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January, 2013:

Tobacco industry argues domestic trademark laws and international treaties preclude cigarette health warning labels, despite consistent legal advice that the argument is invalid

Jan 11th, 2013
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1. Eric Crosbie1,

2. Stanton A Glantz2

+ Author Affiliations

1. 1Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, Cardiovascular Research Institute, San Francisco, California, USA

2. 2Department of Medicine (Cardiology), Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA

1.     Correspondence to Professor Stanton A Glantz, Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, University of California San Francisco, Room 366 Library, 530 Parnassus, San Francisco, CA 94143-13990, USA; glantz@medicine.ucsf.edu

Received 15 April 2012

Accepted 12 October 2012

Published Online First 24 November 2012

Abstract

Objectives To analyse the tobacco industry’s use of international trade agreements to oppose policies to strengthen health warning labels (HWLs).

Design A review of tobacco industry documents, tobacco control legislation and international treaties.

Results During the early 1990s, the tobacco industry became increasingly alarmed about the advancement of HWLs on cigarettes packages. In response, it requested legal opinions from British American Tobacco’s law firms in Australia and England, Britain’s Department of Trade and Industry and the World Intellectual Property Organisation on the legality of restricting and prohibiting the use of their trademarks, as embodied in cigarette packages. The consistent legal advice, privately submitted to the companies, was that international treaties do not shield trademark owners from government limitations (including prohibition) on the use of their trademarks. Despite receiving this legal advice, the companies publicly argued that requiring large HWLs compromised their trademark rights under international treaties. The companies successfully used these arguments as part of their successful effort to deter Canadian and Australian governments from enacting laws requiring the plan packaging of cigarettes, which helped delay large graphic HWLs, including ‘plain’ packaging, for over a decade.

Conclusions Governments should not be intimidated by tobacco company threats and unsubstantiated claims, and carefully craft HWL laws to withstand the inevitable tobacco industry lawsuits with the knowledge that the companies’ own lawyers as well as authoritative bodies have told the companies that the rights they claim do not exist

Big Tobacco: Geneticists Create a Plant That Can’t Stop Growing

Jan 11th, 2013
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http://www.livescience.com/26213-tobacco-plant-genetics.html

Article:

Marc Lallanilla, Life’s Little Mysteries Assistant Editor

Date: 11 January 2013 Time: 05:12 PM ET

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In the comedy “Little Shop of Horrors,” a carnivorous plant named Audrey Jr. grew nonstop by feasting on unsuspecting human beings. In a somewhat more benign development, researchers in Germany have developed tobacco plants that also can’t stop growing.

Under normal conditions, the tobacco plant has a rather uninspiring lifespan. They grow for three or four months, according to Investor’s Business Daily, reaching 6.5 feet (2 meters) in height at the most, while their older leaves turn yellow and fall off. After flowering, the plants die.

But researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology (IME) in Münster, Germany, have isolated the genetic switch that tells the tobacco plant to stop growing, flower and die. By suppressing that gene, the scientists have tricked the plants into growing like Jack’s beanstalk — even the older leaves stay green and healthy.

“The first of our tobacco plants is now almost eight years old but it still just keeps on growing and growing,” Dirk Prüfer, a professor at the Department of Functional and Applied Genomics at IME, said in a statement. “Although we regularly cut it, it’s six-and-a-half meters [21 ft.] tall.”

Genetic research on plants has also produced a variety of switchgrass (an important source of biofuels) that grows faster and produces thicker roots. By switching off a gene called UPBEAT1, the switchgrass never receives a signal to stop growing, leading scientists to believe they can use the modified plant to create a higher-yielding biofuel crop.

In other tobacco research, the plants have been genetically engineered to glow in the dark: By inserting a gene from bioluminescent marine bacteria, researchers at BioGlow, Inc., developed a tobacco plant with faintly glowing green leaves.

The scientists at IME hope to use their genetic engineering technique to create larger, longer-lived food plants. They are currently working with a Japanese company to develop a potato plant that possesses the same robust growth as their giant tobacco plant.

Another super fund drops its investment in tobacco

Jan 10th, 2013
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Dan Harrison
Published: January 10, 2013 – 3:00AM

THE superannuation fund for health and community services workers has become the latest fund to dump its investments in tobacco.

HESTA chief executive Anne-Marie Corboy confirmed the fund had started removing tobacco investments from its portfolios this year, following a decision by the fund’s board late last year.

