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Clear The Air Letter to Hong Kong Customs Commissioner

Dear Commissioner,

In previous correspondence with your anti illicit tobacco taskforce it became clear that for contraband cigarette seizures in Hong Kong approx 30-40% seized was counterfeit, meaning that 60-70% of the seizures were genuine products.

This means the tobacco companies are repeatedly conspiring with their distributors to sell DNP products by failing to control their supply chain networks.

Even the local tobacco front organisation HKUAIT-Stopit states that counterfeit seizures are only 40% of the total.

Given that such genuine DNP/General cargo products emanate from

  1. Transnational tobacco corporations with local HKG representative offices
  2. Mainland corporations

Why is no action taken against such companies and their directors under the Organised and Serious Crimes Ordinance and for common law offences such as conspiracy to defraud HK Govt of excise taxation?

In cases where criminal prosecution might be hindered such as in offending companies based in South Korea, why is no civil action raised against them by Hong Kong Government?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/tobacco-firms-to-pay-550m-over-smuggling-1.902510

http://www.cityam.com/1415884123/british-american-tobacco-whacked-650000-fine-hmrc-oversupplying-belgium-cigarette-market

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/16/bat-fined-for-oversupplying-tobacco-in-low-tax-european-jurisdictions

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/tobacco-industry-accused-of-fueling-cigarette-smuggling-to-boost-profits-10287003.html

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2004/jul/09/smoking.europeanunion

https://industrydocuments.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/collections/japan-tobacco-international-smuggling/

http://www.theguardian.com/bat/0,,191282,00.html

 

Kind regards,

James Middleton

Chairman

http://cleartheair.org.hk

Download (PDF, 2.36MB)

CTA Letter on submission to the Legco Panel on Health Services

Download (PDF, 461KB)

So, you want to try smoking ? This is what you’ll achieve.

Download (PDF, 1.11MB)

Reply to Does smuggling negate the impact of a tobacco tax increase?

http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/letters

James Middleton, NGO

Clear the Air

Re: Does smuggling negate the impact of a tobacco tax increase?. Tsui tobaccocontrol-2015-052310doi:10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2015-052310

NOT PEER REVIEWED

This article is manifestly wrong in material content.

Hong Kong has in fact, two current large domestic manufacturers of tobacco products, Hong Kong Tobacco Co Ltd and Nanyang Brothers Tobacco Co Ltd.

Moreover the HK Customs Dept are all over the local dial-up-delivery smuggling syndicates to the extent that the tobacco funded front groups ITIC and Oxford Economics had to produce wildly false and flawed Information on the supposed level of illicit product availability (suitably decimated by the following reports).

The HK Government gauges smoking prevalence from its Thematic Household survey reports; what is lacking in Hong Kong is the absence of questions in these Thematic Household Surveys seeking information on how many interviewees had purchased and / or used illicit tobacco in the previous year, the price they paid for it and the frequency of such DNP usage and whether they were concerned that the ingredients / nicotine/tar levels would most likely be far more toxic than the excise DP cancer sticks.

Only with the incorporation of this relevant data could the claimed 10.7% prevalence levels be accurately gauged.

In Singapore which has a lower cost of living than Hong Kong, a DP packet of Marlboro retails at HK$ 76 whereas the same DP packet in Hong Kong costs only HK$ 50, meaning tobacco remains affordable and available to HKG youth and there is no tobacco retailer license system, no POS display legislation and no onus on liquor /mahjong / sauna licensees to enforce the anti smoking legislation in their premises.

The Health Department Policy Bureau failed to seek an excise increase in the last Budget, according to the Financial Secretary in an RTHK radio interview in Feb 2015.

The Tobacco Control Office has just over 100 ‘enforcement’ officers to cover Hong Kong, Kowloon, the New Territories and the Islands area over two shifts meaning they have insufficient manpower to patrol.

http://seatca.org/dmdocuments/Asia%2014%20Critique_Final_20May2015.pdf
http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2015/01/05/tobaccocontrol-2014-051937.full
http://www.legco.gov.hk/yr11-12/english/counmtg/hansard/cm0322-translate-e.pdf page 7400
http://www.customs.gov.hk/en/publication_press/press/index_current.html
Shows the multiple seizures and arrests.

