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February 23rd, 2016:

Growing number of female smokers is a worrying trend

http://www.chinadailyasia.com/opinion/2016-02/23/content_15389267.html

The anti-smoking battle in Hong Kong isn’t over yet.

John Tsang Chun-wah, the city’s financial secretary, will unveil the government’s Budget for the year ending March 31, 2017, today (Wednesday). He is strongly advised to raise tobacco tax again to discourage people, particularly women, from smoking.

The number of female smokers is small, but the growing trend is worrying. The number of female smokers rose to 3.2 percent in 2015 from 3.1 percent a year earlier. Just imagine the damage done to young people if they smoke at home with children playing in the same room.

The percentage of people who smoke in Hong Kong has fallen, according to government figures. It dropped to 10.5 percent in 2015 from 11.8 percent in 2009. The decline, however, did not look impressive. Joining hands, the government and the community can do a better job in reducing the population of smokers in the city.

The government’s Hospital Authority statistics show that 75,870 young people under the age of 18 were admitted to hospital between 2004 and 2012 (the latest numbers available) due to diseases caused by lower respiratory tract infections. They included serious complaints such as empyema, pleural effusions and abscesses in the lung. Of those admitted to hospital, 80 percent were pre-schoolers of five years old or younger. Many of the diseases were smoking-related.

The government should enact new laws to prohibit smoking in any common areas of any residential premises or buildings (e.g. common corridors, staircases); any covered or underground pedestrian walkways; any pedestrian overhead bridges; any bus interchanges (not just bus stops), including any area within a certain radius of bus shelters; and hospital outdoor compounds.

More importantly, the government should also ban smoking in public areas with a queue of three or more people. Hong Kong people love to queue. We queue for cinema tickets, we queue in front of a sushi shop or cha chaan teng (Cantonese-style restaurants) and we queue for application forms for our children to enter favored kindergartens. The second-hand smoke that people inhale, in case there is a smoker in the queue, can cause cancer or other serious — even fatal — diseases.

The government and NGOs in the city can expand publicity campaigns (NGOs can raise funds from wealthy tycoons in the city) to call on people to quit smoking and discourage others, particularly young people, from contracting this unhealthy habit. We should spread the message that smoking isn’t “cool.”

More than 60 percent of school-age children could avoid chest infections if there were more no-smoking areas in Hong Kong, University of Hong Kong (HKU) medical and public health academics advocated recently. They said youngsters under the age of 18 are susceptible to pollutants produced by smokers, so the risk of infection could be reduced if the government extended prohibition on smoking.

In a study, the HKU academics deduced that the effect of second-hand smoke on children aged 6 to 18 will be more apparent as they tend to spend more time outside the home and are therefore more exposed to pollutants. And of course, parents with minor children are strongly advised not to smoke at home.

Smoking in local universities is banned. Some university authorities have placed rubbish bins on the roads linking the campuses with neighboring residential districts. Scores of young students can always be seen smoking around these bins and extinguishing the cigarette butts on the dustbins. People often describe such scenes as dabinlo (eating around a hotpot). It is a good practice to keep the streets clean but, more importantly, university authorities are well-advised to dispatch volunteering teams (composed of teachers and students) to these gathering sites to talk to the smokers, trying to convince them to quit smoking and keep the campuses smoke-free. Students are society’s future leaders and they must set a good example.

This is a small step but it is a major step in the battle to rid campuses, and Hong Kong at large, of smokers.

The author is a veteran journalist and an adjunct professor at Shue Yan University.

EU tobacco control policy must separate foxes from chickens

https://euobserver.com/opinion/132402

Imagine you are a farmer and that your chickens are disappearing. Imagine that you are approached by a fox, who offers help including a hi-tech tracking system so that you can trace the chickens and find out who is stealing them. After all, he says, this is an issue that unites foxes and farmers.

Do you accept this, or do you reflect that foxes are known to have a taste for chicken? Is it wise to put a fox in charge of a hen house?

Last week, EUobserver carried a piece by Alvise Giustiniani, who heads Philip Morris International’s (PMI) anti-illicit trade department.

The article contained a number of extraordinary statements, for example the suggestion that the tobacco industry shares a “common agreement” on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control’s (FCTC) Anti-Illicit Trade Protocol to eliminate illicit trade in tobacco products. The Protocol “contains many of the measures” that feature in a PMI agreement with the European Union (EU), and “shares our commitment to tackle this problem in every part of the world,” the company said.

Let’s pause for a moment and establish a couple of facts.

Fact 1: The tobacco industry is behind a concerted worldwide effort to prevent countries and organisations joining the Protocol.

Fact 2: PMI’s “commitment” is the result of legal action by the EU in 2004 which detailed the tobacco industry’s involvement in the illicit trade. As a consequence, PMI has since paid about $1.25 billion to the EU. This is not an act of charity, it’s a legal settlement.

Fact 3: Both the FCTC and its Protocol are crystal clear that the tobacco industry is part of the problem, not part of the solution. What we share is a battlefield – with the industry on one side and the Convention on the other. Article 8.12 of the Protocol states that “obligations assigned to a party shall not be performed by or delegated to the tobacco industry”. And Article 5.3 of the Convention states that “parties shall act to protect these policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry”.

PMI’s black box

It’s easy to understand why the tobacco industry hopes to muddy the waters. Its 2004 agreement with the EU is ending and it’s desperate for a renewal. It seeks to argue that the PMI-EU agreement is in accordance with the EU’s treaty obligations as a party to the FCTC.

