Tobacco.org

• Cancer fear as cigarette prices turn smokers to roll-ups  

SOARING cigarette prices are increasing the risk of cancer as more smokers swap fags for cheaper roll-ups.

The rising cost of ciggies - up again in this month's Budget - has sparked a boom in the sale of hand-rolled tobacco.

Hordes of young revellers, especially women, now consider it trendy to light a roll-up outside bars and clubs.

More than one in four smokers now puffs the DIY way and the number of women smoking roll-ups has risen by almost 10 per cent since 2005.

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• UPDATE 3-BAT buys Scandinavian cigarettes as earnings rise 

British American Tobacco, the world's second-biggest cigarette maker, struck its second deal in a week with the purchase of Skandinavisk Tobakskompagni's (ST) cigarettes for 2 billion pounds ($4 billion) as it beat forecasts with an 11 percent rise in 2007 earnings.

London-based BAT said on Thursday it also planned to cut global costs by 800 million pounds over the five years to 2012, which is more than most analysts had expected, helping boost BAT shares 4 percent to 20.15 pounds before falling back with the market to trade off 0.7 percent at 19.26 by 1345 GMT.

BAT, which agreed to buy Turkey's state-owned cigarette maker Tekel last Friday, is buying 100 percent of the cigarette assets of privately-owned Denmark-based ST with snus and roll-your-own tobacco in an immediately earnings-enhancing deal.

"Good news comes in threes," said analyst Erik Bloomquist at JP Morgan, as the results were above forecasts, BAT planned big cost savings and the ST deal was immediately earnings accretive.

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• BAT to Acquire Most of Denmark's ST for $4.1 Billion (Update3) 

British American Tobacco Plc, the maker of Lucky Strikes, agreed to buy most of Skandinavisk Tobakskompagni A/S for $4.1 billion, gaining 60 percent of the market for cigarettes in Scandinavia.

BAT said today it will pay 20.3 billion Danish kroner for ST units including Prince cigarettes and Fiedler & Lundgren, the Swedish maker of snus powdered tobacco. London-based BAT already owned 32 percent of Soeborg, Denmark-based ST.

The takeover of ST, whose roots date back 258 years, will save BAT 60 million pounds annually by 2011 and give the company a bigger foothold in the $2 billion-plus market for snus. It's the second purchase unveiled by BAT this month, following last week's $1.72 billion bid for Turkey's Tekel. At least $42 billion of tobacco mergers in a year have reduced competition, allowing price increases in a shrinking European cigarette market.

ST gives BAT ``a leading and profitable market share in Scandinavia,'' said Bruce Davidson, an analyst at Blue Oar Securities in London. ``It's almost always better to hold 100 percent of a business than 32 percent. Snus is a useful by- product of the deal.''

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Danish tobacco group sells its cigarette business to British American Tobacco 

enmark-based Scandinavian Tobacco Group said Thursday it has sold its cigarette activities to British American Tobacco PLC, the world's second-largest quoted tobacco group in a €2.7 million (US$4.1 million) deal.

BAT acquired ST's flagship brand Prince and its other products North State, King's Original, Scotsman and Corner Red.

Scandinavian Holding, which controls 65 percent of ST, sold its shares in three companies — House of Prince, J.L. Tiedemanns Tobaksfabrik and Fiedler & Lundgren — to BAT. The companies employ a total of some 2,100 people, of which 730 work in Denmark.

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• Call for roll-up cannabis warning 

Mental health campaigners say that papers used to make hand-rolled cigarettes should carry printed warnings about the dangers of cannabis.

Rethink's efforts have been directed at Imperial Tobacco, which makes the UK's best selling brand, Rizla.

Cannabis has been linked to mental health problems, and Rethink said the messages could help target users. . . .

While both cigarette packets and the packaging for loose rolling tobacco have carried prominent public health warnings for some years, these rules do not currently cover cigarette rolling papers.

However, Jane Harris, Rethink's head of campaigns, accused the makers of Rizla of "being irresponsible". . . .

Amanda Sandford, from the group Action on Smoking and Health, said that she wanted to see health warnings about smoking tobacco on rolling paper packets.

She said: "There are warnings on loose tobacco packets, but once they are opened, we think these don't have the same impact as the messages on cigarette packets."

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Joss Stone Gets Her Smoking Facts Wrong 

British singer Joss Stone shocked guests at a heart disease benefit, by singing the praises of cigarettes.

The star was one of a number of celebrity guests at a New York Fashion Week bash on Saturday to promote U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's (NHLBI) annual Heart Truth awareness campaign. When asked what she did to protect her heart, Stone, 20, revealed she smoked hand-rolled cigarettes - which she wrongly claimed are less harmful than pre-packaged ones.

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EDITORIAL: Low-taxed tobacco 

A pack of five apple-flavored Black & Mild little cigars costs slightly less than a pack of cigarettes. Next month, it will cost a lot less. That's because while Gov. Martin O'Malley and the Maryland General Assembly chose to raise the tax on a pack of cigarettes by one dollar during this fall's special session, they neglected to raise taxes for any other form of tobacco.

