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There are 350 million smokers in China, and consumed 37% of tobacco in the world. Judith Mackay had discussed the issue on Jan. 22, 2010. Please click here to watch the presentation.
Video: Judith Mackay discusses efforts to curb smoking in China, the world’s largest tobacco market
Equire from Annelise about rubbish bins with ashtrays
Ashtrays in rubbish bins encourage smoking.
29/11/2009
Dear FHB,
Can you please explain why, in an indoor pedestrian overpass, it is the official policy of the FHB to put out rubbish bins with ashtrays in them ? It is illegal to carry a lighted tobacco product here, so anyone using the ashtrays is breaking the law - assisted by the FHB policy that mandates ashtrays on rubbish bins.
These ashtrays encourage smokers to smoke in places where it is illegal. You may contact your own FEHD Tobacco Control office and the Council On Smoking and Health, who will each tell you that ashtrays in rubbish bins encourage smoking (legal and illegal) - and send the wrong message to the public. When you put out ashtrays the message you are sending is “We want you to smoke here !!! We will even clean up your butts for you !!! “
Also, most smokers do not extinguish their butts before tossing them in ashtrays, so they cigarette continues to “smoke” and pollute the air long after the smoker has left.
Can the FHB please instruct the FEHD to remove the tops of all rubbish bins in all covered locations where smoking is illegal - or replace them with rounded tops (not flat tops, which are used as ashtrays). You will notice that the MTR does not put ashtrays or lids on their rubbish bins anymore. They have learned that it just encourages smoking.
You may contact Tobacco Control who have many reports from me of illegal smoking in places that have ashtrays on rubbish bins, but very few where there are no ashtrays.
Please set the correct rubbish bin policy for health, while de-normalizing smoking, and do not reward illegal smoking by providing ashtrays or flat topped rubbish bin covers.
Finally, can you please wait to reply to this email until after you have contacted both Tobacco Control and COSH and come up with an integrated plan to eliminate government provided ashtrays completely and flat top rubbish bins from all statutory non-smoking areas
I am happy to give a tour to anyone at the FHB to show how putting out ashtrays - and flat top rubbish bins, actually rewards people who smoke illegally.
Thank you.
Regards,
Annelise Connell
FHB had replied the e-mail. Hit the jump and see the reply letter.
It is high time the HKSAR Government expanded the Tobacco Control Office
Hong Kong Tobacco Control Office only have 99 officers. Do you think it is enough or not?
Macau has a population of 544,000 (source: Macau News) compared to Hong Kong’s 7 million.
Their new Tobacco Control Office will have 70 officers or one per 7,771 Macau inhabitants.
Hong Kong TCO has I believe only 99 officers to cover a population of 7 million which is 13 times more
than Macau and this allocates one HKG TCO officer per 70,707 Hong Kong inhabitants or ten times more persons per TCO officer than Macau. In addition Hong Kong has far more tourists per year than Macau.
It is high time the HKG Government expanded the TCO by at least 10 times manpower-wise to effectively police the current laws and allow them to be expanded. Meanwhile the law must be amended to put the onus on landlords and managers of licensed premises to prevent smoking within , at entrances to and patio areas of the premises as well as vehicles with children on board and the Hong Kong airport bus terminus.
http://www.macaudailytimes.com.mo/macau/7895-Bill-tobacco-for-public-consultation.html
“Last week, while the bill was unanimously approved in principle, lawmakers had already voiced many doubts regarding the law’s enforcement. At that time, the director of the Health Bureau, Lei Chin Ion, said a new department would be created to include 70 workers, to take care of the new duties.”
Source: Clear The Air and Macau Daily Times
Does harm reduction help anti-smoking campaign?
The Citizens Council, a group which brings the views of the public to NICE’s decision-making, has voted in favour of the use of harm reduction as a way to reduce the dangers of smoking.
The 30 members of the Citizens Council met in October last year to discuss the pros and cons of harm reduction.
The aim of harm reduction is to reduce the harm associated with cigarettes for smokers who find it too hard to quit. This could include replacing cigarettes with a clean form of nicotine, or with cigarettes which intend to deliver lower levels of toxins.
It’s a way to provide a less harmful alternative to smoking while accepting that nicotine addiction continues.
