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April 30th, 2016:

Marlborough Man 2016: Smoking icon has swapped his horse for a helicopter and become a Stetson-wearing WOMAN in new e-cigarette ad campaign

Apr 30th, 2016
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The old fashioned Marlboro Man has been replaced by a woman

The new face of e-cigarettes is shown using a helicopter to round up cattle

Imperial Tobacco campaign received a boost after a report released by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) backed E-cigarettes

After using a helicopter to round up a large herd of cattle in the wild west, the Stetson-wearing herder pulls down her bandana and takes a puff from her blue-tipped e-cigarette.

The old fashioned Marlboro Man has been replaced by a woman for the face of the new e-cigarette ad campaign.

However her career was facing an uncertain future with television adverts promoting e-cigarettes set to be banned next month under an EU directive on tobacco.

The World Health Organisation had warned in 2014 that vaping was dangerous but now Imperial Tobacco’s blu e-Cigs campaign received a boost after a report released by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) backed E-cigarettes.

The RCP’s new report concluded that e-cigarettesbring benefits for public health and said they should be widely promoted to smokers to help them quit tobacco.

In a report likely to further fuel a debate over electronic cigarettes, the influential British doctors group also stressed that tobacco smoking is both addictive and lethal but concluded that e-cigarettes are ‘much safer than smoking’.

E-cigarettes are not a gateway to smoking, the RCP said, and do not lead to the normalisation of the habit – two issues often cited by critics who fear the devices can lure children and young people into smoking habits.

‘None of these products has to date attracted significant use among adult never-smokers, or demonstrated evidence of significant gateway progression into smoking among young people,’ the RCP’s 200-page report said.

E-cigarettes, which heat nicotine-laced liquid into vapour, have rapidly grown into a global market for ‘vaping’ products that was estimated at around $7 billion in 2015.

Tobacco smoking kills half of all smokers, plus at least another 600,000 people a year non-smokers via second-hand smoke.

This makes it the world’s biggest preventable killer, with apredicted death toll of a billion by the end of the century,according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Many public health experts think e-cigarettes, or vapes,which do not contain tobacco, are a lower-risk alternative to smoking, but some questions remain about their long-term safety.

Linda Bauld, a professor at Stirling University, deputy director of the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies and aco-author of the RCP report, said that unlike tobacco, nicotine does not cause cancer, heart and lung diseases.

‘The ideal is for people to use nothing,’ she said, but when the alternative is smoking, people should be encouraged to use nicotine ‘delivered in a cleaner form than in deadly cigarettes’.

‘This is what tobacco harm reduction is – it reduces the harm from tobacco while recognising that some people will still use nicotine in other safer forms.’

John Britton, chair of the RCP Tobacco Advisory Group which published the report, acknowledged that e-cigarettes were ‘a topic of great controversy’ but said his group’s analysis ‘laysto rest almost all of the concerns over these products’.

The anti-smoking group ASH UK welcomed the report, saying it showed ‘that switching to vaping is a positive and sensible life choice’ for smokers.

‘Electronic cigarette vapour does not contain smoke, which is why vaping is much less harmful,’ said Deborah Arnott, ASH’s chief executive.

PAYING THE PRICE: THE DEATH OF THE MARLBORO MEN

With his rugged looks and cool cowboy image, the Marlboro Man was the star of the smoking advertisements until they were scrapped in the late Nineties.

Several actors and models have been the face of Marlboro including David Millar, who died of emphysema in 1987, and David McLean, who died of lung cancer in 1995.

Another who pushed the product, Wayne McLaren, died before his 52nd birthday in 1992 and Dick Hammer – better known for his role as Captain Hammer in the TV show Emergency! – passed away from lung cancer in 1999, aged 69.

It wasn’t until state governments banned the use of humans or cartoons to promote tobacco advertisements in the UK that the role was axed.

Eric Lawson who played the iconic cigarette-puffing cowboy during the late 1970s passed away aged 72 from respiratory failure in January 2014.

