Government
University of Waterloo receives grant for tobacco policy research
http://www.570news.com/2016/07/12/university-of-waterloo-to-receive-grant-for-effects-of-tobacco-research/
A big boost for researchers at the University of Waterloo.
The U.S National Cancer Institute has given the University $8.8 million to evaluate the public-health impact of government policies that aim to regulate tobacco products, including e-cigarettes.
The grant is for the University’s International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project– which has evaluated the impact of national-level tobacco control policies in 28 countries.
Waterloo and the Medical University of South Carolina are the two lead institutions in the larger research grant involving 11 institutions and totalling $20 million.
In a release, The University says “they are pleased to be one of two lead institutions involved in this large-scale international project that will further the strides already made in public health related to tobacco products, as well as evaluate the impact of government policies on public health.”
Uruguay Defeats Philip Morris In Major Win For Anti- Smoking Advocates
Uruguay has defeated Philip Morris, the global tobacco giant, in a major international lawsuit over the country’s tough anti-smoking regulations. The Swiss-based company sued Uruguay at the World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes under the terms of a 1991 bilateral investment treaty between Uruguay and Switzerland.
Philip Morris, which was founded in London in 1847, is now the world’s largest cigarette manufacturer with annual revenues of over $80 billion. It has been waging an aggressive battle around the world against national laws requiring tobacco companies to print graphic warnings about the health impacts of smoking. So far it has lost lawsuits in courts in Australia, Norway, Thailand and the UK.
On March 26, 2010, Philip Morris filed a complaint against Uruguay at the World Bank arbitration tribunal. The action was intended to escalate the fight to an international level and to take advantage of trade agreements that typically favor major corporations by allowing them to claim damages from laws that deny them profits from their investments.
“This is like David and Goliath,” Silvina Echarte Acevedo, the legal adviser in charge of the Uruguayan ministry of public health’s case, told the Independent newspaper.
“They are bullying us because we are small.”
In suing the small South American country, Philip Morris also hoped to strike down some of the toughest anti-smoking laws in the world. Uruguay requires tobacco companies to print health warnings and graphic images such as diseased lungs and rotting teeth that cover 80 per cent of both sides of cigarette packets. It also requires companies to use the same image for all its products making it hard for the company to promote sub-brands like lights or mild cigarettes. Taxes have been hiked and smoking in public places have been banned.
On October 13, 2014, Paul Reichler, a lawyer with Foley Hoag, in Washington DC, responded on behalf of the Uruguayan government, citing the country’s obligations under the World Health Organisation’s 2005 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
The case was heard by a three person panel under arbitration rules that allow each party to appoint a judge each and mutually agree on a third. Not surprisingly when the verdict was delivered on July 8, 2016, Piero Bernadini, appointed by Uruguay, sided with the country, while Gary Born, apppointed by Philip Morris, sided with the company. The deadlock was broken by James Crawford, an Australian judge appointed by the World Bank, who sided with Uruguay.
“It is not acceptable to prioritize commercial considerations over the fundamental right to health and life,” Uruguay’s President Tabaré Vázquez announced in a victory speech to his citizens. “The health measures that we have imposed to control tobacco and protect the health of our people have been recognized as legitimate and adopted as a sovereign function of our republic.”
Other politicians and anti-smoking advocates applauded the verdict, notably Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York city who helped fund Uruguay’s
defense.
“This is a major victory for the people of Uruguay — and it shows countries everywhere that they can stand up to tobacco companies and win,” Bloomberg said. “No country
should ever be intimidated by the threat of a tobacco company lawsuit, and this case will help embolden more nations to take actions that will save lives.”
The company attempted to put its best face forward. “We’ve never questioned Uruguay’s authority to protect public health,” Marc Firestone, general counsel at Philip Morris. “The arbitration concerned an important, but unusual, set of facts that called for clarification under international law, which the parties have now received. For the last seven years, we have already been complying with the regulations at issue in the case, so today’s outcome doesn’t change the status quo.”
However the company’s previous statements make it clear that this is a significant defeat.
“The large size of these warnings prevents us from effectively displaying our trademarks and goes beyond what could reasonably be considered appropriate to inform consumers of the well-established health risks of smoking,” Morgan Rees, a spokesperson for Philip Morris, told Investment Arbirtation Reporter. “This is without precedent anywhere in the world.”