Sir Michael Rawlins, Chair of NICE, said: “The concept of harm reduction conflicts with traditional smoking cessation as it does not necessarily seek to help people stop smoking altogether, nor does it treat nicotine addiction. What would this approach mean for the goal of having a smoke free society?
The findings from the Citizens Council come as the Department of Health launches a Tobacco Control Strategy for England which aims to divide the number of smokers, from 21 to 10 per cent of the population by 2020.
This latest strategy, A Smokefree Future, sets out to ensure that every smoker will be able to get help from the NHS to suit them if they want to give up. This includes introducing new approaches to reducing smoking such as harm reduction.
The Department of Health will also work with NICE to encourage alignment of the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF), so as to encourage more smokers to use the NHS Stop Smoking Services.
The public is now invited to comment on the Citizens Council members’ views on the use of harm reduction in smoking, before the report is presented to the NICE Board. The report on the Council’s views is available for public comment, at www.nice.org.uk (Comments must be sent in by 5pm on Wednesday, 31 March 2010).
source: Finiancial Times and NICE
Raise tobacco tax to be on par with other cities
Clear the Air anti-tobacco committee chairman James Middleton
In his 2009 budget speech a year ago, Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah announced a 50 per cent increase in tobacco duty “with immediate effect”.
He said: “We will also continue to step up our efforts on smoking cessation, as well as publicity and enforcement in tobacco control.” But Mr Tsang’s determination is yet to be proved until we see a continuation of a tax increase policy in this year’s budget.
The tobacco tax was increased by 5 per cent in 2001, but there was no rise for the next seven years.
If we want to continue our efforts on tobacco control for public health, besides enforcement and publicity as well as cessation services, we need to see a regular tax increase policy in place.
Some people may argue that raising tobacco tax will only raise the sale price of cigarettes, which are already very expensive.
But is this the case? Hong Kong ranked the 29th most-expensive place among other world cities, while New York ranked 31st, in a recent cost-of-living survey by an international employment agency.
However, cigarettes remain cheaper in Hong Kong than in many of these countries.
Clear the Air anti-tobacco committee chairman James Middleton compared cigarette prices in Hong Kong with those in other high-income cities.
He found that cigarettes in Hong Kong were only 60 per cent of the price in Singapore, 53 per cent of the cost in New York, and 43 per cent of the price in London.
The government should now prove its determination, for the sake of public health and to protect our children.
Therefore, I urge people to support a regular tobacco tax increase policy of 15 per cent annually so that cigarette prices in Hong Kong are on a par with similar cities within five years.
Source: SCMP, Lisa Lau, chairwoman, Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health
Tobacco tax increase is best way to curb smoking
A smoking shelter in United Kingdom.
It took years to extend anti-smoking laws to restaurants and bars, a ban which came into effect last July. It has taken only a few months for activists to take their campaign to curb smoking outdoors. The Council on Smoking and Health is considering recommending that the government should introduce measures to corral smokers into designated outdoor smoking areas. Because more smokers have been driven onto the streets, it argues that second-hand smoke is now an outdoor health hazard, especially in crowded pedestrian areas, and that this justifies further action. A street ban would be difficult to police, but council chairwoman Lisa Lau Man-man cites the example of Tokyo, another densely populated area, where smoking in the streets has been banned in some areas.
Designated non-smoking outdoor areas are already to be found, for example along the promenade outside the Central ferry piers. Smokers generally respect them and Lau believes they would also discipline themselves if the balance were reversed and smoking areas were designated instead.
So long as tobacco use remains lawful, however addictive and unhealthy it may be, these ideas raise the question of balance between personal freedoms and community interest. Bans respect non-smokers’ right to breathe clean air. But there is room for more effective enforcement of the recently introduced indoor bans and the HK$1,500 on-the-spot fines for breaches. That would reinforce the educational message to the slowly shrinking minority who smoke that theirs is an anti-social and risky habit.
Lau rightly concedes that the most effective way of curbing smoking remains rises in tobacco tax. Having raised it by 50 per cent last year - the first increase for eight years - the government should not shrink from imposing a smaller incremental rise in this year’s budget. Unfortunately this would hit the poor hardest. But given that smoking is addictive, and taxpayers at large fund the earlier, more frequent and extra health care that smokers are prone to need, this is one tax increase for which there is an argument in social equity.
