Tobacco.org

• Tobacco sponsorship of tennis tournament goes ahead because of weak Swiss legislation, says campaigning group  

A Swiss antismoking campaign group is concerned that weak legislation in the country is being exploited by Imperial Tobacco to sponsor a tennis tournament and promote its brand of cigarettes and other products. The company is the fourth largest tobacco company in the world.

Switzerland is a sanctuary for the tobacco industry, said Pascal Diethelm, director of the antismoking group OxyRomandie, ahead of the Davidoff Swiss indoor tournament, which starts on 31 October as part of the Association of Tennis Professionals World Tour 500. The tournament, which is one of the last tobacco sponsored tennis events in the world, is being used by the company to intensively advertise its Davidoff brand, on court hoardings and the uniforms of line judges and ball girls and boys, said Mr Diethelm.

The last time the tournament was held in Basel in 2008, the "players drowned in an advertising soup for Davidoff," he said.

He added, "At the end of the match the young ball boys and ball girls received a medal from Roger Federer in recognition of having served the cause of Davidoff so well. Each medal bore the Davidoff logo in order to make sure that these potential future smokers will know which cigarette brand to choose when they start smoking."

OxyRomandie is appealing to the federal tribunal, Switzerland’s supreme court, against a ruling from the Independent Complaints Authority for Radio and Television that Swiss television is allowed to show the tournament even though Swiss law bans tobacco advertising on television.

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The Good Life—that is the art of living. A culture of its own that revolves around taking time, perceiving the world with all the senses in order to experience the fine nuances of pleasure.
Davidoff's "The Good Life" campaign. The Davidoff Swiss indoor tennis tournament is under fire.

• New Survey Finds One in Three Sports Fans Smoke, Five Out of Six Smoke While 

A new survey conducted by the American Legacy Foundation(R) (Legacy) finds that the majority (63 percent) of sports fans surveyed are current or former smokers and 76 percent of them have smoked while watching or attending sporting events. The study examines whether sports fans were exposed to secondhand smoke while watching sports; smoked while watching sports at certain venues; or whether those who quit smoking relapsed while watching a game. The survey also examined whether watching sports was a trigger for fans who smoke.

The survey also indicated that 60 percent of sports fans have been exposed to secondhand smoke in the past year while watching or attending sporting events and that 36 percent of sports fans who smoke or used to smoke are extremely or very tempted to smoke while viewing sporting events in their own homes. When the score of the game is close, nearly one third are extremely or very tempted to light up.

Starting this week and through the winter, many smokers will be exposed to new quit smoking messages through the EX(R) national smoking cessation campaign. Legacy, along with the National Alliance for Tobacco Cessation (NATC), announced today that the next round of new ads in its two-year old EX campaign are now being featured during FOX Sports' broadcast of Major League Baseball's American League Championship Series (ALCS) and World Series.

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• Dog gets ill from smoking aunts in ABC's 'Middle' 

One of this year's top comedy's finally has a pet -- and boy, does she have troubles.

ABC's Middle (Wednesday nights at 8:30 ET) has introduced a Basset Hound who developed emphysema after years of living with two chain-smoking elderly aunts.

Frankie, the mom stuck in the "middle" of all the family disasters, takes Doris to her house for a smoke-free environment. Then what? Watch and find out.

Meanwhile, we checked to see if there have been studies done to determine if and how secondhand smoke harms cats and dogs. It doesn't take a health expert to understand the answer is yes.

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• Blu Cigs President Won't Confirm Product in Sex Tape 

In response to a surge of inquiries, blu Cigs president Jason Healy said he will not confirm the speculation by Gawker.com that the mystery cigarette in the Eric Dane/Rebecca Gayheart sex tape which emitted a blue ember but didn't burn was in fact, the company's signature electronic cigarette.

"Our client records are confidential. We respect the privacy of all our clients, not only high profile ones."

Blu Cigs are known for the distinctive blue light that glows when the cigarette is drawn on. They have become popular with smokers in the film, television and music industries as they can be used in indoor no (tobacco) smoking environments such as sound stages and recording studios as there is no ash and the vapor emitted won't bother non-smokers and will not harm sensitive equipment.

