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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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For the past 25 years, Dr Mackay has been pushing for changes in countries where smoking is regarded as a lifestyle choice rather than a health hazard. And in recognition of those efforts, she will be made an OBE by Queen Elizabeth in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace today.
In her official capacity, she is the senior policy adviser to the World Health Organisation and senior adviser to the World Lung Foundation (WLF). The latter is responsible for taking care of the multimillion-dollar grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, a fund set up by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to encourage tobacco control in poor countries.
In short, she is one of the three "most dangerous" people as far as the tobacco industry is concerned (the others are American campaigner Mike Pertschuk and Canadian Garfield Mahood).
Dr Mackay came to Hong Kong in 1967 after finishing her medical studies and has lived here ever since. Her anti-tobacco efforts began in 1984, when she quit her job at United Christian Hospital after seeing too many patients dying from smoking-related diseases. She decided she could save more lives by helping cut tobacco use.
Her battle began in earnest when she joined the Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health . . .
Dr Mackay says her most rewarding achievement is the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, a milestone in the field and only achieved after she lobbied then WHO director general Gro Harlem Brundtland to make it a priority. . . .
"But, in the past eight years, Hong Kong has been lagging behind others in terms of taxation. We have not raised the tobacco tax to a significant level."
She intends to lobby for a "plain packaging" law for cigarettes, meaning that the pack can only carry the brand name and a health warning.
Dr Mackay says her success is due to three elements, being "determined, optimistic and realistic". . . .
She said tobacco control should be top of the agenda for Beijing because mainland smokers consumed one in three of the world's cigarettes.
Dr Mackay said another impact of the Bloomberg initiative is that it created a profession and a paid career path for tobacco control personnel.
Her position with the WLF is her first paid job since she left the Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health.
Conclusions: The results show higher incidence of periodontal diseases in pan chewers who use tobacco compared with pan chewers who do not use tobacco. Based on the results, it was concluded that, although betel nut has deleterious effects on the periodontium, the addition of tobacco leads to a synergistic effect between betel nut and tobacco on the periodontal tissues.
The targeted therapy gefitinib should be considered a first-line therapy for non-smoking Asian patients with adenocarcinoma of the lung, one of the most common types of lung cancer, suggests a presentation at the 33rd Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) in Stockholm.
Asia has a high proportion of lung cancer patients who are non-smokers, a significant proportion of whom develop a form of cancer known as adenocarcinoma.
"Around 50% to 60% of this population have tumors with mutations in the epidermal growth factor receptor, and we know that patients with such mutations have a significantly better treatment outcome with gefitinib," said researcher Prof. Tony Mok from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
"Currently, gefitinib and other EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors are considered as second line therapy for advanced non-small-cell lung cancers, meaning that the drugs should only be used after cancers fail to respond to the standard cytotoxic chemotherapy."
AstraZeneca's cancer drug Iressa should be considered as a first-line therapy for non-smoking Asian patients who develop a common type of lung cancer, researchers said on Monday.
Iressa was once viewed as a likely blockbuster for AstraZeneca but a 2004 study showed that it only helped a small proportion of lung cancer patients. It is sold mainly in Asia and worldwide sales in the first half totalled $125 million.
Asia has a relatively high number of lung cancer patients who are non-smokers, a significant proportion of whom develop a form of cancer known as adenocarcinoma.
The World Health Organization says health ministers from 11 South and Southeast Asian countries have promised to promote policies to combat the use of tobacco, which claims more than one million lives in the region every year. Anjana Pasricha reports from New Delhi.
The World Health Organization says 500 million young people between the ages of 10 and 24 in South and South East Asian countries are being aggressively targeted by the tobacco industry to make them first-time tobacco users.
Smokers may be giving up cigarettes for other forms of tobacco, such as cigars and roll-your-own brands
The most comprehensive global snapshot ever taken of lung cancer diagnoses and related death rates among patients who have never smoked has found that, contrary to prior indications, lung cancer risk is not on the rise.
The analysis also revealed that the lung cancer death rate among those who have never smoked is higher among men than women.
Both findings stem from an enormous collaborative international effort that draws on information from 13 large studies and 22 cancer registries, and represents upwards of 2 million men and women living in 10 countries across North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
"The great majority of lung cancers are caused by smoking," stressed study author Dr. Michael Thun, head of epidemiological research at the American Cancer Society. . . .
Thun and his colleagues collectively published their observations in the September issue of PloS Medicine.
Their conclusions are based on incident and mortality rates for lung cancer among more than 630,000 and 1.8 million men and women (respectively) who had never smoked, and who had participated in one of 13 different large studies (each involving a minimum of 20,000 participants) conducted in North America, Europe or Asia.
Thus, Africa and Asia are the current target of the tobacco industry.
In the pursuit of this agenda, the industry has employed various strategies and tactics including cigarette smuggling, recruiting of new and young smokers, denying the health consequences of smoking, manipulating governments to delay tobacco control legislations and the sponsoring of health professionals and academic institutions to act in their favour. . . .
Therefore a ban on advertising, promotion and sponsorship of tobacco products is a powerful tool in tobacco control.
