Clear The Air News Tobacco Blog Rotating Header Image

April, 2016:

Baker supports ban on tobacco sales to those under 21

Days before the state Senate is scheduled to debate a bill that would raise the minimum age for purchasing tobacco, Gov. Charlie Baker says he supports banning the sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products to people under 21.

http://www.lowellsun.com/breakingnews/ci_29803768/baker-supports-ban-tobacco-sales-those-under-21

Baker said Friday that he supports the idea of raising the age from 18 to 21, but would need to see the bill’s final language before deciding whether to sign it.

Supporters of the bill hope to discourage more young people from taking up smoking. Dozens of cities and towns, including Boston, have already approved such bans.

The bill would allow anyone who turns 18 before Jan. 1, 2017, to continue buying tobacco. The bill would include new regulations for e-cigarettes and ban tobacco sales at health care institutions.

Senate President Stanley Rosenberg said earlier this week that the “next big matter before the Senate will be raising the legal age to purchase cigarettes from 18 to 21.”

Based on eight separate tobacco bills filed by House and Senate lawmakers this session, the Joint Committee on Public Health put together a bill dubbed “An Act to protect youth from the health risks of tobacco and nicotine addiction” that is now before the Senate Ways and Means Committee, and is slated to hit the Senate floor in formal session on April 28.

Sen.
________________________________________

Jason Lewis, a Winchester Democrat who co-chairs the Public Health Committee, described the bill’s three main provisions — a three-year increase in the age for tobacco sales, a ban on sales in pharmacies, and the addition of e-cigarettes to the state’s anti-smoking laws — as “proven strategies for reducing nicotine addiction among young people.”

In 2005, Needham became the first municipality in the country to ban tobacco sales to people under 21. Nearly 100 Massachusetts communities have since followed suit, with most lifting the sale age from 18 to 21 and some raising it to 19, Lewis said.

In 2014, Westminster’s failed tobacco ban began when members of the town’s Board of Health proposed restrictions based on authority granted under Massachusetts General Laws to “make reasonable health regulations.” Many in town began debating over just what the word “reasonable” meant, while local business owners, who rely heavily on tobacco sales, began taking sides against town officials.

A subsequent Board of Health meeting saw the proposed ban stopped by a 2-1 vote.

Hawaii is the only state in the country where people must be 21 to purchase tobacco products. A bill that would set the age to 21 in California has cleared both chambers of the state Legislature there, but has not yet been signed into law. The legal age is 19 in Alabama, Alaska, New Jersey and Utah.

In addition to raising the tobacco purchase age, the bill the Senate plans to take up next week would ban the use of e-cigarettes in places like schools, restaurants and workplaces where cigarettes are already prohibited; require child-resistant packaging on e-cigarettes; ban tobacco vending machines; and require the Center for Health Information and Analysis to study the tobacco-cessation benefits offered by commercial insurers, MassHealth and the Group Insurance Commission.

Leominster doesn’t have a proposal like Westminster’s from 2014, but the city is exploring whether it should restrict the sale of flavored tobacco products.

The proposed restriction would allow the sale of flavored tobacco products at businesses designated as tobacco retail stores, but restrict sales at other businesses, such as gas stations and convenience stores.

Potentially restricting flavored tobacco had originally been discussed by the board in 2014, but was put on hold after the negative reception of a proposed ban on all tobacco products in Westminster.

As of Wednesday, Joan Hamlett, Leominster’s tobacco agent, said similar flavored-tobacco regulations are being considered by 15 communities in central Massachusetts, eight of which have already set dates for public hearings to discuss the regulation with residents.

As of last month, 48 communities throughout the state had adopted the regulation currently being reviewed in Leominster.

Information from the Associated Press and State House News Service was used in this report

Philip Morris visit stirs controversy

http://www.odt.co.nz/news/queenstown-lakes/380734/philip-morris-visit-stirs-controversy

An anti-smoking campaigner is fuming about a council-owned facility hosting a conference for a global tobacco giant in Queenstown.

The Queenstown Events Centre this week hosted about 250 delegates from the Asian division of Philip Morris, known for cigarette brands such as Marlboro and Virginia Slims.

It is believed attendees included regional presidents from around Asia.

Leading anti-smoking campaigner Trish Fraser, of Glenorchy, said: “I’m certainly not that keen about the tobacco industry having conferences in Queenstown, full stop.