Healy adds, "With current and stricter new restrictions coming on the use of traditional cigarettes, blu Cigs provide smokers with a better alternative cigarette experience without the bothersome secondhand smoke."

In response to whether an electronic cigarette such as blu is safe for use in a bathtub, Healy said, "While we would not recommend use in an environment like that, there's no problem if it were dropped in the water. It would have to be dried out sufficiently before using again."

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• Don Hewitt: Helping invent the wheel of TV news  

The ticking stopwatch. Hidden cameras. Ambush journalism. In 36 years, "60 Minutes" has reflected and shaped popular pop culture. Its correspondents, from Mike Wallace to Ed Bradley, are instantly recognizable. It inspired a Saturday Night Live parody starring Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd. In the late '90s, two PBS documentaries, "Smoke in the Eye" (1996) and "Inside the Tobacco Deal" (1998), were made about a "60 Minutes" episode that was delayed and ultimately aired in a watered-down way that left no one happy except perhaps the lawyers who were involved. A 1999 feature film called "The Insider" and starring Russell Crowe further popularized the same episode.

That segment, which has become the show's most infamous, got its start in 1994 when Wallace and producer Lowell Bergman proposed featuring a biochemist named Jeffrey Wigand, a former executive at the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company. Wigand was willing to say on air that his former employers had deceived the public by ignoring evidence of the health hazards of their cigarettes.

Ultimately, Laurence Tisch, then the chairman of the network, and his lawyers did not allow Wigand's segment to be aired. That decision was made as Tisch was attempting to sell CBS to Westinghouse, and it was feared that an expensive lawsuit brought by the tobacco companies would decrease his company's value. The debate over the decision and Hewitt's role in accepting it will probably never end.

As Hewitt described it to me in 2004, he had no choice. "The only way I could have got that broadcast on the air would have been to go out and hire a bunch of guerrillas and take the transmitter at gunpoint," he says.

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• Group urges smoking ban in TV, film 

The Chinese Association on Tobacco Control (CATC) Wednesday called for tobacco-free TV and film screens in China, in an attempt to take the glamour out of smoking, especially for impressionable young people.

Currently, due to a lack of legislation and low awareness, many scenes in TV series and films - including those produced in China and those imported - contain smoking scenes, which has a negative impact on viewers, particularly on minors who are not mature and tend to follow and mirror others, said Xu Guihua, deputy director of CATC, a Beijing-based non-governmental organization.

The conclusion is based on studies jointly commissioned by CATC and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Xu told China Daily.

Of 144 box-office hit movies from 2004 to 2009, 66 of which were imported, about 69 percent contain tobacco-related scenes such as people smoking a cigarette or cigar, with ash tray or lighters in the background, the study found. . . .

Red River, another Chinese film, which premiered in April, has the longest smoking scene this year: 7.6 minutes, according to the study.

More than 76 percent of the Chinese films contain smoking scenes, compared with one-third of imported films, Yang noted. . . .

One actor who was forced to smoke in films is now a volunteer for the anti-tobacco cause.

"I became a smoker at 22 because the director wanted my character, a successful detective, to smoke while thinking over complicated crimes in the film," said Beijing-based actor Feng Yuanzheng, one of CATC's anti-tobacco volunteers.

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• GASPING FOR BREATH: After battling lung disease for six years, Corrie's Liz Dawn terrible legacy of her life-long smoking habit  

When Vera Duckworth, one of Coronation Street's most loved characters, passed away 18 months ago, there was barely a dry eye among the soap's 12.5million viewers.

But for actress Liz Dawn, who played Vera for an astonishing 34 years, it was a significant personal moment - not only because it was the end of the role, but also because she'd been building up to it since being diagnosed six years earlier with the lung disease, emphysema.

The condition leaves sufferers struggling for breath.

'My last years in the Street were increasingly stressful,' Liz says, talking about living with emphysema for the first time. . . .

