Tobacco.org

• DOH head to share Taiwan's experience in anti-smoking drive at WHA  

Department of Health (DOH) Minister Yeh Ching-chuan said Sunday that if he can attend the annual conference of the World Health Assembly (WHA) in May, he will share Taiwan's experiences in fight against smoking with other participating countries.

Yeh made the remarks while attending an event promoting smoke-free taxis ahead of the Jan.11 implementation of the revised Tobacco Hazards Prevention Act that imposes a strict ban on smoking indoors in public places, including on taxis.

Noting that Taiwan is on par with, or even outperform, Singapore, Hong Kong and Scandinavian countries in efforts to establish a smoke-free environment, Yeh said he looks forward to sharing Taiwan's experiences in this regard with other countries at this year's conference of the WHA-- the top decision-making body of the World Health Organization (WHO), a U.N. specialized agency.

Although Taiwan is no longer a WHO member since its expulsion from the United Nations, Taiwan's health minister has since 1997 consistently headed a delegation to Geneva in May when the WHA convenes its annual meeting to convey Taiwan people's desire to have a voice in the WHA. Because of China's opposition, Taiwan's DOH minister usually could only be seated in the WHA conference hall's public gallery.

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China seizes 7.35 bln counterfeit cigarettes in first 11 months  

A total of 7.35 billion counterfeit cigarettes were seized nationwide from January to November in China, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration (STMA) said Tuesday.

Law enforcement agencies raided 2,912 counterfeit cigarette warehouses and rounded up 6,068 people in connection with the false brands, prosecuting 3,056 people, said STMA deputy head Zhang Hui.

He added law enforcement agencies also solved 6,208 cases, each of which involved more than 50,000 yuan (7,309 U.S. dollars). The 7.35 billion counterfeit cigarettes had an estimate street value of 4.1 billion yuan.

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Leading tobacco company accused of undermining China's anti-smoking efforts  

A group of anti-smoking researchers found in formerly secret corporate documents that a leading tobacco company had attempted to divert public attention from the dangers of secondhand smoke, hoping to re-focus China's health policy.

Monique Muggli, a researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota in the United States, and her colleagues published a research article based on her finding on documents from British American Tobacco (BAT). . . .

The Ministry of Health estimated in 2007 that 540 million Chinese were exposed to secondhand smoke, resulting in over 100,000 deaths annually.

"As highly regulated markets continue to result in decreasing profits for transnational tobacco companies, they will look to less regulated markets in low to middle income countries," Dr. Kelley Lee at the London-based Center on Global Change and Health, co-author of the thesis, told Xinhua Friday via an email.

"Other research has demonstrated that the industry has supported a wide range of charitable activities with the purpose of furthering its own interests," Dr. Lee said. "China is the largest cigarette market with more than 350 million smokers, .. (and) transnational tobacco companies are keen to take a larger market share in the future."

BAT was found to have provided funding for a Beijing-based charitable foundation to distract attention away from smoking to non-tobacco-induced liver diseases, among which hepatitis is a major health concern in China. BAT China tried to influence policy-makers to put priority on the No. 1 infectious disease, or hepatitis, in China, the thesis said.

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• Breaking the habit ($$) 

From today, cigarette packets on the mainland are supposed to change radically - with a warning of a specific disease and a picture that leaves the smoker in no doubt about the possible consequence of his choice.

The change is a result of Beijing having signed up to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which came into force on January 1, 2006 and mandated that packaging regulations be implemented after three years.

Mainland China is the world's largest tobacco producer consumer, with 350 million smokers, one-third of the global total. One million people die each year from smoking-related diseases, while 540 million suffer the effects of others' smoking, with 100,000 dying annually from illnesses caused by passive smoking, according to Ministry of Health figures.

Article 11 of the FCTC sets out the rules for the packaging of cigarettes. It provides that packaging must ensure that "the truth of the effects of tobacco use be properly reflected in the packaging and labelling of tobacco products, including the use of picture warnings that even the least literate members of society can readily understand".

It prescribes that 30 per cent to 50 per cent of the main display area be covered with a warning, including a picture.

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Tobacco Company Downplayed Risks in China, Report Says 

An international tobacco company vying for the huge Chinese cigarette market took steps to stall public smoking bans in that country by sowing doubt about the known risks of second-hand smoke and diverting attention to other public health issues, a new report claims.

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• Philip Morris, BAT Sought to Influence Smoking Policy (Update1)  

Two of the world’s biggest tobacco companies tried to undermine anti-smoking efforts in Asia by seeking to influence health policy in China and scientific research in Thailand, according to two new studies.

British American Tobacco Plc, Europe’s largest cigarette maker, helped form the Beijing Liver Foundation “to reprioritize the agenda of the Ministry of Public Health,” one study said, citing company documents. A senior scientist at Philip Morris International Inc., the world’s biggest cigarette maker, gained a “disturbing” and “inappropriate” influence over teaching at a Bangkok research institute, the second study said.

Smoking could kill 1 billion people this century, 10 times more than in the past 100 years, and is “the single most preventable cause of death,” according to the World Health Organization. The two reports, funded by the U.S. National Cancer Institute, show how cigarette makers seek to counter anti-smoking measures by forging ties with policymakers and scientists.

“Such links are of great concern to the public health community, which is working hard to reduce deaths and disease due to tobacco,” said the editors of the journal that published the studies, PLoS Medicine, part of the Public Library of Science.