Has New Zealand lost its way in tobacco control?
http://theconversation.com/has-new-zealand-lost-its-way-in-tobacco-control-62178
The New Zealand government has decided to reorient its priorities in tobacco control. It has announced it will be pulling 73% of its previous funding support for tobacco control advocacy. The only money allocated for tobacco control to do the vital work of building and sustaining community and multi-party support for tobacco control will go to an Auckland-based Māori health agency Hāpai te Hauora.
Instead, New Zealand will be ploughing nearly all funding into “frontline cessation services with improved training to get better quit results”. Decoded, this means sinking money into efforts focused on smokers in clinical or small group settings and defunding efforts focused on advocacy for policies that will motivate smokers across the community to quit.
This policy shift risks stalling or even starting to reverse the decline in smoking prevalence that New Zealand has experienced. Here’s why.
Five assumptions have almost certainly driven this worrying shift in policy.
First, there is likely to be a myopic preoccupation with lifting smoking cessation success rates rather than a priority focus on increasing the number of people who quit.
Advocates for encouraging what they amusingly call “evidence based” smoking cessation always highlight the generally better success rates obtained by smokers who use assistance compared to those who try to quit alone. From this they reason that the main game should therefore be convincing as many smokers as possible to use assistance.
But over 30 years of efforts in several nations to boost attendance at smoking cessation services have failed to lift attendance beyond fringe proportions of all smokers interested in quitting. Very few smokers are willing to seek anything more than brief assistance.
The number of people who quit is a function of the reach of a method and its rate of success. Consider this: in a million smokers, if 3% quit and stay quit unaided in a year, 30,000 ex-smokers result. But if 15% of 10,000 smokers convinced to attend professional smoking cessation services quit – five times the success rate – the yield is only 1,500 ex-smokers. Clearly, a lower success rate in a much larger number of people should always trump a much higher success rate in a much smaller number.
So the second problem is that intensive smoking cessation services usually requiring repeated contact have always failed to attract anything but tiny proportions of smokers.
In New Zealand, some 88% of smokers appear uninterested in even communicating via the quitline, by far the least demanding of all “interventions”. The number who would be willing to attend or engage with multiple session professional support services would be far, far less.
If you want to get smoking down across a whole population, there is no substitute for policies and campaigns that have mass reach potential, reaching nearly all smokers.
Tobacco tax, mass reach motivational media campaigns, smoke-free policies, and packaging controls all tick that box. Intensive smoking cessation services don’t.
Third, the cessation method that has delivered by far the most number of ex-smokers (unassisted cessation or cold turkey) is routinely neglected and often openly denigrated by smoking cessation specialists.
The conversation stopper here is that if you ask 100 ex-smokers how they stopped smoking, volumes of studies stretching back more than 40 years have shown that between two-thirds and three-quarters of ex-smokers used no pharmacological or professional assistance on their final successful quit attempt. Before the availability of nicotine replacement therapy, hundreds of millions of smokers globally quit smoking unassisted, including many heavily addicted smokers. So often denigrated by cessation specialists whose interests lie in providing assistance, the evidence shows unassisted cessation has the population cessation runs on the board.
The lesson from this is that ongoing, hard-hitting campaigns and evidence-based policies like tobacco tax to encourage quit attempts are of vital importance.
Fourth, those making the decisions are likely to have been mesmerised by clinical trial results, rather than real world data on how various smoking cessation strategies perform. Nicotine-replacement therapy (NRT) used with on-going support has better success than unassisted cessation. But again, we need to ask how many New Zealand smokers will realistically be interested in receiving that sort of support. Most will collect their subsidised NRT and not participate further.
New Zealand reportedly spends $NZ61m on tobacco control, with the great majority of this going to subsidised NRT. There is increasing evidence that handing out NRT to smokers away from ongoing professional support and over-the-counter use is all but useless. Evidence from England shows that the use of NRT bought over the counter is associated with a lower rate of abstinence than quitting unassisted.
Fifth, the seductive power of the so-called “hardening” hypothesis is likely to have tightened its grip on New Zealand policymakers. This hypothesis proposes that as smoking prevalence falls in a country, the proportion of “hard core” smokers rises.