“If Philip Morris was prepared to stop selling cigarettes and only sell e-cigarettes, I think they’d be very welcome in Queenstown, but they continue to sell cigarettes, which are, of course, very harmful.”

Ms Fraser believed the Queenstown Lakes District Council should discuss whether it should open its venues to cigarette companies.

“It would be good to see the council take a stand.

“What would the rest of the ratepayers think? Maybe they should be asked.”

Asked her view, councillor Alexa Forbes said: “Personally, it’s not a good look”, but she would only take the issue further if she had strong community feedback.

The Hague Court: Dutch alcohol and tobacco ID campaign in violation of anti-trust legislation

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-hague-court-dutch-alcohol-and-tobacco-id-campaign-in-violation-of-anti-trust-legislation-300256112.html

Teleconnect Inc (OTCBB: TLCO) today announces that the Court in The Hague has ruled that the Dutch Food Retail Association (CBL) and Jumbo Supermarkets have violated anti-trust legislation by ruling out the very effective age validation system ‘Ageviewers’ at the sale of tobacco and alcohol.

Instrumental for the infringement was the industry wide responsible alcohol retailing code and an ID-campaign in the Netherlands, similar to the ‘We Card Program’ in the US. The Court in The Hague, sitting in full bench, established that both the code and the campaign have the object of impeding the implementation and proliferation of the Ageviewers system and therefore are declared void and nonexistent. CBL and Jumbo are the first parties that have been found jointly and severally liable for all damages inflicted to Ageviewers since 2008.

The ruling does not only affect CBL and Jumbo. Among the many parties involved in the ID program are Dutch market leader Ahold, currently merging with Delhaize and operating in the US with brands as Stop & Shop, Giant and Peapod; the Dutch Brewers Association; the Wine Industry; Bacardi-Martini and Diageo.

Reaction Teleconnect Inc – Ageviewers

We are very happy with this judgment. Our business has been severely affected by this cartel since 2008 and our financial claim will be substantial. In our view, the boycott exposes an extensive morality and compliance problem regarding the sale of alcohol and tobacco to minors. We are investigating the consequences of the judgment in the US, as the boycott completely derailed our plans to implement the Ageviewers system in the American market, where our company is listed and where we have our roots.

We are requesting all parties involved in the production and sale of tobacco and alcohol, in responsible retailing and prevention institutes, to endorse and support our further efforts to implement Ageviewers in the Dutch and US market.

Smoking E-Cigarettes is 10 Times More Cancerous than Tobacco

http://www.theweeklyobserver.com/smoking-e-cigarettes-is-10-times-more-cancerous-than-tobacco/11870/

So you probably thought you were fine now that you quit smoking. No cancer for you, no sir! No filthy chemically stuffed cigarettes for you! You’ve opted for that funky and cool alternative they call e-cig. Why shouldn’t you be that confident? After all, the CDC and FDA are fine with it, so it must be safe. Oh, but it isn’t; in fact, that couldn’t be farther from the truth! According to a recent study – that has nothing to do with the CDC/FDA – electronic cigarettes were found to be contain 10 times as much cancerous ingredients than a regular tobacco cigarette.

I bet you didn’t see that one coming!

You may wonder how in the heavens this has passed the FDA’s notice. Well, with $ 4.5 billion that is supposed to be funding for studies exactly like this one, the FDA didn’t seem to think it necessary to do any research on this product’s safety. If you go over to the FDA website and check out when they have to say about electronic cigarettes, you’ll find a bunch of quality control and standardization stuff. However, they do mention quite clearly that “FDA has not evaluated any e-cigarettes for safety or effectiveness.” There you have it. They admit it. So how the hell are you using this? How are you allowing your kids to play around with it, too?

Well, it’s not your fault; you’re unaware. And Japanese scientists have taken it upon themselves to make the world aware of this threat. The Japanese Ministry of Health commissioned a research about the safety of electronic cigarettes, and the scientists found around 10 cancer-causing carcinogens more than those found in a regular old school Tobacco smoke. They found formaldehyde and acetaldehyde in the liquid that you smoke through the electronic cigarette. They also found that these carcinogens fuel drug resistant pathogens that humans may contract.

Even before the Japanese found these shocking results, in 2015 the WHO asked governments to ban the sale of e-cigarettes to under age people. Furthermore, the UN health agency said that despite there not being any evidence about their unsafety, they wanted “to caution children and adolescents, pregnant women, and women of reproductive age”. They also tried to outlaw their use indoors.