Source: SCMP
Law has failed to stop tobacco sales to minors
The picture is taken on 2006 by Neighbourhood & Worker's Service Centre. But after fighting for years, there is not action taken by the government yet.
I refer to the report (”Cigarettes easier for teenagers to buy”, January 21).
The Neighbourhood and Worker’s Education Centre has once again concluded, as expected, that 86 per cent of retail outlets are willing to sell cigarettes indiscriminately to underage smokers.
Does anyone really believe that the employees of 7-Eleven and Circle K stores, news-stands and other outlets will put up with abuse arising from their refusal to sell cigarettes to under-age smokers? Clearly the relevant legislation has failed and it remains an uphill battle to get smokers to quit and to prevent future generations of young people from taking up this destructive habit.
Because retail outlets can flout the law it makes a mockery of the legislation.
If a retailer refuses to sell to minors they will simply find another store.
There are too many of these outlets which makes meaningful enforcement impossible. Nicotine is a poisonous and cancer-causing substance and its availability must be restricted not facilitated at every street corner as it is now.
It seems totally irrational for a poisonous substance to be as conveniently and widely available as beverages, snacks, newspapers and other daily necessities.
We must fight the aggressive importers of cigarettes by restricting their access to the market place.
Even raising the tax will have only a limited and temporary effect.
Reducing the number of cigarette-vending outlets as soon as possible can help to minimise a potentially huge health care bill for smoking-related illnesses and is in the best interests of the community.
source: SCMP, Ang Ah-lay, Causeway Bay
Tobacco label fight heats up
“Plain packaging” can be a method to reduce tobacco use?
International tobacco companies are preparing to mount a no-holdsbarred legal and lobbying campaign to stop Australia becoming the first country to introduce so-called “plain packaging” for cigarettes.
A United States-based lobby group took the unusual step of making a submission on the issue last year and the Australian-based American Chamber of Commerce is reviewing whether it will take a position.
Plain packaging, one of the key recommendations of a report last year to federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon on a national preventative health strategy, would stop tobacco companies using glossy paper, colours or fonts to decorate cigarette packets even in the parts of the package not already taken up by warnings.
Brand names such as “Marlboro” or “Peter Jackson” could still appear on the packet but would be much smaller and in a dull, nondescript font.
Ms Roxon said she would respond “in a short time” to the recommendations, which include a substantial increase in the excise tax on cigarettes and more funding for quit advertising.
A Senate inquiry is also due to start hearings soon on a private member’s bill by Steve Fielding on plain packaging.
In a sign of the global interest, Thomas Donohue, president of the US Chamber of Commerce, a major Washington-based business lobby group, made a submission to the preventative health taskforce.
“We think that a move to mandate generic packaging would establish a bad precedent for companies from both of our countries,“Mr Donohue said.
“We would hope that the Australian government will not take this step.”
Charles Blunt, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia, said his group was now reviewing whether to take a position on the intellectual property implications of plain packaging.
Mr Blunt said the local American Chamber had been aware of the US Chamber’s submission last year but had not joined it.
Stanton Glantz, an anti-smoking campaigner at the University of California in San Francisco, said it was the first time he had ever heard of the US Chamber of Commerce, which usually deals with US domestic issues, getting involved in another country: “This is pretty amazing.”
Mr Glantz said internal documents made public during the US tobacco trials revealed close links between Big Tobacco and the US chamber.
Tobacco companies in the US are mounting a legal challenge after the Obama administration convinced Congress to pass a law that could allow the US Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco products, including by plain packaging.
The US Chamber has been split by its opposition to several Obama administration initiatives, and Apple quit the organisation over its stance on climate change.
Mathew Rimmer, an intellectual property expert at the Australian National University College of Law, said Australia was one of the first countries to give serious consideration to plain packaging and tobacco firms were concerned that once it was passed in one country, the approach could spread.
“There’s an international strategy. It’s part of an orchestrated campaign to squash plain packaging,” Dr Rimmer said.
The tobacco industry argues plain packaging breaches trademark law and amounts to confiscation of property without confiscation.