True believers in this hypothesis then argue that the suite of comprehensive policies and campaigns that has caused smoking to fall over the past decades has seen nearly all the low-hanging fruit quit smoking and is now producing diminishing returns. Calls are then made to focus efforts on the burgeoning hard core smokers by labour and pharmacologically intensive cessation methods.
The problem with all this is that it is simply not true. New Zealand research just published found “no statistically significant changes in indicators of hardening including the proportion of smokers who were unmotivated or unable to quit despite repeat attempts” between 2008-2014. Similar findings have been reported in other studies internationally.
New Zealand could do with more commitment to the sort of large scale tough, motivating mass media campaigns that have contributed so much to motivating Australian smokers to quit and children not to start. Funding boosts to campaigns such as Stop before you start are likely to reach and influence far more people than giving extra support to low-demand services.
Advocacy groups have provided invaluable assistance to New Zealand governments over the years by making and defending the case for policies such as tobacco tax and plain packaging that can make a difference to the whole population of current and potential smokers. Former Australian health minister Nicola Roxon, the political architect of plain packaging (which is now spreading globally), told me that the call to legislate for plain packaging and very large tax increases was made politically and popularly palatable by the years of policy advocacy undertaken by NGOs and advocates for tough policy.
By all but removing advocacy funding in New Zealand, and filling the vacuum with funding for strategies simply incapable of reaching large numbers of smokers, the government is likely to be doing something it will regret.
New Zealand has some of the world’s most mature, astute and advanced strategic policy researchers. Together, they have punched well above their national weight in stimulating original thinking about pathways toward an endgame for tobacco use. The government would do well to provide support to harness their expertise to bring their analytic and research skills together rather than putting so many eggs in the individualistic smoking cessation basket.
How One Man and His Team Brought about a Complete Ban on Gutka Sales in Odisha
http://www.thebetterindia.com/60849/tobacco-addiction-odisha-gutka-ban/
Meet Imran, a young Odisha resident who has taken the battle against tobacco addiction in the state as a personal crusade and is fighting it with all his might.
“This campaign is like our addiction in the fight against addiction. We have decided to donate one rupee and one hour for the country each day,” says Md. Imran Ali about his crusade against tobacco and alcohol addiction in Odisha.
Imran came across the menace of tobacco in the city while pursuing his Master’s in Social Work degree. During one of his field visits to the Shantipali slum in Bhubaneshwar, he was shocked to see kids as young as 10 years old addicted to tobacco products, especially gutka. On further investigation, he found that the easy availability of tobacco products in the market and ignorance of parents make it easy for children to access these items. This addiction, in turn, becomes a stepping stone to other addictions, like alcohol and drugs, as the children grow up.
The gravity of the situation and its irredeemable impact stuck with Imran. He ended up writing and self-publishing a book named Bloody Gutka, in which he talks about the immense harm done by tobacco products.
This was followed by awareness programmes that he organised with his friends in the slums, where they talked to parents about this problem. Gradually, he brought together some like-minded young people in Bhubaneshwar to form Nasha Mukti Yuva Sankalp (NMYS), a voluntary campaign against tobacco/alcohol addiction and substance abuse.
The group comprises about 30 young people who work on a voluntary basis to contribute towards the cause whenever they can. They started by conducting awareness programmes in schools and colleges across the city, slowly moving on to advocacy in a planned manner.
“We noticed that many OMFED (Orissa State Cooperative Milk Producers’ Federation Limited) booths in the state were turning into tobacco and smoking hubs. One could find tobacco products more than milk in many of these booths. I, along with a friend Jitendra Kumar Sahoo, filed a PIL in the Odisha High Court, seeking a ban on the sale of tobacco products at milk parlours,” says Imran.
A senior HC advocate, Biren Tripathi, agreed to take up the case for free and it resulted in victory. The court ordered a ban on the sale of tobacco products in Odisha milk parlours in 2011.
“Winning the case gave us a lot of confidence. I felt that when you are doing some good work, it gets noticed and recognised,” says Imran.
Soon, the group started campaigning for a complete ban on the sale and business of gutka in the state to address the rising number of mouth cancer cases. According to reports, smokeless tobacco accounts for more than 40% of all cancers in Odisha. Over 43% of the population consumes smokeless tobacco in one form or the other.