Well, once again, thanks to the Japs for being smarter and more aware than the rest of the world.

Pressure grows for Commission President Juncker to end tobacco lobbying secrecy

Splits occur within European Commission, as European Parliament, Ombudsman and NGOs increase the pressure for implementing UN rules for contacts with tobacco industry lobbyists.

http://www.corporateeurope.org/power-lobbies/2016/04/pressure-grows-commission-president-juncker-end-tobacco-lobbying-secrecy

In February, European Commission President Juncker took many by surprise by flatly rejecting a European Ombudsman’s ruling recommending full transparency around tobacco industry lobbying. The previous autumn (after an investigation sparked by a complaint by Corporate Europe Observatory), Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly had slammed the Commission’s failure to comply with the World Health Organisation’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control as ‘maladministration’. The ruling urged the Commission to publish details of all meetings with tobacco lobbyists online. Four months later Juncker responded by claiming that the Commission “complies in full” with the UN rules, repeating the unconvincing argument that its general rules in the field of transparency and ethics are sufficient.

In her speech “Combating tobacco industry tactics: State of play and a way forward” in the European Parliament a few weeks later, O’Reilly expressed strong regret “that the Commission declined to accept my recommendation to extend proactive tobacco lobbying transparency across all DGs and across all levels of the service.” “And, given the stated commitment of the EU to the Convention”, the Ombudsman added, “I confess to being puzzled as to why that is.” In the conclusions of her speech, O’Reilly offered at least a partial explanation, stating that “the sophistication of the tobacco industry’s global lobbying efforts is still seriously underestimated”.

The Ombudsman, fortunately, has far from given up. Within a few weeks, she will publish a final ruling on the case. O’Reilly is also organising an official hearing in the European Parliament on “Improving transparency in tobacco lobbying”. Among the speakers will be Vytenis Andriukaitis, European Commissioner for Health. Andriukaitis has recently voiced strong disagreement with Juncker’s rejection of the Ombudsman’s recommendations. Last month, Andriukaitis revealed at a conference in the European Parliament that Juncker’s response to the Ombudsman had not been discussed in the College for Commissioners. He reported that it was drafted by the Commission’s Legal Services, signed by Juncker and sent to the Ombudsman without consulting other commissioners.

In a resolution approved in a plenary vote last month, the European Parliament added to the pressure on the Commission, stating its concerns about the Ombudsman’s finding that the Commission was “not fully implementing UN WHO rules and guidelines governing transparency and tobacco lobbying”, adding that the Parliament “is of the opinion […] that the Commission’s credibility and seriousness have been endangered”. The Parliament’s resolution “urges all the relevant EU institutions to implement Article 5(3) of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in accordance with the recommendations contained in the guidelines thereto”.

In his response to the Ombudsman, Juncker argued that tobacco lobbying transparency is not needed because the number of meetings between top officials and tobacco lobbyists has decreased since decision-making on the Tobacco Products Directive came to an end in 2014. This is a clear example of the European Commission seriously underestimating the lobbying efforts of the tobacco industry. Tobacco lobbyists are now targeting other issues, such as EU trade policy (TTIP and other trade negotiations), the renewal of the controversial agreements with four tobacco giants on combating illicit trade in tobacco, and the battle around the choice of technology for high-tech digital watermarks in tobacco packaging to prevent counterfeiting. New documents uncovered by CEO – see box below – show the tobacco industry is also making full use of the Commission’s flagship “Better Regulation” initiative in attempts to weaken tobacco control measures such as health warnings on cigarette packs. This has included attempts to bypass the health commissioner by lobbying the cabinet of Commission Vice-President Timmermans, who is responsible for ’Better Regulation’.

The European Parliament, the health commissioner and public health NGOs are calling on the Commission to accept the Ombudsman’s recommendations. So what is Juncker waiting for?

