Tobacco.org

• Switzerland's stinky city  

There has to be some reason why it's impossible to find anywhere to dine, drink or even enjoy a concert without going home stinking of cigarette or cigar smoke.

Coming out of Zurich airport to the hotel shuttle buses, the first thing that hits you is cigarette smoke. And throughout an entire trip, it keeps on hitting you. . . .

For Zurich is almost like last man standing when it comes to banning smoking.

Restaurants, bars, taxis, hotel lobbies are all muggy. We were unable to find a restaurant that even had a no-smoking area. . . .

For companies, the failure of Zurich - and other cities that are out of line with the increasingly global approach to smoking - there is a compliance hazard. How long is it before an employee claims that he cannot go to a city where he is forced to sit in smoke to eat or socialise with clients because it is a health hazard and covered by health and safety at work provisions?

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'Insufficient evidence' to justify restrictions on retail displays of tobacco products says JTI  

Japan Tobacco International has responded to the UK Department of Health's planned ban on retail displays of tobacco products by saying that no evidence has been provided to justify such measures.

JTI Regional President for UK and Ireland Eddy Pirard responded: "We agree with the main rationale underlying the Department of Health's Consultation on the Future of Tobacco Control that 'children and young people' should not smoke and should not be able to buy tobacco products.

"However, there are better ways of reducing youth smoking uptake and better means to make them work effectively, than introducing such a ban. The Department of Health and its consultation exercise have, quite simply, failed to produce evidence which justifies the proposed ban. The proposals will be counterproductive and have unintended consequences on competition and on the illicit trade of tobacco".

As reported, the travel retail sector is pushing for an exemption from the ban. It believes it has a very strong case for an exemption based on its "unblemished" record of implementing age control over tobacco sales, allied to the controlled nature of the airport environment in particular.

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JT International extends its smoking lounge drive with new openings at Munich Airport  

JT International (JTI), a member of the Japan Tobacco Group, this week inaugurated three smoking lounges (two Winston and one Camel), a Camel Plaza and six smoking corners at Munich Airport.

The openings mark a further expansion of Japan Tobacco's drive to open smoking lounges and stations at key international airports, including Athens, Bali, Moscow, Zurich, Kiev, Ho Chi Minh City, Casablanca, Marrakech, Frankfurt, Agadir and Geneva.

They aim to provide smoking passengers with a relaxing environment to take a break before boarding the plane, using state-of-the-art units equipped with custom-designed ventilation systems.

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Smintair  

Smintair, or Smoker's International Airways, is a luxury airline that was scheduled to begin flying between Düsseldorf, Germany and Tokyo, Japan in 2007, but has been put on hold indefinitely due to delays in the delivery of new A380 planes. There has been no official word on the status of the airline since the company's owner entered politics and Germany passed a smoking ban.

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• JTI opens three Munich lounges  

Japan Tobacco International (JTI) is installing airport smoking lounges and areas at Munich Airport in Germany. This week JTI inaugurated three smoking lounges, a Camel Plaza and six smoking corners at Munich International Airport. Other airports that JTI is working with include Athens, Bali, Moscow, Zurich, Kiev, Ho Chi Minh City, Casablanca, Marrakech, Frankfurt, Agadir and Geneva.

"I think this new facility will be applauded by many people travelling from or via Munich, both smokers and non smokers," says Fadoul Pekhazis, JTI's president Middle East, near East, Turkey, Africa and Worldwide Duty Free. "JTI pioneered the concept of smoking lounges and smoking stations in 2003." . . .

By the end of 2008, JTI will have locations in 15 international airports with 46 lounges, 70 smoking cabins and over 60 smoking stations.

Pekhazis adds, "This is a win-win solution for all parties. The smoking public is looked after, non-smokers are not annoyed by tobacco smoke and the airport provides an excellent service to travellers."

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2 men arrested in Germany after drunkenly harassing passengers on trans-Atlantic flight 

FRANKFURT, Germany - Police say have they arrested two Russian sailors at the Frankfurt airport after they drank an entire bottle of vodka and harassed passengers on a flight from Houston, Texas.

Frankfurt police say the two men smoked cigarettes in the plane's bathroom and frightened fellow passengers before the flight crew ordered them to stay in their seats.

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• 50 lashes for smoker on Saudia 

DAMMAM – The Summary Court in the Eastern Province has sentenced a man to 50 lashes for smoking on board non-smoking Saudi Arabian Airlines (SAA) flight from Dammam to Riyadh.

The man kept puffing his cigarette ignoring repeated warnings from flight attendants to stop. His smoking also set off the smoke alarm, causing panic among passengers.

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• Papers show how tobacco companies stopped airline’s smoking ban  

The tobacco industry in Germany, working with the popular German daily newspaper Bild, stopped the airline Lufthansa from banning smoking on its domestic flights in the early 1990s, an analysis of internal tobacco industry documents shows.