Hong Kong Tobacco Company Ltd Address : 3/F Paramount Building, Hong Kong Tel 25618111 Owner Charles HO Tsu Kwok https://webb-site.com/dbpub/positions.asp?p=4462 http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=8075652&ticker=1105:HK https://webb-site.com/articles/bauhiniafound.asp

Nanyang Brothers Tobacco Co Ltd http://www.nbt-hk.com/ Location: Tuen Mun Hong Kong http://www.zigsam.at/B_Peel.htm http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-crime/article/1846318/tobacco-worker-43-dies-industrial-accident-hong-kong Nan Yang also manufacture flavored tobaccos (PEEL)which are sold in the local market http://english.caijing.com.cn/2004-03-20/110030213.html

Smuggling arrests http://www.siic.com/en_service_4.html

Nanyang owners Nanyang Brothers Tobacco Co., Ltd. Nanyang Brothers Tobacco (short for “NBT”)is the largest cigarette manufacturer in Hong Kong, of which main brand is “Double Happiness ” and has a history of more than 100 years. At present, “Double Happiness” has been one of the most valuable trademarks in the tobacco industry. The production base of NBT is located in Tuen Mun, Hong Kong. NBT owns advanced manufacturing techniques, and its process of production is completely under computer control and management in order to guarantee the quality of products. The product of NBT is not only sold to China Mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao, but also sold to Singapore, Thailand and Korea and so on. In 2011, its sales revenue and net profit reached 2,473 million HK dollars and 610 million HK dollars respectively.

Cigarettes manufactured by Nanyang Brothers Tobacco Nanyang Brothers Tobacco Co. Ltd., located at Tuen Mun, New Territories, Hong Kong, China

Nanyang Brothers Tobacco Co. Ltd., located at 9 Tsing Yeung Circuit, Hong Kong, China Founded in 1906. NANYANG means SOUTH PACIFIC. Current PRODUCTS: Alain Delon, Centori, Chunghwa, DJ Mix, Just Above, Peel, Polar Bear, Shuang Xi, Texas 5, (The Globe), Wealth

Study Shows the Reason Why People Like to Smoke While Drinking

CTA SAYS: placing the onus on licensees to enforce the laws in their premises will prevent people smoking in bars as at present

TCO is way understaffed so it acts only on complaints, and days later, with no patrol capabilities

If nicotine addicts cannot go out and socialize in enforced NON SMOKING bars where the laws are actually legally enforced by the licensees, they will quit

http://www.foodworldnews.com/articles/49313/20151102/study-shows-reason-why-people-smoke-drinking.htm

Smoking while drinking? This is the most common scenario in bars and pubs. Despite the fact that the number of tobacco users already decreased, we can still count the number social smokers increasing especially for young men and women. The question is, what is it about drinking that changes the health conscious to become smokers overnight? According to Medical Daily, a recent study found that many drinkers want the stimulant effects of nicotine which helps them not to feel sleepy while drinking alcohol.

An estimated 90 percent of alcoholics also smoke tobacco this is according to the National Institute of Health. They said that even people who are not alcohol dependent are also known to smoke only when they start drinking. The connection between drinking and smoking has been acknowledged, scientists are still unsure what really makes them crave to start smoking.

To investigate the theory of what really makes people smoke when they are drinking, a team of researchers from the University of Missouri, gave rats fitted with sleep-recording electrodes nicotine and alcohol. After observing the effects of the two drugs on the rats’ brains, the team came to an interesting conclusion: Nicotine’s stimulant effect helps to ward off the sleepiness caused by alcohol consumption.

It affected the rat’s basal forebrain, it is the area of the brain associated with reflexes, learning and attention. On the other hand, alcohol which is a depressant inhibits the nervous system. Therefore, it is proven that it would help counteract the sleeping effects and increase alertness. In a past research it has been found that nicotine helps enhance the effects of alcohol. It actually adds to the “high” that alcohol gives and in turn increases the desire to drink more.

However, as we all know along with being two of the most widely used drugs, these are also some of the deadliest drugs. An average of about 6 million deaths each year is caused by smoking and about 3 million is because of excessive use of alcohol according to the World Health Organization

Clear The Air Letter to Legco Panel on Health Services

Download (PDF, 588KB)

The International Tax and Investment Center (ITIC)

Download (PDF, 2.19MB)

BMJ Reply to Does smuggling negate the impact of a tobacco tax increase?

Download (PDF, 135KB)

Tobacco evidence – The Scotsman

To:istewart@scotsman.com
Subject: Tobacco evidence – The Scotsman

Dear Sir,

I refer to the letter from Neil McKeganey (11 Sep 2015) in response to Sheila Duffy of ASH Scotland.

