Tobacco.org

• Edinburgh University students stub out plan to ban cigarettes sales on campus 

STUDENTS at Edinburgh University have voted to keep cigarettes on sale on campus.

A motion was put before the annual general meeting of Edinburgh University Students Association which would have stopped EUSA shops from selling cigarettes and remove all cigarette machines on campus.

The motion, put forward by a fourth year medical student, argued that EUSA should not profit from, promote or help facilitate smoking. It would also have required the students association to promote services which provide support and advice to students who wished to give up smoking.

More than 700 students turned out for the AGM – the largest number for several years – filling the university's George Square lecture theatre and forcing organisers to set up a video link to another venue.

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• 16th Asian Games to be tobacco-free 

The 16th Asian Games, part of the worldwide Olympic movement and governed by the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA), will be “going smokeless” with firm prohibitions on the sale of tobacco products and tobacco sponsorship of the Games.

The Asian Games are the second largest sports event in the world after the Summer Olympic Games.

Governed by the Olympic Council of Asia, the 16th Asian Games follows all mandates of the International Olympic Committee in which Games’ organizers are prohibited from accepting sponsorship of the Games by tobacco manufactures.

Organizers are also prohibited from allowing the sale of cigarettes or tobacco products at any athletic venue.

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• KRASOVSKY: Does tobacco industry need to be saved? 

Tobacco tax increases are the most effective way to encourage people to stop smoking.

Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko, citing concern for the tobacco industry, on Nov. 11 vetoed legislation that would have hiked the excise tax on tobacco products once more.

It is worth remembering that - even though tobacco excise taxes were increased in September 2008, and again in February and May of this year - cigarette prices in Ukraine remain among the lowest in Europe. This leads directly to a public health catastrophe for the nation and creates conditions for rampant smuggling of made-in-Ukraine cigarettes to other nations. . . .

However, tobacco companies in Ukraine claimed that this tax increase would have been disastrous for their business. . . .

Transnational tobacco companies came to Ukraine in 1993. They promised employment, investment and revenue. Now they control 99 percent of the tobacco production in Ukraine. In 1992, Ukraine produced 9,000 tons of tobacco leaves. However, despite huge increases in cigarette production, tobacco growing has almost disappeared in the country. In 1996-2008, the foreign trade balance of tobacco leaves and products was negative for Ukraine and totaled more than $2 billion. It actually means that Ukrainian smokers invested $2 billion in the economies of other nations.

What tobacco companies actually produce is death. . . .

Many politicians in Ukraine already understand that high tobacco taxes are good both for public health and public revenues. I hope that the current and future president of Ukraine will understand this as well.

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• CABE: Going up without the smoke 

Need a nicotine hit? Want to beat the smoking ban? A smokeless cigarette could be the answer, for the long - or short - haul. Just be prepared for some funny looks, writes ROSEMARY Mac CABE . . .

Ryanair now sells the other most popular type, in the form of Similar smokeless cigarettes.

Ryanair's head of communications, Stephen McNamara, says the product was introduced due to customer demand. "Some passengers can find it stressful to spend long journeys without a cigarette so we introduced the product based on customer feedback and to cater to passenger demand. It seemed a logical step to introduce a product that could provide smokers with relief from nicotine withdrawal. . . .

I spent a day with Ryanair's Similar branded smokeless cigarettes: a packet of 10, purchased for €6 on board a Ryanair flight, to see how it feels to smoke on the right side of the law.

The first thing I notice is that they smell, to all intents and purposes, like what one's mother might call "sucky sweets" - irrefutably better than mainstream cigarettes, albeit slightly strange. They feel like real cigarettes and, crucially, they look like them. . . .

Smoking a cigarette that looks like a cigarette, acts like a cigarette but neither tastes nor feels like a cigarette (while giving you more nicotine than a cigarette) seems an odd choice.

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• UPDATE 2-Lorillard starts CEO succession review  

Lorillard Inc (LO.N) had begun reviewing options for succession to CEO Martin Orlowsky, whose contract expires on Dec. 31, 2010, the third-largest U.S. cigarette maker said on Thursday .

The board will weigh "all relevant options," the company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

A spokeswoman for Lorillard declined to comment further on the succession options.

Orlowsky, 67, has been president and chief executive since 1999 and became chairman in 2001. Lorillard was spun off from Loews Corp (L.N) in June 2008.

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• Gristedes chief still on warpath on cheap Indian cigarettes 

The freshly remodeled Gristedes supermarket on 25 University Place has expanded its space, adding new sections for beer, hot food, a salad bar, bakery and organic products, all looking like crowd-pleasers beneath Thanksgiving decorations strung above the aisles.

