Tobacco: Al the Facts, Legislation, and How it Affects Your Health.
Pine cigarettes: Korean firm urged to curb smuggling into Pakistan
Business Recorder (blog) - 1 hour ago
The KT&G, the nation’s leading tobacco maker, exports to 45 countries, including four …Sources said tobacco maker was made aware of the smuggling when
http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2012/05/12/327411_print.html
ZERO TOLERANCE: Professor Jon Berrick is urging a ban on smoking for people born after the year 2000. Picture: RICHARD JUPE
TASMANIA is being promoted as the ideal testing ground to introduce a ban on cigarette sales to everyone born after the year 2000.
The radical health proposal would see younger generations, and all future generations, forbidden to use tobacco products forever.
The plan, promoted by a university professor from Singapore, has won praise from Tasmania’s anti-smoking lobby groups.
Quit Tasmania, the Cancer Council and the Asthma Foundation said the proposal had merits and should be further investigated.
Professor Jon Berrick, from the National University of Singapore, is visiting Tasmania to promote his vision, which he hopes will end nicotine addiction.
Prof Berrick said Tasmania would be an ideal place to trial the proposal because the state had a good record of bipartisan political support on tobacco controls.
He has taken his plan to anti-smoking groups as well as scientists and researchers at the Menzies Research Institute.
Prof Berrick said the idea was a “decisive measure”, unlike other anti-smoking moves that only “chipped away” at the problem.
“Once you do this, the end is in sight,” he said.
Prof Berrick said the ban would rely on proof of age, either through drivers licences that showed people’s birthdates or some other proof of ID card.
Cancer Council Tasmania CEO Simon Barnsley said the initiative would be “very worthwhile” to investigate.
“It’s quite a different way to do it because you build an expectation of change, you don’t set out to achieve it through prohibition,” he said.
He supported the idea of a Tasmania-only trial as it would be hard to achieve nationally.
Prof Berrick, whose background is in science and mathematics, has formulated the idea with a group of experts in Singapore.
He said a 2007 survey of awareness of lung cancer in Singapore included questions about the idea.
“The first thing we asked people was how important they feel it is to prevent children ever taking up smoking and we got over 98 per cent who said it was very important or important,” Prof Berrick said.
“The next question we asked was what about this particular proposal for those born from 2000 forever. From the population as a whole we got over 70 per cent support and for smokers we got 60 per cent support.”
Prof Berrick said many smokers regretted they had started smoking and certainly did not want to inflict it on their children.
Quit Tasmania executive director Michael Wilson said on face value Prof Berrick’s proposal seemed a great idea and fairly easy to administer, but he said there were issues with ID.
“You hear lots of stories in the community about fake ID to me that seems to be the only thing that would be a hindrance,” he said.
Using Tasmania as a pilot had merit, Mr Wilson said, as it had been used for other health pilot studies. But he said it was easy to buy cigarettes interstate.
Asthma Foundation of Tasmania CEO Cathy Beswick said the proposal was worth investigating.
She said tobacco smoke was harmful to people with asthma and respiratory conditions and the foundation was interested in any measure that would reduce or limit the number of people who smoked.
Tasmania’s Director of Public Health, Roscoe Taylor, said a report published in 2008 found that in 2005 tobacco use accounted for $1.836 billion in costs for tobacco-related healthcare and $31.5 billion in indirect social costs in Australia.
He said the most recent figures showed that between 2003 and 2007 an average of 471 Tasmanians died each year due to tobacco use.
http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2012/05/12/327421_tasmania-news.html
Support for tobacco ban
CHARLES WATERHOUSE | May 12, 2012 12.01am
THE proposal to ban the supply of tobacco products to Tasmanians born from the year 2000 was welcomed by two 17-year-old smokers in Hobart yesterday.
Edith said the concept that smoking was “totally wrong” was now embedded in society.
“Even for our age, it is something that is shunned upon ,” she said.
She believed there would be plenty of information circulated about the ban.
Edith said taking up smoking was one of her biggest regrets because it was so expensive: “And it is so hard to give up, especially when you are studying and working and stuff and you are so stressed.”
Amber said she agreed with Edith’s comments.
“I guess people born in 2000 are only 12 now so are not going to have the chance to get hooked before it is illegal for them which is a good thing,” she said.
Amber said she had tried quitting but it was hard because all her friends smoked and it was a very social habit. thing.
“Like at school for example at lunchtime everyone goes to the smoking area and if you don’t smoke you are not with your friends.
“For future generations if it is not really a thing everybody does then it will be a lot easier for them not to start smoking.”