It's a glaring omission that needs to be corrected as soon as possible. Cigars, pipe tobacco, snuff and the like raise many of the same health concerns that cigarettes do. . . .

The point of a high tax on cigarettes is not merely to balance the state budget; it's to discourage people from buying them at all. Tobacco use is the single most preventable cause of death and disease in this country. A tax policy that fails to discourage all types of tobacco use demonstrates a disregard for public health.

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Cost and pride lead individuals to roll their own or make their own ($$) 

The roll-your-own (RYO) and make-your-own (MYO) tobacco segment continues to grow in the United States from about 12 million pounds sold in fiscal year 2005 to more than 17 million pounds in fiscal year 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency.

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LETTERS: is it time for the workplace to wipe out cigarette breaks?  

Caleb Ayers, a solid plasterer, was fired after his boss thought he was smoking cannabis on site at Hornby in Christchurch. He was smoking a roll-your-own cigarette.

But is it time for employers to discourage smoking by wiping out cigarette breaks? Is it fair those who smoke to have them while others have to work on?

Here is the latest selection of Your Views:

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• In Gaza Cigarettes are More Expensive than Shrimps  

All of a sudden Gaza has become the most expensive place on earth for tobacco, and today cigarettes are more expensive than shrimps and caviar, Abu Nadi says, while cupping his hand over a match to light his rolled cigarette.

Prices soared after the deposed Hamas government decided to tax cigarettes, resulting in the price of a packet of cigarettes climbing from NIS 100 to NIS 200.

By charging 60 to 70 percent tax on the second packet, cigarettes have become an excellent source of income for Hamas, which has found itself completely isolated in Gaza by Israel and the outside world since taking over the coastal enclave last June. . . .

merchants have placed stands at every corner where they sell packaged cigarettes at insane prices, leaving at least 70% of smokers buying loose tobacco and rolling their own cigarettes.

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Warning to smokers after huge tobacco haul 

Smokers were yesterday warned to be wary of buying poor-quality counterfeit tobacco after customs officers raided a factory' in Glasgow.

A flat in Hill Street was searched and HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) confiscated nearly 170kg of illicit "Golden Virginia" tobacco.

Alongside the haul were wrappers, cellophane and duty stamps aimed at misleading smokers into thinking they were buying genuine hand- rolled tobacco.

AnnMarie Symes, a detective with HMRC Scotland, said: "This was a sophisticated operation with the manufacturers touting tobacco around the city, claiming it was cheap duty free. The reality is that the product was extremely poor quality tobacco with loose tea added to bulk it up. People who produce counterfeit tobacco undercut honest businesses, deprive the UK of funding and con their customers.

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Tax Hike on Cigars, Other Tobacco Products Proposed  

Cigar makers and distributors were stunned to learn legislation to fund an expansion of the federal State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) included a potential 20,000 percent increase in the tax on cigars. . .

said Michael Gold, president of Arango Cigar Company in Northbrook, Illinois, one of the nation's leading sellers of fine cigars and other tobacco products.

"Today the tax is 20.7 percent of the manufacturers' price, with a cap of $48.75 per thousand, or about a nickel a cigar," Gold said. "The House increases the percentage to 44.6 percent, with a cap of $1 per cigar. The Senate version is 53.1 percent and a cap of $3 a cigar. This is on large cigars.

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• Hand-rolled cigarettes more carcinogenic - study  

Smokers of hand-rolled cigarettes tend to consume less tobacco, but face a greater risk of developing lung cancer than those who smoke manufactured cigarettes, a study on Norwegian lung cancer patients has found.

Norway is one of the last Western countries that still use a significant amount of hand-rolled tobacco, amounting to one-third of tobacco sales, according to the study released on Wednesday.

While smokers of hand-rolled cigarettes "consumed (fewer) cigarettes, and statistically had fewer years of smoking, hand-rolled cigarettes were more carcinogenic, resulting in a higher incidence of lung cancer development", the study by Heidi Rolke, of Norway's Sorlandet Hospital, said.

The paper was presented at the World Conference on Lung Cancer in Seoul.

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• Gaza: Smokers fume over rising prices 

Price of cigarettes in Gaza has doubled since Hamas hiked taxes, and smokers aren't pleased. 'If all the smokers vote in the elections, Hamas is going to bite it,' one smoker says . . .

Smokers in Gaza have another reason for concern. The price of cigarettes has soared in the last few months. Why? Because Hamas decided that cigarette taxes would be an excellent source of income for Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh's government.

With cigarettes out of their price range, many smokers are turning to the old standby: Tobacco and rolling papers.

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Roll Yer Own: VPapers Self-Sticking Rolling Papers Take the Lick Out Of Smoking 

Stop licking that blunt, getting your spit all over it and everything, and start using these self-stick VPapers from Sustainable Trading Limited. Apparently creating and patenting these self-sticking rolling papers was not quite as simple as you might think.

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