Meena Carr figured out years ago why her young grandson, Malik, was chronically coughing and wheezing: Her home made him sick. Carr, 69, didn’t smoke cigarettes, but some of her neighbors in the Washington-Beech housing development did, often in the hallway. The smell permeated Carr’s apartment.

Last month, Washington-Beech in Roslindale became the city’s first smoke-free public housing development. Today, Carr plans to join other community leaders, public officials, and housing advocates to discuss the Boston Housing Authority’s more ambitious long-term objective — clearing the air by 2013 at all 64 public housing developments.

That positions Boston to become the first city in Massachusetts, and perhaps the largest housing authority nationwide, to impose such a ban. Under the proposal, still in its initial stages, about 27,000 residents in 12,000 units would be prohibited from smoking in common areas and their own apartments.

“This new initiative will go a long way to encourage more healthy living styles for our residents,’’ said Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who earlier this year unveiled the plan to make housing developments smoke free. “You don’t live in a single-family home, you are in multiunit housing,’’ Menino said. “What you do there has an effect on all other folks living in that building.’’

Today’s meeting at Suffolk University is being billed by officials as a “summit’’ to launch the campaign. Details, including how a ban would be phased in and how violators would be punished, are still unclear. Housing officials say the process will include community debate and a public comment period. By January, they hope to submit a proposal to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Nationwide, about 170 public housing authorities — roughly 5 percent — have instituted some kind of no-smoking policy in the past few years, according to the Smoke-Free Environments Law Project in Michigan, a nonprofit that tracks the issue. But so far none as large as Boston’s has implemented the ban, making the city a leader if it moves more quickly than other authorities of similar size.

Jonathan Winickoff, a pediatrician at MassGeneral Hospital for Children, said a ban on smoking in public housing developments would be a natural expansion of a six-year-old state rule that forbids smoking in workplaces, including restaurants and bars.

“People know that smoke doesn’t stop at the doorway. It travels through the air ducts, the hallways, along the electrical routes to contaminate every unit in a building,’’ Winickoff said. “This is bringing the multiunit housing world online with common sense health and safety standards.’’

The housing authority says a poll it conducted this spring found a smoking ban has widespread support among public housing development residents with families. Of 1,300 people surveyed, 92 percent said they favor smoke-free housing, while only 8 percent objected, according to the housing authority.

But that level of support was not necessarily reflected in comments made by residents last week at Washington-Beech, which is halfway through a $100 million project to transform a sea of aging red-brick apartment buildings into a neighborhood of pastel-colored townhouses.

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“You should be able to smoke where you live,’’ said Andrea Venable, 29, through the screen door of a townhouse she shares with her 12-year-old daughter and mother. Venable said that to move into the unit, she had to sign an agreement not to smoke anywhere on the grounds.

Another resident, Julie Silva, 40, said there already was too much regulation of residents’ lives before the smoking ban. Silva, who has emphysema, said she would like to smoke on her front steps, although she wants to eventually quit.

Boston’s plan had its beginnings 10 years ago, when housing officials tried to figure out what was causing high incidences of asthma and other respiratory diseases among public housing residents. Eventually, they focused on second-hand smoking as a cause.

Last October, the housing authority debuted 14 smoke-free units at the Franklin Hill public housing development in Dorchester as a pilot project. Washington-Beech followed in June. Residents there had to agree to refrain from smoking in their homes and common areas. Violators can face “immediate termination’’ of their lease, according to the regulations.

While the city has not yet determined a specific policy for dealing with violations, housing officials said the process likely would be similar to an eviction process and include a lengthy appeals period.

Officials said they realize it will be difficult for some residents to give up smoking and will, in some cases, take into consideration extenuating circumstances. For example, elderly or disabled residents unable to leave their homes might be granted waivers from the rule.

The city will also launch outreach and education efforts, including smoking cessation programs.

“We want to give some comfort to people who are nervous about this policy that we are going to be working on all sides of this issue,’’ said Kate Bennett, the BHA’s special assistant to the administrator for planning. “A lot of people think we are trying to evict smokers. We are trying to create healthy housing.’’

Officials also said they do not expect any legal roadblocks to a smoking ban.

The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development last summer stated that it “strongly encourages’’ public housing authorities to create no-smoking policies in at least some of their housing units. The message dispelled concerns among owners of multiunit buildings that they would be charged with discrimination if they prohibited smoking, said Jim Bergman, director of the Smoke-Free Environments Law Project. The project is part of the Center for Social Gerontology in Michigan, a nonprofit research and advocacy group.

“There’s never been a legal challenge to a smoke-free policy in a housing situation,’’ said Bergman. “There is not a right to smoke.’’

And the smoke-free movement is not limited to public housing. A growing number of privately developed apartment and condominium complexes already have smoking bans in place, including the luxury 241-unit Archstone Avenir in Boston, which opened in March.

Sally Matheu, Archstone group vice president, said the company wanted to promote healthy living and avoid complaints about second-hand smoke. It is the first smoke-free building in the company’s national portfolio of 81,354 units.

“We decided we would take a chance,’’ Matheu said. “It’s been a huge success.’’

At Washington-Beech, Carr also is seeing the benefits of the smoking ban — since it took effect in June, her grandson’s health has already improved.

“We have to educate people on the effects of smoking on nonsmokers,’’ said Carr, who pushed to get cigarettes snuffed out at the complex. “We have to give them a way to help themselves.’’

By Jenifer B. McKim

By now, everyone knows that Washington Nationals ace pitcher, rookie Stephen Strasburg is the real deal.

His debut lived up to all the hype, with the 21-year old throwing furious heat into the seventh inning. He had 14 strikeouts and no walks, getting his first major league win against the Pittsburgh Pirates in a 5-2 win Tuesday evening.

But what I had somehow missed in all the coverage leading up to his debut is this: the young man uses dip, that is, smokeless tobacco.

Reading some of the Washington Post coverage Wednesday morning, I came across a description of the Nats clubhouse scene which starts off with a mention of Strasburg’s wife:

While Rachel was making an early run on the Nationals’ Team Store — coming away with a bagful of limited-edition Strasburg 37 jerseys, and paying full price — her husband was taking batting practice in an indoor cage, with a tin of dip tobacco in his back pocket and a pinch between his gum and lower lip.

As Phil Rizzuto and Harry Caray might have said: Holy Cow! Or as was said in an earlier baseball era, say it ain’t so.

So Strasburg has a weakness after all.

Major League Baseball has for years wanted to get rid of smokeless tobacco, a known carcinogen which causes some of the most hideous cancers of the mouth and throat imaginable. It has been banned in the minors since 1993, though players there still sneak it.

For years, there’s been a concerted effort to keep young people from starting the dip habit, especially because of the mistaken impression that it’s safer than smoking tobacco.

The mlb.fanhouse.com site has an informative story that provides plenty of background on the use of the product in the majors and efforts to prohibit it. Apparently, the players’ union has opposed a ban.

But there are players who support a ban, who understand that they are role models to youngsters, according to the Fanhouse piece:

An excerpt from the piece:

“I would be for [a ban],” A’s infielder Eric Chavez said. “I don’t do it. Sometimes when I’m watching the games you see a guy throw in a big dip and the camera focuses in on it, I know kids are watching. You want guys to be able to do what they want. Everyone is an adult, but you also have to be aware of the message that you send to kids. … Since I don’t dip, I think I’d be an advocate for trying to get it out of the game, or at least off the field.”

As was made clear last night, Strasburg draws a lot of attention and will no doubt be a role model for many youngsters, especially because, by all accounts, he is a humble and level-headed young man.

So his use of snuff is the kind of practice many people will find worrisome, not only for the personal health of one of the most gifted young pitchers baseball has ever seen but for the message it could send to many youngsters who may try to imitate their newest hero.

By Frank James, Npr.org

Sitting in a crowded cafe, 26-year -old “Astri” asks the waiter to bring her an ashtray before she puffs on her first cigarette of the evening. A group of college girls sitting at the next table recognize her as a celebrity and approach her on the pretext of borrowing her lighter. The girls light up their cigarettes too and start to smoke while chatting loudly about Astri.

“You don’t mind me smoking, do you?” asks the once-famous child star, still a singer today.

Astri first started smoking when she was still a high school sophomore, taking up the habit because most of her girlfriends smoked.

“When I was in college I became addicted to cigarettes,” she said. “I tried to quit but it was so hard. Everybody in my clique was a smoker.”

Astri did manage to quit smoking once, when she was pregnant with her son until the time he turned 2, but relapsed as soon as she decided to go back to work.

“In the entertainment business everybody smokes, from veteran actresses to newcomers,” Astri said. “During shooting breaks we all smoke.”

Though she realizes that as a celebrity mother, smoking sets a bad example for her son and fans, she says she cannot quit and refuses to pretend to be a quitter just to please everyone.

“I have thousands of followers on Twitter and they know that I smoke a lot; my son knows too, and he sometimes drops big hints … He says things like, ‘I think I’m going to die prematurely because my mom won’t stop smoking,’” Astri said.

Astri is just one of tens of millions of female smokers in Indonesia. As smoking has declined in many Western countries, it has risen in Indonesia. Around 63 percent of all men light up and one-third of the overall population smokes, an increase of 26 percent since 1995. Smoking-related illnesses kill at least 200,000 annually in a nation of 220 million.

Toxic Lies

Today, May 31, marks World Without Tobacco Day. The theme of this year’s celebration is “Gender and Tobacco with an Emphasis on Marketing to Women.” The WHO proposed the theme because women, along with children, have become the new target for the cigarette industry.

“The cigarette market for men is played out. Customer numbers are stable,” Fuad Baradja, head of the education unit at the Indonesian Smoking Control Foundation, told the Jakarta Globe. “The industry is now looking to develop this new market. Our TV stations are bombarding us with cigarette advertisements for women.

“We are being inundated by these advertisements. Cigarette companies are using very attractive images and beautiful, sexy women. They are trying to imply that smoking is cool, fashionable,” Fuad said.

He added that many companies were trying to lure women into smoking by selling low-nicotine cigarettes to create the image that the cigarettes were less toxic than the regular ones.

“Guess what? You’ve been lied to,” Fuad said. “Smoking low-nicotine cigarettes won’t minimize the health risks. It just makes you spend more money.”

The Global Youth Tobacco Survey conducted by the WHO from 2006 to 2009 found that 88.4 percent of Indonesian girls were exposed to cigarette ads on billboards and more than 87 percent of them were exposed to second-hand smoke in public places.