Last year Darrell Winfield became the sixth Marlboro man to pass away from an unspecified ‘lengthy illness’ at his ranch in Riverton, Wyoming, while in hospice care.

Winfield was a real-life rancher who worked on a cattle farm in 1968 when he was first discovered by the Leo Burnett advertising agency and transformed into a world-recognized model.

Foreign funders funding anti-tobacco lobby, says ITC’s Y.C. Deveshwar

Apr 30th, 2016
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ITC chairman Deveshwar says certain India-based NGOs are acting at behest of foreign funders based in the US

Guntur: ITC Ltd chairman Y.C. Deveshwar pointed a finger at US-based organizations, whom he accused of “funding” the Indian anti-tobacco lobby, which he said was harming farmers’ interests and indirectly aiding in cigarette smuggling.

Deveshwar did not take any names, but said certain India-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were acting at the behest of foreign funders based in the US.

When asked if he had any concrete evidence to back his claims, he said ITC had passed on “some information” to the government.

“This kind of money, where is it is coming from?” Deveshwar asked a group of journalists on Thursday, before answering it himself. “Behind this is vested interests… where money is given into the hands of so-called NGOs, who are being influenced to kill local brands knowing fully well that smuggled cigarettes of some other industry are going to be used here.”

Tobacco companies in the country have stopped cigarette production owing to a lack of clarity on the size of graphic health warnings on cigarette packs. ITC, the maker of brands such as Classic, Gold Flake and Wills Navy Cut, has shut production at all its five cigarette factories since 1 April.

The ministry of health and family welfare said in September that graphic warnings on consumption of cigarettes shall occupy 85% of packing from 1 April. However, in March, a parliamentary committee hearing the issue tabled a report recommending that new pictorial health warnings occupy 50% of front and back panels of a cigarette pack. Previous rules mandated pictorial health warnings to cover 40% of the front face of a cigarette pack.

The ambiguity on the portion of a cigarette pack that should depict graphic warnings on the harmful effects of tobacco consumption has forced cigarette makers to temporarily halt production till unambivalent rules emerge.

“You do not have to terrorize the consumer by covering the whole pack with warning,” Deveshwar said in Guntur, a hub of tobacco sourcing for ITC, the country’s biggest cigarette maker.

Andhra Pradesh, where Guntur is located, accounts for two-thirds of the tobacco sourced by ITC, with Karnataka accounting for the rest.

Deveshwar said the company will invest Rs . 345 crore in Guntur and make it the headquarters of ITC’s agribusiness division, which has a turnover of Rs . 8,000 crore.

ITC will invest Rs . 200 crore in s 0.5 million sq. ft facility that will provide employment to 500 people.

The facility will also house a research division for agri commodities, he said.

Deveshwar said ITC will source chillies, pepper and millets from Andhra Pradesh.

Guntur’s food-safe chillies, or chillies without pesticides and chemicals, have export potential to Europe and the US, Deveshwar said.

The company will also build Guntur’s first five-star hotel by 2019 with an investment of Rs . 145 crore.

The 144-room My Fortune hotel will come up on a 1.44-acre property that earlier was the site of an ITC guest house. “We are taking a leap of faith in anticipation of growth in this region,” Deveshwar said at the media conference.

Ditch tobacco sponsors, health experts warn cultural institutions

Apr 30th, 2016
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1,000 experts sign open letter to London’s leading cultural bodies, including British Museum and Royal Academy, over ‘morally unacceptable’ sponsorship

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/apr/30/arts-institutions-ditch-tobacco-sponsors-health-experts-letter

More than 1,000 healthcare experts, including 57 professors, have signed an open letter calling on some of London’s most respected cultural institutions to abandon their financial links with big tobacco.

The British Museum, the Royal Academy of Arts, the South Bank Centre and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, have long-standing lucrative corporate membership and sponsorship deals with two leading cigarette manufacturers, which are banned from advertising in the UK.