But the two really aren’t the same and – let’s be clear about this – the EU risks a breach of its treaty obligations if it renews.

Such a settlement also has detrimental international implications. It is well known that the tobacco industry uses it as an example and argument to promote other agreements around the world. Since the EU settlement, more than 100 parties to the Convention have engaged in voluntary agreements with the industry, seriously compromising the entering into force of the Protocol.

There is another important issue – the tracking-and-tracing systems required by the Protocol and by regulations including the EU’s Tobacco Products Directive.

The current PMI-EU anti-illicit trade agreement uses a system invented by PMI called Codentify, which is the tobacco industry’s supply chain control system. While PMI claims that Codentify can track and trace tobacco products, and in turn reduce illicit trade and counterfeiting, the technology is more accurately described as merely a code generator system, which offers no effective tracking and tracing services of contraband tobacco products.

There are other major problems with Codentify. It’s essentially a “black box” that is protected by a tobacco industry patent. We don’t know what’s inside, but we do know that it’s managed and controlled by the tobacco industry.

This industry solution does not meet the requirements of Article 8.12 of the Protocol and it should be rejected.

So too should a multitude of measures proposed by the tobacco industry. The 180 Parties that have ratified the FCTC did so in order to end tobacco usage and should be alert to the industry’s often-underhand behaviour.

Invitations from tobacco industry front organisations should be refused and so-called memorandums of understanding with the industry should be rejected. These are simply designed to ensure that countries do not become parties to the Protocol.

The tobacco industry likes to portray itself as a responsible party, on a par with governments or non-governmental organisations in tobacco-control policy. It suggests that we’re all in it together, but we’re not all in it together.

Farmers and foxes have different interests.

Dr Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva is Head of Secretariat at the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control

EU tobacco control policy must separate foxes from chickens

https://euobserver.com/opinion/132402

Imagine you are a farmer and that your chickens are disappearing. Imagine that you are approached by a fox, who offers help including a hi-tech tracking system so that you can trace the chickens and find out who is stealing them. After all, he says, this is an issue that unites foxes and farmers.

Do you accept this, or do you reflect that foxes are known to have a taste for chicken? Is it wise to put a fox in charge of a hen house?

Last week, EUobserver carried a piece by Alvise Giustiniani, who heads Philip Morris International’s (PMI) anti-illicit trade department.

The article contained a number of extraordinary statements, for example the suggestion that the tobacco industry shares a “common agreement” on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control’s (FCTC) Anti-Illicit Trade Protocol to eliminate illicit trade in tobacco products. The Protocol “contains many of the measures” that feature in a PMI agreement with the European Union (EU), and “shares our commitment to tackle this problem in every part of the world,” the company said.

Let’s pause for a moment and establish a couple of facts.

Fact 1: The tobacco industry is behind a concerted worldwide effort to prevent countries and organisations joining the Protocol.

Fact 2: PMI’s “commitment” is the result of legal action by the EU in 2004 which detailed the tobacco industry’s involvement in the illicit trade. As a consequence, PMI has since paid about $1.25 billion to the EU. This is not an act of charity, it’s a legal settlement.

Fact 3: Both the FCTC and its Protocol are crystal clear that the tobacco industry is part of the problem, not part of the solution. What we share is a battlefield – with the industry on one side and the Convention on the other. Article 8.12 of the Protocol states that “obligations assigned to a party shall not be performed by or delegated to the tobacco industry”. And Article 5.3 of the Convention states that “parties shall act to protect these policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry”.

PMI’s black box

It’s easy to understand why the tobacco industry hopes to muddy the waters. Its 2004 agreement with the EU is ending and it’s desperate for a renewal. It seeks to argue that the PMI-EU agreement is in accordance with the EU’s treaty obligations as a party to the FCTC.

But the two really aren’t the same and – let’s be clear about this – the EU risks a breach of its treaty obligations if it renews.

Such a settlement also has detrimental international implications. It is well known that the tobacco industry uses it as an example and argument to promote other agreements around the world. Since the EU settlement, more than 100 parties to the Convention have engaged in voluntary agreements with the industry, seriously compromising the entering into force of the Protocol.

There is another important issue – the tracking-and-tracing systems required by the Protocol and by regulations including the EU’s Tobacco Products Directive.

The current PMI-EU anti-illicit trade agreement uses a system invented by PMI called Codentify, which is the tobacco industry’s supply chain control system. While PMI claims that Codentify can track and trace tobacco products, and in turn reduce illicit trade and counterfeiting, the technology is more accurately described as merely a code generator system, which offers no effective tracking and tracing services of contraband tobacco products.

There are other major problems with Codentify. It’s essentially a “black box” that is protected by a tobacco industry patent. We don’t know what’s inside, but we do know that it’s managed and controlled by the tobacco industry.

This industry solution does not meet the requirements of Article 8.12 of the Protocol and it should be rejected.

So too should a multitude of measures proposed by the tobacco industry. The 180 Parties that have ratified the FCTC did so in order to end tobacco usage and should be alert to the industry’s often-underhand behaviour.

Invitations from tobacco industry front organisations should be refused and so-called memorandums of understanding with the industry should be rejected. These are simply designed to ensure that countries do not become parties to the Protocol.

The tobacco industry likes to portray itself as a responsible party, on a par with governments or non-governmental organisations in tobacco-control policy. It suggests that we’re all in it together, but we’re not all in it together.

Farmers and foxes have different interests.

Dr Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva is Head of Secretariat at the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control