Changing Values

Prasenohadi, a pulmonologist from the University of Indonesia, said that a regular smoker was driven to consume a certain level of nicotine daily.

“When someone is addicted and needs two milligrams of nicotine a day, he or she will smoke twice as many low-nicotine cigarettes to compensate for his or her needs, which means he or she will spend more money on cigarettes,” Prasenohadi said.

“So don’t be fooled by the words mild, light or low.”

Sonny Harry Harmadi, chief of the Demographic Foundation, said that the cigarette industry had had women and children in its sights since the reform era began in 1998.

“Before the reform era, the stigma associated with females who smoked was so strong that a woman could be labeled as ‘wild’ if she smoked,” he said.

Now, Sonny said, Eastern values were no longer as binding in urban areas as in rural ones.

“That is why there are more female smokers in big cities; people in urban areas tend to be more permissive,” he said.

Fuad said smoking posed a greater threat to women than it did to men not only medically but also financially and psychologically because in a household, women usually took on the role of treasurer with the main task being to manage family spending. He said that since children tended to be closer to their mothers than fathers, they would tend to imitate their mothers’ actions.

Falling Sick

Uya, a mother of two in her mid-30s, said she was an active smoker from 1995 to 2001, but quit because her children started to grow up and questioned her a lot about her decision to smoke.

“They said that smoking caused a greater risk of cancer and they asked me whether I had the heart to put them in danger, day in and day out, as passive smokers,” she said. “That struck me and I decided to quit.”

Tricia Dewi Anggraini, an obstetrician, said that women faced greater health risks than men if they smoked. She said that most Indonesian women smoked during their “reproductive” years.

“There then arises the obvious infertility problem,” Tricia said. “They also tend to experience menstrual pain and irregular cycles. They also increase their risk of developing osteoporosis, early menopause, sexual dysfunction and even cervical cancer.”

Tricia said pregnant smokers also endangered their unborn children.

“Smoking will also affect a woman’s looks,” she said. “It damages the skin, the color of the eyes and nails.”

Noel Gallagher has claimed that the classic Oasis track ‘Cigarettes And Alcohol’ is “social comment”.

Oasis seemed to enjoy an irresistible rise to fame. The band’s debut single ‘Supersonic’ dropped in 1994, with a string of classic releases outlining their quest from rock ‘n’ roll domination.

The band’s third single would enshrine them as arch hedonists. ‘Cigarettes And Alcohol’ was one of the most influential tracks of the 90s, built around a riff half-inched from the classic T Rex single ‘Get It On’.

A shameless evocation of life on the wild side, in the space of three minutes it mentions virtually every drug under the sun. Speaking ahead of the new Oasis compilation ‘Time Flies’ Noel Gallagher claimed that the song was “a proper youth anthem”.

“Right up until the last gigs, that’s when people go fucking apeshit, for that song. It mentions drugs and shagging birds, social comment, boozing and drinking and listening to tunes. You know, what more do you want?!”

Released on June 14th, Noel Gallagher has prepared a series of short films for the new compilation. Continuing, the guitarist claimed that the track became an anthem to fans even before its release.

Referring to an age before the internet, Noel Gallagher explained his surprise at fans knowledge of the track. “On a few occasions I would play the riff and people would start clapping and I’d be like: ‘what are you clapping for? You haven’t fucking heard this before!’”

“It was just going round by word of mouth and we started to get a little following”.

Meanwhile, Liam Gallagher has revealed that his post-Oasis project will be named Beady Eyes, with their debut album due later this year.

‘Times Flies… 1994 – 2009′ is due to be released on June 14th.

The Australian government has promulgated a law which prohibits all forms of promotional texts and pictures glamorising smoking on cigarette packs, saying the move will discourage potential new smokers.

In its reaction, the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria has hailed the move, urging the Federal Government to emulate it.

The Australian government last week announced that by July 2012, all cigarettes sold in that country will have to be in plain packaging – meaning the packs will henceforth carry no tobacco industry logos, no brand imagery, no colours, and no promotional text other than brand and product names in a standard colour, position, font style and size.

Article 11 of the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control requires each party to the protocol to adopt and implement, within three years, measures to ensure that tobacco product packaging and labelling carry large, rotating health warnings and do not promote tobacco products by false, misleading or deceptive means.

It also requires that tobacco product packaging and labelling contain information on relevant constituents and emissions of tobacco products, as defined by national authorities.

In a statement issued in Lagos, ERA/FoEN Programme Manager, Akinbode Oluwafemi, said, ”The Australian government‘s move complements global efforts to curb the gale of deaths spurred by the deceptive promotional packs of the tobacco industry. It is highly commendable and timely in nipping the renewed efforts to woo underage persons into smoking through beautiful packs, colours and logos.”

Akinbode explained that ”The move by the Australian government is a step further in implementing Article 11, which ensures that all packets of tobacco products, and any packaging and labelling used in retail sale of tobacco products, carry rotating series of health warnings which must describe the harmful effects of tobacco use, and other appropriate messages that should cover at least 50 per cent, on average, of the principal display areas.”

Continuing, he said, ”This enviable move by the Australian government should ginger our lawmakers to expedite action on the National Tobacco Control Bill currently stagnating in the hallowed chambers of the National Assembly. It is ironic that Nigeria, which signed the FCTC in 2004 and ratified it in 2005, is still lagging behind and prevaricating on domesticating the FCTC in form of state and national laws.”

The National Tobacco Control Bill was sponsored by the Deputy Minority Leader, Senator Olorunnibe Mamora, and it scaled the second reading in February 2009.

A public hearing on the bill was also held by the Senate Committee on Health, chaired by Senator Iyabo Obasanjo-Bello, on July 20 and 21, 2009.

The committee is expected to send the reports of the public hearing to the Senate plenary, after which a vote will be taken on the bill.

Senate President David Mark had also hinted that the Senate would vote individually on the bill, as against the usual practice of a voice vote.

The wealthy are recovering their fortunes and their joie de vivre, but they haven’t recovered their love for luxury.

A new survey from the Affluence Collaborative, run by the luxury-ad experts AgencySaks, finds that the wealthy are optimistic about their finances and feel genuinely happy about their place in life.

According to the survey, which polled 900 people with incomes of more than $75,000, half of those with incomes of more than $500,000 said they felt “extremely optimistic” about their financial situation. Of those with $75,000 to $200,000 of income, only about a fifth reported extreme optimism. The $500,000-plus group also reported being happier than they were two years ago and happier than others around them.

But when it comes to spending, they are feeling downright morbid.

About a third of the women in the study said they plan on decreasing the amount they spend on luxury items in the next 12 months, while half planned no change and only 16% plan to spend more. The categories taking the biggest hit among those planning to spend less were jewelry, clothing, accessories, shoes and handbags.

More than half the women said they get more satisfaction from saving money.

But here’s the kicker. When given a list of 25 brands from various categories and asked which made them happiest, the top four responses were technology brands. Fashion brands didn’t even make the top 15 (in results that are reminiscent of this post last week).

When given a list of 22 activities that contribute to their current sense of happiness, shopping for luxuries ranked 20th, barely beating smoking.

Some might see that as an encouraging sign, since, for smokers, few things in life add to your momentary happiness than lighting up.

Another way to look at it is that for today’s affluent, luxury spending is bad for your financial health. Like smoking, it gives you short-term happiness, but ultimately is damaging to you and the broader society.

Or, perhaps the wealthy just like to sound virtuous in surveys, especially as the rest of the country remains mired in recession. They say they are being frugal, but really they are splurging like it is 2007. After all, someone is responsible for all the blockbuster earnings of late by the luxury companies.

Do you think luxury spending is as bad as smoking? Have you kicked the habit?

THE SMOKE SMUGGLERS: In the second part of our series, Crime Correspondent CONOR LALLY looks at the role of former republicans and organised crime gangs in the counterfeit cigarette industry

WHEN GARDAÍ and Customs officers staged a major raid on suspected cigarette smugglers in Monaghan last November they found something there weren’t expecting.

Instead of the usual large boxes of cigarettes – either fake imports or legitimately produced smokes on which import duties had not been paid – the authorities found evidence of a very sophisticated operation.

A search of a truck parked in a yard in smuggling country near Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan, yielded enough tobacco, cigarette paper, filters and packaging for 12 million cigarettes.

“It would have been processed into finished packets of smokes at an illegal processing plant somewhere along the Border; that’s how sophisticated the smugglers are now,” said one well-placed source.

The haul, which was valued at €5 million and has been traced back to a Danish port, had entered the Republic by car ferry from Holyhead.

Customs officers checked the container freight using an X-ray scanner at Dublin Port. The X-rays showed that whatever was in the 40ft container was not the paper products mentioned in the shipping documents.

The container was placed under surveillance, and after being collected at the port by a truck driver, was followed to the townland of Creevy, near Carrickmacross, where it was due to be collected by those behind the smuggling operation.

They obviously suspected the authorities were on to them and didn’t turn up to receive the drop; the truck’s lucrative cargo was left to the Garda and Customs team.

The lorry driver was questioned and released. There wasn’t any evidence to identify the borderlands gang behind the haul.

A massive shipment had been taken off the streets, but nobody was caught. It’s a familiar pattern in the booming and expanding cigarette smuggling trade, which cost the exchequer €400 million last year in taxes and duties forgone.

Senior gardaí who spoke to The Irish Times said that during the Troubles the contraband and counterfeit cigarette trade was dominated by the Provisional IRA. Many of those involved were based in Co Louth, across the Border in South Armagh, and at a number of other locations along the Border.

The proceeds of the trade – and that of diesel laundering and smuggling, which the Provisional IRA also specialised in – mainly went to “the movement”.

“At the height of it they weren’t only funding a terrorist campaign both here and in Britain – they also had to find money to look after their people, prisoners’ families and so on,” said one Garda source.

The same source said while republicans were responsible for sourcing and importing the cigarettes, they worked with “ordinary decent criminals” in the distribution of the contraband around the country.

“You had drivers delivering the stuff to places like markets in towns and villages, to street dealers mainly in Dublin and the other cities, and to shops that would take them and sell them,” said another source.

Senior officers familiar with the trade say since the disbandment of the Provisional IRA, many former members who had organised the cigarette smuggling, and those criminals they had worked with, continue to dominate the illegal trade, working purely for personal gain.

“Some of the drugs gangs are involved, but we still pretty much see a separation between what you could define as smugglers on the one hand and what the media calls gangland,” said a Garda source.

A number of former members of the Provisional IRA based in Co Louth who are now centrally involved in the Real IRA were heavily involved in cigarette smuggling for years, and remain so.

