Tobacco.org

• Children's Secondhand Smoke Exposure in Private Homes and Cars: An Ethical Analysis  

In response to the growing body of scientific literature linking SHS with serious diseases, many countries, states, and cities have established policies mandating smoke-free public spaces. Yet thousands of children remain unprotected from exposure to SHS in private homes and cars.

New initiatives targeting SHS in these spaces have raised ethical questions about imposing constraints on private behavior. We reviewed legislation and court cases related to such initiatives and used a principlist approach to analyze the ethical implications of policies banning smoking in private cars and homes in which children are present.

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ENGEL: Outside Edge: How our pubs have run out of puff 

The more laws governments pass, the more they are subject to the oldest law of all: the law of unintended consequences. And smoking bans are having bizarre consequences across the world. . . .

In Britain, where smoking in enclosed public places became totally illegal in 2007, beer sales are down by 10 per cent; analysts attribute half of that to the smoking law. Pubs are now closing at a record rate of 36 a week. . . .

There are similar reports from Ireland, where the broadcaster Gerry Anderson said bars now had the atmosphere of a dentist’s waiting room. In France, more than 500 of the 40,000 cafés and bars disappeared last year. Again, the ban is largely blamed. And in France, the climate is more conducive to sitting outside with a Ricard and a Gauloise.

Latest figures suggest there has been no effect at all on tobacco consumption in Britain or Ireland. And anecdotal evidence is that kids are now staying out of pubs, heading for any open spaces they can find, getting bladdered on cheap supermarket lager and smoking their heads off.

When the ban came in, all the non-smokers twittered about how they could now safely visit all the lovely smoke-free pubs. And did they? Did they heck!

I hardly ever smoked in pubs myself. Nor does anyone else now. They do not drink in them either. Brilliant.

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• Clinical Trials in Category (59) Emphysema 

Clinical Trials in Emphysema

Alabama

Birmingham : Research Site: New! TESRA: (Treatment of Emphysema with a gamma-Selective Retinoid Agonist)

Birmingham : Cardiothoracic Surgery ,University of Alabama, Birmingham The IBV Trial . An Investigational treatment for people suffering from Emphysema

Mobile : Pulmonary Associates of Mobile, PC The IBV Trial . An Investigational treatment for people suffering from Emphysema

Arizona

Phoenix : Pulmonary Associates Phoenix The EASE Trial: An investigation of the Exhale� Drug-Eluting Stent in homogeneous emphysema patients with severe hyperinflation . . .

Bulgaria

Pleven : Research Site: New! TESRA: (Treatment of Emphysema with a gamma-Selective Retinoid Agonist)

Ruse : Research Site: New! TESRA: (Treatment of Emphysema with a gamma-Selective Retinoid Agonist)

Sofia : Research Site: New! TESRA: (Treatment of Emphysema with a gamma-Selective Retinoid Agonist)

Canada

Toronto, ON : Research Site: New! REPAIR Tier 2 - (Retinoids in Emphysema Patients on the Alpha-1-Antitrypsin International Registry)

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• SMOKE2U 

There's something odd about PO Box 365, Irving, New York. Located on the Seneca Nation -- nestled just at the Empire State's southwestern tip -- the box is the mailing address for at least 10 online vendors registered in far-flung locations, from New York City to Ankara, Turkey. Boasting names like BigChiefCigarettes.com, Smoke2U.com, and EZTobacco.com, the sites bear no apparent affiliation to one another, except that they all sell one product: untaxed cigarettes. . . .

Over the past decade, as cigarette taxes have soared throughout the United States -- rising an average of nearly 90 percent between 1998 and 2002 alone -- websites catering to tax-dodging smokers have proliferated. In 2006, an estimated 772 sites were selling to U.S. consumers, up from just 88 in 2000. According to Jeff Cohen, associate chief counsel for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' (ATF) Northeast division, it's common for entrepreneurs to maintain five or six differently branded websites to drive traffic, "even though they're just shipping from one address."

Some sites are based in low-tax states such as the Carolinas; others sell duty-free packs from overseas. Increasingly, overseas cigarette vendors drive traffic: The number of sites based overseas jumped from at least 10 percent in 2003 to over 45 percent by 2006, according to Kurt Ribisl, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina's Gillings School of Global Public Health, who has extensively studied online sale patterns.

In the United States, the real action is taking place on Indian reservations. . . .

