Tag: Global

Speaking with smokers
The results of a survey carried out on behalf of the Foundation for a Smoke-free World has demonstrated that support for quit attempts can be better targeted by understanding the unique experiences of individual smokers.
The Foundation yesterday published findings from a global survey aimed at better understanding smokers, their experiences, and the challenges they face when they try to quit smoking. The survey highlights also their awareness regarding the harm caused by smoking and how their perceptions of cigarettes, alternative products and nicotine influence their motivation to move away from smoking.
The Foundation said the data would be used to shape the development of research to determine the best solutions to accelerate the end of smoking across diverse cultures and economic conditions.
The Foundation describes itself as an independent, private foundation formed and operated free from the control or influence of any third party. Philip Morris International provided the initial funding to the Foundation, which makes grants and supports medical, agricultural and scientific research to end smoking and its health effects, and to address the impact of reduced worldwide demand for tobacco.
The 2018 State of Smoking Survey included 17,421 current smokers, ex-smokers, and non-smokers from 13 countries: Brazil, France, Greece, India, Israel, Japan, Lebanon, Malawi, New Zealand, Russia, South Africa, the UK and the US. In parallel, a series of qualitative focus groups were carried out in seven countries, France, Greece, India, New Zealand, South Africa, the UK and the US, to give additional context to the quantitative results. The survey was conducted by Kantar Public, an integrated consulting and research agency, which was engaged by the Foundation.
In a press note, the Foundation said the primary findings were:
1. Smoking isn’t an isolated habit. Smokers consider it deeply integrated with their basic pleasures of life, such as eating, drinking, and socializing. Currently implemented cessation methods fail to take these into account, resulting in continued smoking.
2. Smokers know that smoking is harmful to their health, and many consider themselves in poorer health than non-smokers, yet they do not actively engage with their healthcare providers or discuss effective cessation or reduced-harm solutions with them. The healthcare system needs to better engage with smokers, and medical providers need more effective tools to help smokers quit.
3. There is confusion among smokers about the relative harms of smoking and less harmful alternatives. While people ‘smoke for the nicotine, but die from the tar,’ there is still considerable misperception about the risks of nicotine. This impacts their motivation to quit or try reduced risk alternative products.
“I hope this survey will jolt many of the world’s one billion smokers into action to stop smoking, spark a meaningful discussion on the deeply complex reasons so many people continue to smoke, and make clear the urgent need to develop more effective communications and interventions to help smokers quit or substantially reduce their risks,” said Dr. Derek Yach (pictured), president of the Foundation. “By better understanding key drivers behind why people start smoking, barriers to quitting, and motivations to stop, we can help reduce the negative health consequences for many who are trapped in the cycle of addiction to combustible tobacco products.
“The data demonstrates that by better understanding the unique experiences and struggles of the individual smoker, we can better support each individual’s quit journey. In this age of personalized medicine, it is only logical that we should stop treating the world’s smokers as one homogeneous group and start developing and embracing a wide range of solutions that allow individual smokers to select the method that works best for his or her situation and, more importantly, reduce the harm, disease, and death that is caused by smoking.”
Further findings from this study are available at:
https://www.smokefreeworld.org/sites/default/files/uploads/derek-yach-press-conference-presentation.pdf .
March 20, 2018
No to shisha research
On the evidence of a survey launched in May, the board of CORESTA (Co-operation Centre for Scientific Research Relative to Tobacco) has decided not to include activities specific to water pipes in its work program.
The survey was conducted to evaluate interest in water pipe research since very little scientific work had been done on either water-pipe tobacco mixtures or emissions.
‘Work had started with ISO/TC 126 on a preliminary level in 2010 but was stopped in 2016 after four documents were drafted for proposed further projects,’ a CORESTA press note said.
‘The survey was announced in the CORESTA Newsletter (#47), on the website and via an e-mail to all CORESTA contacts.
‘It gathered 18 marks of interest, including four from non-CORESTA members. Sixteen had water pipe related activities, supplying material, equipment or services. Fourteen showed interest in future work but only nine declared having expertise in analytical methods, and 15 showed interest in participating in a workshop.