When haulier Ciarán Smyth was shot dead aged 39 in Co Louth in 2001, it emerged he was a key player in the cigarette smuggling trade, who worked with the Real IRA.

The Provisional IRA’s alleged former chief of staff, Thomas “Slab” Murphy, has also been linked to cigarette smuggling. A large quantity of cigarettes was found on his lands during a major Garda raid in March 2006.

The former Provisional IRA men, current Real IRA members and the “ordinary decent criminals” they work with have built an impressive network of contacts internationally – from the US to Eastern Europe and the Far East – from whom they source massive shipments of cigarettes.

The 120 million cigarettes, valued at €50 million, seized in Greenore port in Co Louth last October, for example, have been traced to the Philippines. A criminal syndicate of formerly active republicans and “smuggler criminals” around the Border was behind the haul.

Some gangland figures hit by the recession, mainly due to the falling demand for cocaine from recreational users, have begun to smuggle cigarettes, though the diversification is still in its infancy.

The same small number of gangs has also become involved in growing cannabis plants in industrial-sized growing facilities, a number of which have been found by gardaí in recent months in Meath, Donegal and Wicklow.

“They’re looking to get into anything to make a few extra quid now that the cocaine market has fallen very flat,” said one Garda source.

The Keane gang in Limerick has long been involved in smuggled cigarettes and have had some consignments seized from them.

Some cases taken by the Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab) in recent years offer an insight into the wealth that has been amassed by some smugglers.

Last month, Barry O’Brien of Oaktate, Stonetown, Carrickmacross Road, Dundalk, had three houses and €70,000 in cash seized by the Cab. He was also unable to explain the source of almost €300,000 that had gone through one of his bank accounts. O’Brien was once charged with cigarette smuggling in the North, but fled.

Dublin criminal Noel Duggan (49) became so heavily involved in cigarette smuggling he became known as Mr Kingsize. In 2003, the Cab confiscated a five-storey apartment and retail block owned by him that was valued at €4 million.

The Cab presented him with a demand for €4 million in respect of unpaid taxes after a three-year investigation revealed he was involved in smuggling and distributing cigarettes around the State.

However, Garda sources say crime gangs and traditional smugglers who want to build considerable wealth would need to import and sell a constant flow of cigarettes.

Sources point out that smugglers have to pay for the cigarettes and their transport to Ireland from their country of origin.

Once they reach Ireland they are sold by the key players to black market wholesalers. They can then be sold on a number of times to middle men before they reach street dealers.

“All those people have to get their cut, and the packs of 20 only sell on the streets for half the price of genuine cigarettes, so every pack is being sold for peanuts by the guys at the top of the chain here,” said one source.

Another source points out that drugs gangs have been slow to muscle in on cigarette smuggling because the margin of profit is much smaller than with drugs.

“A packet of 20 cigarettes that sells for around €4 on the streets here can be bought at source overseas for around 50 cent.

“But in South America you can get a kilo of coke for around €800 once you buy in bulk. When you get it to Ireland it’s worth €70,000. You just don’t get that sort of profit in cigarettes.”

Another senior Garda officer offers an interesting view: “The recession means the people going to nightclubs and parties doing lots of cocaine definitely don’t have the same spending power as before. So the drugs trade has been hit very badly.

“But the opposite is happening with the cigarettes. The black market smokes are half the price of the ones sold legitimately in shops, so in the recession that means the demand for them is going to be massive.”

GENEVA, Switzerland, – Every day an estimated 82,000-99,000 young people start smoking, many under age 10, World Health Organization officials say.

The Bulletin of the World Health Organization says tobacco is marketed to children and the tobacco industry recognizes that new smokers must be recruited to replace those who quit or die of tobacco-related diseases.

“The dangers of tobacco consumption and second-hand smoke have been widely recognized, children are also harmed in less apparent ways; through hunger and malnutrition when scarce resources are diverted to tobacco purchases rather than food, exploitation of children as workers in tobacco farming and by death and injury resulting from fires caused by cigarettes,” the report said.

“Almost half of the children who had never smoked were exposed to second-hand smoke both at home and outside the home.”

Although most of the research on media influences of tobacco has been conducted in a few high-income countries, but distribution of free cigarettes and widespread awareness of tobacco advertisements has been demonstrated among children in Africa, the report said.

The authors of the report are all members of the American Academy of Pediatrics Tobacco Consortium.

The ubiquitous habit of spitting in China has defeated virtually every effort the authorities have made to stamp it out — from public information campaigns to fines.

Now, in a renewed push to curb the practice, one local administration is threatening serial offenders with eviction.

Under a new scheme introduced at a government-subsidised housing complex in the southern city of Guangzhou, residents have been told that they could forfeit their homes if they are repeatedly caught spitting or dropping cigarette ends.

A proposed penalty system has been designed to “build a civilised, hygienic, safe and harmonious community environment”, the Guangzhou Land Resources and Management Bureau said on its website.

Residents would be penalised on a points system and rack up three points if caught seven times committing any of a series of minor offences which include spitting.

More serious transgressions, such as unsafe storage of “flammable, explosive, poisonous, radioactive and other hazardous materials”, carry heavier point penalties. Residents who accumulate more than 20 points in a two-year period would be evicted.

A spokeswoman for the local housing authority said that the points system followed constant reports of unsanitary conditions and robberies in public housing neighbourhoods.

Spitting has proved almost impossible to halt in China. In the run-up to the 2008 Olympics, Beijing imposed hefty fines of 50 yuan (£5) for anyone caught expectorating on the street, a sum equivalent to a day’s wages for a university graduate.

Officials even promised to provide paper bags and tissues for anyone needing to spit and some civic-minded students took to the streets to police the programme voluntarily.

The state media hailed the campaign as a success, saying that the number of people spitting had fallen sharply.

Spitting still remains a widespread habit in much of China, however. The streets of Beijing are spattered with blobs of spittle and the sound of hawking is to be heard on every street corner.

The plan has already run into opposition, amid allegations that it discriminates against the poor.

The local New Express Daily said that if it was the duty of the government to provide housing to lower income people, then it should not abandon that responsibility simply because of the moral level of tenants.

The idea has similarly upset some in China’s increasingly vocal online community. One web user on popular portal sina.com.cn said: “What if a rich person did all these things?”

New Year’s is by far the biggest stop smoking day of the year. Although we expect pharmaceutical industry holiday season creativity in marketing quitting products, this year the University of Wisconsin (UW) is leading the charge. Recipient of millions of dollars in industry funding, it’s payback time and media manipulation is the order of the day.

The opening line of a December 14 press release by the UW’s Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention (UW-CTRI) reads in part, “smokers trying to quit smoking for the holidays have the best chance for success if they take the nicotine lozenge in combination with either bupropion (a pill) or the nicotine patch.”

It’s the one line GlaxoSmithKline — maker of the Commit nicotine lozenge, Nicoderm nicotine patch, and Zyban (bupropion) — hopes health journalists will seize upon in writing this year’s batch of “how to quit smoking” articles.

The press release briefly reviews a UW-CTRI study published in the December 14 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine entitled, “Comparative Effectiveness of 5 Smoking Cessation Pharmacotherapies in Primary Care Clinics.” Primary care patients motivated to quit smoking were randomized to one of five quitting product groups while also receiving counseling via a telephone quit line.

The study and press release boast six-month quitting rates of 29.9% in a group that combined use of both the nicotine lozenge and bupropion, 26.9% in a group using both the nicotine lozenge and patch, 19.9% in a group using the nicotine lozenge alone, 17.7% in a group using the patch alone, and 16.8% among those using bupropion alone.

Both UW-CTRI and GlaxoSmithKline also hope health journalists include the press release zinger that, “the clear message here is that combining the lozenge with the nicotine patch or bupropion gives smokers the best chance to quit.” But is it true?

What the UW-CTRI press release does not tell journalists is that neither this study nor its November 2009 clinical companion presents any evidence that any study participant actually broke nicotine’s grip upon their mind and life. None. Imagine pronouncing those using multiple avenues to stimulate brain dopamine pathways as having been most successful, when blood, saliva and urine were not examined to determine if stimulation by quitting products actually ended.

What percentage of this study’s successful quitters remain hooked on nicotine lozenges today? Doesn’t informed consent scream that smokers be told?

What we do know is that a 2003 study found that up to 7% of nicotine gum quitters and 37% of all current gum users remain persistent long-term users for at least 6 months, twice as long as the use period approved by the FDA.

Combination treatment clearly has potential to generate the highest blood serum nicotine levels ever documented in quitting studies. It is highly irresponsible for the University of Wisconsin to strongly advocate combination quitting product use while ignoring evaluation of chronic long-term chemical dependency upon NRT and/or Zyban.

“The clear message here is that combining the lozenge with the nicotine patch or bupropion gives smokers the best chance to quit.” Again, is it true? Were any smokers actually able to arrest their chemical dependency upon nicotine? Additionally, is this “clear message” honest when counseling, and not combination therapy, may account for nearly all of the differences seen?

There is consensus among experts that counseling and support are highly effective at helping smokers quit. Common sense suggests that the more we stimulate the quitter’s dopamine reward pathways, and the more comfortable we make them, the longer and more benefit they are able to receive from ongoing counseling. Obviously, participants have no need for counseling once they relapse to smoking.

The study arranged telephone counseling through the Wisconsin Tobacco Quit Line (WTQL). Although told that the percentage of each quitting product group actually speaking with WTQL counselors was similar (a low of 35% for bupropion group, to a high of 46% for the bupropion plus nicotine lozenge group), the study fails to disclose the total amount of counseling time received by each group.

Instead, readers are told that:

“These results showed that there was not a linear increase in abstinence rates with more minutes of counseling but, instead, users with fewer than 90 minutes of counseling (n=316 had an abstinence rate of 19.6% that was nearly the same as the rate for nonusers of the WTQL (n=801; abstinence rate, 19.5%. In contrast, WTQL users who had more than 90 minutes of counseling had a 6-month abstinence rate of 35.8%.”

Shouldn’t the “clear message” from this study have been the value of more than 90 minutes of counseling? In that the UW-CTRI press release does tell readers the actual value of receiving more than 90 minutes of counseling, it appears to be more interested in helping GlaxoSmithKline make money than it is in being honest with smokers.

UW-CTRI wants this study to be known as a “real-world” effectiveness evaluation. Frankly, it has very little to do with how smokers quit under “real-world” conditions. How many “real-world” smokers are randomly assigned to one of five quitting groups, are given free quitting products, are able to afford the purchase of combination quitting products, and receive a telephone call from a telephone quit line? Here in the real world the vast majority of all successful quitters do not engage in weeks or months of nicotine weaning but quit cold turkey.