Tobacco industry lobbyists using the Commission’s “Better Regulation” agenda

After attending a BusinessEurope meeting with the Commission on the Commission’s “Better Regulation” package, Japan International Tobacco (JTI) requested a meeting with the cabinet of Commission Vice-President Timmermans to “discuss a number of specific areas”. When the meeting happened (November 25 2015), the JTI lobbyists only raised “a very specific issue” concerning “the placing of health warning on cigarette packs with bevelled sides”. JTI attempted to use the “Better Regulation” agenda in its lobbying on this issue and went to Timmermans’ cabinet to bypass the Commission’s health department. The cabinet member promised to contact the cabinet of the health commissioner “to hear their side of the story”, but the notes of the meeting also stress that “no further commitments were undertaken”. This meeting was disclosed because it involved a top Commission official, but how many more meetings like this are happening at lower levels?

Forum: Raising tobacco sales age will save future generations

http://www.nhregister.com/opinion/20160421/forum-raising-tobacco-sales-age-will-save-future-generations

In Connecticut, about 4,900 adults die each year because of tobacco. The fact is that tobacco kills more people than alcohol, AIDS, car crashes, illegal drugs, murders and suicides combined. (he omitted malaria) We see the effects of tobacco in heart disease, lung disease, and many other chronic conditions we treat. We see the devastation wrought, and despite the success of programs we’ve put in place to detect and treat lung cancer and other smoking-related diseases sooner, we’re not addressing the root problem: preventing people from smoking in the first place.

Now Connecticut, like many states, is considering increasing the tobacco purchase age to 21, and for good reason. Ninety-nine percent of all adult smokers report that they started smoking before age 25. Tobacco use is a pediatric epidemic because most users start in high school. Eighty percent of youth smokers will become adult smokers, and one-half of adult smokers will die prematurely from tobacco-related diseases. One half!

Specific to Connecticut, this means 56,000 kids who are now under the age of 18 will ultimately die prematurely from smoking. Currently, 13 percent of Connecticut high school students smoke, and 2,100 kids under the age of 18 become new daily smokers in Connecticut each year.

The developing brain is particularly vulnerable to nicotine exposure. Smoking during adolescence increases the risk of long-term addiction to nicotine and other drugs, and makes quitting more difficult. Most teens who smoke and use tobacco report getting cigarettes and other products from their friends; 90 percent of those who provide cigarettes to younger teens are under the age of 21. Increasing the sales age will limit high school and middle school youths’ access to addictive products from older teens.

Needham, Massachusetts, became the first town in the country to raise its tobacco sales age to 21, in 2005. A recent study of the town’s smoking rate among high school students showed a 47 percent reduction as well as a reported decline in area retail tobacco purchases. To date, Hawaii and at least 125 localities in nine additional states have followed Needham’s lead. As a state that prides itself in our health status and focus on prevention, Connecticut should be the next state to take the lead in this fight, and for more than public health reasons alone.

Not only is tobacco killing us and our kids, but it is also associated with some staggering monetary impacts. More than $2 billion in annual health care costs in Connecticut are directly caused by smoking. Whether or not you smoke, you should know that you are literally paying for those who do. Per household, Connecticut residents incur a $916 federal and state tax burden from smoking-caused government expenditures.

During Connecticut’s current legislative session, there was a bill proposing this age increase. The tobacco industry submitted testimony against the bill and reminded legislators that a similar New Jersey bill, if passed, would reduce cigarette and tobacco excise tax and sales tax revenue by $19 million annually. This, in part, led some to believe that passing such a law in Connecticut would result in a bigger state budget deficit which, in the current budget climate, was more than enough to prevent the bill from seeing the light of day. It is unfortunate that legislators failed to recognize that should lower tobacco tax revenue materialize, it would be the result of fewer Connecticut residents smoking and therefore reduce the state’s burden of smoking related healthcare costs and create a healthier future for our children.

This conversation needs to continue and be taken seriously by our elected lawmakers who faithfully serve the best interests of their constituents. Make no mistake, beyond possibly losing a valued customer, the tobacco industry does not care about the lives lost from smoking or the quality of life and well being of the people in our state. They do not care about those 56,000 kids in Connecticut now under the age of 18 who will eventually die prematurely as a result of the use of their product. Raising the tobacco purchase age to 21 makes good sense and is the right thing to do — now, before more tax dollars are wasted and more lives are lost.

Patrick Charmel is president and CEO of Griffin Hospital and a member of the board of directors of the American Heart Association of Connecticut and Western Massachusetts.

Cigarette sales get a boost from TV commercials for e-cigs, says study

http://www.campaignlive.com/article/cigarette-sales-boost-tv-commercials-e-cigs-says-study/1392249

It’s been nearly 50 years since Congress banned cigarette commercials from the airwaves. But a new study suggests the rapid proliferation of e-cigarette commercials may be lifting the sales of cigarettes, too, offering an unexpected path back to TV for the tobacco industry.