The links have dismayed many in the medical community. “As a doctor specialising in the care of people with emphysema, I see the harm smoking causes every day,” said Dr Nick Hopkinson, reader in respiratory medicine and honorary consultant physician at the National Heart and Lung Institute, who is leading a campaign against the tie-ups.

“Tobacco companies, which rely on getting people addicted to products, which maim and kill, must not be allowed to use arts sponsorship as a way to present [themselves] as respectable.”

Tobacco giant JTI has corporate membership deals with the British Museum, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Royal Academy of Arts. JTI pays almost £40,000 a year to the Royal Academy for a premier membership package that sees the company listed in all exhibition catalogues. The company is also a corporate supporter of the Southbank Centre on whose website its logo appears.

British American Tobacco is an associate member of the Royal Academy of Arts and a corporate sponsor of the London Symphony Orchestra.

The Framework convention on tobacco control – to which the UK is a signatory – states that tobacco companies’ investment in corporate social responsibility initiatives should be treated as a form of advertising.

In 2007, Philip Morris International Inc, manufacturer of Marlboro, stopped funding a number of New York art institutions.

In their letter, published in Sunday’s Observer, health experts, including John Moxham, professor of respiratory medicine at King’s College London; Richard Ashcroft, professor of bioethics, Queen Mary University of London; and John Britton, director, UK centre for tobacco and alcohol studies, University of Nottingham; call on cultural organisations to rethink their relationship with big tobacco.

They warn: “Tobacco advertising has now been banned along with sponsorship of sport. However, tobacco companies continue to use sponsorship of some high-profile arts organisations to promote the spurious idea that they are responsible corporate citizens.”

Hopkinson added: “People can’t believe that the galleries, museums, orchestras they love could do this.”

Pressure on the likes of the Royal Academy to drop their links with big tobacco companies comes after BP ended its sponsorship of the Tate after 26 years following anger from environmental groups. The British Museum, National Portrait Gallery and other institutions have also been forced to defend themselves against claims that they accommodated the demands of the oil company, a major sponsor.

In a statement to Hopkinson, Will Dallimore, director of public engagement at the Royal Academy of Arts, said that JTI’s support had “indisputably helped the academy fulfil its endeavours to contribute to the artistic life of the country”.

A spokesman for the London Philharmonic said: “The LPO is grateful to JTI for its support and for providing our organisation with many platforms for us to make classical music more accessible and widen access to the arts.”

A spokesman for the British Museum said: “JTI supports an acquisition fund at the British Museum, which allows us to acquire objects for the museum’s modern Japanese collection. JTI have supported the Museum since 2010. The British Museum is grateful to JTI for their long-term support.”

A spokesman for JTI said: “It seems illogical that in a democratic society like the UK and at a time when funding for cultural and artistic institutions is under pressure, people would want to prevent a legitimate company like JTI from making a contribution to good causes.”

A British American Tobacco spokesman: “Like many other businesses we support art and cultural institutions throughout the UK through corporate memberships. The small amount of corporate memberships we have do not result in our brands being featured anywhere but simply provide the opportunity for our staff, customers and business partners to attend events, concerts and exhibitions alongside other corporate members.”

But Hopkinson suggested that the tobacco firms were using their support for the arts to retain key staff to give themselves a commercial advantage.

“In its annual report, British American Tobacco identifies the difficulty recruiting people because of the industry’s poor reputation, as a risk to its future profits,” Hopkinson said. “Arts sponsorship is one way that the tobacco industry can enable its own employees to deceive themselves about the true nature of what they are doing.”

Antismoking Coalition Gives Big Tobacco a Fight in Indonesia

Apr 30th, 2016
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/world/asia/antismoking-coalition-gives-big-tobacco-a-fight-in-indonesia.html?_r=0

The densely packed houses along Yogyakarta’s Kali Code River went from drab to a riot of reds, blues, yellows and whites.

Residents did not know who had paid for the elaborate painting job last year. The Yogyakarta press speculated that an unknown company had painted the houses so they would resemble the colorful favelas of Rio de Janeiro.