In stark contrast to UW-CTRI’s artificial manipulation and control, a true “real-world” study was published in the April 2006 edition of Addictive Behaviors. It simply followed Australian primary care smoking patients and reported on their quitting attempts, methods used and outcomes.

It found that the success rate for cold turkey quitters was twice as high as the rates for those using the nicotine patch, nicotine gum, nicotine inhaler or Zyban (bupropion). Even more impressive, it found that cold turkey quitters accounted for 1,942 of 2,207 former smokers, a whopping 88% of all success stories.

UW-CTRI refuses to document real patient quitting outcomes of Wisconsin primary care physicians. Why? Because even in Wisconsin cold turkey is king and there would be nothing to sell.

UW-CTRI has already played a key role in redefining “quitting.” By its definition we should totally ignore chemical dependency upon nicotine and instead focus only upon success in ending use of just one form of nicotine delivery, the cigarette.

Now it seeks to redefine “real-world” quitting, in asking us to ignore and hide how real-world quitters actually succeed, and how quitting rates among those using quitting products are almost always lower than rates achieved by those quitting without them.

Amazingly, the University of Wisconsin press release does not alert media to the authors’ pharmaceutical industry financial ties. It should. The study’s financial disclosure states:

“Dr Smith has received research support from Elan Corporation plc. Dr Jorenby has received research support from Pfizer Inc, Sanofi-Synthelabo, and Nabi Biopharmaceuticals and has received consulting fees from Nabi Biopharmaceuticals. Dr Fiore has received honoraria from Pfizer Inc and has served as an investigator on research studies at the University of Wisconsin that were funded by Pfizer Inc, Sanofi- Synthelabo, and Nabi Biopharmaceuticals. In 1998, the University of Wisconsin (UW) appointed Dr Fiore to a named Chair funded by an unrestricted gift to UW from Glaxo Wellcome. Dr Baker has served as an investigator on research projects sponsored by pharmaceutical companies including Sanofi-Synthelabo, Pfizer Inc, and Nabi Biopharmaceuticals.”

Will health reporters eventually awaken to researcher study games and industry marketing tactics? Maybe not. It’s much easier to simply regurgitate a study press release than to look behind its words to the truth beyond.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Teen smoking reached its recent peak levels around 1996 and 1997, followed by a sharp decline for about six years and a continued more gradual decline ever since, according to the latest Monitoring the Future study of the nation’s young people.

“Over the past two years we have seen the smoking rates among young people continue to decline only very gradually, at rates much slower than were occurring previously,” said University of Michigan researcher Lloyd Johnston, principal investigator of the Monitoring the Future study. “The proportions of students seeing a great risk associated with being a smoker has leveled off in the past several years, as has the proportion of teens who say they disapprove of smoking.”

Monitoring the Future has been conducting annual, nationwide surveys of U.S. teens in school for the past 35 years. The 2009 survey included a total of 46,097 students in the 8th, 10th and 12th grades in 389 secondary schools.

The research is conducted by a team of research professors at the U-M Institute for Social Research, which in addition to Johnston includes Patrick O’Malley, Jerald Bachman and John Schulenberg. The National Institute on Drug Abuse supports this investigator-initiated study through a series of competitive research grants.

“While great strides have been made in reducing youth smoking in this country, there is still plenty of room for improvement,” Johnston said. “Among high school seniors in the Class of 2009, 20 percent have smoked in the most recent month and one in nine (11 percent) is a current daily smoker. Further, our follow-up studies have shown that a number of the lighter smokers in high school will convert to heavy smoking after leaving high school. Given what we know about the consequences of smoking, this is still an unacceptable level of involvement.”

To illustrate the progress that has occurred, among 8th-graders (13- and 14-year-olds), the proportion saying that they smoked any cigarettes in the month prior to the survey has dropped by two-thirds (from 21 percent in 1996, the peak year, to 7 percent by 2009). Among 10th- graders, the decline over the same 13-year interval was more than one-half (down from 30 percent to 13 percent); among 12th-graders, whose smoking rate reached a recent peak in 1997, there has been a decline of almost one-half (down from 37 percent in 1997 to 20 percent by 2009). Daily smoking has declined by even larger proportions.

One reason smoking has declined so sharply is that the proportion of students ever trying smoking has fallen dramatically. While 49 percent of 8th-graders in 1996 had tried cigarettes, “only” 20 percent of the 8th-graders in 2009 indicated having ever done so, a 60 percent-decline in smoking initiation over the past 13 years.

“These are very substantial improvements in the situation and they have enormous implications for the health and longevity of this newest generation of young Americans,” Johnston said.

But the improvement has been continuing at a much slower rate. Over the past two years , the prevalence of smoking in the 30 days prior to the survey has fallen by just 0.6, 0.9 and 1.5 percentage points among 8th-, 10th- and 12th-graders, respectively.

This reduced rate of improvement, plus the fact that the rises in perceived risk and disapproval of smoking have leveled off, leaves Johnston less optimistic about future gains.

“Future progress, if it occurs, is likely to be due to changes in the external environment—policy changes such as increasing cigarette taxes, further limiting where smoking is permitted, broad-based prevention campaigns, and making quit-smoking programs more available,” Johnston said.

The perceived availability of cigarettes to under-age buyers, as measured by the percent of students who say they could buy cigarettes “fairly easily” or “very easily” if they wanted some, has declined substantially since 1996 among 8th- and 10th-graders (12th-graders are not asked the question).

The 8th-graders showed the sharpest decline—from 77 percent in 1996 to 56 percent in 2007—about where it remained in 2009. Perceived availability leveled among 10th-graders in 2009, having fallen from 91 percent in 1996 to 76 percent by 2009. Although availability has decreased, the investigators note that the majority of these students in their early to mid-teens still report that they could easily get cigarettes.

A number of attitudes toward smoking and smokers changed in important ways during the period of decline in cigarette use. These changes included increases in preferring to date nonsmokers, strongly disliking being around people who are smoking, thinking that becoming a smoker reflects poor judgment, and believing that smoking is a dirty habit. All of these negative attitudes about smoking and smokers rose to high levels by 2007, but have shown little change since then.

One attitude widely held by young people today may be of particular salience to those considering smoking. In 2009, 81 percent of 8th-graders, 80 percent of 10th-graders, and 75 percent of 12th-graders said that they “would prefer to date people who don’t smoke.”

It is clear that any young person today who becomes a smoker will pay an important social price for that choice by becoming less attractive to the great majority of the opposite sex.

“This fact provides what we believe could be a very strong prevention message,” Johnston said.

Smokeless Tobacco

The use of smokeless tobacco (which includes snuff, plug, dipping tobacco, chewing tobacco and more recently “snus”) is assessed in all three grades. From the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, there was a substantial decline in use, with monthly prevalence falling by one-third to one-half, but the declines have not continued.

In fact, there have been significant increases occurring over the past three-to-four years in 10th and 12th grades (with still little change in 8th grade). While so far modest in size, these changes suggest an upward trajectory in use. Thirty-day prevalence of smokeless tobacco use in 2009 is 3.7 percent, 6.5 percent and 8.4 percent among 8th-, 10th- and 12th-graders, respectively.

Perceived risk of regular use appears to have played an important role in the decline phase in smokeless tobacco use, as was true for cigarettes. In all three grades, perceived risk rose fairly steadily from 1995 through 2004 before leveling. In 2009, all three grades showed some decline in perceived risk (significant in 10th grade), consistent with the increase in use.

Kreteks and Bidis

Kreteks are clove-flavored cigarettes from Indonesia, and at the beginning of this decade there was concern that they could become popular among American youth. However, the annual prevalence of kretek use was not very high in the first year of measurement (2001). After that, use declined by roughly half in 8th and 10th grades by 2005, before the question was dropped from the 8th- and 10th-grade questionnaires.

Among 12th-graders, annual prevalence declined steadily from 2001 to 2004, before leveling at around 6-7 percent. In 2009 there was a further drop, bringing annual prevalence for kreteks down to 5.5 percent—reflecting a decline of almost half from the level of use as first measured in 2001. The investigators conclude that kretek use was a short-term fad that simply did not catch on with mainstream youth.

Bidis are small, flavored cigarettes imported from India, and again there was early concern that they might find favor among youth. A question on their use was added in 2000, and again their annual prevalence was fairly low, at 3.9 percent, 6.4 percent and 9.2 percent for 8th-, 10th- and 12th-graders, respectively. The rates of use fell fairly sharply thereafter, with the result that the annual prevalence rates in 2005 were less than 2 percent among 8th- and 10th-graders, at which point the question was dropped for them. Among 12th-graders, a further decline of more than one-half has been observed since 2005. Use was 1.5 percent in 2009—down by 84 percent from the peak level in 2000. Here again, a threat seems to have been contained and is diminishing steadily.

Using new regulatory authority granted under federal legislation, the Food and Drug Administration in September 2009 banned the sale of flavored cigarettes (with the exception of menthol-flavored cigarettes). Thus, the already low-use of kreteks and bidis is likely to decline even further, the investigators say.

“One of the purposes of the Monitoring the Future study is to assess potential new threats to our youth population and fortunately in these two cases the threats never really materialized,” Johnston said. “Two of the latest developments to raise concern in this sphere, however, are the smoking of tobacco in the form of small cigars and also by using hookah water pipes. Questions about these behaviors will be included in the 2010 survey.”

Monitoring the Future has been funded under a series of competing, investigator-initiated research grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, one of the National Institutes of Health. In addition to Johnston, the lead investigators are Patrick O’Malley, Jerald Bachman and John Schulenberg—all research professors at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. Surveys of nationally representative samples of American high school seniors were begun in 1975, making the class of 2009 the 35th such class surveyed. Surveys of 8th- and 10th-graders were added to the design in 1991, making the 2009 nationally representative samples the 19th such classes surveyed. The sample sizes in 2009 are 15,509 8th-graders in 145 schools; 16,320 10th-graders in 119 schools; and 14,268 12th-graders in 125 schools, for a total of 46,097 students in 389 secondary schools. The samples are drawn separately at each grade level to be representative of students in that grade in public and private secondary schools across the coterminous United States. Schools are selected with probability proportionate to their estimated class size.

The findings summarized here will be published in the forthcoming volume: Johnston, L. D., O’Malley, P. M., Bachman, J. G., & Schulenberg, J. E. (2010). Monitoring the Future national results on adolescent drug use: Overview of key findings, 2009 (NIH Publication No. [yet to be assigned]). Bethesda, MD: National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The content presented here is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute on Drug Abuse or the National Institutes of Health.