Thus, even with states' best diligence, cigarettes continue to slip through. "They [the Internet sellers] are resourceful," said California Deputy Attorney General Laura Kaplan. "They always seem to be one step ahead of us." In the latest development, she said, California secured an agreement with First Regional Bank to stop processing unlawful cigarette purchases -- to her knowledge, the first of its kind in the nation. But as Kaplan notes, there are thousands of other banks out there who have yet to sign on.

Online sites are also moving offshore, beyond the reach of effective U.S. law enforcement. In one high-profile 2004 case, the ATF raided a cargo plane that touched down at John F. Kennedy Airport bearing 60 million duty-free cigarettes from a Switzerland-based company, Otamedia. The company's original URL Yesmoke.com was shut down, but its operators simply packed up shop and today continue to do business from Italy. . . .

But given how one site can pop up as quickly as another is shuttered, suppressing the trade has become something of a global game of "whack-a-mole." "We see a lot of sites operating outside the country: Moldova, Israel, Russia, Ukraine," Kaplan said. Despite states' best efforts, she said, "We haven't noticed a real reduction in sales." . . .

To that end, advocates such as Representative Anthony Weiner, Democrat of New York, and the National Association of Attorneys General are actively pushing the optimistically titled Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking (PACT) Act

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• Key Challenges and Issues Facing the Smoking Cessation: World Markets 

Reportlinker.com announces that a new market research report related to the Pharmaceutical industry industry is available in its catalogue.

Smoking Cessation: World Markets

http://www.reportlinker.com/p097960/Smoking-Cessation-World-Markets.html

Smoking cessation is among the most dynamic pharmaceutical markets, and one that is expected to grow despite economic conditions. More than 5 million deaths are attributed to nicotine each year. This has encouraged public health entities to pursue smoking cessation, and has driven development of smoking cessation products, both prescription and over the counter. The arrival of Chantix/Champix and its unique marketing strategy and a robust pipeline bodes well for growth in this pharmaceutical segment.

This report, Smoking Cessation: World Markets takes a thorough look at the products, key players, and important trends in smoking cessation.

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Research and Markets: Japan Tobacco - IT Sales Opportunities - 2008 

Japan Tobacco Inc. is a Japanese company engaged mainly in the tobacco industry. The main business segments of the company are domestic and overseas tobacco, pharmaceutical, foods, and others. The tobacco segment manufactures and sells cigarette products in domestic and overseas market. The pharmaceutical segment is engaged in the research, development, manufacture, and distribution of drugs and medicines. The food segment manufactures and sells processed food, beverages, seasonings, chilled foods, and other products. The others segment is engaged in the leasing and operation of real estate, as well as the provision of other services. The Company has 299 consolidated subsidiaries and 25 associated companies.

Industry trends and drivers have a direct or indirect affect on IT spending of all companies operating within an industry. For example - increase in sourcing from low cost countries might influence Japan Tobacco Inc. to relook at their supply chains, resulting in selling opportunities for SCM solutions, collaboration tools etc. Thus, we can conclude that industry spending on any particular IT product or service is an important indicator of the criticality of that product or service for the industry. Based on the IT spend information available in 'TechNavio', we have computed a 'criticality score' for various IT products and services, for Japan Tobacco Inc.

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• Foreign 'soota' may be fuelling terror  

Beware: your foreign cigarette puff may be lighting up terrorism, proving it to be injurious to the country's health too.

Yes, the profits from genuine as well as cheap fake smuggled cigarettes of popular foreign brands are now under suspicion of funding terrorism in India.

Such cigarettes are coming into this country from Bangladesh, Myanmar, Korea and China. Popular brands like 555, Marlboro and Benson and Hedges are easily available at panwalla shops in every city.

A warning has been sounded by the American security agencies stating that the profits from cigarette smuggling in the USA are funding terrorist entities abroad such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and Al-Qaida.

Although prepared for a different purpose, India's top business body - Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry in India (ASSOCHAM) - in a report 'Combating counterfeiting - brand protection', released earlier this year, gives a definitive estimate of the huge funds generated through smuggled tobacco. . . .

After the November 26-29 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, Indian spying and counter-terrorism agencies have started looking at various channels from where terror money is flowing into the terrorism market. The smuggling of foreign cigarettes' has come on their radar.

They are trying to calculate how much money generated through this smuggling network is finding its way to terrorism activities in India.

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• Legal Update (PDF) 

• “Key to the Future”: British American Tobacco and Cigarette Smuggling in China 

Background

Cigarette smuggling is a major public health issue, stimulating increased tobacco consumption and undermining tobacco control measures. China is the ultimate prize among tobacco's emerging markets, and is also believed to have the world's largest cigarette smuggling problem. Previous work has demonstrated the complicity of British American Tobacco (BAT) in this illicit trade within Asia and the former Soviet Union.