The tobacco company Philip Morris has had to publish thousands of internal documents on the internet as a consequence of a US court sentence against it in 1998. A paper in a German public health journal has used the documents to shed light on the tobacco industry’s successful lobbying strategies in Germany (Gesundheitswesen 2008;70:315-24, doi:10.1055/s-2008-1078752).

The documents also show how the German Association of the Cigarette Industry (Verband der Cigarettenindustrie) managed to prevent a ban on tobacco advertising, to persuade the German government to bring action against certain EU guidelines, to keep cigarette vending machines accessible to children, and to prevent the introduction of higher taxes on tobacco products. They also show how scientists and doctors acted as expert witnesses against the dangers to health of tobacco.

"However," said Martina Pötschke-Langer, one of the authors of the paper and head of the World Health Organization Collaboration Centre for Tobacco Control at the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg, "the campaign against Lufthansa’s non-smoking flights appears to be especially vicious, since pressure was applied to the government as well as to public opinion via the mass media."

In 1989 Lufthansa tried to introduce non-smoking domestic flights but was unsuccessful until 1996.

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Air rage suspect re-arrested in N.Y.  

Authorities have re-arrested a woman passenger who was busted on a flight diverted to Denver in June after she allegedly screamed racial slurs and punched a flight attendant who stopped her smoking.

Christina E. Szele, 35, of Woodside, N.Y., was arrested Monday by U.S. marshals in Brooklyn for violating her pretrial release conditions, including twice testing positive for cocaine and an arrest for assault in Queens.

Szele was freed on $10,000 bail in Denver June 25.

She faces federal charges of assaulting a flight attendant and interfering with a flight crew during the the June 17 ruckus aboard a New York to San Francisco flight.

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JetBlue flight diverted after fight breaks out  

A JetBlue flight from Boston, Massachusetts, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was diverted Saturday when a fight broke out after someone was smoking in the bathroom, federal officials said.

A JetBlue plane was held in North Carolina for two hours while passengers were interviewed.

One passenger aboard JetBlue Flight 455 was taken into custody . . .

Eyewitnesses said the scuffle was between two brothers, one of whom was angry that his brother had smoked on a plane.

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• Smoking ban appears hazy 

The state's public indoor smoking restrictions take effect in 11 days, but the new rules are about as clear as a smoke-filled room for some members of the midstate's business community.

Take Harrisburg International Airport as an example.

Officials there read the law and saw no mention of airports in it. . . .

Ochs defended the state's efforts to implement the law, which was passed in June and provided a 90-day ramp-up period before it took effect.

"It's a very quick timeframe for the complexities of this law. It really is," Ochs said. "Given all of the intricacies, it's not quite enough time. It's doable. We feel we're doing it."

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• Disruptive air passengers concern 

Reported incidents of disruption involving air passengers have more than trebled in the last five years, official figures show.

There were 2,219 instances of violent, abusive or unacceptable behaviour between April 2006 and March 2007, compared to 648 incidents in 2002/3.

Civil Aviation Authority figures showed that alcohol was a factor in 34% of cases, and smoking in 25%.

Pilots' association Balpa said members were "very concerned" about the issue. . . .

* 25% involved smoking - mostly passengers caught trying to smoke secretly in aircraft toilets

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Qantas Tobacco Sales A Retrograde Step: AMA 

The Australian Medical Association cannot believe that QANTAS has made a decision to sell in-flight duty-free cigarettes on international routes.

The AMA understands that QANTAS has instructed its staff to ensure that cigarettes are ‘displayed prominently on top’ of the in-flight duty-free cart to ‘ensure our customers are aware of the duty-free products onboard’ and to ‘boost sales’.

AMA President, Dr Rosanna Capolingua, has labelled QANTAS’ apparent actions a retrograde step that encouraged smoking and was inconsistent with government and community efforts to address the causes of preventable chronic disease.

The AMA will be writing to QANTAS to urge the airline to reverse any decision to sell tobacco products on its flights.

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EDITORIAL: Time to quit 

QANTAS has managed to fly in the face of undisputed evidence that smoking kills by offering duty-free cigarettes on its international flights. . . .

Qantas showed leadership when it scrapped onboard cigarette sales. Their backflip is disappointing.

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QANTAS flies into smoking storm 

Fiona Sharkie is the Executive Director of Quit Victoria.

FIONA SHARKIE: This seems an incredibly retrograde step, to go back on that decision.

SIMON SANTOW: When they decided to do this, did they make a big fuss about what they were doing?

FIONA SHARKIE: I'm not sure back in 99, but it was certainly a very strong signal of support for all the good work that, Australia was leading tobacco control in those days and remains so, and it was a tremendous sign of support by QANTAS to be doing the same.

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