By Joe Serwach
Phone: (734) 647-1844

OKLAHOMA CITY — A report released Thursday on making the state healthier recommends increasing taxes on tobacco, improving access to healthy food choices and encouraging the building of more sidewalks and bike trails.

The Oklahoma Health Improvement Plan focuses on tobacco use, obesity and children’s health. It also makes recommendations for improving access to medical care.

The plan was mandated by the Legislature in 2008 through Senate Joint Resolution 41.

The resolution directed the State Board of Health to prepare a report that outlines a plan for the improvement of physical, social and mental well-being.

“Current national state health rankings place Oklahoma at 49th,” State Board of Health President Barry Smith said. “We find this unacceptable.

“We recognize that Oklahomans face a variety of barriers to good health due to poverty, lack of insurance, limited access to primary care, and risky personal health behaviors associated with diet, physical activity and smoking.”

If Oklahoma matched the national average in health indicators, about 5,320 Oklahoman lives would be saved every year, Smith said.

Each pack of cigarettes costs the state’s economy $7.62 in medical costs and lost productivity, according to the report.

The report recommends extending state law to eliminate smoking in all indoor public places and workplaces, except private residences. It also recommends increasing the number of tribes that voluntarily eliminate commercial tobacco abuse in tribally
owned or operated worksites, including casinos.

“Sixty-five percent of Oklahoma adults are either overweight or obese, and 31 percent of Oklahoma youth are either overweight or at risk of being overweight,” the report said.

The report recommends health-related fitness testing in all public schools. It also calls for incentives for grocery stores or farmers markets to locate in underserved areas.

In the area of children’s health, the report recommends increasing preconception care; minimizing prenatal sexually transmitted diseases; increasing the number of women who receive prenatal care in the first trimester; and minimizing unintended pregnancies.

Backers of a proposed ballot measure to raise cigarette taxes by $1 per pack for smoking-related cancer research and prevention, which critics said would sap funding from early-childhood education, have reversed course and agreed to rewrite the measure.

The Californians for a Cure committee issued a news release Monday announcing it will rework its “California Cancer Research Act” measure to “backfill” tobacco-tax revenue for the state’s First 5 system. The rewrite means the measure must be re-reviewed by state officials before backers can start gathering petition signatures to put it on November’s ballot.

First 5 Alameda County CEO Mark Friedman said he’s “extremely gratified.”

“No one wanted to have to choose between supporting cancer research and supporting young children,” he said, “and now they won’t have to make that choice.”

The state’s last cigarette tax increase was 50 cents per pack in 1998 under Proposition 10 to fund early-childhood education via a new “First 5″ bureaucracy.

That measure, piloted by movie mogul Rob Reiner, included a backfill provision requiring the state to compute how much the new tax would reduce cigarette sales, and to transfer a cut of the new Prop. 10 revenue to offset the decrease in earlier revenue from taxes that was going to tobacco-related health education and disease research, hospital care for the indigent, park and wildlife restoration and other causes.

The proposed measure would have backfilled all those older tobacco tax beneficiaries, but not First 5 revenue from Prop. 10.

Former state Senate President Pro Tem and 2010 Oakland mayoral candidate Don Perata helped conceive of the latest measure and introduced it last month. At that time, a longtime Perata campaign consultant representing Californians for a Cure said the First 5 backfill’s omission was no accident, but rather a deliberate calculation on where the money could be better spent.

The Legislative Analyst’s Office last week reported the measure would cost the state’s First 5 programs about $45 million; campaign consultant Paul Hefner said Friday no decision had been made on whether to refile or to change the measure.

But Hefner’s news release Monday said initiative sponsors including the American Cancer Society, American Lung Association and American Heart Association have agreed to amend the measure “after an analysis found it would provide more than $800 million a year in new funding for cancer research and anti-smoking programs” even after a First 5 backfill. He also noted the measure would help kids by reducing their exposure to secondhand smoke and by keeping thousands of teenagers from becoming smokers.

By Josh Richman
Oakland Tribune
07 December, 2009

Imagine a middle-aged man who becomes partially disabled and unable to work full time. He has no pension, and when Social Security kicks in it won’t make ends meet. Fortunately, he receives a disability settlement that will pay a guaranteed amount over several years and possibly lesser amounts thereafter.

Should he fritter this away by living large while the money lasts, or sock it away for the leaner times he knows are coming? If he does the former, should his long-suffering wife go along for the ride or clobber him?

This more or less describes the Michigan Legislature’s relationship with the tobacco lawsuit settlement money the state began collecting after 1998 as compensation for past “damages” incurred through Medicaid and other state medical welfare payments to individuals with smoking-related illnesses. Michigan’s share is about $280 million annually for 26 years, and perhaps lesser amounts thereafter.

Our politicians have not recognized the temporary nature of this windfall and placed most of it in a reserve fund. Every penny so far has been spent, and legislators have actually borrowed against future settlement cash to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on wrongheaded “economic development” programs, tourism industry subsidies and to avoid spending cuts.

When the settlement was announced in late 1998, it was like chum dumped into shark-infested waters: Hungry special interests began circling the state Capitol.

Setting the money away in a “rainy day” fund was never in the political cards — the political rewards for feeding the sharks were just too attractive to lawmakers. Gov. John Engler recognized this and forestalled the frenzy by proposing to use most of the revenue to pay for college scholarships for students who did well on the Michigan Educational Assessment Program tests. Most of the balance went to Medicaid health care programs.

But the sharks began nibbling around the edges. In 2005, the Legislature created at Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s request the 21st Century Jobs Fund business subsidy program, a hodge-podge of spending with little oversight. To pay for it they borrowed $400 million against future tobacco settlement proceeds.

To avoid spending cuts in the 2007 budget, the Legislature approved another $415 million in borrowing against future tobacco money. In 2008, legislators pulled out this same credit card, using it to buy $60 million in tourism ads (the “Pure Michigan” and related campaigns).

The result of all this borrowing is that for the next couple decades, some $80 million of the annual tobacco money will be unavailable to current and future taxpayers. Instead, debt service payments will draw off funds that otherwise could provide state services or even tax relief.

The consequences hit home in this year’s budget, when the college scholarship deal devised by Engler and later expanded by Granholm got the ax. That’s too bad for middle-class families — and perhaps even more unfortunate for the gold-plated state university budgets that ultimately reaped this money — but the program had become an unaffordable luxury for an increasingly bankrupt state.

Unfortunately, the tobacco lawsuit money that funded the scholarships will be used to prop up unreformed state government spending for another year. This is hardly surprising: If politicians couldn’t resist spending the windfall back in the fat years of the late 1990s, they have even less incentive to do so now.

Still, it would be nice if they at least used the money for something other than avoiding reforms. For example, the $80 million that won’t go to Promise grant scholarships this year would have made a nice down payment toward transitioning school employees from defined benefit pensions into 401(k)-type accounts.

Michigan taxpayers should stop suffering in silence. While someone else is spending the tobacco settlement windfall like there’s no tomorrow, we must choose between going quietly along for the ride or lowering the boom.
By Jack McHugh, December 04. 2009

Cigarettes are “widely contaminated” with bacteria, including some known to cause disease in people, concludes a new international study conducted by a University of Maryland environmental health researcher and microbial ecologists at the Ecole Centrale de Lyon in France.

The research team describes the study as the first to show that “cigarettes themselves could be the direct source of exposure to a wide array of potentially pathogenic microbes among smokers and other people exposed to secondhand smoke.” Still, the researchers caution that the public health implications are unclear and urge further research.

“We were quite surprised to identify such a wide variety of human bacterial pathogens in these products,” says lead researcher Amy R. Sapkota, an assistant professor in the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health.

“The commercially-available cigarettes that we tested were chock full of bacteria, as we had hypothesized, but we didn’t think we’d find so many that are infectious in humans,” explains Sapkota, who holds a joint appointment with the University’s Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health and the department of epidemiology and biostatistics.

“If these organisms can survive the smoking process — and we believe they can — then they could possibly go on to contribute to both infectious and chronic illnesses in both smokers and individuals who are exposed to environmental tobacco smoke,” Sapkota adds. “So, it’s critical that we learn more about the bacterial content of cigarettes, which are used by more than a billion people worldwide.”

Public Health Significance

The researchers describe the study as the first snapshot of the total population of bacteria in cigarettes. Previous researchers have taken small samples of cigarette tobacco and placed them in cultures to see whether bacteria would grow. But Sapkota’s team took a more holistic approach using DNA microarray analysis to estimate the so-called bacterial metagenome, the totality of bacterial genetic material present in the tested cigarettes.

Among the study’s findings and conclusions:

* Commercially available cigarettes show a broad array of bacterial diversity, ranging from soil microorganisms to potential human pathogens;
* The is the first study to provide evidence that the numbers of microorganisms in a cigarette may be as “vast as the number of chemical constituents;”
* Hundreds of bacterial species were present in each cigarette, and additional testing is likely to increase that number significantly;
* No significant variability in bacterial diversity was observed across the four different cigarette brands examined: Camel; Kool Filter Kings; Lucky Strike Original Red; and Marlboro Red;
* Bacteria of medical significance to humans were identified in all of the tested cigarettes and included Acinetobacter (associated with lung and blood infections); Bacillus (some varieties associated with food borne illnesses and anthrax); Burkholderia (some forms responsible for respiratory infections); Clostridium(associated with foodborne illnesses and lung infections); Klebsiella (associated with a variety of lung, blood and other infections); and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (an organism that causes 10 percent of all hospital-acquired infections in the United States).

“Now that we’ve shown that a pack of cigarettes is loaded with bacteria, we will conduct follow-up research to determine the possible roles of these organisms in tobacco-related diseases.” Sapkota says.

For example, do cigarette-borne bacteria survive the burning process and go on to colonize smokers’ respiratory systems? Existing research suggests that some hardy bacteria can be transmitted this way, the researchers say. This might account for the fact that the respiratory tracts of smokers are characterized by higher levels of bacterial pathogens. But it’s also possible that smoking weakens natural immunity and the bacteria come from the general environment rather than from cigarettes. Further research will be needed to determine the possible health impacts of cigarette-borne bacteria.

Sapkota is the lead and corresponding author. She conducted the research with Sibel Berger under the guidance of Timothy M. Vogel in 2007 at the Environmental Microbial Genomics Group, Laboratoire Ampère, UMR CNRS 5005, Ecole Centrale de Lyon in Lyon, France.