According to the study, Advertising, Habit Formation and U.S. Tobacco Product Demand, funded by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, TV advertisements for e-cigarettes create a “spillover effect” that also increases demand for cigarettes. “If you increase e-cigarette advertisement, then cigarette demand is going to increase slightly,” said Yuqing Zheng, an agricultural economist the University of Kentucky and lead author of the study.

Researchers compared advertising data from Kantar Media with point-of-sale data at outlets that sold five different kinds of tobacco or nicotine products between 2009 and 2013. What they found was that for every increase in e-cigarette advertising on television, there was an accompanying lift — however small — of cigarette sales.

That rise in cigarette sales is small but statistically significant: one-one hundredth of 1% whenever e-cigarette advertising doubles. But e-cigarette advertising increased 17-fold between 2011 and 2014, so it could be contributing to tens of millions of dollars in cigarette sales.

Though the FDA has petitioned for regulatory control of the e-cigarette market, there are currently no restrictions on e-cigarette advertising, the bulk of which take the form of TV commercials. The findings of the study, which was published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, could renew calls for e-such oversight, said the authors. “Such results may lend support to those who advocate that more regulations on e-cigarette marketing are needed,” they wrote.

The study found that the spillover effect was restricted to TV. E-cigarette magazine ads did not have the same positive effect on cigarette sales. “We consistently find that TV advertising is the most effective way to enhance demand,” said Zheng.

Why e-cigarette ads increase cigarette demand is unclear, though Zheng speculated there could be an “umbrella” effect at work. “A lot of the cigarette and e-cigarette brands belong to the same parent company, so when you do advertise for e-cigarettes, it’s probably going to enhance the image of the parent company which owns the cigarette brand, so that might stimulate some cigarette smoking as well,” he said. Intentionally or not, cigarette manufacturers may have found a way to boost sales by advertising a different product in their inventories.

These could be problematic numbers for e-cigarette manufacturers, who have been resisting calls for the regulation of either their products or their advertising. If further research supports the study’s finding that e-cigarette advertising increases cigarette sales, then continuing to allow unregulated e-cigarette advertising “might undermine the efforts to reduce cigarette smoking,” the study said. “If a new policy were to prohibit e-cigarette television ads, similar to what is imposed for cigarettes, the model predicts a small drop in consumer demand for e-cigarettes, and a minor decrease in cigarette demand.”

Whether the prospect of that minor decrease helps anti-smoking advocates win regulatory controls for e-cigarettes and their ads remains to be seen.

Judge, Big Three tobacco manufacturers reach deal on corrective statements – Winston-Salem Journal: Local Business

http://www.journalnow.com/business/business_news/local/judge-big-three-tobacco-manufacturers-reach-deal-on-corrective-statements/article_82ff0b0d-c941-5f6a-9911-b03dad623827.html?mode=print

A federal judge and the Big Three tobacco manufacturers have reached an agreement on five “here is the truth” corrective statements for cigarette marketing.

Judge Gladys Kessler ruled in November 2012 that cigarette marketing should carry the overarching preamble: “A federal court has ruled that the defendant tobacco companies deliberately deceived the American public about the health effects of smoking, and has ordered those companies to make this statement.”

In May 2015, a U.S. Appeals Court ruling found that Kessler’s preamble exceeded, in part, the District Court’s authority, saying the preamble “reveals nothing about cigarettes. Instead, they disclose defendants’ prior deceptive conduct.”

“After all … the statute reads ‘prevent and restrain,’ not ‘prevent, restrain and discourage.’”

The consent order, approved Tuesday, strips that preamble and replaces it with “a federal court has ordered Altria, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, Lorillard and Philip Morris USA to make this statement about the addictiveness of smoking and nicotine.” The ruling affects ITG Brands LLC, the successor to Lorillard Inc.

The compromise did not include a “trigger date” for when the ads would start. Altria Group Inc. spokesman Brian May said Friday that the trigger date is the date on which all appeals are exhausted.

The manufacturers filed their latest appeal with the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia on April 8.

“We continue to object to the content of the corrective communications, including the language in the preamble, and intend to pursue the appeal, May said.