Dowload PDF : Should smokers be offered assistance with quitting. 2010
SCMP
| Clifford Lo May 12, 2012 |
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Customs officers are trying to trace more than 300 buyers who placed phone orders for contraband cigarettes, after a series of raids on illicit tobacco operations. Officers found three ledgers during the raids that were believed to contain the buyers’ telephone numbers and order details – but the entries were represented by nicknames and abbreviations. The task of cracking the codes and tracking down the buyers has fallen on a new customs task force that targets the sale of contraband cigarettes via phone orders. “Tobacco traffickers use abbreviations and set their own secret codes to store their customers’ information,” a senior customs officer said. “We need more time to carry out background checks to identify buyers, then we will apply for search warrants in court before raiding their homes and making arrests.” The ledgers were seized on three occasions during an operation codenamed Torpedo, which started in the middle of last month and netted illegal cigarettes worth a total of HK$6.4 million. On Thursday, four tobacco traffickers were arrested in Tsuen Wan and HK$900,000 of cigarettes seized. Customs said the contraband was used to fill phone orders. That followed a raid on an industrial building in Tsuen Wan on Tuesday where contraband cigarettes with a retail value of HK$5.5 million were stored. Two men were arrested. Customs hit the place hours after a cross-border truck from Shenzhen smuggled in a consignment hidden in the hollow centres of 10 piles of cartons, said Mark Lee Yuen-man, divisional commander of the anti-illicit-cigarette investigation unit. The Torpedo operation involved raids on 60 flats, with 22 buyers arrested and 11,000 illicit cigarettes seized. The authorities said they wanted “to send a message that both buyers and sellers of illicit cigarettes have criminal responsibility”. |
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http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/call-to-cut-smoking-in-local-films/story-e6frfku0-1226351110049
May 9, 2012
AUSTRALIAN films receiving government assistance should cut down on depictions of actors smoking, parliament has been told.
Labor senator John Faulkner said the commonwealth provided generous tax incentives for film, television and other screen production in Australia, giving about $145 million in tax offsets to producers in 2010/11.
“I believe it’s now time for the government to consider the introduction of conditions to be applied about the smoking content of any production before government funding is provided,” he told the Senate today.
“It is also time to seriously investigate the application of such constraints to overseas productions filmed in Australia.”
But Liberal senator Simon Birmingham used Twitter to remark the imposition of such limits would be an interference in personal choice.
“John Faulkner currently telling @AuSenate we should regulate art by restricting portrayal of smoking in films – more #NannyState anyone?” he tweeted.
Senator Faulkner said the government’s new plain-packaging law was another example of Labor targeting tobacco advertising promotion and sponsorship.
All cigarettes and tobacco products will have to be sold in drab olive-brown packs from December.
“We are setting a global precedent that has big tobacco shaking in its boots,” Senator Faulkner said.
The federal budget handed down yesterday has cut the amount of cigarettes and tobacco that could be purchased duty-free.
Under existing rules, inbound travellers aged over 18 are allowed to bring in 250 cigarettes or 250 grams of tobacco products tax-free.
This will be cut to 50 cigarettes.
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/10/v-print/4480780/2009-federal-tobacco-tax-increase.html
Published Thursday, May. 10, 2012
WASHINGTON, May 10, 2012 – Study Comes as Tobacco Industry Spends Nearly $40 Million to Defeat Tobacco Tax Ballot Initiative in California
WASHINGTON, May 10, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ – The large federal tobacco tax increase implemented on April 1, 2009, reduced the number of youth smokers by at least 220,000and the number of youth smokeless tobacco users by at least 135,000 in the first two months alone, according to a new study released today by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20080918/CFTFKLOGO)
The researchers emphasized that the study measured only the immediate impact of the tax increase through May 2009, and the number of youth prevented from smoking and using smokeless tobacco would be much larger over time.
The study “showed that a large national tax increase can influence youth tobacco use prevalence within a very short time period,” the researchers wrote. “Adolescents not only respond to tax policy changes, but the speed of their response is fast. The prevalence of smoking and use of smokeless tobacco… dropped immediately following the tax increase in this study, and statistically significant and meaningful changes could be measured and detected within 30 days of the tax increase.”
The study was published online by the National Bureau of Economic Research and can be found at:http://www.nber.org/papers/w18026.
The new study comes as the tobacco industry, led by Philip Morris USA and R.J. Reynolds, is spending nearly $40 million to oppose a June 5 ballot initiative in California (Proposition 29) to increase that state’s cigarette tax by $1 per pack. The initiative would reduce smoking and fund research on cancer and other tobacco-related diseases, as well as tobacco prevention programs.
