Tag: Germany

  • Usual suspects support ban

    Usual suspects support ban

    Sixty-nine percent of Germans are in favor of a ban on tobacco advertising, according to a Xinhua News Agency story citing the results of a survey conducted by the German opinion research institute Forsa and published yesterday.

    Out of 1,003 respondents, 27 percent were opposed to a ban on tobacco advertisements.

    Banning alcohol advertising was supported by 58 percent of respondents and opposed by 36 percent.

    Tobacco advertising has been banned from radio, television, newspapers and magazines since 2016.

    But politicians from the governing conservative CDU/CSU alliance and those from its coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party, are planning to extend the ban.

    Opposition to banning tobacco advertisements has come from some German politicians and the tobacco industry.

    Several politicians, such as former CDU/CSU parliamentary group leader Volker Kauder wants to limit the scope of the ban.

    In November, the German Cigarette Association (DZV) argued that tobacco advertising would not ‘lead to more people starting smoking or fewer consumers give up smoking’.

    But it warned that a ban on tobacco advertising would have a ‘significant signal effect and would cause domino effects’ in other sectors, such as alcohol, spirits or food. ‘Commercial communication for a legally manufactured and distributed product would be switched off’ for the first time in Germany, it added.

    Official 2017 figures from the German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) showed that 22.4 percent of German citizens smoked regularly or occasionally, while 77.6 percent had never smoked or had quit.

  • Advertising under attack

    Advertising under attack

    The more adolescents say they have seen advertisements for electronic cigarettes, the more often they vape e-cigarettes and smoke tobacco cigarettes, according to a press note from the European Lung Association based on a study published in ERJ Open Research. The press note was published at eurekalert.org.
    The study was conducted in Germany, where regulations around tobacco and e-cigarettes advertising are less restrictive than in other parts of Europe.
    “The World Health Organization recommends a comprehensive ban on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship in its Framework Convention on Tobacco Control,” Dr. Julia Hansen, a senior researcher at the Institute for Therapy and Health Research (IFT-Nord), Kiel, Germany, was quoted as saying. “Despite this, in Germany, tobacco and e-cigarettes can still be advertised in shops, on billboards and in cinemas after 6pm. Elsewhere, although tobacco advertising may be banned, the regulations on advertising e-cigarettes are more variable. We wanted to investigate the impact that advertising might be having on young people.”
    The researchers asked 6,902 pupils from schools in six German states to fill in anonymous questionnaires. They were aged between 10 and 18 years of age, with an average age of 13. They were asked about their lifestyle, including diet, exercise, smoking and use of e-cigarettes. They were also asked about their socioeconomic status and school performance.
    The pupils were presented with pictures of real e-cigarette advertisements with brand names removed and asked how often they had seen each one.
    Overall 39 percent of the pupils said they had seen the advertisements. And those who said they had seen the advertisements were found to be 2.3 times more likely to say that they used e-cigarettes and 40 percent more likely to say that they smoked tobacco cigarettes [presumably, than those who said they hadn’t seen the advertisements].
    The results were said to have suggested also a correlation between seeing more advertisements and using e-cigarettes and smoking tobacco cigarettes more often.
    Other factors such as age, sensation-seeking tendency, the type of school the teenagers attended and having a friend who smoked were also all linked to the likelihood of using e-cigarettes and smoking.
    “In this large study of adolescents we clearly see a pattern: those who say they have seen e-cigarette adverts are more likely to say they have used e-cigarettes and conventional cigarettes,” said Hansen, who was a co-researcher on the study.
    “This type of research cannot prove cause and effect, but it does suggest that e-cigarette advertising is reaching these vulnerable young people. At the same time, we know that the makers of e-cigarettes are offering kid-friendly flavours such as gummi bear, bubble-gum and cherry.”

  • Advertising battle

    Advertising battle

    Germany’s drug commissioner says that nicotine represents the country’s biggest substance risk, according to a story at dw.com.
    Marlene Mortler wants to ban outdoor advertising for cigarettes and tobacco, but some within her own party are opposed to her proposal.
    When Mortler presented the official 2018 report on drugs and addiction in Germany, she did not stress opioids, cocaine, LSD or even cannabis.
    Instead, she stressed that nicotine had remained the addictive drug that had cost the most lives in the country in recent years.
    The numbers of people in Germany who smoke have declined by 30 percent since 2013, as they have elsewhere in Europe. But Mortler still singles out tobacco as an area where more needs to be done.
    “We can’t relax when we have 120,000 tobacco-related deaths every year,” Mortler told reporters in Berlin. “120,000 deaths mean 120,000 cases of great suffering, and public costs of up to €100 billion ($115 billion).”
    Germany is the only country in the EU that allows outdoor tobacco advertising.
    Mortler, a member of the Bavarian conservative party, the CSU, succeeded in getting the Cabinet of the previous government under Chancellor Angela Merkel to back a ban on such advertising, only to see it torpedoed from within her own conservative bloc.
    The German Government receives €14.4 billion a year from its 75 percent tax on tobacco products.