Methods and Findings

This paper analyses internal documents of BAT available on site from the Guildford Depository and online from the BAT Document Archive. Documents dating from the early 1900s to 2003 were searched and indexed on a specially designed project database to enable the construction of an historical narrative. Document analysis incorporated several validation techniques within a hermeneutic process. This paper describes the huge scale of this illicit trade in China, amounting to billions of (United States) dollars in sales, and the key supply routes by which it has been conducted. It examines BAT's efforts to optimise earnings by restructuring operations, and controlling the supply chain and pricing of smuggled cigarettes.

Conclusions

Our research shows that smuggling has been strategically critical to BAT's ongoing efforts to penetrate the Chinese market, and to its overall goal to become the leading company within an increasingly global industry. These findings support the need for concerted efforts to strengthen global collaboration to combat cigarette smuggling.

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• The “Green” Cigarette?  

According to the Southeast Farm Press, organic tobacco is “the biggest growth area in US tobacco production.” The stuff fetches about twice the price as regular tobacco on the open market. “Any tobacco without pesticide residues is more attractive than conventional in the current market,” said organic tobacco producer Micou Browne.

Browne's company, Organic Smoke Inc., bought twice as much leaf in the past year. But that won’t be even half as much as what the Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co., makers of the additive-free Natural American Spirit brand cigarettes, grew. Already the largest organic tobacco product manufacturer, Santa Fe continues to see its sales grow by more than 10 percent each year. . . .

The mass consumption of cigarettes, which is increasing globally by slightly more than one percent a year, can only be met through the exhaustion of natural resources, environments, and labor. Big companies like Reynolds American, which owns RJR and is itself 42 percent owned by British American Tobacco and manufactures about one of every three cigarettes sold in the US, tend to buy cheap leaf from developing countries where farm practices are lax and tobacco-control efforts are more easily suppressed.

In fact, by 2010 a projected 87 percent of tobacco will be grown in developing countries like South Korea, where more than 40 percent of annual deforestation is due to the production and curing of tobacco; Brazil, where pesticide sprayings have polluted fresh water; and Malawi, which has the highest incidence of child labor in Southern Africa (tobacco farms in Malawi that have a contract with multinationals, about 20 percent of the total, have a ban on child labor). . . .

In a paper McDaniel had published last year on smokers’ perceptions of “natural” cigarettes, she concluded that “tobacco companies may be inclined to introduce natural brands as part of their burgeoning corporate social responsibility efforts” and that “such efforts may involve expanding the current concept of natural cigarettes, with their emphasis on no additives, into 'green' cigarettes—organic (pesticide-free), completely biodegradable, or manufactured using renewable energy.” Indeed, market research shows that informing smokers of the chemical contents of most cigarettes results in shock and alarm, and also suggests that, for many smokers, this alarm can be allayed by a “natural” cigarette. In Germany, ads for “organic” cigarettes have been banned because regulators there decided they mislead consumers into thinking they're a healthier product.

Like a subliminal message, the soothing words of the environmental movement have become powerful enough to override the proven negative health effects of cigarettes and the government-mandated warning label. There's some sense of trust and reassurement hearing a company say, as Santa Fe does on its website, “Supporting sustainable agriculture is part of our commitment to reducing our footprint on the Earth, and protecting our natural resources.” But McDaniel points to a “need to expand our definition of sustainable. It’s all well and good to grow something organically and use renewable energy sources, but if it kills half the people who use it then it’s not very sustainable.”

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High Yield Safe Haven: New Global Tobacco Index 

In stark contrast to my previous article on socially responsible and green exchange-traded investment vehicles, the accompanying table (click to enlarge) presents the Top 10 companies by market cap and statistics for the ETF Innovators (ETFI) Global Tobacco Index, which easily outpaced the overall market and benchmark ETFs over the last year.

The Top 25 Rated companies managed to post a gain of 1.5% on a total return basis in the past year, thanks to an average dividend yield of 6.3%. All benchmark ETFs posted losses over the past year on a total return basis, including Consumer Staples SPDR (XLP) (-17.5%), Claymore/Sabrient Defensive Equity Index (DEF) (-31.5%), Vanguard Consumer Staples (VDC) (-17.3%), and iShares Dow Jones Select Dividend (DVY) (-34%).