Kessler said the order “is the complete agreement of the parties as to corrective statements and supersedes any prior negotiations, agreements or understandings of the parties.”

Kessler ordered the corrective statements appear on company websites, cigarette packages, prime-time network television ads and in newspaper ads in the front section of Sunday editions. The ad will not appear in the Winston-Salem Journal, but it will in The Charlotte Observer. Each newspaper ad will feature one of the five corrective statements. The 260 TV spots will run over a 52-week period

The manufacturers filed a joint appeal of Kessler’s ruling in January 2013. They have tried to persuade Kessler to reject the statements, calling them “forced public confessions” in legal filings.

The compromise does not include Reynolds’ complaint that it should not have to run additional ads related to its 2004 purchase of Brown and Williamson Tobacco Corp.

The manufacturers have said the 2009 Tobacco Control Act eliminated any reasonable likelihood the companies would commit future violations, thus making the need for corrective statements moot.

Responding to the May 2015 appellate ruling, Kessler said the federal government has agreed to remove “deliberately deceived the American public” from the preamble. But Kessler said the phrase “Here is the truth” remains appropriate to begin each corrective statement.

The U.S. government filed a lawsuit in 1999 against the nation’s largest tobacco manufacturers.

The initial ban on labels — such as “low tar,” “light” and “mild” — was part of Kessler’s landmark 2006 ruling that found the manufacturers guilty of racketeering and fraud for deceiving the public about the dangers of smoking, in particular whether certain products were marketed with an expressed or implied lower-risk health message or descriptor.

Kessler ruled that cigarettes marketed as low tar, light and mild have been found to be no safer than others.

In May 2009, a U.S. Court of Appeals panel unanimously upheld requirements that manufacturers change the way they market cigarettes. The Food and Drug Administration banned the use of the labels in June 2010.

Corrective statements

The order from federal Judge Gladys Kessler specifies “truth” statements for five categories:

* Adverse health effects of smoking, such as “more people die every year from smoking than from murder, AIDS, suicide, drugs, car crashes and alcohol combined; ”
* Addictiveness of smoking and nicotine;
* Lack of significant health benefit from smoking low-tar, light, ultra-light, mild and natural cigarettes;
* Manipulation of cigarette design and composition to ensure optimum nicotine delivery, such as “when you smoke, the nicotine actually changes the brain – that’s why quitting is so hard; ” and,
* Adverse health effects of exposure to secondhand smoke, such as “secondhand smoke kills over 3,000 Americans each year.”

Tobacco company’s tactics scrutinised

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/tobacco-companys-tactics-scrutinised

Cambodia’s top-selling cigarette firm achieved dominance by courting senior political figures and vigorously opposing public health legislation, according to a study published this month in medical journal Global Public Health.

Twenty years after moving into Cambodia, British American Tobacco Cambodia (BATC) controls 40.3 per cent of the cigarette market.

Through analysis of internal industry documents available through the global Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, by Drs Ross MacKenzie and Jeff Collin examined the strategies employed by BATC to reach the top spot.

The documents from the mid-1990s revealed a strategy focused on “handling government officials both at provincial and national levels on a variety of topics”.

Mac-Kenzie and Collin found that BATC’s greatest asset in managing those relationships was its chairman, Oknha Kong Triv, whose real value, they assert, was “his connections to the inner circle around the CPP”.

Related strategies involved funding the Hun Sen Forestation Nursery and BAT’s regional marketing director thanking the prime minister for his “vision, wisdom and leadership”.

MacKenzie and Collin believe BATC’s lobbying paid off. The government, they report, gave the company generous preferential tax treatment and a willing ear to listen to its concerns on policy matters.

Cambodia’s 2005 ratification of the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control should have made further exploitation of those relationships impossible.

Article 5.3 of the convention requires signatory nations to protect health policy from the “vested interests of the tobacco industry”.

Yet in a 2010 conversation with the Post, Kun Lim, BATC’s head of corporate and regulatory affairs, praised government officials for their “commitment to listen” and a 2007 internal document spoke of the “culture of partnership” between the company and state.

Yel Daravuth, who heads the WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative in Cambodia, believes that while Article 5.3 has been adopted by Cambodia on paper, there is a lack of proper guidelines.

“It’s very important [to have specific guidelines] because it will tell the government what they should do, what they should not do and how restricted they are. If they want to [meet with tobacco executives], they have to be very transparent,” said Daravuth.