But cigarettes are no longer on sale here -- seemingly a sign of the times in this upscale Greenwich Village neighborhood near New York University.

"We haven't had them for some time now," said an assistant manager who identified himself only as Thomas. He noted that cigarettes are available at other Gristedes stores in New York (about 20 still carry them), even though he believes the demand is down. The main reason for the decline in tobacco sales, another Gristedes manager said, is that "people know where they can get them elsewhere" for half the price that conventional retailers in New York charge -- upward of $95 per carton, with $4.25 in state and city taxes tacked on.

He was alluding to untaxed tobacco sold on Indian reservations, a subject that has bedeviled convenience-store operators and New York governors from Cuomo to Paterson.

Led by its Greek-born owner and C.E.O., John Catsimatidis, a longtime New York City mayoral wannabe who smokes an occasional cigar, Gristedes Foods Inc. has claimed in protracted litigation that Indian merchants on two Eastern Long Island reservations are luring away New York customers, and even helping to fund organized crime gangs and terrorist groups like Hezbollah with bulk sales, a charge some politicians dismiss as absurd but others solemnly repeat. . . .

Since he cares so much about health, why does he sell any cigarettes at his grocery stores?

"There is such a thing as freedom of choice," the mogul replied. "I lecture my wife, who smokes, and tell her, Why don't you just have one or two instead of more? It's like what the Greek philosophers say: Everything in moderation."

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• Philip Morris USA Sues Retailers to Stop Counterfeit Cigarette Sales  

Philip Morris USA (PM USA) filed lawsuits against ten retailers selling counterfeit versions of the company's Marlboro� brand cigarettes in New York and New Jersey.

"The New York metropolitan area continues to be a lucrative market for counterfeit and contraband cigarette smugglers," said Joe Murillo, vice president and associate general counsel, Altria Client Services, speaking on behalf of PM USA. "High excise taxes, coupled with New York state's lack of effective tax enforcement, only makes the problem worse," added Murillo.

"These lawsuits are the latest in a series of filings by Philip Morris USA aimed at combating the sale of counterfeit cigarettes in New York and New Jersey," said Murillo. Since May 2009, Philip Morris has filed lawsuits against 27 retail locations in New York and New Jersey for selling counterfeit Marlboro� brand cigarettes

In addition to violating many trademark laws, counterfeit cigarettes are almost always sold without the appropriate federal and state excise tax. The counterfeit cigarettes purchased from the retailers named in today's suits bore no tax stamp or a counterfeit tax stamp. As a result, the applicable excise taxes were not paid. . . .

Eastern District of New York

Maria’s Deli Grocery 143-20 101 Avenue, Richmond Hills, NY 11419

Loveras Grocery 996 Nostrand Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11225

Southern District of New York

Aloshe Mini Market 1889 Guerlain Street, Bronx, NY 10461

El Barrio Grocery Deli 39 West 183rd Street, Bronx, NY 10453

Fernandez Grocery Corp. 1665 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10029

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• Internet Cigarette Sales--an Illegal Rip-off of Our Nation / It's Time for the Feds to Act! (PDF) 

• Intent on determining whether progress has been made in curbing the illegal Internet sale of tobacco products, an American Wholesale Marketers Association (AWMA) researcher selected 27 Internet sites at random and purchased 22 cartons of cigarettes using a Visa card and a prepaid Visa card. Of the 27 random sites selected using the Internet search engine Google, 74% allowed the use of a credit card—Visa, Diners Club, MasterCard, and/or American Express.

• None of the cigarettes purchased carried U.S. state tax stamps, and in no case were taxes collected at the time of purchase.

• The American Wholesale Marketers Association will notify proper state authorities of the purchases and pay the appropriate amount of tax to comply with the law.

• Age verification was virtually nonexistent. Most sites simply had a statement on the home page, or hidden in a disclaimer or under Frequently Asked Questions, stating that a purchaser must be a certain age to buy cigarettes. Some asked for a simple check-off that the buyer was over 18.

• This study clearly demonstrates that efforts to restrict illegal cigarette sales via the Internet are ineffective, that billions of dollars in taxes are going uncollected, and that legitimate sellers of tobacco products in the U.S. face unfair competition from unscrupulous online purveyors who are scoffing at U.S. laws and tax requirements.

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• Clearing air on cigarette ads  

There seem to be two Dr. Alan Blums.