The Top 10 companies by market cap will be getting smaller as Altria (MO) is set to close on its acquisition of smokeless tobacco maker UST Inc. (UST) early next year. Companies yielding over 5% among the Top 10 largest include Philip Morris International (PM), British American Tobacco (BTI), Altria, Reynolds American (RAI), and Lorillard (LO).

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AFP: Japan Tobacco to scrap five overseas plants 

Japan Tobacco Inc. plans to axe five overseas plants as part of an overhaul following its acquisition last year of British rival Gallaher Group, a spokeswoman said Tuesday.

JT will close plants in Singapore, Britain, Austria, Ukraine, and the Canary Islands, reducing the total overseas to 26 as part of restructuring that aims to cut costs by 300 million dollars, spokeswoman Yuka Kin said.

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• American Cancer Society recognizes international tobacco control leaders 

The American Cancer Society announced today the winners of the 2009 Luther L. Terry Awards for Exemplary Leadership in Tobacco Control. The awards are named for the late United States Surgeon General Luther L. Terry, M.D., who led the landmark 1964 Surgeon General's Report which connected tobacco use to lung cancer and other illnesses. Dr. Terry's courageous and groundbreaking work established the foundation for public health scrutiny of the dangers of tobacco use. The awards are presented triennially - the initial awards were presented at the 11th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health in Chicago, Illinois, USA, in 2000, with subsequent awards presentations at the 12th and 13th World Conferences on Tobacco OR Health in 2003 and 2006 respectively.

"Given the momentum of the World Health Organization (WHO)'s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), currently ratified by 161 countries including Costa Rica, Croatia, Guinea-Bissau, Iraq, Lao People's Democratic Republic, and Nepal, and the growing global movement to combat unprecedented and aggressive worldwide tobacco marketing tactics, the timeliness of recognizing these achievers' contributions is particularly relevant," said chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society, John R. Seffrin, Ph.D. . . .

These awards will recognize outstanding worldwide achievement in the field of tobacco control and will be presented during a special ceremony on Wednesday, March 11, in Mumbai, India, as part of the 14th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health. The winners are as follows:

* The United States' Stanton Arnold Glantz, Ph.D., will receive the Distinguished Career Award.

* The Ministry of Health of the Government of Uruguay will be given the award for Exemplary Leadership by a Government Ministry.

* The United States' Ronald M. Davis, M.D., and India's K. Srinath Reddy, M.D., D.M., M.Sc., F.A.M.S., will receive the award for Outstanding Individual Leadership.

* The InterAmerican Heart Foundation will receive the Outstanding Organization award.

* K. Michael Cummings, Ph.D., M.P.H., of the United States will receive the award for Outstanding Research Contribution.

* The United States' Dileep G. Bal, M.D., M.P.H., M.S., and Thailand's Hatai Chitanondh, M.D., F.I.C.S., F.R.C.S. (T.), will be given the award for Outstanding Community Service.

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American Heart Association comment on the World Cancer Report 

This week the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a division of the World Health Organization (WHO), released updated cancer death projections in a call to action, asking the government to help fund cancer prevention and research initiatives and international tobacco control policies. According to the report, the burden of cancer doubled globally between 1975 and 2000, and cancer is expected to become the leading cause of death worldwide in 2010.

"This is a very important issue and does indeed deserve the attention of governments around the world," said Timothy Gardner, M.D., President of the American Heart Association.

The report states that reasons for the growing cancer burden include the adoption in less developed countries of "Western" habits such as tobacco use and high calorie, high-saturated and trans-fat diets.

"These factors are also significant contributors to the global burden of cardiovascular disease," said Gardner. "The IARC's aggressive support of tobacco control is particularly important, as cigarette smoking is the main preventable cause of premature death in the United States, as well as worldwide."

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EDITORIAL COMMENT * The Fag End  

According to a report by the World Health Organisation's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) the disease is now poised to become the leading cause of death worldwide by 2010, overtaking cardiovascular ailments as the number one killer. . . .

The United States, on the other hand, has made a turnaround and is now showing a decline in both disease incidence and death for the first time in a decade.

Again, the reason is not far to see. In the 1980s and 1990s when the US and other western countries came down heavily on smoking, tobacco giants began making major moves towards developing countries. As a result smoking fired up as, subsequently, did lung cancer. It's high time, therefore, that countries like India too initiated aggressive anti-smoking measures. Specifically, we need to urgently commit to a comprehensive tobacco control approach including increased taxes and access to cessation tools and programmes.

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