Ms Corboy said she expected the fund, which has more than 750,000 members, to have sold all its tobacco investments by about April.

She said for more than a decade the fund had allowed members to put together tobacco-free portfolios, and had excluded tobacco from its ethical investment option since early 2012. She said less than $35 million of the $20 billion managed by the fund was invested in tobacco.

Anne Jones, the chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health Australia, welcomed the move.

”If a health fund invests in the tobacco industry, they are part of the tobacco industry,” she said. ”It’s clearly unethical.”

HESTA’s decision comes as the Future Fund weighs what to do with its tobacco investments, worth more than $200 million. Fund chairman David Gonski told a Senate hearing in October the fund had not set out to invest in cigarette makers, but acquired its tobacco shares through investments in fund managers, which often had a mandate to own top-performing stocks.

Ms Jones called on the Future Fund to dump its stake, arguing it was hypocritical for Australia to try to stamp out smoking domestically while profiting from it abroad.

”You can’t have Australia being a leader in tobacco control driving down smoking rates at home but saying it’s OK for us to be investing in getting poor people addicted in other countries,” she said.

In November, the New South Wales government said it would dump more than $200 million in tobacco investments and ban them in future.

First State Super, which has more than 770,000 members and more than $32 billion in funds under management, said in July it had disposed of all its tobacco investments.

The Victorian government’s investment management organisation, the Victorian Funds Management Corporation, has more than $100 million invested in tobacco and has said it has no intention of getting rid of them.

This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/national/another-super-fund-drops-its-investment-in-tobacco-20130109-2cgqc.html

UW awarded US$10 million for smoking study

Jan 10th, 2013
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http://www.jsonline.com/features/health/uw-awarded-10-million-for-smoking-study-vg8806c-185487891.html

By Karen Herzog of the Journal Sentinel

Jan. 2, 2013

The University of Wisconsin has been awarded a $10 million federal grant to continue a comprehensive study helping smokers quit and to assess how quitting affects their health, lifestyle and well-being.

While research has established that smoking is dangerous, less is known about how quitting affects health vs. continuing to smoke.

The study will recruit 600 to 800 adult smokers in the Milwaukee and Madison areas and give those selected for the study free coaching and medications to help them quit.

It will offer participants potentially lifesaving tests – including artery scans that can signal impending risk of a stroke or heart attack – at one- to three-year intervals throughout the study, free of charge, to assess their health over time. That’s literally thousands of dollars in benefits.

The new study recruits will join several hundred patients from the original Wisconsin Smokers’ Health Study launched in 2005, allowing researchers to collect health data spanning several years. Everyone from the previous study – whether they are now smoking or not – will be invited to continue in the next phase of the study, bringing the total number of participants to roughly 1,500.

“It’s the most comprehensive study of smokers ever to help patients quit and to follow them over time,” said Michael Fiore, director of the UW Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention, which was founded in 1992 to research the nature of tobacco dependence and develop evidence-based treatments for smokers. The center is part of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison.

The five-year grant announced Wednesday is from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, or NIH. The first phase of the study received $8 million from the NIH.

Among the free exams that participants will receive are ones that track cholesterol levels in addition to artery scans, blood counts, diabetes tests, lung function tests and monitoring for cancer.

The first phase of the study saw a 35% smoking cessation rate – seven times better than the rate for smokers who try to quit on their own, said Fiore. Typically, those who quit for a year do not resume smoking, he said. Most relapse in the first couple weeks after trying to quit.

Each study participant will receive one of three medications to help them quit smoking: Varenicline (Chantix), the nicotine patch plus nicotine lozenges, or just the nicotine patch.

Chantix and the nicotine patch with nicotine lozenge treatments have demonstrated the highest quit rates of all quit-smoking medications, according to Timothy Baker, a study investigator along with Fiore and James Stein of UW Preventive Cardiology. However, the two treatments have never been compared head-to-head.

“We’ll not only determine which works better,” Baker said in a prepared statement, “but also whether one approach works better with some types of smokers than does the other.”

At the end of the study, researchers hope to enhance the understanding of how to treat smoking optimally, how quitting smoking helps participants to reduce their risk of heart disease, stroke and cancer, and the mechanisms by which these health benefits occur.

Wisconsin currently has about 800,000 smokers. And funding for the state’s smoking cessation hotline can help only about 12,000 smokers a year, according to Fiore. “We believe 30,000 or more would take advantage” if more funding were available, Fiore said. “We know from research that every dollar spent on helping people to quit smoking has a $2 to $3 return on investment within three years.”