It turns out the village’s benefactor was Philip Morris International and its “Show Your Colors” advertising campaign. On the side of the Gondolayu bridge that overlooks the settlements sits a giant picture frame, with tag lines hung above it reading, “Create your own story” and “Go ahead.”

The village had been transformed into a giant advertisement for a brand owned by the tobacco company.

The ads were another aggressive marketing attempt by an international tobacco company to gain market share in Indonesia. The country is the second-largest cigarette market in Asia after China, and had the highest male smoking rate in the world — 67 percent, according to a 2011 survey — thanks in part to the popularity of pungent clove cigarettes.

Over the last decade, it has become a last Eden for tobacco companies facing declining smoking rates at home. As late as 2004, international tobacco companies had a marginal presence in the Indonesian market. Today, led by Philip Morris International, they control around 45 percent.

Yet that push has been met by an increasingly potent coalition of mayors, health officials and antismoking groups that has scored some important victories.

In one prominent example, huge cigarette billboards that dominated the highways of Jakarta, the capital, were taken down in 2015, as part of a move to ban outdoor tobacco advertisements by mayors around the country.

Many of the lobbying efforts that led to local regulations, including in Jakarta, were substantially financed by the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use, the $600 million fund founded by Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor.

The Bloomberg Initiative has designated Indonesia one of its five priority countries, and has donated more than $10 million since 2007. The initiative is largely focused on establishing local and regional tobacco control laws in a nation with a highly decentralized government structure.

“It’s a battle — like a war,” Yayi Prabandari, a professor of public health at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, said of the clash between tobacco companies and tobacco control organizations.

Before the Bloomberg Initiative became active in the country nearly 10 years ago, fewer than 10 cities had laws that restricted smoking in public areas, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, which jointly administers the Bloomberg Initiative’s grant programs in Indonesia. Since then, the group says, more than 170 cities have passed laws heavily restricting smoking in public spaces.

Yet tobacco growing has deep roots here. Indonesia is one of the few countries in Asia that has not signed the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which mandates strict limits on tobacco advertising and sponsorship.

The Bloomberg Initiative has also created a backlash from smokers’ rights groups, who portray Mr. Bloomberg as a foreign oligarch determined to stamp out Indonesia’s proud tobacco tradition.

“People who smoke today are stigmatized — we’re discriminated against,” said Alfa Gumilang, the chain-smoking secretary general of Komunitas Kretek, a smokers’ rights group that accepts funds from the tobacco industry.

The Indonesian government relies on the tobacco industry for around 10 percent of state tax revenue. Although tobacco is not nationalized, the government issues growth targets; in 2015, the Industry Ministry released a “road map” for the industry calling for expanded cigarette production.

In October, President Joko Widodo visited the United States to promote American investment in Indonesia. While he was there, Philip Morris announced a $1.9 billion expansion of its tobacco factories in the country — the second-largest investment that Mr. Joko secured from an American corporation during his visit.

Philip Morris’s success — it controls 35 percent of Indonesia’s tobacco market through its local subsidiary, Sampoerna — ushered in a new age of foreign expansion. In 2009, British American Tobacco purchased Bentoel, a local tobacco company that is now Indonesia’s fourth largest, with around 7.5 percent market share.

According to Health Ministry officials, Indonesia’s fragmented government ministries often work at cross purposes when tackling the issue.

Because of the difficulty of making sweeping changes to tobacco control laws nationally, Indonesia tobacco control advocates are increasingly pushing for changes at the local and regional levels, where money from the Bloomberg Initiative comes in handy.

Dr. Theresia Sandra, a specialist in chronic lung disease at the Health Ministry, credits the Bloomberg Initiative with helping local governments counter the influence of big tobacco. The group “builds organizations to balance against the strength of industry and opens local governments to the necessity of protecting their communities,” Dr. Sandra said.

In one national success, the Indonesian government, with help from the Bloomberg Initiative, passed a law in 2014 requiring manufacturers to put warning labels on cigarette packaging.