On the writer’s own website (http://www.drugmisuseresearch.org/funders) he lists Big Tobacco among his funding sources: Philip Morris / BAT/ Nicoventures & also Reckitt Benckiser BAT’s CEO Nicandro Duranante was appointed as a Non-Exec Director of Reckitt Benckiser Group plc in December 2013.

http://tinyurl.com/o2eckqf

GTNF – Global Tobacco & Nicotine Forum aka the ‘Davos of Tobacco’ since 2008,  is a yearly gathering of tobacco industry executives, invited front groups & paid friends of the industry where tricks of the trade are exchanged.

http://www.gtnf-2014.com/agenda/

“what really distinguishes the GTNF is its “two-way traffic” approach. The essence of the forum and workshop sessions is interaction, conversation, debate, consensus—a sharing of knowledge, expertise and wisdom”

The writer is a repeat yearly speaker/panelist at GTNF conferences dating back numerous years & is scheduled to attend GTNF in Bologna this month

http://gtnf-2015.com/look-whos-talking/

Big Tobacco does not invite dissenting voices to speak at its own industry conferences.

Indeed the writer sees nothing wrong with convicted Rico racketeers funding selective research

http://tinyurl.com/ohcfxmn

http://www.who.int/tobacco/media/en/TobaccoExplained.pdf

“it is a predatory industry whose market dynamics  demand that it recruits young people. It does this by deploying vast promotional expenditures to create, communicate & amplify a set of positive values associated with the product. Once the glamour phase subsides, nicotine addiction takes over making the customer dependent on the product & securing a profitable cash flow. Trapped by nicotine addiction, the smoker is subject to a variety of sub-lethal illnesses which culminate in a one in two probability of death through smoking-related disease. The smoker’s death means a replacement customer must be found – and the cycle begins again”

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2509609/

http://tinyurl.com/p7clqrr

“After combing through nearly 50 million pages of previously secret, internal tobacco-industry documents, UC Davis and UC San Francisco  researchers say they have documented for the first time how the industry funded & used scientific studies to undermine evidence linking secondhand smoke to cardiovascular disease.”

Moreover, another frequent speaker at the GTNF conferences each year is Dr Delon Human, a South African doctor based in Switzerland who was funded by BAT to write a book on nicotine.

Human’s EuroSwiss Health company along with LIAF (Italian anti tobacco foundation) http://www.liaf-onlus.org/ funded the recent Nutt report https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/360220  relied upon by PHE for its ‘e-cigs 95% safer’ report.

The chief executive of LIAF is Dr Riccardo Polosa. A search of Legacy tobacco documents online https://industrydocuments.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/ reveals 134 links for ‘Polosa’ & shows his University department received Euro 400,000 study funding from PMI 12 years ago. Another regular GTNF panelist is South African opthamologist Kgiso Letlape with connections to Delon Human thru the African Medical Assn. http://www.africama.net/about_afma.htm

Polosa & Letlape are amongst the authors of the Nutt report funded by Human /LIAF and the writer rubs shoulders with them at the GTNF conferences. Another Nutt report author, K Fagerstrom is shown as a recipient of industry funding.

http://www.tobaccoreporter.com/gtnf-2013/

http://www.gtnf-2014.com/  (the Davos of Tobacco)

As for the writer’s query on the effectiveness of killing the ‘Silent Salesman’ (the last available advertising outlet for Big T = the pack) combined with a multi pronged approach of increased taxation , health warnings replacing the glitz & control of point of display, Health Australia states:

http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/content/tobacco-kff

Q: Have any early impacts of tobacco plain packaging been identified?

A: Research undertaken during the roll-out phase of the tobacco plain packaging legislation, when both plain and branded packs were available found that plain packaged cigarettes with larger health warnings increased smokers’ urgency to quit and lowered the appeal of smoking

http://tinyurl.com/q9ucybt

Australia’s plain packaging laws successful, studies show The first comprehensive evaluation of Australia’s ground-breaking plain packaging tobacco laws shows they are working, the Victorian Cancer Council says.

Fourteen separate studies on the impact of plain packaging in its first year were published today in a special supplement to the British Medical Journal.

The research found after the laws were implemented, there was a “statistically significant increase” in the number of people thinking about & making attempts to quit smoking

http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/24/Suppl_2.toc

http://tinyurl.com/nbwkhoz

Readers must query the possible bias and intentions of the correspondent with a pinch of salt, which is also bad for the health.

People in glass houses should not throw stones.