‘Considering the relatively low level of interest and the fact that work was simultaneously reactivated within ISO with four work item proposals for one ISO Standard and three Technical Specifications, the CORESTA Board eventually decided not to add water pipe specific activity within CORESTA’s work program.’
The following new ISO projects on water pipes were approved by ISO members at the end of May:
- ‘NP 22486 – Standard on definitions and standard conditions;
- ‘NP 22487 – Technical Specification on TPM and NFDPM;
- ‘NP 22492 – Technical Specification on CO in vapor phase;
- ‘NP 22991 – Technical Specification on CO in charcoal.’
November 14, 2017
Hoist with his own petard
The World Conference on Tobacco or Health (WCTOH) has said that anyone affiliated with ‘Philip Morris International’s Foundation for a Smoke-free World’ is ineligible to attend its 17th conference, and will not be admitted.
The 17th conference is due to be held in Cape Town, South Africa, on March 7-9.
‘It will unite researchers, academics, non-governmental organisations, civil society, scientists, healthcare professionals and public officials working on all aspects of tobacco control from more than 100 countries,’ the WCTOH said in a note posted on its website.
On another part of the website, under the heading, Key Information, the WCTOH said its statement on those affiliated with the Foundation was ‘a reiteration of the core conference admission policy’. ‘Affiliations with tobacco entities (current and/or during the past five years) will make an individual ineligible to attend or present at the conference,’ it said.
‘This policy is aligned with the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), Article 5.3, which states in its guidelines: “There is a fundamental and irreconcilable conflict between the tobacco industry’s interest and public health policy interests”.’
The founder and president-designate of the Foundation, Dr. Derek Yach (pictured), was one of the people who were responsible for initiating the FCTC.
October 20, 2017
PMI chief says goals aligned
The CEO of Philip Morris International, André Calantzopoulos, has told a grouping of health organizations that his company’s core strategy is not at odds with their demand that it stops selling cigarettes.
In an open letter posted on the PMI website, Calantzopoulos said that he had recently received an open from 122 health organizations in which they had called on PMI to stop selling cigarettes; and to do so immediately.
‘In essence, the letter says that anything less than shutting down PMI’s cigarette business is “irresponsible” and “monstrous”,’ Calantzopoulos wrote.
‘In the interest of open discussion, I’ll take the letter’s demand at face value and assume that I could simply order PMI to stop its cigarette sales. What would that accomplish from the perspective of public health? Would smoking prevalence change?
‘Globally, PMI has a market share of approximately 15 percent, which represents about 150 million men and women who smoke our cigarette brands. If those brands are suddenly unavailable, our competitors – both the lawful and the illicit ones – would quickly step in to meet demand. The supply would change, and there would be short-term turmoil on the market, but people would still smoke.
‘In short, there is no benefit to society for us to stop selling cigarettes from one day to the next. Nonetheless, and perhaps surprisingly, our core strategy is not at odds with the demands of your letter. Indeed, our paramount business strategy is to replace cigarettes with less-harmful, smoke-free alternatives. That’s what we call a smoke-free future, and it could mean that PMI will one day, ideally sooner rather than later, no longer be in the cigarette business.’
The full text of the health organizations’ letter and the current list of signatories is at: https://www.unfairtobacco.org/en/open-letter-quitpmi/.
The full text of Calantzopoulos’ letter is at: https://www.pmi.com/media-center/news/details/Index/open-letter-from-pmi.
October 3, 2017
WHO says no to Foundation
The World Health Organization has said that it will not engage with the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, the establishment of which was announced on September 13.
The Foundation is led by Derek Yach, an anti-smoking crusader who, while working at the WHO, was the primary architect of that agency’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).
The Foundation has secured initial funding of about $80 million annually during the next 12 years, beginning in 2018, from Philip Morris International, but it expects to receive funding from other sources.
In a note posted on its website, the WHO said the UN General Assembly had recognized a “fundamental conflict of interest between the tobacco industry and public health”.
WHO member states, it added, had stated that “WHO does not engage with the tobacco industry or non-state actors that work to further the interests of the tobacco industry”. Who would therefore not engage with the new Foundation.