  • Call for advertising ban

    A new petition from SumOfUs, an international consumer group, is urging the German government to ban outdoor cigarette advertisements.
    The group issued a press note yesterday saying that children who regularly saw tobacco advertisements were twice as likely to start smoking as those who didn’t.
    It said that, because of the effect they had on children, tobacco billboards had been banned in every country of the EU, except Germany.
    Today, advertisements for regular and electronic cigarettes could be placed anywhere in Germany, including near or next to schools.
    In a preamble to a petition, the group said that parliamentarians of the centre-right CDU/CSU parties knew how deadly effective these advertisements were but preferred to keep tobacco corporations and their lobbyists happy than keep children safe.
    The group said, however, that dissent was brewing in the German government, and that the federal drug commissioner had recently spoken in favour of a ban. By gathering as much public support as possible, there was ‘a real chance of getting a vote on the table – and winning’.
    Smoking was a serious problem in Germany, the group said, especially among young people. More than 110,000 ‘children’ smoked every day, ‘a higher rate than the European average’. ‘More and more of them are trying e-cigarettes, which Phillip Morris and co. promote as a cooler, healthier tobacco alternative,’ the group said in promoting the petition.
    ‘Smoking kills nearly 125,000 Germans every year. We can’t let Big Tobacco keep profiting off those deaths while continuing to sign up new recruits with its billboards. A couple of years ago, the German government almost banned the ads – including ads for e-cigarettes – but it got thwarted at the last minute.
    ‘Every other country in the EU has put its foot down. It’s time Germany did as well.
    ‘If the SumOfUs community comes together, we can show the holdouts in the German government that they’re on the wrong side of history. It worked earlier this year, when we convinced the EU commission to stand up to Bayer’s lobbyists and ban three of the worst bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides. With tobacco corporations, we’re up against a $346 billion juggernaut – but as we’ve proven time and time again, our people power is stronger than the industry’s money.
    ‘We know that given enough public pressure, the CSU/CDU will start valuing kids’ health over the interests of Big Tobacco. It’s up to us to make the government go cold turkey on the lobbyists.’

  • Spreading the word

    Spreading the word

    Although during its 15-year existence the electronic cigarette has been successful in encouraging millions of smokers to switch to this much less harmful alternative, there is still a pressing need to disseminate further the message about the advantages of these products.
    This is according to Dustin Dahlmann (pictured), founding member of the Independent European Vape Alliance (IEVA) and the author of a sponsored-content piece published yesterday by politico.eu.
    Dahlmann said that, according to a study published in 2016 by the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center in Athens, Greece, more than six million tobacco smokers in the EU had succeeded in quitting their habit with the help of e-cigarettes, while another nine million smokers had been able to reduce their dependence on combustible cigarettes by using the electronic alternative.
    A German study from 2017, meanwhile, had found that 99 percent of all e-cigarette users were current or former tobacco smokers.
    The Graz-based toxicologist Professor Bernd Mayer was quoted as saying that on switching to e-cigarettes, the typical smoker’s cough disappeared within a few weeks, the susceptibility to infection decreased massively and the physical condition improved.
    For him, the transition to e-cigarettes in terms of health improvements was comparable to stopping smoking. In an opinion written in 2016, as an appointed expert of the Federal Government, Mayer said the most significant difference between e-cigarettes and conventional cigarettes was that the former did not burn during use; so no combustion products were formed, and it was these products that were responsible for potentially fatal diseases such as cancer, heart attacks, strokes and COPD.
    But Dahlmann pointed out that the proven lower degree of harmfulness of e-cigarettes had not penetrated sufficiently into the consciousness of European society. ‘A survey in Germany in 2017 revealed that more than half of the population believe e-cigarettes are at least as harmful as tobacco cigarettes,’ he said. ‘Comparable studies in Great Britain have come to similar conclusions. This also applies to the only relevant target group for e-cigarettes: adult smokers and their relatives, for whom a switch could provide significant relief.
    ‘In this regard, public health bodies are encouraged to spread the generally accepted facts about the e-cigarette to the wider public, so that smokers can correctly assess the alternatives.’