When awareness drives and online campaigns did not lead to any positive impact, they filed another PIL in the High Court. This time, an NGO named CLAP (Committee for Legal Aid to Poor) stepped forward to help them. NMYS was successful once again and the state implemented a complete ban in 2013.
Continuing with his mission to make people aware about the hazards of tobacco, Imran directed an Odiya documentary called Salaam Jeevan, addressing the health, economic and environmental hazards of tobacco.
It was shown in 2,500 colleges in the state with the help of the youth wing of the Odisha government. Imran also wrote a book with the same name, which was followed by yet another documentary called Silent Killer. It is a short documentary that shows the effect of tobacco consumption on families in general and Imran circulated it on WhatsApp to reach more people.
Members of NMYS also assist mouth cancer patients by directing them to the Acharya Harihar Regional Cancer Centre that treats underprivileged people for free. Imran has started a counselling centre for tobacco users with one of his friends B Nayak, who is a doctor.
“Mouth cancer does not develop suddenly. It has many warning signs and symptoms, which if caught and medicated early, can help in the treatment of the disease. We focus on the preventive part of the disease at the counselling centre,” he says.
Imran feels blessed that he has people who are willing to help his team by contributing towards the cause in kind. Professional editors, voice-over artists, cameramen, etc., agree to volunteer for his movies for free.
All the members of the group work on a voluntary basis. They come from varying backgrounds – education, health, business, etc. Imran too works part time as a teacher in a college. He is originally from the Bhadrak district of Odisha but moved to Bhubaneshwar after completing his graduation in sociology.
Imran decided to dedicate his life to social work when he applied for a post-graduation course. No bank was willing to give him an education loan. He wrote to the then President of India, APJ Abdul Kalam, seeking help. And the President’s office replied with a notice to the bank demanding immediate attention. “I received the loan within two days. The incident made me think that if the first citizen of the country is so dedicated towards the welfare of common people like me, then my duty and responsibility toward the country become even greater,” he says.
“Every time we take patients to the hospital and help in their treatment, they show so much gratitude that I feel richer than any millionaire. It is a traumatising experience for people when they come to know about cancer. It is important for someone to support them and give them courage in such times. That is why I have decided to keep doing what I am doing,” he concludes with a smile.
Smoke and Mirrors? Structuring of Foreign Investments Following the Philip Morris Award
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=a2cfda47-0e67-4a86-91c4-2eba3fa71966
Perhaps the most high-profile case in the debate over investor-state arbitration in recent years has been the investment treaty claim by Philip Morris against the Australian Government, concerning the introduction of tobacco plain packaging rules. Opponents have relied on the case to highlight the perceived risk of “regulatory chill” caused by the proliferation of “secret courts”, while many proponents had hoped that the case would result in an award that carefully balanced the State’s “right to regulate” with the investor’s rights to “fair and equitable treatment” and “legitimate expectations”. The recently published decision[1] of the tribunal not to exercise jurisdiction over the claim has therefore resulted in a degree of disappointment from all quarters. Nonetheless, the award on jurisdiction and admissibility of 17 December 2015 deals with some important issues that have direct relevance to any investors seeking to restructure their investments in a manner that maximises their chances of obtaining investment treaty protections.
Background
The claim was brought by Philip Morris Asia Limited (“PM Asia“), a Hong Kong based subsidiary of Philip Morris International Inc. (“PMI“), under the Agreement between the Government of Hong Kong and the Government of Australia for the Promotion and Protection of Investments, dated 15 September 1993 (the “Treaty“). The substantive claim arose from the introduction of the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act 2011 and the Tobacco Plain Packaging Regulations 2011, which prohibited the use of brands, trademarks and logos on tobacco packaging. PM Asia argued that this amounted to an indirect expropriation of its intellectual property rights and transformed its Australian subsidiary (“PM Australia“) from a manufacturer of branded products to a manufacturer of commoditised products, thus substantially diminishing the value of its investments in Australia. PM Asia claimed damages of over US$ 4 billion.