The smoking rate among Wisconsin Medicaid recipients is double the smoking rate for adults in general, Fiore said.

Cutting down smoking among those on Medicaid will “help the bottom line of one of the biggest cost drivers in Wisconsin,” he said.

“We know that, paradoxically, people below the poverty level smoke at a rate two times the rate of those above the poverty line,” Fiore said. “It’s primarily the poor, least educated and people with psychiatric or substance abuse challenges who smoke.”

The study will actively seek participants who fall below the poverty line.

“It’s a misconception that the poor don’t want to quit smoking,” said Fiore.

© 2013, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved.

An open letter to the Chief Executive and Financial Secretary, Hong Kong SAR Government

Jan 9th, 2013
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Download PDF : Coshsubmission2013

CtacombinlettOmbudMPFA

Passive Smoking Increases Risk of Severe Dementia, According to Study in China

Jan 9th, 2013
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Web address:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/
130109110048.htm

Passive Smoking Increases Risk of Severe Dementia, According to Study in China

Jan. 9, 2013 — An international study by scientists in China, the UK and USA has found a link between passive smoking and syndromes of dementia.

The study of nearly 6,000 people in five provinces in China reveals that people exposed to passive smoking have a significantly increased risk of severe dementia syndromes.

Passive smoking, also known as ‘second-hand’ smoke or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), is known to cause serious cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, including coronary heart disease and lung cancer. However, until now it has been uncertain whether ETS increases the risk of dementia, mainly due to lack of research. Previous studies have shown an association between ETS and cognitive impairment, but this is the first to find a significant link with dementia syndromes.

The study, published in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, is a collaboration between scientists at King’s College London and Anhui Medical University, China, along with colleagues in the UK and USA.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), nearly 80 percent of the more than one billion smokers worldwide live in low- and middle-income countries, where the burden of tobacco-related illness and death is heaviest; but only 11 percent of the world’s population are protected by comprehensive smoke-free laws.

China is the largest consumer of tobacco in the world, with 350 million smokers. Since 2006, the Chinese government has actively promoted the introduction of smoke-free environments in hospitals, schools, on public transport and in other public places, but implementation has not been widespread.

Recent data show that the prevalence of passive smoking is still high, with over 50 percent of people exposed to environmental tobacco smoke on a daily basis. China also has the highest number of dementia sufferers in the world, with increasing rates of new cases as the population ages.

Dr Ruoling Chen, senior lecturer in public health from King’s College London, and colleagues interviewed 5,921 people aged over 60 in the rural and urban communities of Anhui, Guangdong, Heilongjiang, Shanghai and Shanxi to characterise their levels of ETS exposure, smoking habits and assess levels of dementia syndromes.

They found that 10 percent of the group had severe dementia syndromes. This was significantly related to exposure level and duration of passive smoking. The associations with severe syndromes were found in people who had never smoked and in former and current smokers.

The data from the Anhui cohort, which were collected at baseline in 2001-03 for dementia syndromes and in the follow up in 2007-08 for ETS exposure and dementia, further excluded the possibility that dementia syndromes caused people to be more exposed to environmental tobacco smoke.

Dr Ruoling Chen, also a visiting professor at Anhui Medical University said: ‘Passive smoking should be considered an important risk factor for severe dementia syndromes, as this study in China shows. Avoiding exposure to ETS may reduce the risk of severe dementia syndromes.

‘China, along with many other countries, now has a significantly aging population, so dementia has a significant impact not only on the patients but on their families and carers. It’s a huge burden on society.’

The findings from this study, together with a second recent study by Chen and colleagues published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia on the links between passive smoking and Alzheimer’s disease, strengthen the case for public health measures to protect people from exposure to environmental tobacco smoke.

‘At present, we know that about 90 percent of the world’s population live in countries without smoke-free public areas. More campaigns against tobacco exposure in the general population will help decrease the risk of severe dementia syndromes and reduce the dementia epidemic worldwide.’

He added: ‘The increased risk of severe dementia syndromes in those exposed to passive smoking is similar to increased risk of coronary heart disease — suggesting that urgent preventive measures should be taken, not just in China but many other countries.’