  • Limit on warning obligation

    Limit on warning obligation

    A district court in Berlin, Germany, has ruled that cigarette-pack health warnings do not necessarily have to be visible when the packs are displayed in retail outlets, according to a story by Denis Bedoya for InfoSurHoy.com.
    In making its ruling, the court dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband (the Federation of German Consumer Organizations) against a retailer.
    It was alleged that the health warnings on cigarettes stacked on shelves were completely or partially obscured by mounts or stock cards.
    The court emphasized that the EU directives on cigarette-pack warnings referred only to the cigarette packs themselves. And the same applied to the German law implementing the EU law.
    There was no legal basis on which to control the presentation of the warnings in a retail environment.
    It was noted, too, that it was, on a practical basis, hardly possible to show the warnings of all packs.

  • Self-censorship suggested

    Self-censorship suggested

    Cigarettes are ‘ubiquitous’ in films and on television, and this is a problem, said Marlene Mortler, Germany’s Federal Drugs Commissioner, in an interview with newspaper and magazine publisher Funke Mediengruppe that was reported by DW World (Deutsche Welle).
    “The more frequently that young people see others smoking in films and on television, the greater the likelihood is that they will pick up a cigarette,” said Mortler, referencing a recent study by the Kiel-based Institute for Therapy and Health Research.
    That study revealed that of the 39 films which were nominated for the German Film Prize in 2016 and 2017, smoking was shown in 33 of them. In films nominated for an Oscar during the same period, that ratio was 64 percent.
    Mortler hopes to make people working within the film industry “more aware of their role in influencing the health of their viewing public”.
    DW World said that because film characters were often looked up to by viewers, ‘children and young adults may be more likely to smoke after seeing one of their heroes light up on screen’.
    According to the DW World piece, Mortler seemed to be saying that because the number of people who smoked in Germany was steadily declining, especially among those aged 18 to 25, the light in which smoking was presented in films should be made less positive.
    “The idea that audiences have this kind of media literacy is reckless and short-sighted,” Mortler was quoted as saying in her ‘appeal to the film industry to be more sensitive in their presentation of cigarettes’.

  • Nanoparticles lower toxicity

    Nanoparticles lower toxicity

    Chemists at the Johannes Gutenberg University (JGU) in Mainz, Germany, have developed a technique that reduces the toxic effects of commercially available cigarettes, according to a story at physorg.com.

    ‘Tobacco smoke contains almost 12,000 different constituents,’ the story said. ‘Among these are narcotoxic substances such as nicotine, blood toxins like cyanide and carbon monoxide, not to mention the various carcinogens. Among these are free oxygen radicals, also known as reactive oxygen species. More than 10 quadrillion (1016) of these molecules are inhaled with every puff on a cigarette.’

    The Mainz-based team headed by Professor Wolfgang Tremel said that it had discovered how to lower significantly the levels of these free oxygen radicals and thus markedly reduce the toxicity of cigarette smoke.

    Researchers took the underlying idea behind the concept from natural enzymes. In the presence of an enhanced concentration of reactive oxygen species as a result of, for instance, tobacco smoke, uncontrolled cell division and oxidative cell damage can occur. Nature regulates the concentration of radicals by means of antioxidant enzymes such as superoxide dismutase (SOD), which plays a central role in the prevention of pathological processes. The naturally occurring enzyme utilizes metals such as copper-zinc, nickel, iron, and manganese as reactive centers that cause oxygen radicals to decompose so that the organism is protected from their aggressive reactive behavior.

    The story said the team of chemists in Mainz had been collaborating with a group headed by Professor Jürgen Brieger of the Mainz University Medical Center to determine whether it were possible to integrate functionalized copper hydroxide nanoparticles in cigarette filters and thus reduce levels of free radicals in smoke, hence providing smokers with greater protection against their toxic potential.

    Cytotoxicity tests had shown that the cigarette smoke extracts in examined concentrations no longer had a toxic effect on human cells after passing through cigarette filters containing nanoparticles, while there had been increased toxicity in the case of controls in which untreated filters were employed.

    The researchers in Mainz had thus been able to demonstrate that imitating natural defense mechanisms with the help of nanoparticles was possible and that a reduction in the toxic effects of various types of smoke could be achieved.

    The researchers’ report was published in the scientific journal Nanoscale.

    The physorg.com story is at: https://phys.org/news/2017-05-copper-hydroxide-nanoparticles-toxic-oxygen.html

  • Pax Labs expands vaporizer line to U.K., Germany

    Pax Labs, leaders in vaporization technology, announced Sept. 15 that the company’s Pax vaporizers are now available in the U.K. and Germany. The devices are available at www.paxvapor.com and local retailers.