The award sets out a detailed description of the chronology preceding the claim, but in summary, Australia had first considered plain packaging legislation in 1995. After various consultations and one abortive attempt to introduce legislation into the Senate, the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, officially announced his intention to introduce plain packaging legislation in April 2010. Following Mr Rudd’s defenestration by Julia Gillard and the subsequent election in August 2010, the Tobacco Plain Packaging Bill was eventually introduced into parliament in April 2011 and received Royal Assent on 1 December 2011.
In parallel with these developments, PMI had expressed its opposition to plain packaging legislation in Australia from at least late 2009. It maintained its dialogue with the Government from that point onwards, describing the proposals as “restrictions tantamount to expropriation” and threatening “legal challenges” if the proposals were pursued. Staring in September 2010, PMI began restructuring several of its global affiliates, with the stated aim of streamlining its corporate structure. On 21 January 2011, PMI filed a foreign investment application regarding the proposed purchase of PM Australia by PM Asia. The Treasury subsequently issued a “non-objection letter” and the acquisition completed on 23 February 2011. PM Asia issued its initial notice of claim under the Treaty on 27 June 2011 and its formal notice of arbitration on 21 November 2011, the day that the Tobacco Plain Packaging Bill passed both Houses of Parliament.
Award on Jurisdiction and Admissibility
The award on jurisdiction and admissibility deals with two preliminary objections by Australia:
- the “Non-Admission Objection” – Australia argued that PM Asia’s investment in PM Australia was not properly admitted in accordance with Australian law and therefore fell outside the subject-matter jurisdiction (ratione materiae) of the tribunal;
- the “Temporal Objection” – Australia argued that there was a pre-existing dispute between PMI and the Australian Government concerning the plain packaging proposals, and PM Asia’s investment in PM Australia post-dated this dispute, so it did not fall within the temporal jurisdiction (ratione temporis) of the tribunal. Australia supplemented this jurisdictional objection with an admissibility objection: even if the tribunal had jurisdiction over the claim, it should not exercise its jurisdiction because PM Asia’s claim under the Treaty amounted to an abuse of process.
- The “Non-Admission Objection” is specific to the facts of the case and is therefore of limited significance. However, the tribunal’s findings on the “Temporal Objection” may have wider application and are therefore worth further consideration.
PM Asia’s primary response to the Temporal Objection was that it had controlled PM Australia prior to the restructuring, through the exercise of management functions and strategic/budgetary decisions since 2001. The Treaty definition of an “investment” included assets “owned or controlled” by an investor and so PM Asia argued that it was eligible for the protections afforded by the Treaty long before its formal acquisition of PM Australia. The tribunal undertook a brief analysis of the case law on the distinction between ownership and control and found that PM Asia’s involvement in the approval of expenditures and dividends, its role in branding and marketing strategy and its supervision of PM Australia’s staff were insufficient to amount to “control” in circumstances where PM Asia’s actions were undertaken in accordance with PMI global policies and procedures and were ultimately subject to PMI approvals.
Having determined that PM Asia’s only eligible investment was its acquisition of PM Australia in February 2011, the tribunal therefore needed to ascertain whether it had jurisdiction and, if so, whether there was any reason for it to refuse to exercise that jurisdiction. Applying Gremcitel,[2] the tribunal held that whenever a cause of action is based on a treaty breach, the test for ratione temporis is whether the claimant made the protected investment before the moment when the alleged breach occurred. In that case, the tribunal had found that the critical date on which the breach crystallised was when the relevant legislative measures were adopted, notwithstanding the fact that this may have been “the culmination of a process or sequence of events which may have started years earlier“. In PM Asia’s case, it was the enactment of the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act in December 2011 that allegedly breached the Treaty and so PM Asia’s investment in February 2011 pre-dated the breach. Accordingly, the tribunal found that it did have jurisdiction over PM Asia’s claim.