WHO quoted Article 5.3 of the FCTC, saying that the guidelines for its implementation stated clearly that governments should limit interactions with the tobacco industry and avoid partnership. These guidelines were explicit in saying that governments should not accept financial or other contributions from the tobacco industry or those working to further its interests, such as this Foundation.
WHO’s view is that strengthening implementation of the FCTC in relation to all tobacco products remained the most effective approach to tobacco control. Policies such as tobacco taxes, graphic warning labels, comprehensive bans on advertising, promotion and sponsorship, and offering help to quit tobacco use had been proven to reduce demand for tobacco products.
‘If PMI were truly committed to a smoke-free world, the company would support these policies,’ the WHO said. ‘Instead, PMI opposes them. PMI engages in large scale lobbying and prolonged and expensive litigation against evidence-based tobacco control policies such as those found in the WHO FCTC and WHO’s MPOWER tobacco control, which assists in implementation of the WHO FCTC.’
WHO admitted that there were many unanswered questions about tobacco harm reduction, but it said the research needed to answer these questions should not be funded by tobacco companies. The tobacco industry and its front groups had misled the public about the risks associated with other tobacco products. ‘This includes promoting so-called light and mild tobacco products as an alternative to quitting, while being fully aware that those products were not less harmful to health,’ the WHO said. ‘Such misleading conduct continues today with companies, including PMI, marketing tobacco products in ways that misleadingly suggest that some tobacco products are less harmful than others.’
This decades-long history meant that research and advocacy funded by tobacco companies and their front groups could not be accepted at face value. ‘When it comes to the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, there are a number of clear conflicts of interest involved with a tobacco company funding a purported health foundation, particularly if it promotes sale of tobacco and other products found in that company’s brand portfolio,’ the WHO said. ‘WHO will not partner with the Foundation. Governments should not partner with the Foundation and the public health community should follow this lead.’
The full WHO statement is at: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/statements/2017/philip-morris-foundation/en/.
September 29, 2017
PMI reorganizes
Philip Morris International yesterday said yesterday that it was making organizational changes intended to drive the company’s transformation toward a smoke-free future while maintaining its financial performance.
“There is no doubt that the greatest contribution PMI can make to society is to replace cigarettes with less harmful alternatives,” said CEO André Calantzopoulos. “The changes we are announcing today [September 28] reflect our desire to best equip, empower and support our organization as we transform within a rapidly evolving environment.
“They reflect the exceptional quality and depth of our senior leadership and underscore our commitment to successfully deliver solutions not only for our consumers, employees and shareholders, but also to society in general.”
Effective January 1, 2018: Calantzopoulos will continue to serve as CEO; Jacek Olczak, currently CFO, will be appointed COO, responsible for the deployment of global strategy and the delivery of results for combustible and reduced-risk products; and Martin King, currently president, Asia Region, will be appointed CFO.
PMI said also that it would in future arrange its operations in six geographic regions, rather than four, as is the case now.
The full list of the organizational changes and the biographies of those involved are available on the PMI website.
September 29, 2017
Using science to reduce risk
Scientists at British American Tobacco say they have created the most comprehensive database of scientific test results for an electronic cigarette.
The results of the studies provide evidence that the use of a Vype ePen could be substantially less risky than is smoking a traditional cigarette.
The database was said to have been created using data collected from a series of scientific tests that could form the basis of a template to support health-related claims such as “reduced risk” for e-cigarettes and next generation products, such as tobacco-heating devices, when the use of those products was compared to that of conventional cigarettes.
“This is a very new consumer category and both consumers and regulators rightly want as much information as possible about the products available,” said Dr David O’Reilly, group scientific and R&D director at BAT.
“We believe a science-based approach is vital to gathering the evidence needed to demonstrate the reduced-risk potential of e-cigarettes and other products, which is why testing products like Vype ePen in this way is so important. We intend for this to be the first of many applications of our scientific assessment framework,” he said.
The application of BAT’s approach to the scientific assessment of potentially reduced-risk products is reported today in the journal Regulatory Pharmacology and Toxicology, where the results of 17 published studies on Vype ePen are described.
