spelitis said that threatening letters sent out by Queensland Health had stated that products had been seized at the border, and had warned that importing liquid containing nicotine could attract a $10,000 fine.
In Queensland, nicotine liquid is considered to be a poison and only those with a prescription, or licence, are legally entitled to possess the product.
Associate Professor in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of New South Wales, Dr. Colin Mendelsohn, is scathing about the Queensland Health approach.
He said vaping using nicotine liquid was an important tool for people to quit smoking more harmful tobacco and the products should be made available to encourage people to give up smoking.
“People who are trying to quit smoking are being frightened by Queensland Health,” said Mendelsohn, who is chairman of the charity, Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association, and a prominent campaigner on the issue.
“Vaping is a life-saving harm reduction option for people who are addicted and can’t quit.”
Mendelsohn added that combustible tobacco, not nicotine, was the enemy.
“I have seen so many people unable to quit and repeatedly come back,” he said. “They’ve tried the Champix, they’ve tried patches and nothing works. This works.
“If you can help a person quit smoking that’s the most important health intervention they’ll ever have in your life.”
Meanwhile, a Queensland Health spokesperson was quoted as saying that e-cigarettes presented a risk and could encourage people, particularly young people, to take up smoking; or could make smoking appear more socially acceptable.
“People seeking to access unapproved products containing liquid nicotine for therapeutic use can only do so under the Special Access Scheme or the Personal Importation Scheme of the Therapeutic Goods Administration,” the spokesperson said.
“Under these schemes, the prescribing doctor would need to follow requirements prescribed by the Therapeutic Goods Administration.”
Queensland Health’s concerns are shared by Australia’s major medical body, the Australian Medical Association.
AMA President Dr. Tony Bartone said electronic cigarettes had the potential to normalise smoking without addressing the issue that “tobacco smoking has significant health consequences”.Blind faith in warnings
Reports in Australia based on a study published in the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) raise some interesting questions about smokers’ thinking; or perhaps about the way that anti-tobacco operatives think that smokers think.
According to a story by Tegan Taylor for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the MJA study asked 1,800 Australians about whether they thought smoking increased the risk of 23 conditions shown to be associated with tobacco use, such as lung cancer, stroke and diabetes.
While more than eight in 10 participants knew lung, throat and mouth cancers, heart disease and emphysema were linked to smoking, a much smaller proportion were aware it was associated with erectile dysfunction, female infertility, diabetes and liver cancer.
Dr. Michelle Scollo of Cancer Council Victoria, which ran the study, was quoted as saying the results of the study showed the current warning labels were doing their job, and that it might be time to expand them.
“It was predictable and pleasing that smokers knew about the health effects that have been highlighted in the current sets of warnings and media campaigns,” Scollo said.
But this seemed not to be the case entirely. According to the story, which was illustrated – perhaps ironically – with a huge picture apparently of a Department of Health and Ageing mock-up of a cigarette pack showing a current graphic health warning in which somebody’s eye was being held open with a metal instrument and that bore above the picture the legend: SMOKING CAUSES BLINDNESS, blindness was one of conditions people were least likely to associate with an increased risk caused by smoking.
Scollo went on to say that fewer than half of the people who responded to the study realised smoking could reduce fertility, something that could have a major impact on the course of people’s lives. “There’s a lot that people need to appreciate,” she was quoted as saying.
The current set of graphic warning labels have been in place since 2012 and Scollo hopes the results of the study will lead to an expanded campaign including new graphic warning labels, showing more of smoking’s health risks.
“People need continuous reminders of these sort of things if they’re going to remember them but I don’t see why we need to be limited to just 14 warnings,” she said.
“I think we need as many warnings as we need to adequately warn people about the risks they face.”WTO appeal likely
An appeal is expected to be made by one or more of the complainants that referred Australia to the World Trade Organization (WTO) over the country’s introduction of plain tobacco packaging, according to Professor Tania Voon of the Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne.
It has been widely reported, including here, that the WTO recently ruled in favor of Australia.
In a lengthy piece on the Intellectual Property Watch website, Voon said that scholars and professionals in intellectual property, trade and public health were likely to be digesting the 900-odd page WTO Panel Reports in Australia – Tobacco Plain Packaging, circulated on June 28, for some time.
‘An appeal by one or more of the complainants (Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Indonesia) is expected, to be launched between 20 and 60 days after circulation, in accordance with the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU, Art 16),’ she said.
‘Although Australia won the dispute in its entirety, the country could also choose to appeal certain intermediate findings of the Panel, such as its interpretation or application of particular WTO provisions.’
Voon went on to say that, in theory, an appeal would take an additional 90 days, but that the duration of appeals had been significantly higher in recent years, especially in more complex cases. And Australia – Tobacco Plain Packaging was a highly complex case, involving record numbers of third parties (e.g. 38 in the complaint brought by Honduras) and voluminous evidence presented on both sides (e.g. as summarised in the 150-page Appendices to the Panel Report).
Voon’s piece goes on to give details of the Panel’s decisions and the reasons behind those decisions.Plain-packs defense costly
The Australian Government spent nearly $39 million over six years defending its standardized-tobacco-packaging laws against Philip Morris Asia (PMA), according to a story in The Guardian quoting freedom of information documents.