Moving on to the question of admissibility, the tribunal undertook an analysis of the arbitral case law on abuse of process. Drawing on several prominent cases,[3] the tribunal emphasised that the mere fact of restructuring an investment to obtain the protection of an investment treaty is not per se illegitimate and that the threshold for finding an “abusive manipulation of the system of international investment protection” is high.[4] Applying Tidewater andMobil,[5] the tribunal determined that the key question was whether there was a “pre-existing” dispute at the time the restructuring was carried out. The tribunal grappled with the various formulations adopted in Gremcitel, Lao Holdingsand Pac Rim[6] and held that the initiation of a treaty claim constitutes an abuse of process when an investor “has changed its corporate structure to gain the protection of an investment treaty at a point when a specific dispute was foreseeable“.[7] Rather than adopting the test of foreseeability articulated in Pac Rim as “a very high probability and not merely a possibility“, the tribunal held instead that a dispute is foreseeable when there is a “reasonable prospect… that a measure which may give rise to a treaty claim will materialise“.[8]
Applying this test to the facts, the tribunal noted PMI’s objection to the Government’s proposals as early as 2009, including specific references to the deprivation of property rights and possible legal challenges. The tribunal also emphasised the fact that, while it took a considerable time for the legislation to pass and there was a degree of uncertainty as to whether the Government could obtain the parliamentary majority needed to pass the legislation, the intention of the Government remained relatively clear since April 2010 and so there was at least a “reasonable prospect” of the legislation being passed from that point onwards.
Notwithstanding these findings, the tribunal acknowledged that the commencement of a claim shortly after a corporate restructuring might not necessarily amount to an abuse of process where the restructuring was justified “independently of the possibility of bringing a claim“.[9] On the facts, the tribunal was unconvinced by PM Asia’s insistence that the restructuring (i) was part of a broader group-wide process, (ii) was needed to align ownership with pre-existing management control, (iii) helped minimise PM Asia’s tax liabilities, and (iv) helped to optimise cash flow. In particular, the tribunal noted the failure of PM Asia to present any witnesses who were directly familiar with the rationale for the restructuring and the lack of “contemporaneous corporate memoranda or other internal correspondence sufficiently explaining the business case for the restructuring in detail“.[10]
The tribunal also placed significant emphasis on the volume and timing of legal advice from PMI’s advisors concerning potential investment treaty claims. As part of the production phase of the arbitration, the parties agreed to exchange privilege logs listing any documents that they wished to withhold on grounds of privilege or political sensitivity. Following objections from both parties, the tribunal ordered the production of many of those documents.[11] While the award itself contains heavy redactions in relation to privileged and commercially sensitive documents, it is evident that the subject headings of emails passing between PMI and its legal advisors (for example, “Australia-HK BIT“, “Arbitration under the HK BIT“) gave a clear indication that PMI was being advised on potential investment treaty claims from as early as July 2010. Critical email exchanges also coincided precisely with the internal approval of the restructuring and the finalisation of the notice of claim.
In such circumstances, the tribunal was satisfied that the passage of the offending legislation was not only foreseeable, but actually foreseen. The tribunal concluded that “the main and determinative, if not sole, reason for the restructuring was the intention to bring a claim under the Treaty, using an entity from Hong Kong“.[12] Since this was carried out “at a time when there was a reasonable prospect that the dispute would materialise” it was deemed to be an abuse of process. Accordingly, the tribunal declared the claim inadmissible, precluding it from exercising jurisdiction over the dispute.
Key Lessons
There are several key lessons to take away from the Philip Morris award for any investor seeking to restructure its foreign investments in an effort to maximise treaty protections:
- Preparing for the “worst case scenario” by seeking legal advice on investment treaty protections is entirely normal and prudent business behaviour.
- Similarly, restructuring investments to benefit from treaty protections is unlikely to be abusive where this is in response to a general risk of future disputes.
- The threshold for abusive conduct lies where a restructuring takes place at a point in time when a specific dispute is foreseeable; in other words, there is a reasonable prospect that a measure giving rise to a treaty claim will materialise.
- Factual evidence is likely to be fundamental to the outcome of any objection based on abuse of process. It is therefore critical to ensure that any other reasons for the restructuring (such as tax benefits, costs reductions, management rationalisation) are well-documented and are presented in a manner that can be adduced in evidence without jeopardising any subsequent claims for legal privilege.
- Legal advice on potential investment treaty protections should be sought as early as possible, and certainly prior to the crystallisation of a specific dispute. Wherever possible, any communications seeking legal advice should be clearly marked as privileged and should be drafted carefully to avoid any inadvertent suggestions that a specific dispute is either inevitable or foreseeable.