    Since introducing its portable, loose-leaf Pax vaporizer three years ago, sales have grown by 200 percent. In March, Pax Labs introduced Pax 2, an enhanced version of the original Pax vaporizer that offers a more intelligent, high-performance smoking experience. The release of Pax vaporizers in the U.K. and Germany follows the company’s recent $46.7 million Series C funding round and is part of Pax Labs’ aggressive global expansion plan to bring its best-selling vaporizers to customers around the world.

    “With the growing demand in the vaporization category, consumers have high interest in innovative products,” says James Monsees, CEO and co-founder of Pax Labs. “The timing is perfect for us to introduce Pax in the UK and Germany.”

    According to Pax Labs CMO Richard Mumby, “Both London and Berlin are cultural hubs for technology innovation, cutting-edge fashion, global contemporary art and music. With our Silicon Valley approach to innovation, best-in-class technology and thoughtful design, we’re confident consumers across Europe will receive the product as favorably as we’ve experienced in the United States and Canada. Our connection with the fashion, art and music worlds will help us connect with consumers in these diverse and cultural markets. Forward-thinking, trendsetting and socially active consumers continue to be drawn to the PAX products across geographies.”

    Pax has distinguished itself as a premium vaporizer brand through its collaboration with fashion, music and art. This year, Pax secured its first fashion retail partnerships with lifestyle boutiques, including Opening Ceremony New York and American Rag Los Angeles. The company also participated in Fashion Week events, collaborating with designer Richard Chai at “New York Fashion Week: Men’s” and the 2015 New York Fashion Week with Opening Ceremony and 11 by BBS. Pax has integrated its brand and products into the prolific art and music scene through artist showcases, event sponsorships and consumer engagements.

    “We know that consumers connect with Pax through not only our product design but also our distinct brand identity,” says Mumby. “We’ve redefined our category, and we’re always challenging ourselves to find resonant ways to connect with our fans, often through experiential partnerships and collaborations. From speakeasies, warehouse parties and music festivals, to prolific street art, galleries and fashion shows, the U.K. and Germany are two vibrant and influential European markets. London and Berlin are two cities at the leading edge of innovation, creativity and style.”

    Pax 2 is an evolved product building on the original Pax. Pax Labs further integrated new hardware and software into Pax 2, making it smaller, faster, smarter, more robust, longer lasting on a single charge, and more straightforward to use. Pax 2 is the most pocketable and premium loose-leaf vaporizer available. The device heats loose-leaf material, instead of burning it, releasing active ingredients and natural oils into a subtle vapor. This process produces no combustion and no smoke, making it optimal for social settings.

    Pax 2 retails for 199 pounds in the U.K. and 259 euros in Germany. The company now has distribution in the United States, Canada, the U.K. and Germany from its online store, PAXvapor.com, and at select retail locations.

  • H.B. Fuller opens Luneburg Adhesive Academy

    H.B. Fuller—a leading global adhesives provider focusing on perfecting adhesives, sealants and other specialty chemical products—has opened its Luneburg Adhesive Academy. Located in Germany, the Luneburg Adhesive Academy is the company’s newest technical center and will help its customers respond more quickly and effectively to market trends, industry challenges and opportunities.

    Combining state-of-the-art equipment with the collective knowledge of experts drawn from H.B. Fuller’s global network, the facility will be a focus for adhesive R&D excellence. Drawing on specialist knowledge from different industry sectors, the academy provides an environment to work in partnership with customers to solve problems and create new solutions more rapidly than ever before.

    “Our new adhesive academy is a perfect example of what we mean by ‘connecting what matters.’ It brings together everything necessary to connect customers to innovative adhesive solutions that will give them a competitive edge,” says H.B. Fuller president and CEO Jim Owens. “From the academy, we will strengthen our commercial partnerships, solve some of the world’s toughest adhesion challenges and develop market-ready solutions to help drive customer and industry performance.”

    Nick Lehman, H.B. Fuller’s R&D director, adds, “By bringing together adhesive specialists from different sectors to share expertise, transfer technologies between markets and stimulate ideas, we are confident we can accelerate adhesive innovation. Furthermore, we are providing those experts with first-class offices, laboratories, technical facilities and machinery to ensure they have the best possible environment in which to think and to create.”

    Covering 2,300 square meters, the Luneburg Adhesive Academy includes dedicated areas for packaging and converting, hygiene and durable assembly adhesive technologies. It is purpose-designed for related functions, such as conducting experiments, running demonstrations and training customers. The investment in the site also reinforces H.B. Fuller’s commitment to the local community.