The tests included Preclinical studies that demonstrated the relatively simple composition of Vype ePen vapor compared to that of conventional cigarette smoke: that demonstrated there were about 95 percent less toxicants in Vype ePen vapor than in smoke. Further tests revealed that this vapor had no biological impact on human cells tested in the laboratory, or at least a much-reduced impact when compared to that of conventional cigarette smoke.
Clinical Studies, which involved humans, revealed that Vype ePen vapor delivered nicotine to the consumer as efficiently as cigarette smoke did, which is an indicator of whether the product might provide smokers with a satisfactory alternative to a cigarette.
Population studies, which use predictive modelling to estimate an overall harm reduction effect of the product on a population, indicated that the wide availability of an e-cigarette such as a Vype ePen could have an overall harm-reduction effect because more people might quit smoking when e-cigarettes were widely available.
In a press note, BAT said that, taken together, these results formed the basis of a comprehensive dossier of scientific data that laid the groundwork for establishing the Vype ePen’s reduced-risk potential.
‘This dossier of results presents the kind of information that regulators like the US Food and Drug Administration want when any company submits a Modified Risk Tobacco Product application in order to introduce novel reduced-risk tobacco products to the US market,’ the note said.
‘It can take years to create such a dossier and our scientists say that it would be impractical to create a new dossier every time a product is tweaked.’
“This category is so fast moving that there are new and improved products appearing all the time,” said Dr James Murphy, head of reduced risk substantiation at BAT. “If for example, a scientific dossier was required before these products could go on the market, this could drastically impact the availability of new and improved products and their value in tobacco harm reduction.
“Importantly, this sort of framework could provide datasets for product families so that full scientific tests wouldn’t need to be done with every new generation of the same product – making the innovation process faster whilst still giving consumers and regulators assurances around the relative risk of each product. This could mean improved products with harm reduction potential can be developed, assessed and brought to market more quickly without duplicating tests. We are urging regulators and public health officials to look at this methodology in this context.” Murphy said.
September 25, 2017
Tobacco antis ‘gut-punched’
The surprise announcement by the former head of the World Health Organization’s Tobacco Free Initiative, Derek Yach, that he would head a newly-established organization called the ‘Foundation for a Smoke-free World’ to ‘accelerate the end of smoking’ was met with gut-punched disappointment by those who have worked for decades to achieve that goal, according to a BMJ blog by news editor, Marita Hefler.
The blog was headed, A ‘Frank Statement’ for the 21st Century?, and included the names of 14 people: Ruth E. Malone, Simon Chapman, Prakash C. Gupta, Rima Nakkash, Tih Ntiabang, Eduardo Bianco, Yussuf Saloojee, Prakit Vathesatogkit, Laurent Huber, Chris Bostic, Pascal Diethelm, Cynthia Callard, Neil Collishaw and Anna B. Gilmore.
‘Unmoved by a soft-focus video featuring Yach looking pensively off into the distance from a high-level balcony while smokers at ground level stubbed out Marlboros and discussed how hard it was to quit, leading tobacco control organizations were shocked to hear that the new organization was funded with a $1 billion, twelve-year commitment from tobacco company Philip Morris International (PMI),’ the piece said.
‘PMI, which has been working for decades to rebrand itself as a “socially responsible” company while continuing to promote sales of its top-branded Marlboro cigarettes and oppose policies that would genuinely reduce their use, clearly believes this investment will further its “harm reduction” agenda, led by its new heat-not-burn product, IQOS. But don’t worry, the Foundation assures everyone that “PMI and the tobacco industry are precluded from having any influence over how the Foundation spends its funds or focuses its activities”.
‘Except that is what a broad range of industry front groups, sometimes headed by respected and even well-intentioned leaders, have been saying since the “Frank Statement” of 1954.
‘The long and sordid history of the industry’s funding of “research,” a major part of the mission of this new foundation, is replete with exactly this sort of blithe reassurance, as Yach himself pointed out in an earlier time.
‘In reality, nothing has changed. The “research” really isn’t the point anyway. The mere fact of having landed Yach is a major public relations coup for PMI that will be used to do more of what the industry always does: create doubt, contribute further to existing disputes within the global tobacco control movement, shore up its own competitive position, and go on pushing its cigarettes as long as it possibly can…’
The full story is at: http://blogs.bmj.com/tc/2017/09/19/a-frank-statement-for-the-21st-century/.