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by King’s College London.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

1.     R. Chen, K. Wilson, Y. Chen, D. Zhang, X. Qin, M. He, Z. Hu, Y. Ma, J. R. Copeland. Association between environmental tobacco smoke exposure and dementia syndromes. Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 2012; 70 (1): 63 DOI: 10.1136/oemed-2012-100785

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King’s College London (2013, January 9). Passive smoking increases risk of severe dementia, according to study in China. ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 10, 2013, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2013/01/130109110048.htm

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NSW tobacco reforms prompt moves to make North Sydney LGA a smoke-free municipality

Jan 9th, 2013
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http://mosman-daily.whereilive.com.au/news/story/stubbing-cigs-out/

North Sydney Mayor Jilly Gibson envisions smoke-free streets and outdoor spaces in her municipality. Photo: Dave Swift

North Sydney Mayor Jilly Gibson envisions smoke-free streets and outdoor spaces in her municipality. Photo: Dave Swift

NORTH Sydney could be one of Australia’s first smoke-free local government areas under Mayor Jilly Gibson’s plan to ban smoking in all outdoor spaces.

This would include no smoking in public and private outdoor dining areas, beer gardens and terraces as well as outside sections of residential properties.

“We couldn’t enforce it but we could certainly encourage all residents and businesses to self-police a blanket ban on smoking in North Sydney,” Cr Gibson said.

“Personally, I am highly allergic to passive smoking – that’s why I fought to abolish smoking in outdoor dining areas 12 years ago.”

<TELL US: Should smoking be banned in all outdoor spaces in the North Sydney LGA? COMMENT BELOW>

Cr Gibson’s comments came after the State Government’s new tobacco laws came into effect on Monday.

Smokers now risk being fined up to $550 if they are caught lighting up at transport stops, playgrounds, sports fields and pools.

State laws are now in line with North Sydney Council’s anti-smoking policy, which was introduced in October 2011.

“It’s great news the legislative changes are in effect but we’re already doing it,” general manager Penny Holloway said.

While council rangers aren’t planning a blitz on errant smokers, they are relying on “peer pressure” within the community to help enforce the reforms.

“We take an educative approach, informing people where they can and can’t smoke – these things usually become self-enforcing,” Ms Holloway said.

TOBACCO REFORMS:

* It is now illegal to smoke at bus stops, taxi ranks, playgrounds, public sports grounds and swimming pools in NSW.

* Smoking in outdoor dining areas will be outlawed in 2015.

* North Sydney and Mosman councils have had similar anti-smoking policies in place for years.

* Smoking causes 5,200 deaths and 44,000 hospitalisations in NSW each year – costing NSW $8 billion annually.

A new regulation will require cigarette producers to add graphic warnings to cigarette packages in Indonesia

Jan 9th, 2013
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Tobacco Bill Requires Graphic Warnings to be Displayed on …

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Jakarta Globe-7 hours ago

A new regulation will require cigarette producers to add graphic warnings to cigarette packages in Indonesia. (JG Photo/Afriadi Hikmal)

Why Asia is set for more tobacco plain packaging rules

Jan 9th, 2013
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09 January 2013

Peter Leung, Hong Kong

australia-plan-packaging

Encouraged by Australia’s new plain packaging law, more countries are taking steps to restrict tobacco products. Managing IP explains the latest developments in Asia

Australia’s tobacco plain packaging law, which requires that all cigarettes be sold in packs with standardised colours, fonts, and devoid of logos, came into effect on December 1 after surviving a constitutional challenge before the High Court. As expected, governments and health organisations around the world are considering their own versions of the law. What might these laws look like, and how are brand owners responding?

Thailand   http://www.managingip.com/Article/3138718/Managing-Trade-marks-Archive/Why-Asia-is-set-for-more-tobacco-plain-packaging-rules.html

Thailand’s proposed tobacco packaging law, the Tobacco Consumption Control Act, look set to go further than Australia’s plain packaging rules when it comes to curtailing brand owners’ rights.

Thailand already has laws regulating tobacco packaging, requiring that 55% of the packaging be covered by graphic health warnings. There are also laws prohibiting advertising and marketing.

Alan Adcock of Tilleke and Gibbons says the latest draft of the plain packaging law contains few specifics about packaging. Instead, the bill leaves the…

Ministry wants 70 pc of price as taxes for tobacco products

Jan 8th, 2013
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Ministry wants 70 pc of price as taxes for tobacco products

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Indian Express-21 hours ago

The Health Ministry is all set to introduce a steep hike in taxes on tobacco products in its budget proposal so much so that it wants the tax

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