The tobacco fight in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, even extends to the country’s most powerful Muslim organizations, and shows just how central the issue is for society and the economy.

Muhammadiyah, Indonesia’s second-largest Muslim organization, became the first major Muslim group in the country to issue an edict declaring that smoking is forbidden in all circumstances, citing smoking’s devastating consequences to public health.

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The 2010 decision was significant: Muhammadiyah operates thousands of schools, universities and hospitals around the country. Almost overnight, those places became smoke-free zones.

But the Indonesian media quickly pounced on a funding detail. Posted on the Bloomberg Initiative’s website was a $393,000 grant to Muhammadiyah in 2009. According to Bloomberg’s website at the time, the grant sought “the issuance and dissemination of religious advice on the dangers of tobacco use among Muhammadiyah/Islamic institutions.”

Critics accused Muhammadiyah of seeking to unite Muslim opinion against tobacco in return for the grant money.

Dr. Sudibyo Markus, who led Muhammadiyah’s health department at the time, said there had never been any quid pro quo.

Meanwhile, religious leaders affiliated with Nahdlatul Ulama, Muhammadiyah’s main rival, criticized Muhammadiyah for supposedly bowing to Bloomberg’s money. But Nahdlatul Ulama, which does not view smoking as forbidden in most circumstances, receives funding from the foundation wing of Djarum, Indonesia’s third-largest tobacco company.

The group’s vice chairman, Maksum Mahfudh, said there was “no relationship whatsoever” between the funding and its decision that it would not forbid smoking. He added that moving “drastically” against tobacco would impoverish the farmers and sellers who are “grass-roots people of N.U.”

For now, the two sides appear to have fought to a draw. After steadily rising for a decade, the smoking rate has plateaued, according to the Indonesian Family Life Survey, funded by the United States National Institutes of Health, that was released in April.

Still, Philip Morris International remains optimistic about Indonesia. In a February conference call with investors, André Calantzopoulos, the chief executive officer, said Indonesia remained a good bet.

“We remain optimistic about the profit growth opportunities in this key market thanks to its growing adult population and rising income levels,” he told them

One In Six Children Hospitalized For Lung Inflammation Positive For Marijuana Exposure

Apr 30th, 2016
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http://www.science20.com/news_articles/one_in_six_children_hospitalized_for_lung_inflammation_positive_for_marijuana_exposure-171667

A new study to be presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies 2016 Meeting found that one in six infants and toddlers admitted to a Colorado hospital with coughing, wheezing and other symptoms of bronchiolitis tested positive for marijuana exposure.

The study, “Marijuana Exposure in Children Hospitalized for Bronchiolitis,” recruited parents of previously healthy children between one month of age and two years old who were admitted to Children’s Hospital Colorado (CHC) between January 2013 and April 2014 with bronchiolitis, an inflammation of the smallest air passages in the lung. The parents completed a questionnaire about their child’s health, demographics, exposure to tobacco smoke, and as of October 2014, whether anyone in the home used marijuana. Marijuana became legal in Colorado on January 1, 2014.

Of the children who were identified as having been exposed to marijuana smokers, urine samples showed traces of a metabolite of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive component of marijuana, in 16 percent of them. The results also showed that more of the children were THC positive after legalization (21 percent, compared with 10 percent before), and non-white children were more likely to be exposed than white children.

The findings suggest that secondhand marijuana smoke, which contains carcinogenic and psychoactive chemicals, may be a rising child health concern as marijuana increasingly becomes legal for medical and recreational use in the United States, said lead researcher Karen M. Wilson, MD, MPH, FAAP, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and section head at CHC. Most states with legal marijuana do not restrict its combustion around children, she said.

“Our study demonstrates that, as with secondhand tobacco smoke, children can be exposed to the chemicals in marijuana when it is smoked by someone nearby,” Dr. Wilson said. “Especially as marijuana becomes more available and acceptable, we need to learn more about how this may affect children’s health and development.” In the meantime, she said, “marijuana should never be smoked in the presence of children.”