 

James Middleton

Chairman

www.cleartheair.org.hk

——————————————————————-

http://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/letters/tobacco-evidence-1-3883447

00:29 Friday 11 September 2015

HAVE YOUR SAY

Sheila Duffy (Letters, 9 September), like many single-issue lobbyists, celebrates the data that confirms her view while casually disregarding other evidence that contradicts it.

In her letter, she refers to the dozens of studies that have focused on tobacco plain packaging without mentioning the “inconvenient finding” that not a single one of those studies has actually shown a reduction in smoking prevalence attributable to plain packaging.

In advance of this policy being implemented in Australia, leading tobacco control researchers were advising that plain packaging would result in a 1 per cent reduction in adult smoking 
and a 3 per cent reduction in children’s smoking within two
years of the policy being implemented.

Those same researchers are now advising that plain packaging may be a “slow burn distal” influence on smoking with its impact best considered in the long term when it is used alongside a whole host of other tobacco control measures such as taxation.

Tobacco plain packaging was implemented as a way of reducing smoking prevalence and while it may well reduce the 
attractiveness of smoking, nobody ever died from the attractiveness of a cigarette packet.

The key to reducing smoking-related health harm, as Duffy well knows, is to reduce smoker numbers.

Those who advocated for plain packaging should be demanding the evidence on whether it has reduced smoker numbers rather than switching the assessment criteria to a range of soft, subjective measures, such as determining if plain packaging reduces the appeal of smoking.

Neil McKeganey PhD

Centre for Drug Misuse Research Glasgow

19:56 Tuesday 08 September 2015

HAVE YOUR SAY

In THE midst of a recent article about alcohol minimum unit pricing, Neil McKeganay, from the Centre for Drug Misuse Research, casually dismisses proposals for standardised tobacco packaging as lacking in evidence. Far from being rushed this policy has been years in the making, and the subject of dozens of studies – I wish all policy initiatives were so carefully considered and had such strong public support.

Plain, standardised packaging makes the look of tobacco more truthful and is designed to disrupt tobacco companies’ attempts to hook in new consumers through presenting their product as sophisticated, rugged or slimming. In 2011 the UK Department of Health commissioned a systematic review of 37 studies on the likely impact of standardised packaging, later updated with 17 further studies. This evidence consistently demonstrated that standard packs would reduce the appeal of tobacco products and increase people’s awareness of health warnings.

In Australia where tobacco has been sold in standardised packaging since December 2012, all the early signs are encouraging. Smokers say the cigarettes don’t taste as good, and that they are more likely to think about quitting. Smoking rates in Australia are plummeting. Figures from the Australian department of health show that tobacco consumption in the first quarter of 2014 was at the lowest ever recorded.

McKeganay’s own tobacco-industry funded group claims an interest in researching “harm reduction”. Standardised tobacco packaging is a well-evidenced harm reduction measure.

Sheila Duffy

ASH Scotland Frederick Street Edinburgh

CTA SAYS: Here is our prediction on the new revolution of vaping

Worldwide authorities will either ban or regulate E-cigarettes as medicinal products

Only systems with enclosed canisters will pass required testing (to prevent people adding MDMA or other drugs and accidental poisoning of children attracted to the colours)

The cost and timing of certification and testing each product, its electrical charging system and battery safety, contents of the canister and accuracy of nicotine / other ingredients will be extreme

Only the largest e-cig companies and Big Tobacco will be able to afford such testing- their own scientists will already know what is required to achieve FDA or equivalent testing

The smaller e-cig companies will fall by the wayside or survive on mail order and a huge black market will appear for fillable tank tape inhalers

More inhaler type products like VOKE will appear on the market and Big-T will issue patent suits against copycats

Big-T will start a ‘General Cargo’ aka smuggling, network via its supply chain to avoid payment of Excise tax on approved cartridges and to keep people addicted to nicotine

Black market cartridge copies containing higher nicotine content will appear – canisters containing flavorings and synthetic drugs like MDMA will appear – police in a quandary how to deal with situation

Big-T will use its paid bent senators and front groups to push for a seat at the Govt Health tables, since they are now part of the harm prevention ‘solution’ and Govt / NHS Health Services are now their major clients

Meanwhile youth will experiment with vaping , normalise usage, add drugs to the tank, – move on to combustibles = who knows? – all in all , a mess;- meanwhile Big-T gets richer and more powerful, sues Governments to prevent adoption of health measures like plain packaging, Governments add massive excise increases in retaliation, ‘General Cargo’ surges to fill the demand, the death cycle continues