“This study shows exactly why the tobacco industry is spending so much money to oppose California’s Prop 29: They know higher tobacco taxes are very effective at reducing smoking, especially among kids,” said Matthew L. Myers, President of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “Because the truth is against them, the tobacco companies are spending huge sums on ads to deceive and confuse voters. Californians should ignore their lies and vote yes on Prop 29.”
Study Findings
A 2009 law approved by Congress, the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act , increased the federal tax rate on cigarettes by 61.66 cents per pack (from 39 cents to $1.0066 per pack) and on moist snuff, the most common form of smokeless tobacco, by 92.5 cents per pound (from 58.5 cents to $1.51 per pound). Taxes were also increased on other forms of smokeless tobacco.
The study investigated the changes in youth smoking and smokeless tobacco use rates following the April 2009 federal tobacco tax increases, using data from the Monitoring the Future survey, an annual national survey of 8th, 10th and 12th grade students. Because the survey is conducted from February through May each year, it coincided with the April 1 tobacco tax increase and provided an effective means to measure the immediate impact.
The study found that the tobacco tax increase had a substantial and immediate impact.
The percentage of students who reported smoking in the past 30 days dropped between 9.7 percent and 13.3 percent immediately following the tax increase, while the percentage who reported using smokeless tobacco dropped between 16 percent and 24 percent (because the survey asked about behavior in the past 30 days, the study used three different models, with different cutoff dates, to fully assess the impact of the tax increase).
Because of the tax increase, there were between 220,000 and 287,000 fewer current smokers and between 135,000 and 203,000 fewer smokeless tobacco users among middle and high school students in May 2009, the study estimated.
The study controlled for other factors that influence youth tobacco use, including individual, family and school characteristics as well as state tobacco control measures, including state cigarette taxes, smoke-free air polices and tobacco control funding.
The study also found that, even as youth tobacco use declined, federal tobacco tax revenues increased by 147 percent in the 12 months following the increase – from $7.1 billion in the 12 months before to $17.5 billion in the 12 months after.
The study “demonstrated that a well-designed, across-the-board tobacco tax policy can deliver both economic and health benefits, and has implications for policymakers at all levels when considering effective tobacco control policies to reduce tobacco use among youth,” the researchers wrote.
Support for the study was provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National Cancer Institute.
SOURCE Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids
http://www.news-medical.net/news/20120510/Tobacco-news-from-around-the-world.aspx
An internal memo showing that Imperial Tobacco has known cigarettes to be deadly and addictive since the 1980s has been entered into evidence in Quebec’s $27 billion class-action lawsuit against Big Tobacco.
In the memo, Bob Bexon, Imperial Tobacco’s former director of Marketing Research and Development, admits that the only thing keeping tobacco companies in business is the addictiveness of cigarettes. “The only remaining ‘benefit’ of cigarette smoking is the psychological assist it provides in terms of stress reduction,” Bexon writes in the confidential memo. “If our product was not addictive we would not sell a single cigarette next week in spite of these positive psychological attributes.” “The crux of the problem is personal health,” Bexon writes. “Social unacceptability, passive smoking effects, price, aroma, after effects are all distant seconds to the key smoker’s concern that they are damaging their health — contributing to their own death. Death is not the entire problem,” Bexon goes on. “The key health issue is lung cancer. Fear of cancer as much as fear of mortality with its public perception of slow lingering painful etc. (sic) is a real problem.”
Bexon’s 10-page handwritten memo was sent as an update to senior management on “Project Viking,” an internal evaluation from 1986 to 1987 that sought to assess smokers’ health concerns. Imperial Tobacco lawyer Suzanne Côté had argued against the document being introduced as evidence on the grounds that it was not pertinent and based on hearsay.
This document strikes a major blow to Canada’s three tobacco industry giants — Imperial Tobacco Ltd.; Rothmans, Benson & Hedges; and JTI-Macdonald — who are on trial in Quebec Superior Court in the largest class-action lawsuit in Canadian history.
The suit is an amalgamation of two major class actions. The Cécilia Létourneau case was first filed in 1998. It is seeking $17.8 billion in damages on behalf of the 1.78 million smokers in Quebec considered to be clinically addicted to cigarettes. The Jean-Yves Blais case is seeking $9.45 billion in damages for the estimated 90,000 Quebec residents afflicted by emphysema or lung, larynx, or throat cancer.
All three tobacco companies on trial had publicly denied that smoking was addictive and dangerous until June 9, 2000, when Imperial Tobacco and JTI-Macdonald stunned a Senate committee that proposed raising taxes on cigarettes by agreeing to the tax hike and admitting their products were addictive and carcinogenic.