One is a tweedy academic — the family medicine professor and director of the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society at the University of Alabama who has devoted his dead-serious career to the prevention of tobacco-induced illnesses.

The other is the self-described “Bart Simpson of the anti-smoking movement” — the alter ago who donned a fake pharmacist’s lab coat Wednesday to help set up “Your Cancer and Drug Store,” an exhibition on tobacco advertising that opens today in the Buffalo Museum of Science. . . .

The approach reflects a lesson learned in 1977 when Blum, then a Miami hospital intern and nascent anti-smoking crusader, lost a contentious radio talk show debate with a tobacco industry spokesman while the host, Larry King, blew smoke in Blum’s face.

Ever since, “I’ve tried to bring some humor and satire to a depressing issue that many people take very seriously,” Blum said. The strategy has included “house calls” to tobacco festivals and “anything else we could do to ridicule the brand names.”

Satirical references abound in “Your Cancer and Drug Store,” which was gleaned from a trove of tobacco advertising and promotional materials that Blum started collecting 15 years ago and now fills 2,500 boxes in his Alabama center.

He started by buying items distributed by cigarette companies that a Connecticut store owner had accumulated over two decades. “He must’ve thought it had collectible value, but it cost more to ship it [to Alabama] than I paid for it,” Blum said.

From the outset his goal was to mount an exhibition that underscored the everyday irony of seeing tobacco products on the shelves of pharmacies that dispense drugs prescribed to combat cancer, heart disease, hypertension and other diseases linked to smoking.

“I wanted to do an over-the-top, walk-through exhibit,” he said, citing the role that drugstores have played in keeping America smoking. “I’m not going after individual pharmacies as much as the chains that own them.” . . .

By touring “Your Cancer and Drug Store,” he said, “you are looking at origins of cancer just as much as you would by looking through a microscope.”

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I wanted to do an over-the-top, walk-through exhibit. I’m not going after individual pharmacies as much as the chains that own them.
Prof. Alan Blum, on his Buffalo, NY, ad exhibit that explores the role that drugstores have played in keeping America smoking.

Your Cancer and Drug Store: One-stop shopping: prescriptions, cigarettes, urgent care and chemo.
Alan Blum's mock-drug store: an exhibition on tobacco advertising that opens today in the Buffalo Museum of Science.

• Market Watch: Cigarette Trade Changing In Central America 

Now, more than ever, Central America is an ever-changing field of opportunities and obstacles. John Parker profiles the region and goes through the numbers market by market.

The combination of rising income, more influence of free trade policies, multinational business connections, and smokers seeking higher quality brands contributed to greater cigarette imports by countries in Central America in 2008. Estimated cigarette imports for countries in Central America in 2008 rose to about 11 bn pieces. That is an estimate for total imports tabulated by adding data for each of the seven countries. The net regional imports would be about half of that because of large shipments to other countries in Central America by Honduras and Guatemala. BAT and subsidiaries account for most of the cigarette output in Central America.

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• CORCORAN: Ottawa's fruit-flavoured tobacco bomb 

The result was Bill C-32, officially titled The Cracking Down on Tobacco Marketing Aimed at Youth Act -- a misnomer if ever there was one. Today, a year later, what Mr. Harper's Conservatives have delivered instead is an over-the-top law that threatens a global trade war and another bonanza for Canada's already out-of-control contraband cigarette market.

The trade-war potential gathered momentum earlier this month when, according to Inside US Trade, the United States joined Argentina, Mexico, Switzerland, the European Union and other nations in opposition to Ottawa's new anti-bubble-gum tobacco law. At a meeting in Geneva, the nations said Canada's law would restrict trade in regular tobacco products to the benefit of Canadian tobacco producers.

The more immediate impact of the law, however, is a ban on the sale in Canada of virtually all brands of U.S. cigarettes. Guess where that leads? The logical result of a ban on legal imports of Marlboros and Winstons is new demand for illegal supplies through the burgeoning Native-dominated contraband market, a tax-evading multi-billion-dollar industry that already accounts for between 33% to 50% of the Canadian cigarette market. . . .

While this may look like another case of unintended consequences run amok, it more likely is part of deliberate scheming by Health Canada officials and others who are consciously using fruit-flavoured smokes to create a global tobacco trade bomb against the U.S. and tobacco industries in Europe, South America and Asia. . . .

Still, Bill C-32 became law, even though Senator Segal abstained over the trade issue. As a result, Mr. Harper's opportunistic election gimmick, aimed at curbing the use of flavoured tobacco to children, will do nothing to protect children. By further enhancing the power and scope of the contraband market, it will only increase the supply of illegal cigarettes, a prime source of tobacco to the young. At the same time, the government has launched a protectionist scheme that threatens a trade conflict.