Health Ministry rapped over tobacco plain packaging plans
http://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2016/05/25/health-ministry-rapped-over-tobacco-plain-packaging-plans/
KUALA LUMPUR: A DAP lawmaker has criticised the Health Ministry for backtracking on its plans to implement plain packaging for tobacco products.
Klang MP Charles Santiago said the ministry had previously announced plans to introduce generic packaging for tobacco products to reduce brand recognition and consumption.
“The ministry’s director of disease control division Dr Chong Chee Keong said this on Feb 24.
“He even suggested that standardised colours and fonts be used in the packaging in stages,” Santiago told a press conference in Parliament lobby Wednesday.
He said the statements suggested that the ministry had an implementation plan and strategy for plain packaging.
Santiago noted that Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr S. Subramaniam had said in a parliamentary response on Monday that the ministry had to undertake public consultations before implementing plain packaging.
“This clearly shows that the Government has backed off from its original position and reversed the plain packaging policy,” he said.
Santiago said the Government should not buckle under pressure from the tobacco industry and stressed that the ministry should acknowledge the opinions of health groups.
“The tobacco industry and lobby groups have cautioned the Government that introducing plain packaging would violate international trade laws.
“It is unacceptable that the ministry chooses to ignore the opinions of health groups and instead listen to business corporations,” he said.
He urged the ministry to keep to its plan and implement plain packaging ahead of the World Health Organisation’s Tobacco Day.
The ministry has yet to respond on the issue.
Customs officials allegedly involved in drug and tobacco smuggling
http://www.smh.com.au/national/customs-officials-involved-in-drug-and-tobacco-smuggling-20160518-goy672.html
A network of Australian border security officials is allegedly working for organised criminals, including drug and tobacco smugglers, in the most serious corruption scandal to ever hit the nation’s border agencies.
A Fairfax Media investigation has uncovered multiple cases of alleged corruption involving staff from the Australian Border Force and the Department of Agriculture, along with maritime industry employees with government clearances.
In response to the revelations, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection and the Australian Border Force said they were “working actively with law enforcement partners to investigate allegations of serious criminality by its officers at the border”.
Police on Wednesday arrested a Department of Agriculture compliance assessment officer, Richard Vong, over alleged links to organised criminals, including a syndicate led by suspected Melbourne drug trafficker Jimmy Chhav. They also raided his house.
Mr Vong will face court on Thursday charged with trafficking and possessing a drug of dependence, knowingly dealing in the proceeds of crime, dealing in property reasonably suspected of being the proceeds of crime and theft of Commonwealth property. A female official has been charged with knowingly dealing in the proceeds of crime and dealing in property reasonably suspected of being the proceeds of crime.
The allegations come as the government makes a virtue of its strength on border security, with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull claiming the opposition “lack the commitment to keep our borders secure”.
However, the federal government and customs chiefs, including the nation’s top border security official, Michael Pezzullo, have been repeatedly warned over four years in high-level confidential briefings about significant suspected corruption in the Border Force’s ranks, especially in NSW.
Evidence, including NSW police briefing notes and testimony from crime figures, suggests that one of the most vital border security facilities, the NSW Customs Examination Facility, has been compromised by corrupt insiders, enabling criminals to import large amounts of drugs and tobacco undetected. Staff at the facility are responsible for searching containers suspected to contain contraband.
A small network of Department of Agriculture officials responsible for clearing imports into Australia have also been assisting and liaising with known drug traffickers for at least the past five years.
This network is allegedly led by Mr Vong, a suspected corrupt Department of Agriculture official, who works out of Customs House in Melbourne. The department missed multiple warnings about Mr Vong and some of his colleagues.
Fairfax Media has delayed reporting on the border corruption scandal for several months at the request of authorities.
In NSW, evidence uncovered by Fairfax Media from multiple sources, including agency officials, government briefing files and figures with underworld ties, implicates Border Force officials in drug and tobacco trafficking, and leaking to the criminal underworld.
Criminal intelligence suggests one officer has been taking kickbacks of hundreds of thousands of dollars from traffickers, while another has been facilitating importations.
Suspected corrupt officers are still operating.
The latest scandal comes three years after a network of corrupt customs officers was identified at Sydney airport and charged by the federal police. At the time, Mr Pezzullo promised sweeping reforms, including many which have been implemented.