September 20, 2017
Cigarette price matters
Researchers at Imperial College London have found an association between infant mortality rates and cigarette price differentials, according to a EurekAlert story citing a new study.
The authors were quoted as saying that eliminating budget cigarettes from the market might help to reduce infant deaths globally.
“Thanks to tax and price control measures, cigarettes in EU countries are more expensive than ever before,” said Dr. Filippos Filippidis, of Imperial’s School of Public Health and the lead author of the study. “However, the tobacco industry is good at finding loopholes to ensure that budget cigarettes remain available. In this study, we found that the availability of budget cigarettes is associated with more infant deaths.”
The study, published yesterday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, analysed nearly 54 million births across 23 EU countries from 2004 to 2014. The researchers obtained data on cigarette prices over this period and examined whether differences between average priced and budget cigarettes was linked to infant mortality rates.
And they found that during the 10 years under review, overall infant mortality declined in all countries from 4.4 deaths per 1,000 births in 2004 to 3.5 deaths per 1,000 births in 2014.
The cost of average priced cigarettes increased during this time in all the countries studied. The difference between average-priced and budget cigarettes varied from 12.8 percent to 26.0 percent over the study period.
The authors said that though EU governments had made cigarettes more expensive by increasing taxes, tobacco companies had responded with differential pricing strategies, where tax increases were loaded onto premium brands. This caused a price gap between higher and lower priced cigarettes that gave smokers the option to switch to cheaper products, making tax increases less effective.
September 19, 2017
Foundation opposed
Canadian health organizations have responded to the announcement that Philip Morris International has pledged $1 billion to the newly-launched Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (https://www.smoke-freeworld.org/) by calling on the Canadian government immediately to restore public funding for tobacco control and to ensure that the costs of reducing tobacco use are passed on to the tobacco industry.
‘In this recent ploy, Philip Morris is using the same bag of tricks it invented in the 1950s, to create its own research bodies in order to manipulate the research environment and delay effective measures to reduce smoking,’ said Neil Collishaw, research director of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada in a statement issued by the Coalition québécoise pour le contrôle du tabac.
‘We risk repeating the tragedy of past decades unless the government moves quickly to ensure that the new challenges of e-cigarettes and so-called reduced risk products are addressed by reliable and uncontaminated research.’
Melodie Tilson, director of policy for the Non-Smokers’ Rights Association, was quoted as saying that a year had passed since ‘we provided Health Canada with proposals for ways to protect public health from tobacco industry interference in research and policy’.
‘Since that time, we have seen no action on any of our 20 recommendations, nor any indication that these are a priority of Health Canada.
‘Recent events and the industry’s abuse of science as a front for tobacco marketing have increased our concerns that Canada is vulnerable to tobacco industry interference.’
Meanwhile, Cynthia Callard, executive director of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, said the most recent intrusion of the tobacco industry into research funding was all the more dangerous in the context of massive cuts to tobacco control funding by the previous government, and the failure of the new government to restore resources for independent activities.
‘External policy research was abandoned by Health Canada in 2012,’ she was quoted as saying. ‘The failure of the new federal government to restore this important work has left little national-level capacity for independent response to industry-funded disinformation.’
And Flory Doucas, co-director and spokesperson for the Quebec Coalition on Tobacco Control said the federal government should apply the polluter-pay principle to public health by levying a regulatory charge on tobacco manufacturers. ‘We have previously made this recommendation as a way to require the industry to internalize some of the costs they impose on society.’
In the US, Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said Philip Morris had a long history of deceiving the public and doing whatever it took to sell cigarettes.
‘This is not the first time Philip Morris has announced that it is funding “independent” research, nor is it the first time it has claimed to support “independent” researchers, he said in a statement.
‘Each of its past efforts have been nothing more than a smokescreen to divert attention from its marketing practices, the harm its products cause and the strong scientific consensus that already existed – both about the harm of its products and the scientifically proven ways to reduce tobacco use. There is no reason to believe that this announcement is any different.’
September 18, 2017