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• Organizations Call on U.S. Senate to Pass Legislation Preventing Tax-Evading 

Representatives of law enforcement groups, public health organizations and trade associations today gathered on Capitol Hill to urge the Senate to pass S. 1147, the Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking Act of 2009 (PACT Act). This legislation will help combat online cigarette sales that have robbed hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues from the states and that undermine state laws that prevent youth access to tobacco products. This bill closes gaps in current federal laws regulating "remote" or "delivery" sales of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products.

These organizations were joined by Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI) and Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), advocates of combating illegal cigarette sales. Numerous stakeholders have worked with Sen. Kohl through the years to pass the PACT Act, which was passed in the House of Representatives this May.

"The PACT Act will strengthen our tobacco laws to ensure that law enforcement has the tools they need to investigate and prosecute cigarette traffickers, said Sen. Kohl. "Each day we delay its passage, terrorists and criminals raise more money, states lose significant amounts of tax revenue, and kids have easy access to tobacco products sold over the internet."

"We must crack down on the illegal sale of tobacco, which gives terrorists and criminals the ability to raise more money," said Rep. Weiner. " . . .

Organizations represented at the press conference included the National Association of Convenience Stores, American Wholesale Marketers Association, National Black Police Association Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids and American Legislative Exchange Council.

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• Physicians Urge FDA to Justify Condemnation of E-Cigarettes 

"We urge FDA to make public the laboratory data behind the July 22 condemnation of electronic cigarettes, along with comparable data on pharmaceutical nicotine products and conventional cigarettes. Then, on the basis of these data, either fully justify or retract the July 22 condemnation of electronic cigarettes," says Joel L. Nitzkin, Chair of the American Association of Public Health Physicians Tobacco Control Task Force in a letter to the FDA.

The letter specifically targets the new tobacco legislation that passed through Congress this summer which gives the FDA power to regulate tobacco products in the United States and notes that the success rate of current smokers who attempt to quit by using pharmaceutical aids is as low as 5%. Making smokers more aware of less harmful alternatives, snus and e-cigarettes included, could significantly reduce the amount of smokers who die due to tobacco-related illnesses.

"Contrary to prevailing conventional wisdom, virtually all the heart and lung disease from conventional cigarettes, and an estimated 98% of the cancer mortality, are due to direct inhalation of fresh products of combustion deep into the lung. Our best estimate (based on the work of Pankow et al and others) is that only about 2% of the cancer mortality from cigarettes is from the named carcinogens commonly found in tobacco products," says the letter. The FDA's study in July found miniscule amounts of carcinogens in a few e-cigarette cartridges, but failed to provide any data on the amount of those same carcinogens in pharmaceutical nicotine products.

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• Court rules against tobacco shop 

Customers are still rolling their own smokes at Tobacco Haven, despite a superior court ruling Monday that says the Brookline shop is a cigarette manufacturer that hasn’t been paying either the mandatory Tobacco Settlement tax, or making escrow payments.

Merrimack County Superior Court Judge Larry Smukler issued a temporary injunction against Tobacco Haven on Monday, ordering the shop on Route 13 to either ensure that its supplier has paid the required tax or escrow payment, pay itself, or stop operating its two high-speed cigarette-rolling machines.

The machines take loose tobacco and roll 200 cigarettes in a matter of minutes. A carton costs $25.99, while cartons of many name brand cigarettes can cost twice as much. Customers have flocked to the store, often lining up to use the machines.

What’s at stake here is a lot more than where people can buy cheap smokes. The state filed suit against the company in August because New Hampshire stood to lose about $50 million in tobacco settlement money.

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• Cigarette sales plunge since Florida's tax increase 

Cigarette sales have fallen sharply across Florida since a $1-a-pack tax increase took effect July 1, plunging nearly 50 percent in some counties.

Statewide, cigarette sales that regularly topped 100 million packs per month dropped to 73 million packs the month the tax became law. Since then, sales have inched back to around 78 million packs but remain well below prior levels.

To supporters, the sagging sales are evidence that the tax is meeting its public health objective: getting smokers to quit. Critics, however, say many people are simply buying their cigarettes elsewhere or switching to items that aren't subject to the higher tax, like small cigars.

The state charge on cigarettes is now $1.34, compared with the 34-cent tax that had been in place since 1990.

"It's working exactly the way it was designed to work. People are quitting," said

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