The documents indicate the figure, $38,984,942.97, is the total amount invoiced to the Department of Health by ‘external service providers’, related to the bilateral-investment treaty dispute between Australia and PMA for the financial year 2011-12 through to October 2016.
The department was quoted as saying that some of that amount might not relate solely to the PMA dispute, because some service providers had worked on that dispute and other standardized-tobacco-packaging litigation matters, and invoices for their work had not been disaggregated.
However, that figure had been provided as the ‘grand total’ amount after a two-year freedom of information battle by former senator Nick Xenophon and his former staffer, now Centre Alliance senator, Rex Patrick.
Patrick was quoted as saying that he had been blown away by the “mammoth cost” to taxpayers of the legal fight.
“This is exactly why Australia must stop signing up to free trade agreements with these insidious ISDS [Investor-State Dispute Settlement] provisions in them,” he said.
“I accept the government had to defend the matter, but if we hadn’t signed up to the Hong Kong agreement with ISDS provisions in it then there would not have been a tribunal hearing. Imagine what health outcomes could have been achieved with that $39 million.”
The Guardian story said that Philip Morris had taken its case to the permanent court of arbitration in 2012, using an ISDS clause in a 1993 Hong Kong-Australia trade deal.
The Guardian story looks also at ISDS issues related to the 11-country (including Australia) Trans-Pacific Partnership.Listen to me, I'm an expert
Most Australians want electronic cigarettes legalized, according to the results of a recent survey, but the Government and anti-smoking advocates claim the devices might pose health risks, according to a story by Callum Godde for news.com.au.
The Australian Retail Association (ARA) poll, conducted by the Crosby Textor Group, shows 61 percent of 1,200 adults backed a move towards legalizing e-cigarettes or vaporisers.
ARA executive director Russell Zimmerman called on the federal Government to follow the lead of the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand by opening the market.
“More and more Australians are buying personal vaporisers with nicotine online from overseas, simply because they can’t buy them locally,” Mr Zimmerman said in a statement yesterday.
“The government needs to act so that responsible local retailers can compete on a level playing field and sell less harmful products for Australians trying to change their habits.”
Godde said the Cancer Council was ‘sceptical of the survey,’ suggesting the ARA results were ‘motivated by self-interest’.
The Council apparently urged power brokers not to be swayed by lobbyists.
“Public health policy decisions aren’t based on opinion polls,” tobacco issues committee chair Paul Grogan told AAP in a statement.
“Cancer Council supports the National Health and Medical Research Council’s ongoing independent review of the risks and potential benefits of e-cigarettes and the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s role in independently assessing any therapeutic benefit.”E-liquids – the reality
The effectiveness of Australia’s vaping laws is being thrown into question with data showing illicit nicotine is making its way into retail stores, according to a story by Flint Duxfield for mobile.abc.net.au.
Data from the New South Wales Department of Health suggests people could be unwittingly buying e-liquids containing nicotine, even though it is illegal to sell such liquids in Australia.
In testing conducted since 2015, the Department found that 63 percent of e-liquids labeled as nicotine-free contained nicotine.
The Department was unable to provide a breakdown of the concentrations of the nicotine, but of the testing it conducted of all e-liquids, about half contained between 3 mg/ml and 20 mg/ml. [20 mg/ml is the maximum strength allowed under the EU’s Tobacco Products Directive]
While it is legal to buy liquid nicotine from overseas for personal use in all states except Queensland, the sale of e-liquids containing nicotine is illegal across Australia.
However, official figures show that NSW retailers stock nicotine-containing e-liquids.
From November 2015 to April 2018, NSW health inspectors visited 227 retailers selling e-liquids. More than 40 per cent of those retailers were found to be selling products that contained nicotine.
Of the other state health departments contacted, Western Australia’s agreed that e-liquid labeling was an issue but could not provide any details.Tax rises not working
Australia is one of the most expensive countries in which to buy cigarettes, with retail prices set to reach nearly A$40 for a 30-piece pack after this year’s Budget, according to a Nova Network story quoting the federal Treasurer Scott Morrison.
September 1 is scheduled to see the imposition of the second of four planned, consecutive 12.5 percent tobacco excise increases.
The September increase will see the price of a 30-piece pack of cigarettes increase by about A$3. When the first of the increase was imposed last year, the price of a pack of 30 Winfield Blues rose from A$32.50 to A$35.20.
But it seems that high prices do little to convince smokers to quit.
According to the Nova Network story, Australia saw an 0.2 percent drop in smokers during a recent three-year period, which saw also cigarettes being sold in standardized packs.
Meanwhile, a Channel 7 News story had it that the number of people giving up smoking in Australia had slowed in recent years despite the country’s having the highest-priced cigarettes in the world.
England, the US, Canada, Norway and Iceland were said to be among a long list of western countries that were seeing their citizens kick the habit at a faster rate.
The Channel 7 story quoted Colin Mendelsohn, a tobacco treatment specialist and associate professor in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of New South Wales, as saying that “high prices simply aren’t working anymore”.