Aware of this, the tobacco industry is fiercely confronting directly and indirectly tobacco legislations, a measure which is one sure way of controlling the epidemic in the world, irrespective of the well established health and economic benefits of such restrictions and the support of civil society for such actions.
Indeed, many nations (including most developing countries) have embraced the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), the world’s first public health treaty, but there are more challenges in implementing the policies that will counteract the activities of the tobacco industry. . . .
In Ghana, tobacco consumption is relatively low. Besides, there have been some commendable efforts of tobacco control in Ghana in recent years.
Not until the beginning of the new millennium, there were a lot of huge billboards advertising one brand of tobacco product or another.
There were other tobacco promotional activities such as sponsoring of sporting activities, musical shows and beauty pageants.
The peak of these was the painting of the front views of the then two largest markets in Ghana, Kaneshie and Kejetia markets in Accra and Kumasi respectively, by the British American Tobacco company (BAT). . . .
The tobacco industry is seeing a bright market in the developing world, especially Africa.
It has not given up yet. Increase in tobacco taxation; ban on advertising, promotion and sponsorship; and a counter public education on the health consequences of tobacco use; checking tobacco smuggling and surveillance are some of the measures that can nullify the strategies and tactics of the tobacco industry and consequently help control the tobacco epidemic, particularly in developing countries and in the world at large.
A huge new study conducted in Europe, North America and Asia, based on 2.4 million nonsmokers who had lung cancer, provides new information about just who is at risk.
Male nonsmokers are more likely than female nonsmokers to die of the disease, the study found, and the overall risk to nonsmokers is not increasing.
“Concerns have been raised that the risk was higher in women and that the risk was increasing, but this study counters those two misperceptions,” said Dr. Michael J. Thun, the lead author of the study and the head of epidemiologic research for the American Cancer Society. The study is being published online in PLoS Medicine.
Bangalore (ENI). Pictures on the Internet depicting Jesus smoking a cigarette and holding what appears to be a can of beer have caused repeated trouble for media in Asia in recent months.
Half a billion young Asians are at risk from diseases associated with nicotine, a senior World Health Organisation official said Friday, denouncing advertising directed at teenagers.
"Youngsters are led to believe that certain types of cigarettes do not contain nicotine, when in fact they do," Asia-Pacific director Shigeru Omi said in a statement issued on the eve of the WHO-designated World No Tobacco Day.
He said the tobacco industry's marketing campaign targets half a billion young people in the Western Pacific "into trying their first stick."
Tobacco companies are targeting the half billion young people in the Asia Pacific region by linking smoking to glamorous and attractive lifestyles, the U.N. World Health Organization said Friday.
In a statement marking World No Tobacco Day on Saturday, WHO said the tobacco industry is taking advantage of young people's vulnerability to advertising and influence.
"The bombardment of messages through billboards, newspapers, magazines, radio and television ads, as well as sports and fashion sponsorships and other ploys, are meant to deceive young people into trying their first stick," Shigeru Omi, WHO regional director for the Western Pacific, said in the statement.
Widespread tobacco advertising makes smoking appear normal and makes it hard for young people to understand that it can kill, the statement said.
WHO called on policy-makers to support a total ban on tobacco advertising, sponsorship and promotion as stipulated in the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, a global tobacco control agreement.
ASEAN nations should speedily introduce strong tobacco packaging and labeling laws which have proven effective in spreading the anti-smoking message, Malaysian media reported on Thursday.
This was the message from senior government officials, civil society officials and World Health Organization representatives from the grouping who met in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday.
Joining their appeal were experts from Mongolia and Australia attending a two-day regional workshop on tobacco controls, the New Straits Times said.
The call came at the end of a three-year deadline for the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei and Cambodia to introduce large and effective health warnings on tobacco product packages and comply with the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC).
British American Tobacco (BAT) has been in Africa since 1902. The shareholders at the London meeting had reason to celebrate; the company made a pretax profit of more than $4.5 billion last year. But Action on Smoking and Health, a non-profit group that works to eliminate the harm caused by tobacco, used the opportunity to protest the company's growing presence in Africa.
Group spokesman Martin Dockrell says African countries are experiencing the highest increase in tobacco use among developing countries.
"The shareholders are meeting in London today to count their profits," he said. "They sold 1.1 billion cigarettes in Africa and the Middle East region last year, and we are not so happy because by our calculation that is equivalent to about 100,000 deaths."
Dockrell says since smoking is on the decline in the West due to pressure by organizations like his and the general public's awareness of the health implications of smoking, companies such as BAT have shifted their focus to Africa and Asia with aggressive advertising. . . .
BAT responded with a written statement saying Action on Smoking and Health's facts just do not stand up. It also dismissed the charge it is breaking into emerging markets to dodge regulation, since it has been in those markets for more than 100 years and abides by the laws and regulations of all the countries it operates in.
The company says the health risks associated with smoking are well-known and warnings about the hazard are printed on every single pack of cigarettes it makes whether the law requires it or not.
Not only is it unfair, but it is also intentionally deceptive of the tobacco industry to continue to promote its harmful and lethal products portrayed through "cool", "sexy" or "sophisticated" imagery.
It is about time all Asean governments put an end to all forms of direct and indirect tobacco advertising, promotions and sponsorship, because where tobacco companies are concerned, there is no such thing as "truth in advertising".