Since tobacco was deregulated in 2004, the question everyone in the industry has been asking has been how many farmers would drop out of leaf production altogether?

But Jeremy Rhodes of Four Oaks, N.C., has gone against the trend: He didn’t begin growing tobacco until 2005, the year after the price support program ended.

So while most tobacco farmers today have the experience of several generations of family members to draw on, and often some of their capital assets, Rhodes started out as a first-time tobacco farmer with no family history in the crop.

“I had a little experience myself working for neighbors and relatives who had tobacco, but never as an owner and never from a management position,” says Rhodes, who has run a logging business for a number of years. “My father-in-law is a tobacco grower and I was able to obtain advice from him.

But basically, he was out there learning on the job. It was a scary proposition, but at the time, the price of tobacco was appealing compared to other crops. “So I decided I wanted to give tobacco a try,” Rhodes says.

Now, five seasons later, what advice would he give to a potential new grower?

“I would tell him to do all the planning and research he can,” he says. “One thing about tobacco is that there are a lot of hidden costs you can’t always account for. You need a right large margin to cover those higher costs.”

The big ones recently have been energy and fertilizer prices.

But the biggest challenge started immediately after he decided to grow tobacco: Amassing the amount of machinery needed to produce flue-cured leaf.

“Since I was new to tobacco, everything has been a new investment,” he says.

The timing of his entry did provide one advantage: Because of the industry turmoil, there was and has continued to be plenty of used equipment on the market. Just this past July, Rhodes was able to buy eight rack barns at a reasonable price, and like everything else he’s purchased, the barns came from local farmers.

His goal has been to keep capital investments as low as possible in hopes of shortening the payback period, he says. “At the prices that newer barns are selling for now, it would be very hard for me to cash flow them over any reasonable length of time.”

One thing he hasn’t had to spend a lot of money on is disease control.

“I had a little land that was new to tobacco,” he says. “Most of it had been in tobacco in the past. But it had all been rotated.”

He has developed a three-year rotation of tobacco for himself. “I like to follow sweet potatoes with tobacco. I put a lot of potash to sweet potatoes, and the tobacco may be able to use any that is left over,” he says.

He rents his land to a soybean grower for the third year of the rotation.

Rhodes has been able to avoid any serious disease problems by planting on relatively fresh tobacco land, holding to a three-year rotation, and using disease-resistant varieties — Speight 220 and Speight 168.

He grows all 70 of his tobacco acres under the PRC (Purity Residue Clean) program.

Rhodes used the new organic-certified suckercide OTAC this season and got good results. “It cost a little more, but we got a price incentive from Santa Fe to use it,” he says.

It performed as well as any of the conventional contact chemicals he has used.

He sprayed OTAC five times after topping twice and hand-suckering three times. He skips every ninth row and sprays four rows on each side with a boom-type sprayer.

He is hoping for a yield of 2,500 pounds per acre. “I have had 3,000-plus pound per acre yields using this program,” he says.

He contracted this crop with Santa Fe through United Tobacco Co. of Wilson, N.C.

He doesn’t expect any expansion in his tobacco operation next year except perhaps in plant production. “I might add another greenhouse,” he says. “I can produce all I need now. But I have had requests from other people who would like to get plants from me.”

W.K. “Bill” Collins, a longtime Extension tobacco specialist, says Rhodes has good prospects for success because he has capitalized on the current conditions.

• He has taken active steps to keep his land relatively disease-free. “With his good rotation, he is less likely to be confronted with the soilborne diseases that you get in a short rotation,” says the agronomist. “You don’t want to have to fumigate in this day and age. It can add 10 cents a pound to your costs.”

• He is taking advantage of the premium available for PRC tobacco. “He is trying to meet a demand,” Collins says. “Frequently, when farmers have gotten out of tobacco in recent years, it was because they could not produce something that the market demands.”

• He is also taking advantage of the availability of good used equipment. “That’s an advantage tobacco farmers haven’t often had,” Collins says. “It is like buying cars — there are plenty of used ones around right now.”

Nov 17, 2009, By Chris Bickers

WASHINGTON: The CIA has funnelled hundreds of millions of dollars to the ISI since 9/11 but believes that it has got its money’s worth from the Pakistani spy agency, the Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday.

The support for the ISI has been the subject of a long-running debate within the US government that has usually led to the conclusion that ‘there is no other game in town’ when it comes to information on militants who operate in the country’s tribal belt where almost every terrorist plot in this decade was hatched, the Times says.

A former senior CIA official is quoted as saying, ‘They gave us 600 to 700 people captured or dead…Getting these guys off the street was a good thing.’

Another former national security official said that, despite the suspicions about where the ISI’s loyalties lie, ‘you’ve got no smoking gun from command and control that links them to the activities of the insurgents’.

US officials also told the newspaper that the CIA had routinely brought ISI operatives to a secret training facility in North Carolina, even as US intelligence analysts try to assess whether segments of the ISI have worked against US interests.

Explaining this, a US intelligence official told the Times that Pakistan had made ‘decisive contributions to counter-terrorism’.

‘They have people dying almost every day,’ the official said. ‘Sure, their interests don’t always match up with ours. But things would be one hell of a lot worse if the government there was hostile to us.’

The CIA depends on Pakistan’s cooperation to carry out missile strikes by Predator drones that have killed dozens of suspected extremists in Pakistani border areas.

Another former CIA official told the Times that he believed there really are two ISIs. ‘On the counter-terrorism side, those guys were in lock-step with us. And then there was the ‘long-beard’ side. Those are the ones who created the Taliban and are supporting groups like Haqqani.’

A one-time aide to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described to the newspaper a pointed exchange in which Pakistan’s army chief Gen Ashfaq Kayani said his spies were no safer than CIA agents when trying to infiltrate notoriously hostile Pashtun tribes.

‘Madame Secretary, they call us all white men,’ Gen Kayani said, according to the former aide.

The newspaper notes that CIA payments to the ISI can be traced to the 1980s, when the Pakistani agency managed the flow of money and weapons to the Afghan Mujahideen. That support slowed during the 1990s, after the Soviets were expelled from Afghanistan, but increased after the Sept 11, 2001, attacks.

16 Nov, 2009 Dawn

Towson University will be a smoke-free campus, it announced Wednesday, becoming Maryland’s first four-year college to ban an activity once as commonplace as lounging on the quad.

The reason for the policy, which goes into effect in August, is simple, administrators said: They want to reduce health risks from smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke.

“I don’t try to guide people in how they live their lives, but I am going to protect the campus so it’s clean and pleasant for as many people as possible,” said Towson President Robert L. Caret.

Smoking is already banned in campus buildings at Towson, but under the new rules, it will be off-limits on the grounds: on sidewalks, in garages and parking lots, and even outside the bar at Bill Bateman’s Bistro.

Towson joins a rapidly growing list of U.S. colleges – at least 365, according to the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation – that have banned smoking on campus. Last year, Montgomery College became the first Maryland institution of higher education to take the leap. Harford, Frederick and Carroll community colleges have followed suit. Pennsylvania’s university system has banned smoking on all of its campuses.

“I don’t really care that we’re first on this one,” Caret said. “It was done more for practical reasons. But I expect to see more schools go this way. It’s just the trend today.”

Towson officials have discussed the ban since last year, and the university held forums on the issue for faculty, students and staff. The Student Government Association voted to support the ban last month.

Caret said a survey found that a very small percentage of students and faculty smoke and that those who do smoke less frequently than they did in the past. The policy encountered some opposition from student leaders. “But there wasn’t too much push-back,” Caret said. “Very few objections on principle, mostly on pragmatic details.”

Some students raised safety concerns about having to walk to the edge of campus late at night to smoke. Others wondered if the university will be able to enforce the rule, noting that a current ban on smoking within 30 feet of school buildings is only loosely followed.

“I don’t know how they will ever successfully stop everybody from smoking. I think kids will just do it anyway,” said Alex Lokey, a senior from Woodbine who smokes.

Lokey said he sees people breaking the 30-foot rule all the time and has never heard of anyone having to pay the $250 fine. For him, smoking is just part of college life.

“Obviously, it’s a good thing [to ban smoking], but as a college student it’s almost like a staple – coffee, cigarettes, stress and no sleep,” Lokey said. “It’s like a quintessential break from an overload of studying.”

Students said existing rules have had little impact at Linthicum Hall, the English and psychology building and a well-known gathering place for smokers.

“You walk through there, and there are clouds of smoke,” said Leslie Zuknick, a senior from Gambrills who does not smoke. “You smell like a cigarette when you walk out.”

Caret said the ban will be easier to enforce than the more convoluted rules now in place.

“It will be more of a black-and-white issue,” he said. He hopes the campus won’t have to develop “smoking police” and instead will rely on administrators and supervisors to enforce the policy gently but firmly.

Students and staff members who violate the rules will face fines and sanctions. Visitors who light up may be barred from future access to the 328-acre campus.

Some students said the ban will improve campus.

Rachel Jochem, a senior from Tabernacle, N.J., said she thinks the smoke-free policy will promote a “better image” for the university and might attract students who don’t smoke.

Casey Crass, a senior from Mount Laurel, N.J., said that most smokers just deposit their cigarette butts on the ground. “It’s trashing our campus,” Crass said.

In advance of the ban, Towson will offer free classes through its health center to help students, faculty and staff quit smoking.

“By not having smoking on campus, kids will stop smoking,” said Lora Brown, a senior from Medford, N.J.

Copyright (c) 2009, The Baltimore Sun
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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PHILIPPINE and Thai negotiators late last week resumed their second hearing on an ongoing trade dispute over cigarette duties, the Manila delegation said in a statement over the weekend.

The dispute process had been held up when the World Trade Organization (WTO), which arbitrates the case, had to make way for the resumption of talks seeking to forge a global trade pact.

The Philippines, at the hearing last Nov. 4-6, reiterated claims that Thai tax policies on foreign-made cigarettes violate WTO rules as they unfairly favor domestic industry, the statement read.

A ruling from an international panel led by Brazil WTO representative Roberto Acevedo is expected early next year, the statement read further.

Manila first raised the dispute in March 2007 in line with Philip Morris Philippines Manufacturing, Inc.’s complaint that Thai customs officials were ignoring declared customs values, preferring to set higher ones that meant higher duties needed to be paid.

This policy, along with higher excise taxes slapped on foreign-made cigarettes, violate free trade rules, Manila argued.