But anti-smoking groups say courts around the world have consistently upheld governments’ right to restrict the use of trademarks on serious public health grounds such as tobacco-related death.
Source: Prof. Judith Longstaff Mackay, Senior Advisor of worldlungfoundation.org & Geoff Winestock, Australian Financial Review
Needs of license sellers of tobacco
Retailers in Hong Kong sell cigarettes to minors in the face of tobacco control laws designed to protect children (”Most stores still selling cigarettes to teens”, January 25).
This is nothing new. Sting operations in Hong Kong from 1987 have shown the same thing - that retailers are flaunting the law.
Bans globally on sales to minors are not effective unless they are given real teeth.
The best way forward for Hong Kong is to license retailers to sell cigarettes. If they are then found to be selling cigarettes to those under age, they lose their cigarette licence.
It might also be an appropriate time to remove tobacco displays from their prominent positions in supermarkets and other stores.
Source: SCMP, Dr Judith Mackay, director, Asian Consultancy on Tobacco Control
Arrests double for trading in illicit cigarettes
The number of people arrested over illegal cigarette activities has nearly doubled since the tobacco tax was increased by 50 per cent in February - the youngest a boy of 11 and the oldest a 95-year-old man.
Chow Chi-kwong, head of customs’ revenue and general investigation bureau, said illegal traders tried to use children to smuggle cigarettes to lower the risk of being detected.
He said the 11-year-old boy was used by his mother to carry a paper bag containing 820 duty-not-paid cigarettes as they crossed from the mainland to Hong Kong in Sha Tau Kok. The boy was released after investigations found he was innocent but his mother was prosecuted for possessing dutiable cigarettes.
Another youngster arrested was a 15-year-old recruited to make deliveries on phone orders for illicit cigarettes, Chow said. He was among 57 people arrested between March and November for involvement in offering illicit cigarettes phone order services. A total of 290,000 cigarettes were seized.
The 95-year-old man was caught selling contraband cigarettes in Kwai Chung in March. He was among a growing number of elderly people selling illicit cigarettes to other old people and their friends on public-housing estates and in parks and cooked-food areas.
Officers said elderly peddlers generally sold a single pack of illicit cigarettes rather than a whole carton and could make HK$2 or HK$3 a pack. “The profit is not big, but a little money is enough for them,” Chow said.
Officers said they might obtain the cigarettes by buying them duty-free when returning from the mainland. Chow said customs would step up patrols to stop the trade. He warned that buyers and sellers faced a maximum penalty of a HK$1 million fine and two months’ jail.
The Customs and Excise Department recorded a 91 per cent rise in the number of arrests between March and November - to 1,794 from 935 in the same period last year.
Cases of cigarette smuggling, distribution, storage and selling rose by 87 per cent to 2,301 between March and November compared with 1,229 in the same period last year.
But seizures of illicit cigarettes dropped by 25 per cent from 63 million between March and November last year to 47 million during the same period this year.
Customs attributed the increase in the number of arrests and cases to stringent enforcement action.
Explaining the drop in seizures of contraband cigarettes, Chow said: “I believe the [cigarette] syndicates also notice our enforcement action. They lower their storage to cut losses. Before the increase in tobacco tax, we could seize more than two million sticks of illicit cigarettes in a single major case. After April, we seize fewer than a million sticks in a case.”
Customs’ figures show the number of taxed cigarettes sold in the city dropped by 26 per cent to 14.84 million between March and November from 20.11 million in the same period last year.
Last month, the newly formed Tobacco Control Concern Group, comprising cigarette makers and retailers, said the 50 per cent increase in tobacco tax had failed to reduce the number of smokers and had instead promoted an increase in sales of illicit cigarettes.
Chow said the situation was under control after stronger enforcement measures were introduced in March.
“It is an endless war and we still have to fight,” he said, adding that customs would spare no effort in combating such illegal activities and would closely monitor the situation.
He urged people to report such activity on customs’ 24-hour hotline, 2545 6182.
Meanwhile, the number of travellers who were ordered to pay penalties after being caught bringing duty-not-paid cigarettes into the city without declaration at control points rose by 71 per cent this year after the 50 per cent increase in tobacco tax.
The department recorded 4,421 such cases between March and November, compared with 2,584 cases in the same period last year.
Source: SCMP,