Cambodia Movement for Health executive director Dr Kong Mom said in an email the tobacco industry persistently attempts to railroad policies that would curb their position.

“Recently, the tobacco industry in Cambodia established an alliance called Association of Tobacco Industry of Cambodia aiming at interfering in the development and implementation of the law on tobacco control and its regulations. It is not the matter of which company is more or less aggressive than other companies, but they work together to protect their vested interest,” Mom wrote.

The Ministry of Health’s vice chief of tobacco and health, Kong Sam An, could not be reached yesterday. A BATC representative hung up when a Post reporter called for comment.

Govt should ensure smoking ban is being properly implemented

http://www.chinadailyasia.com/opinion/2016-04/21/content_15420749.html

Over recent years, great strides have been made in the fight to limit smoking in public places in Hong Kong. This fight is being conducted to reduce the opportunities for smokers to light up, and thereby perhaps save their lives from constantly indulging their deadly addiction. It is also conducted to protect those people located nearby, who may not smoke, from the harmful — indeed from the life-threatening — effects of cigarette smoke reaching them from others.

It is heartening to note from recent reports that the incidence of smoking is generally being reduced — meaning that there are apparently somewhat fewer smokers in Hong Kong than there were a decade or more ago. That reduction, of course, must include the sad statistic of the many regular smokers who have since died from serious illnesses caused by their regular tobacco intake.

There is little to feel complacent about however, as many Hong Kong people continue to damage their own health and that of others near them, by lighting up. An especially lamentable sight is that of youngsters, even schoolchildren, taking up the deadly addiction, which will more than likely kill them before they die from national causes.

The advent of e-cigarettes has provided an alternative to smoking the more dangerous real tobacco products. The jury is still out, however, on whether or not e-cigarettes themselves present a danger to health. They are a comparatively new invention, so it is too early to be able to judge what a lifetime’s intake of e-cigarette smoke might or might not do to harm a person’s lungs and health. Let’s remember that it took many years of research before a confirmed link was established between smoking tobacco in cigarettes and severe damage to a smoker’s health. These days, everyone knows that smoking can kill you; yet many people continue to smoke and others take up the habit — which soon leads to a lifetime’s nicotine addiction.

It is now against the law for people to smoke inside a bar, restaurant or coffee shop in Hong Kong. However, you may commonly see customers sitting near the open frontage of such places, puffing away. Some are located actually within the establishment as they do so, meaning they are seated inside the place. The noxious smoke they emit thus blows in and poisons those customers seated within, as well as polluting the air just outside the place.

Others are technically outside, but positioned so near the place as to make little difference. They are facilitated in doing so by the establishment providing tables and ash trays just outside their open frontages. The prohibition needs to be extended, to outlaw smoking within five meters of a place’s entrance or frontage. Large and clear NO SMOKING signs should be required to be placed near the entrances of all bars and restaurants — preferably showing graphic pictures of diseased lungs and the other horrors that smoking causes.

Some others brazenly indulge their smoking habit well inside the place and, to their shame, some bars and other establishments provide ashtrays on every internal table, to facilitate (and really to encourage) breaking the law by having their customers smoke inside the place. The law needs to be strengthened by prescribing hefty fines for both the smoker and the establishment’s owner for such infringements. Presently, too few prosecutions are initiated against smokers and none against owners.

It is said that the price of freedom is constant vigilance. Similarly, the eradication of smoking inside Hong Kong’s bars and restaurants will happen only if firmer steps are taken to enforce the laws prohibiting it. That means that there need to be more governmental staff assigned as Tobacco Control Office inspectors; many more spot-checks need to be conducted on bars and restaurants; no verbal warnings should be given. Instead each infringement should be prosecuted, according to the law. Only a zero-tolerance approach, prosecuting every offender who so breaks the law and landing him with a hefty fine — and that includes the place’s owner — would have the desired deterrent effect.

For those frequent offenders among bar and restaurant owners, consideration should be made to rescinding their license to operate. That danger to their business would turn the tide, obliging them to do everything possible to stop people smoking on their premises, rather than — as now — some of them turning a blind eye to, or even encouraging, smoking on their premises.

Only through uncompromising law enforcement can smoking inside (or too near) a bar or restaurant really be brought to an end.

The writer is a seasoned Hong Kong commentator, who has lost close family members to the deadly effects of cigarette smoking.