“The Philippine delegation… presented factual claims and legal arguments…challenging the WTO-consistency of customs and internal tax measures taken by Thailand affecting cigarettes made in the Philippines and imported into Thailand…[The delegation also] highlighted issues of transparency, discrimination, and domestic protection in Thailand’s regulatory regime, which affects the entry of Philippine-made cigarettes in the country.”

Both sides will have up to Dec. 7 to submit final comments before the panel issues a ruling “in the early part of 2010.”

A deadline for lawsuits seeking to recoup smokers’ health-care costs from a Japan Tobacco Inc. unit that had been sought by British Columbia, Ontario and New Brunswick was rejected by a judge for coming prematurely.

The Canadian provinces want their claims for treating people with smoking-related illnesses included among those of creditors for Japan Tobacco’s insolvent JTI-MacDonald unit. The provinces said they feared nothing would remain if JTI settled a federal lawsuit that seeks to recover lost taxes from cigarette smuggling in the 1990s.

Ontario Superior Court Judge Peter Cumming called the request premature in an Oct. 30 ruling. The provinces may challenge the company’s plan to exit bankruptcy when it is submitted, the judge said.

“There is no plan of arrangement being put forth or even seen at this point on the distant horizon,” Cumming wrote.

JTI-MacDonald, the maker of Export A cigarettes in Canada, entered bankruptcy protection in 2004 after Quebec’s Ministry of Revenue demanded a C$1.4 billion ($1.31 billion) payment for lost taxes from smuggling. The company said at the time it had C$1.81 billion in assets and C$1.8 billion in liabilities.

Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd. and Rothmans Inc., the two biggest Canadian tobacco companies by market share, agreed last year to pay about C$1.15 billion in fines and penalties to settle federal charges that they aided cigarette smuggling in the 1990s. JTI, the third-biggest Canadian cigarette manufacturer, wasn’t a part of the settlement.

The judge urged the provinces to proceed with a single lawsuit for their health-care claims outside of bankruptcy.

‘Years of Litigation’

“It seems obvious that it would be both efficient and expeditious to have a single trial,” Cumming wrote. “There will probably be several years of litigation and negotiation ahead before any resolution.”

Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, has filed a separate suit seeking C$50 billion from tobacco manufacturers to cover the costs to its government-funded health-care system for treating sick smokers. British Columbia was the first province to sue and is seeking unspecified damages, as is New Brunswick. Quebec has said it plans to sue and would likely seek about C$30 billion, Laura Donaldson, an attorney representing British Columbia said in court.

All other Canadian provinces, with the exception of Prince Edward Island, have legislation allowing them to sue to recover health-care costs.

The case is Between JTI-MacDonald and the Attorney General of Canada, 04-cl-5530, Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Toronto).

By Joe Schneider, November 3, 2009 Bloomberg

New Delhi: Pictorial warnings on cigarette packets recently introduced by the government are about to be phased out, reports say. It is its a clear attempt to safe guard the interest of the people involved in the tobacco industry and to keep the governmen’ts crucial vote bank intact.

Initially, there were some gruesome pictures that depicted the worse possible effects of tobacco on the human body. These pictures were first notified by the Health Ministry in July 2006 as pictorial warnings for cigarette and gutka packets. But these pictures were shot down by the Group of Ministers (GoM) as ‘objectionable’.

Former Union Labour Minister, Oscar Fernandes said, “If we’re talking about making the pictures harsher, we may as well shut down the industry. There are several districts in West Bengal where poor bidi workers earn their livelihood from this.”

In a meeting of the GoM chaired by Pranab Mukherjee in July 2007, it was decided that the picture of the dead body be replaced with a ‘suitable’ one.

The minutes of the meeting available with CNN-IBN show that in the GoM, Pranab Mukharjee said, “A number of representations have been received from the bidi industry that employs a large number of workers from the weaker sections of society. The basic issues raised by the bidi industry relate to the size, colour and obnoxious nature of the pictorial warnings. Keeping this is view, the pictorial warnings may be modified.”

The GOM also asked the Health Ministry to consult the Ministry of Law and remove the ‘skull and cross bone’ as a warning sign.

On February 26, 2008 the GoM finalized the pictures in which the pictorial warnings were completely watered down from the graphic ones to ones that make one wonder if the warnings are in fact serious enough or not.

Pranab Mukhejee won from the Jangipur constituency. It is notable that the Jangipur constituency has a sizable population of bidi workers. Votebank politics may well affect the way the smoke blows in the bidi, cigarette warning.

Nov 02, 2009
By Seemi Pasha / CNN-IBN

Anti-smoking proponents say they will push once again for legislation to close loopholes in state law that permit smoking in some bars and restaurants.

The intent is to protect workers from the health effects of secondhand smoke, representatives of the American Heart Association and the state Health Department said.

On Thursday proponents said they would seek legislation similar to a bill that died in the Oklahoma House this year.

The bill would remove exemptions to anti-smoking legislation approved in 2003. The exemptions allow smoking in stand-alone bars and in separately-ventilated smoking rooms in restaurants.

Marilyn Davidson of the American Heart Association said secondhand smoke leads to disease that kills 38,000 people a year and increases the risk of coronary heart disease by 25 percent to 30 percent.

A recent report by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies said studies have shown a decrease in the rate of heart attacks after a smoking ban was implemented.

Smoking is the leading preventable cause of death and disease, said Dr. Alan Blum, a family medicine professor at the University of Alabama and director of the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society.

Blum said restaurant groups that oppose bans are influenced by tobacco companies that want to protect their profits.

“Basically, it’s about health over money,” Blum said.

But some Oklahoma restaurant and nightclub owners have opposed an outright ban on smoking, claiming it would have a negative impact on their business. Some have invested thousands of dollars building separate smoking rooms.

“We are obviously sympathetic to them,” Davidson said. “Our main concern is the workers that have to work in these smoking rooms.”

Jim Hopper, president of the Oklahoma Restaurant Association, did not return telephone calls seeking comment on the proposed smoking ban.

BY SUSAN SIMPSON
October 30, 2009 Newsok

Labour supports UK moves on tobacco

Labour Associate Health Spokesperson Iain Lees-Galloway says the decision by the UK Parliament to support a ban on tobacco displays is embarrassing for the New Zealand Government that can’t even decide whether or not it is in favour of similar action here.

“I am heartened that the UK House of Commons today voted to send legislation banning tobacco displays to the House of Lords. Removal of point-of-sale tobacco advertising is seen as the next step in the fight to prevent young people from taking up the smoking habit, a habit that kills 5000 New Zealanders every year and is the leading cause of preventable death in our country,” said Iain Lees-Galloway.

“Sadly, although the Minister responsible for tobacco control, Tariana Turia, is in favour of a ban, the National Party is happier sitting on the sidelines lest they upset anyone in the tobacco industry.

“In response to my questions in the house, Tony Ryall was unable to give the Government’s position on tobacco displays, instead offering Mrs Turia’s personal opinion on the matter. He is avoiding the issue and refuses to acknowledge the growing body of evidence that supports a ban on Tobacco Displays.

“As more and more countries introduce bans on Tobacco Displays, New Zealand falls further and further behind in preventative healthcare.

“The only people opposed to a ban are the tobacco companies and associations of which the tobacco companies are members. The only people Tony Ryall is appeasing is the tobacco companies.

“It is time for our brave little country to act. The nations we like to compare ourselves to, are rapidly removing the last bastion of tobacco advertising. How long before we are the only one left beholden to Big Tobacco?”

13 October 2009, Scoop

DAMASCUS – Syria banned smoking inside public places on Sunday, the official news agency said.

The decree, signed by President Bashar al-Assad, sets a fine of 2,000 ($46) Syrian pounds on anyone flouting the ban in cafes, pubs and restaurants, the SANA agency said.

The ban extends to schools and public transport, and covers the nargile, or water pipe, a favorite among locals and tourists alike.

Those owning and running buildings where people violate the law, which also includes strengthening a ban on tobacco adverts, will be fined and, in some cases, imprisone.

The age of 18, when an American citizen becomes a legal adult, marks many rights of passage – the ability to vote, enlist in the army, get a tattoo or piercing and buy a pack of cigarettes. However, many college campuses are beginning to prohibit that last rite of passage.

As of this month, there are over 300 colleges that enforce “100 percent smoke-free campuses” according to the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation, including University at Buffalo, the first SUNY school to enforce the ban. Buffalo established the UBreathe Free policy for the 2009-10 school year, prohibiting smoking anywhere except for designated parking lots 100 feet or more from campus, but hopes to become completely smoke free by August 2010.

According to a 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 31 percent of college students smoke, compared to 25 percent of the rest of the country.

Currently, on the Binghamton University campus, smoking is prohibited inside all buildings and other designated areas, but is allowed outdoors within 25 feet of building entries or windows.

Linda Spear, a distinguished professor of psychology at BU who specializes in addictions, thinks that while a campus-wide ban may be good in the distant future, it could initially have some negative side effects.

“Not allowing smoking on campus would help people quit smoking which is a good thing in the long run,” Spear said. “(But) if they can’t smoke on campus, they’ll start going through withdrawal and likely show withdrawal symptoms, such as irritability and lack of concentration.”

Steve Burns, a junior engineering major, has been smoking cigarettes for years and thinks that the University’s current stance is fair.

“If you stand far enough away from buildings and do what you’re supposed to do it should be fine,” Burns said. “As long as you’re not bothering anyone I don’t see what the problem is.”

Recently, the city of Ithaca is beginning to consider a ban on smoking in public areas due to the dangers of second-hand smoke. New York City implemented an indoor smoking ban in 2003.

In June of this year, President Obama signed an anti-smoking bill allowing the Food and Drug Association to reduce the amount of nicotine in tobacco products and ban flavored tobacco products.

While some students may object to the smoking ban as a violation of rights, the preventative health measures may outweigh their concerns.

Matthew Eng, a junior biology major and vice president for the Student Environmental Awareness Club on campus thinks that while smoking cigarettes does not strongly impact the environment, it will be good for students’ health.

“I think that people should be allowed to smoke, as long as they stay 20 feet away from a building,” Eng said. “But i think that a smoking ban would help improve the health of a lot of people on campus.”

By Elena Cox
October 06, 2009

The findings that alcohol prices and advertisements affect young smokers are extremely inessential. The government needs to found policy on findings, not doctrine.

Tobacco policy at present lies on two demands: tobacco advertising and promotion are the main causes why teenagers start smoking, and young people are very delicate to the price of tobacco products.

These two claims serve the principal components of tobacco policy, namely that all forms of tobacco advertising and promotion, including tobacco displays, should be banned, and tobacco should be intensely taxed for to prevent or at least lessen minors tobacco use.