Bexon’s letter has now provided lawyers, politicians, and the public with evidence that Imperial Tobacco knew the truth about their products for well over a decade before coming clean in 2000. Côté pointed out that the public has known about the risks associated with smoking for a long time, and that smokers should therefore accept the consequences for the choices they make.
The complex trial is expected to last at least two years.
Australian films instructed to cut down on smoking scenes
Australian films receiving government assistance should cut down on depictions of actors smoking, parliament has been told.
Labor senator John Faulkner said the commonwealth provided generous tax incentives for film, television and other screen production in Australia, giving about $145 million in tax offsets to producers in 2010/11. “I believe it’s now time for the government to consider the introduction of conditions to be applied about the smoking content of any production before government funding is provided,” he told the Senate today. “It is also time to seriously investigate the application of such constraints to overseas productions filmed in Australia.”
Senator Faulkner said the government’s new plain-packaging law was another example of Labor targeting tobacco advertising promotion and sponsorship. All cigarettes and tobacco products will have to be sold in drab olive-brown packs from December. “We are setting a global precedent that has big tobacco shaking in its boots,” Senator Faulkner said.
Cut down on duty-free cigarettes
The federal budget handed down yesterday has cut the amount of cigarettes and tobacco that could be purchased duty-free. Under existing rules, inbound travellers aged over 18 are allowed to bring in 250 cigarettes or 250 grams of tobacco products tax-free. This will be cut to 50 cigarettes.
Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) chief executive Anne Jones said duty-free products undermined health goals. “It makes no sense for government to give tax breaks to the tobacco industry and its deadly addictive products,” Ms Jones said on Wednesday. “This is a win-win for government.”
She said the measure would raise extra $600 million over four years and end the “anachronistic concession” for Australia’s leading cause of death and disease. About 320 million duty-free cigarettes are sold in Australia each year, ASH says.
Hookahs could be more dangerous than cigarettes says WHO
The hookah has made a comeback in social space gracing plush joints in metros and rising in popularity among the young. But its return has sparked concern among cancer experts who say Indian youth are getting addicted to the hubble-bubble in the mistaken belief that it is a healthy alternative to cigarettes.
According to the Global Adults Tobacco Survey (GATS) 2009-10, India accounts for over seven million hookah users among a total of 274.9 million tobacco users. While tobacco is the leading cause of cancer deaths in India, experts say hookah smokers are prone to lung cancer, oral cancer, heart diseases and respiratory disorders.
“Over the last two years, hookahs have penetrated urban space and gained enormous popularity among youngsters. Without knowing the harmful effects, youth are addicted to the hookah because of a fashion quotient associated with it,” said Dhirendra N Sinha, regional advisor, Surveillance (Tobacco Control) at the World Health Organisation (WHO), Southeast Asia. “Making hookah smoking seem fashionable is an innovative approach of the tobacco industry to make the youth population addicted to tobacco,” Sinha told IANS.
“In cities, hookah parlours have become symbols of socio-economic prosperity. They are easily available and being at a hookah parlour looks cool to youngsters and urban rich,” PK Julka, professor of clinicaloncology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), told IANS.
Hookah or waterpipe smoking uses a technique where specially-made tobacco is heated, and the smoke passes through water to be drawn through a mouthpiece. Experts say the tobacco in a hookah pipe is no less toxic, and the water in the hookah does not filter out the toxic ingredients in the tobacco smoke. “While we also get cancer patients from rural areas, the young hookah-related cancer patients coming to us have a myth. They think hookah is less harmful than cigarettes due to its water base,” informed Julka.
According to WHO, a hookah smoker may inhale as much smoke per session as a cigarette smoker would inhale from over 100 cigarettes. Sharing the same mouthpiece for smoking can also cause serious communicable diseases such as tuberculosis and hepatitis, the global health body informs. Occasionally, hookah laced with alcohol or marijuana is also ordered.
“What we need is awareness and of course stricter norms,” said Bhawna Sirohi, head of medical oncology at Artemis hospital, Gurgaon
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8464563/cuts-on-duty-free-tobacco-welcomed
May 9, 2012
The federal budget’s clampdown on duty-free tobacco sales has been welcomed by a health group as a “win-win” for government.
Under existing rules, inbound travellers aged over 18 are allowed to bring in 250 cigarettes or 250g of tobacco products tax-free.
This will be cut down to 50 cigarettes.
Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) chief executive Anne Jones said duty-free products undermined health goals.
“It makes no sense for government to give tax breaks to the tobacco industry and its deadly addictive products,” Ms Jones said on Wednesday.