Top security and policing officials, along with corruption experts, called for the nation’s federal police watchdog, the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity (ACLEI) to have its budget dramatically increased and said the Australian Border Force had failed to deal with corruption in its ranks.
Leading corruption expert and former senior judge Stephen Charles, QC, said ACLEI – which, with about 20 investigators out of a total of 55 staff, is among the smallest corruption fighting agencies in Australia – was badly outgunned. Mr Charles said Australia needed an anti-corruption agency with hundreds of staff.
“It [ACLEI] needs to be ten-drupled,” a law enforcement agency source said.
Fairfax Media can also reveal that officers from the joint state and federal Polaris waterfront crime taskforce in NSW, which has played a key role in identifying corruption on the docks, were last week told they would be shut down due to a lack of funding. State police are furious, but federal government sources insist the funding has been reallocated to other anti-organised crime taskforces.
One briefing describes how a veteran customs officer who has previously worked closely with the AFP and the NSW Crime Commission is suspected of leaking “sensitive information” to drug and tobacco importers. A customs officer is also named as having travelled overseas with a suspected criminal.
Property records obtained by Fairfax Media reveal this customs officer, who was on long-term sick leave, lives next door to the suspected criminal in the Sydney suburb of Sylvania Waters.
The border security scandal comes three years after the Sydney airport customs corruption scandal, in which a network of corrupt customs officers led by customs officer Adrian Lamella were trafficking drugs using couriers on international flights.
The reforms implemented by Mr Pezzullo and the federal government after the Sydney airport scandal appear to have failed to stop significant corruption in the agency.
One senior government source said the Australian Border Force was “incapable” of eradicating corruption in its ranks and sometimes dealt with internal integrity issues with departmental sanctions, such as demotion or sacking, rather than by conducting intensive probes that could expose corrupt networks.
The Department of Agriculture section involved in Mr Vong’s alleged corrupt network was formerly named the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service.
AQIS senior managers were first warned that organised criminals had infiltrated the agency’s ranks in 2012, when an officer was identified, and later charged, for leaking information to a drug importation syndicate.
Information outlining Mr Vong’s alleged links to suspected drug trafficker Jimmy Chhav has been held by various law enforcement agencies for several years, but it is unclear if it was ever formally passed to the Department of Agriculture. However, the department had its own information linking the pair which was never acted upon.
In April 2012, Fairfax Media first reported Australia’s maritime borders were badly exposed to corruption and that a confidential Operation Polaris report had found that “serious organised crime groups are able to access and exploit key Australian government officers.”
“Polaris investigations have identified employees of law enforcement and regulatory bodies providing assistance to criminal groups. This assistance is less common but of higher consequence than private sector corruption. The employees have included members of customs and employees of AQIS.
“Operation Polaris has also determined the government’s Maritime Security Identification Cards – required by tens of thousands of Australians who work in the industry – have failed to stop organised crime infiltration.
“Multiple MSIC holders are involved in drug activity and are subject to substantial intelligence holdings detailing their criminal activity and criminal associates.”
Stephen Charles, QC, a former Victorian Court of Appeals judge and an expert in anti-corruption agencies, said watchdog ACLEI was unable to combat public sector corruption outside of several policing agencies.
Mr Charles, who recently gave testimony to a Senate committee about the need for the establishment of a national anti-corruption agency, said ACLEI’s staff had good intentions but had limited investigative and jurisdictional capacity.
The federal government has recently passed laws to ensure that people with criminal histories are not giving the government security clearance to work on the waterfront or at airports.
Liberal frontbencher Josh Frydenberg said on Thursday morning that the allegations were being dealt with appropriately.
“Such behaviour will not be tolerated and we’ll take every possible measure to ensure that those people, if they have behaved in a way that is criminal, face the appropriate justice system,” he told ABC TV.
The Department of Immigration and Border Protection said in a statement that although it and the Australian Border Force were “unable to comment on the status of current investigations”, it could confirm that it had been working “in partnership with ACLEI”.
It said Taskforce Pharos, an internal taskforce set up following the corruption scandal at Sydney airport to target corruption “within the border environment”, continued to operate and had been instrumental in referring matters to ACLEI for further investigation.
“In addition, the Department has provided supplemental funding to ACLEI to ensure matters relating to its own officers can be fully and independently investigated.”