Unfortunately, neither of these demands nor policies meets the measures of evidence-based policymaking.

In evidence-based political decision, as in evidence-based clinical medicine, procedures and decisions are based on exact, absolute surveys of ‘best practice’, that is, treatments and interventions that work very hard for to reduce sickness rate and mortality.

Well-known studies have neglected to find the significantly link between tobacco advertising, consumption, and youth smoking. Actually, the two main UK government-commissioned studies on tobacco advertising and trade failed to find a causal link between advertising and young people starting to smoke.

This lack of evidence is attested by the fact that countries that have had advertising bans for a quarter century or more have not experienced statistically important declines in youth smoking. The use and influence data from 145 countries finds little evidence that the whole range of tobacco control measures, including advertising restrictions and bans, has a statistically significant influence on smoking prevalence in any country.

The government introduced harsh restrictions on tobacco advertising through legislation to ban the display of all tobacco products. Even though the Department of Health required that there is firm evidence for to show that such bans will reduce youth smoking, this is not the case.

The evidence in support of tobacco display bans, just as for tobacco advertising bans, is with difficulty thin. Almost all anti-tobacco researchers found that tobacco displays have no statistically significant effect on youth smoking.

Researchers concluded that seeing tobacco displays had no effect on youth intentions to smoke. None of the so-called evidence about tobacco displays provides urging behavioral indications that any young person started smoking after seeing tobacco displays.

Even the claim that high taxes can discourage or prevent youth smoking is not a true one. Because as it is known smoking is addictive, and if the smoking is addictive, logic dictates that smokers will be heedless to price increases.

But the claim also runs counter to what most experts say about how young people smoke. Most young smokers are experimental smokers who do not buy their cigarettes, but instead get them from friends or family, which makes them much less sensitive to high tobacco prices.

A lot of American studies have found that tax increases have a statistically inessential effect on preventing young people smoking. Last year, in a study of tobacco control policies in 27 European countries, it was found that, for adolescents, price was unrelated to smoking influence.

OTTAWA — Canada’s rookie health minister appears to have won a political tug-of-war with her Quebec colleagues over contentious changes to flavoured-tobacco controls.

The Quebec wing of the Conservative caucus had pulled for amendments that would ban some flavours and additives in cigars and cigarettes but not others.

But Leona Aglukkaq tugged back harder.

“I met with the Quebec caucus and they’re in support of the legislation as is,” she said Wednesday.

Bill C-32, also known as the Cracking Down on Tobacco Marketing Aimed at Youth Act, would ban all flavours and additives in tobacco products except for menthol.

The government says tobacco companies add fruit flavours and vitamins, sugar and other additives that taste like candy to little cigars – called cigarillos – to mask the tobacco’s harshness to appeal to kids.

The legislation unanimously passed the House of Commons in June with the support of all three opposition parties.

But Tories from Quebec pushed for changes after Rothmans warned it might have to rethink plans to expand its Quebec City plant – jeopardizing some 330 jobs – if the legislation passed without amendments.

The Quebec Conservative caucus, led by former foreign affairs minister Maxime Bernier, deemed the legislation too broad.

They said the bill, as is, would ban hundreds of other ingredients, including some used to make American blended cigarettes that contain Burley tobacco.

“Freedom of choice is a fundamental principle in a civilized society. We can think what we want about the act of smoking (personally, I don’t smoke), but it remains legal,” Bernier wrote on his blog last week.

“There is no reason to deprive adult smokers of the possibility of choosing between cigarettes that contain Burley tobacco, and cigarettes that contain Virginia tobacco, even if those who choose the first are in a minority.”

He was more curt in Wednesday’s blog post.

“I took a stand in favour of amendments to Bill C-32 in order (to) protect the freedom of choice of adult smokers, while maintaining the ban on small cigars with fruit and confectionery-style flavours,” he wrote.

“Unfortunately, the debate within our party has led to a decision which is contrary to the one I have supported. In politics, one sometimes wins battles, sometimes loses others.

“As a team player, I have chosen to rally the large consensus within my team, though without repudiating the principles that I have defended.”

He declined to comment further.

Former Montreal Canadiens coach Jacques Demers, newly appointed to the Senate, said the health minister did more listening than talking during the Quebec caucus meeting.

“The minister mostly listened to the recommendations made,” he said.

Public Works Minister Christian Paradis, the Conservatives’ Quebec lieutenant, said it’s important to protect jobs at Rothmans while also keeping cigarettes away from children.

Aglukkaq’s office released a statement Wednesday saying the bill contains a clause meant to target additives used in products made solely for the Canadian market.

“It is the government of Canada’s policy intent that tobacco products manufactured in Canada solely for the export market will be permitted,” it said.

The Senate also heard from tobacco companies, industry groups and anti-smoking groups late Wednesday.

TORONTO — The Canadian province of Ontario has become the latest jurisdiction to launch a lawsuit to recover smoking-related health costs from the tobacco industry.

The suit seeks $50 billion Canadian (US$46 billion) from a dozen Canadian firms and their parent companies.

Ontario Attorney General Chris Bentley said Tuesday the figure represents their view of the costs of health care related illnesses directly tied to tobacco from 1955 until now.

The claim follows similar actions in the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and New Brunswick, as well as in the U.S. and abroad.

Among those named in the suit is Canada’s largest tobacco manufacturer, Imperial Tobacco Co., a wholly owned unit of British American Tobacco of London that sells cigarettes under such well-known brands as du Maurier and Player’s.

Imperial spokesman Eric Gagnon suggested the Ontario government was being hypocritical.

“They’re collecting billions of dollars in taxes, and right now they are turning and suing the tobacco companies,” Gagnon said. “This is a legal product and we do it in the way the government dictates us to do it.”

The lawsuit alleges the companies have long known that cigarettes were addictive, and that active and passive smoking can cause diseases such as lung cancer. It also accuses the companies of conspiring to mislead the public about the dangers, suppressing evidence of the risks, and failing to take proper care to stop adolescents from smoking.

Canada’s most populous province said tobacco-related illnesses cost the health care system more than $1.6 billion Canadian (US$1.48 billion) per year. Tobacco use accounts for the deaths of about 13,000 Ontario residents each year, or 36 deaths per day, and almost 500,000 hospital days annually.

In the U.S., all 50 states have launched legal action to recover the costs of smoking-related illnesses. In 1998, the states agreed to a US$25 billion out-of-court settlement.

Last month, a Los Angeles jury recommended that Philip Morris USA pay US$13.8 million in punitive damages to the daughter of a longtime smoker who died of lung cancer.

Tobacco companies are undermining laws for graphic warnings on cigarette packets suggests.

Researchers at Otago University have found the most offensive images for smokers featured less often than those judged less disturbing.

Of more than 1300 cigarette packets, the image of a “corpse with toe-tag” was the most prevalent.

Last year it became mandatory for cigarette packets to be covered with one of the seven graphic health warnings.

This included pictures of rotting teeth, diseased lungs and a cancerous mouth to raise awareness of the health effects of smoking.

But the study found tobacco companies were not following regulations to evenly distribute the seven graphic health warnings.

Manufacturers who breach the regulations can be fined up to $10,000, while retailers can be fined up to $4000.

Researchers bought 168 cigarette packets from Wellington and Wairapapa supermarkets and collected 1208 discarded packets from streets around the country.

Of that total, 25.6 per cent of the purchased packets and 17.8 per cent of the street packets had the “toe-tag” image, considered the least disturbing.

“This image also appears more often on packs sold by all three of the largest tobacco companies in New Zealand,” Professor Janet Hoek said.

The most offensive image – the diseased mouth – was found on 7.1 and 13.8 per cent respectively.

Professor Hoek said that, by reducing the impact of graphic health warnings, tobacco companies were undermining the law and public health policy, which aimed to reduce the serious health impact of smoking.

Karen Evison, the Health Ministry’s national programme manager for tobacco policy and implementation, said there was not enough evidence yet to support a prosecution, but the ministry was monitoring the situation.

Cancer Society spokeswoman Belinda Keenan said graphic health warnings were important as they “de-glamourised” smoking.

British American Tobacco, the biggest player in the tobacco industry with about 76 per cent market share, rejected the claims.

A spokeswoman said the Health Ministry had not raised any concerns with the company.

“British American Tobacco’s graphic health warnings meet all legal requirements,” she said.

Copyright © 29/09/2009 Stuff

Moves to end cigarette displays in shops took a step forward today following a vote in the Scottish Parliament.

MSPs voted in favour of the Tobacco and Primary Medical Services (Scotland) Bill today as it completed stage one of the parliamentary process. The bill now returns to the Health and Sport Committee for further scrutiny before a final vote in the Parliament.

The bill’s key proposals include:

* Banning tobacco displays in shops
* Banning cigarette vending machines
* Introducing a registration scheme for retailers
* Fixed penalty notices for retailers who sell cigarettes to under 18s
* Banning orders to prevent retailers selling cigarettes if they continually flout the law

In today’s debate, Public Health Minister Shona Robison told MSPs that ending the display of cigarettes in shops would help reduce child smoking in future generations.

Ms Robison said:

“The toll of smoking on our nation’s health cannot be underestimated. For decades, too many Scots have suffered and died prematurely from smoking-related diseases.

“That’s why, as part of our drive to end this misery, we are doing all we can to stop children from starting to smoke at all.

“Our decisive action will make cigarettes less attractive and less easily available to children and I am pleased that MSPs have given the bill their backing.

“Cigarettes are dangerous – they’re not the type of product to be given pride of place in shops or available from self-service vending machines.

“Stopping future generations from smoking will help us make a huge leap forward in improving Scotland’s health and I believe these proposals help us do just that.”

Dr Laurence Gruer, NHS Health Scotland’s Director of Public Health Science and chairman of the Smoking Prevention Working Group, said:

“The ban on displays of cigarettes behind the counter has my full support. It will close a loophole which has allowed the tobacco industry to continue to advertise its dangerous and addictive products.

“It will play an important part in helping to discourage young people from ever starting to smoke and is another step towards creating a healthier Scotland.”

The Tobacco and Primary Medical Services (Scotland) Bill was published in February.

The bill is expected to complete its passage through the parliament by the beginning of next year. Large retailers will then have until 2011 to implement the display ban while small retailers will have until 2013.

Smoking in public places in Scotland was banned on March 26, 2006. On October 1, 2007, the minimum age for buying cigarettes was raised to 18.

A survey of over 2,000 11-14 year olds in California found that exposure to tobacco marketing in convenience stores increased the chances of a child smoking by up to 50 per cent.