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• “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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• “Efforts to Reprioritise the Agenda” in China: British American Tobacco's Efforts to Influence Public Policy on Secondhand Smoke in China 

Methods and Findings

To understand company activities in China related to SHS, we analyzed British American Tobacco's (BAT's) internal corporate documents produced in response to litigation against the major cigarette manufacturers to understand company activities in China related to SHS. BAT has carried out an extensive strategy to undermine the health policy agenda on SHS in China by attempting to divert public attention from SHS issues towards liver disease prevention, pushing the so-called "resocialisation of smoking" accommodation principles, and providing "training" for industry, public officials, and the media based on BAT's corporate agenda that SHS is an insignificant contributor to the larger issue of air pollution.

Conclusions

The public health community in China should be aware of the tactics previously used by TTCs, including efforts by the tobacco industry to co-opt prominent Chinese benevolent organizations, when seeking to enact stronger restrictions on smoking in public places.

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• Documents offer look at big tobacco's tactics  

Two studies released Tuesday allege that big tobacco companies tried to undermine anti-smoking policies in Asia by infiltrating a research institute in Thailand and providing funding for one in China.

Public health researchers from the University of Sydney and the University of Edinburgh analyzed internal industry documents made public following litigation in the United States. The researchers claimed that Philip Morris planted a scientist in Chulabhorn Research Institute in Bangkok in a bid to get researchers to play down the impact of secondhand smoking.

A separate study including a Mayo Clinic researcher alleges that British American Tobacco provided funding in China for the Beijing Liver Foundation in a campaign to shift the focus there away from smoking dangers to ailments like liver disease.

Both companies denied the charges presented online in the Public Library of Science Medicine journal. The two studies were partly funded by the National Cancer Institute in the U.S.

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WEIHUA: More guts but no more lip service 

Ask a chain smoker to kick the butt, and in all probability he'll tell you he's tried quitting a hundred times before.

That's one of the reasons I wonder how the Shanghai Municipal Office on Tobacco hopes to pull off its plan to extend the smoking ban from public places to all indoor workplaces. . . .

Just days before the authorities in Shanghai vowed to ban smoking in all indoor workplaces, the State-run Shanghai Tobacco Factory broke ground for an expansion project for its Chung Hwa cigarettes.

Nationwide, some 60 billion yuan ($8.78 billion) will be invested in the tobacco industry over the next few years to boost production, according to the 21st Century Business Herald.

It is just another sign of how our governments are addicted to tobacco taxes and profits, which totaled a whopping 380 billion yuan in 2007.

People are spending an even larger amount trying to get treated for various smoking-related diseases.

Ironically, both are spurring the country's GDP growth, albeit, in a malicious way.

It's heart-aching to see that as we mark 30 years of successful reform and opening-up, we are losing the war on tobacco.

Our country has displayed a lot of courage, taking on tough challenges over the past three decades. Now, it is high time we showed real guts to stub out the cigarette.

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• Economists call for higher tobacco tax 

A new report "Tobacco Tax and Its Potential Influence on China", launched at a press conference in Beijing on December 15, calls for a substantial increase in tobacco taxes in order to cut the number of smokers.

The report's authors are Professor Teh-wei Hu of the University of California at Berkeley, Professor Mao Zhengzhong of Sichuan University, Shi Jian, vice director of the Theoretical Research Institute of the State Administration of Taxation (SAT), and Chen Wendong, also of SAT.

Every year 1 million of China's 350 million smokers die from tobacco-related illnesses and the number is expected to increase to 2 million by 2020. Economic losses from smoking amount to 186 billion yuan every year or 1.9 percent of GDP.

A one-yuan increase in duty on a pack of cigarettes would save 2.7 billion yuan in medical costs. Furthermore with people taking less time off work, 9.92 billion yuan of additional revenue would be produced.

The report says China's 40 percent tobacco tax is much lower than the international standard of 65 percent.

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• China's new tobacco campaign 

China's State Tobacco Monopoly Administration is set to use the redundant labor from the crisis-hit manufacturing industries to expand China's tobacco farming. Up to 1 million workers will be hired.

"We will invest 40 billion yuan ($5.84 billion) for tobacco farmers to increase their acreage by 35 million mu (2.33 million hectares)," said Jiang Chengkang, an official with the national tobacco monopoly.

The weekly newspaper China Business Journal, quoted him as saying that as a reward to the farmers, the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration "will increase the purchasing price for their tobacco leaves by 20 percent."

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财政部回应：以税控烟有空间 

中国控制吸烟协会日前发布的题为《烟草税和其在中国的潜在影响》的报告（以下简称《报告》），引起了广泛关注。昨日，由民间控烟机构新探健康发展研究中心举办的新闻发布会上，与会专家披露了国家财政部和国家烟草专卖局对民间提高中国烟草税等呼声的回应。回应称，我国存在提高烟草税的空间，将按照世界卫生组织控烟框架公约，适时出台更加有效的控烟税收措施。

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中华慈善榜“封杀”烟草乳品行业 

因遭禁烟组织反对，国内6家烟草企业今年全部落选“中华慈善榜”，且从此都将与该榜无缘。此外，乳品行业也只有伊利一家企业独撑大局。此举引发了各界的强烈争议，业内担心一味的“封杀”可能会打击收益丰厚的烟草企业对慈善事业的积极性。

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中外经济学家呼吁提高烟草税 

人民网北京12月15日讯记者苏显龙报道中国控制吸烟协会与《烟草税和其在中国的潜在影响》项目研究小组今天在北京河南大厦召开新闻发布会，会上由美国加州大学柏克利分校胡德伟教授介绍了由其与四川大学毛正中教授、中国税务总局理论研究室副主任石坚和助理研究员陈文东等中外经济学家共同研究并撰写的《烟草税和其在中国的潜在影响》报告。 该报告研究了中国烟草税收的体制，分析了烟草使用造成的医疗等经济和社会负担问题，并借鉴国外经验，对提高烟草税及烟草价格以增加政府收入、减少吸烟危害和医疗负担提出了具体建议。

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