“This is a win-win for government.”
She said the measure would raise extra $600 million over four years and end the “anachronistic concession” for Australia’s leading cause of death and disease.”
About 320 million duty-free cigarettes are sold in Australia each year, ASH says.
| STOPPING SMOKING Elaine Yau (elaine.yau@scmp.com) May 08, 2012 South China Morning Post, Hong Kong |
Smokers in Hong Kong might soon have trouble telling brands of cigarettes apart as the government toys with the idea of demanding plain packaging to combat tobacco consumption.
Hong Kong is among about half a dozen jurisdictions that met recently to discuss the feasibility of such a move, says Judith Mackay, senior adviser with the World Lung Foundation.
Mackay says she has been talking to the Hong Kong government about plain packaging for some time, although the government is “not quite ready to implement it”.
“Many countries, including Hong Kong, are waiting to see what happens in Australia. We need a precedent before we go forward,” she says.
On December 1, Australia will adopt the world’s first plain packaging legislation, which bans the use of the brand logo, symbols, other images or promotional text on tobacco products. The country is taking the lead in implementing Article 13 of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. This says “a comprehensive ban on advertising, promotion and sponsorship would reduce the consumption of tobacco products”.
Cigarettes will be sold in drab packages with graphic images of tobacco-related diseases and warnings that occupy 75 per cent of the area of the box. No trademark logos will be permitted on any packaging of tobacco products, although firms will be able to print their name and the brand in a small, prescribed font on the packets.
“The smoking rate dropped from 30.5 per cent in 1998 to 15.1 per cent in 2010 in Australia, but we still expect 15,000 Australians to die from smoking every year,” says Jane Halton, secretary of Australia’s Department of Health and Ageing.
Packaging, she says, is one of the last forms of tobacco advertising and must be removed. Her sentiments were echoed by authorities and experts at the 15th World Conference on Tobacco or Health in Singapore in March.
The tobacco industry is fighting back. Australia has been sued by Hong Kong-based tobacco giant Philip Morris Asia, which alleges that plain packaging amounts to unlawful expropriation of the company’s investments and valuable intellectual property without compensation.
Australia has also been sued in its High Court by the tobacco industry. “The reaction from the industry is not surprising, but they are becoming more extreme and subversive,” says Halton. “We reject the claims filed by Philip Morris. Our arbitrators will hear the case.”
Philip Morris moved its business from Australia to Hong Kong soon after the Australian government announced its decision on plain packaging in April 2010.
Since the announcement, Halton says her department has received 53 “freedom of information requests” relating to plain packaging from the tobacco industry – a tactic aimed at slowing the bureaucracy down.
“The requests are designed to ensure we are required to examine hundreds of files and tens of thousands of documents for potential release. [The industry wants to] tie up funding and resources within my department to ensure we have less time to implement this law,” she says.
“We will not be deterred by the threats and will fight this incredibly vigorously.”
Uruguay, Norway and Turkey are also countering legal challenges from the tobacco industry regarding their tightened tobacco control measures.
WHO director general Margaret Chan Fung Fu-chun says the chain of legal action taken by the tobacco industry shows its desperation. “I take it as an indication that big tobacco sees the writing on the wall,” she says. “These are the death throes of the industry.”
Chan applauded Australia’s resolve in curbing tobacco consumption. “We must make plain packaging a big success so that it becomes the success of the world,” she says.
Simon Chapman, professor in public health at the University of Sydney, says it’s ludicrous for the tobacco industry to take the Australian government to court – alleging the government is acquiring valuable intellectual property and using it to make money.
A spokesman for the Hong Kong Health Department says it will consider whether to adopt plain packaging legislation. In 1994, it became mandatory for cigarette packs sold in Hong Kong to carry written warnings. Graphic health warnings, which have to occupy half of a packet’s area, were introduced in 2007.
Article 11 of WHO’s convention – which was enacted in 2005 and has 174 countries signed up so far – compels parties, within three years of joining the convention, to have tobacco product health warnings that cover at least 30 per cent (and preferably 50 per cent) of the visible area on a cigarette pack. Singapore, the first country in Asia to implement graphic health warnings on packets, will introduce a new set of health warnings that use gory and emotional images from next March.
“What [the tobacco industry] wants to see is a domino effect,” says Chan. “When one country’s resolve falters under the pressure of costly, drawn-out litigation and threats of billion-dollar settlements, others with similar intentions are likely to topple as well.”
Chan says no commercial interest should undermine public health measures to protect people. Article 5.3 of the WHO convention on tobacco control gives countries the space and legitimacy to take such actions.