Concern that others avoid the same problem is why she has agreed to be the celebrity ambassador for the British Lung Foundation (BLF) and is heading the organisation's Love Your Lungs campaign, launched this week.

Its aim is to encourage people with symptoms such as a persistent cough, breathlessness or wheezy chest to ask their doctor for a lung test. . . .

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• Simpsons in smoking scandal  

D'oh! The Simpsons could be encouraging another generation of young people to take up smoking.

One of the most popular television shows in history contains a "large number" of tobacco-related scenes, say researchers who watched 400 episodes of the cartoon for science.

"We recorded 795 instances of smoking or references to smoking," says Dr Guy Eslick, a fellow of the International Union Against Cancer and honorary associate of the University of Sydney's School of Public Health.

"The most notable characters who smoked were Marge Simpson's sisters Patty and Selma, Krusty the Clown and Bart's school teacher Mrs Krabappel."

Dr Eslick assessed the first 18 seasons of the program and found the number of smoking references per season ranged from just over 10 to more than 60.

Smoking was presented in a "positive way" in just two percent of these cases, in a negative way in 35 percent of cases and neutrally in 63 percent. . . .

"Even instances of smoking being reflected in a negative way, particularly among young characters, could have an impact on promoting children to smoke cigarettes," Dr Eslick said.

The study concludes: "Viewing The Simpsons characters smoking may prompt children to consider smoking at an early age".

The research is to be published in the Medical Journal of Australia, and today (Sunday) is World No Tobacco Day.

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• Tobacco Policy Research 

Produced by: University of Kentucky 04/01/2009

Description: Ellen Hahn, professor in the College of Nursing at the University of Kentucky, and her team are conducting tobacco policy research that’s truly having an impact. Hahn’s efforts resulted in the passage of a smoke-free ordinance in all public buildings within Lexington, Kentucky, one of the first cities to do so. Learn about the importance of such policies and the effects they have on the community. . . .

Runtime:00:28:30 . . .

This program will air on ResearchChannel at the following times (GMT-08:00) –

* Wednesday, May 27 1:30 p.m. PT 7:30 p.m. PT

* Thursday, May 28 4:30 a.m. PT 10:30 a.m. PT 4:30 p.m. PT 10:30 p.m. PT

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• Cartoon family get animated on first Irish visit  

In The Name of the Grandfather sees the dysfunctional animated family travel, on a pilgrimage of sorts, to the village of Dunkilderry so Homer can make his ageing father's dream of one last pint in Tom O'Flanagan's bar a reality. . . .

“Something terrible has happened,” Homer laments. “The Irish have become hard-working and sober!”

Mr Brooks said the storyline was inspired by a newspaper article he read last year.

“I read this article in the New York Times about the smoking ban and the fact that the pubs were closing,” he said.

“Irish people were also working so hard and crunching hours to the point that the pubs were suffering.”

As Homer and Grampa attempt to overcome the shock, the one-pint pilgrimage descends into a drinking binge, featuring a cast of beers and a rare cocktail called Bushmills served in a potato floating on a Guinness.

The episode turns when Homer and Grampa wake in the bar the next morning to the news that, thanks to Irish property law, they purchased O’Flanagan’s in their inebriated state. . . .

The tale ends in a courtroom, where Homer tells a judge he ignored the smoking ban in his bar because he wanted to "take Ireland back to the good old days of 'Angela's Ashes'."

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• Soaps criticised over smoking scenes  

Coronation Street and EastEnders have been criticised for failing to show the consequences of smoking.

Anti-smoking campaigners Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) and The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation have claimed that heavy smokers like Weatherfield's Deirdre Barlow (Anne Kirkbride) and Walford's Dot Cotton (June Brown) are sending out the wrong messages to viewers.

ASH's Amanda Sandford has now called on both soaps to introduce lung cancer storylines in order to properly educate fans about the dangers of cigarettes.

"The level of smoking on-screen is a cause for serious concern and a message needs to be sent out to the younger audience regarding the consequences," Sandford told the Daily Star Sunday.

"For Dot and Deirdre to get something like lung cancer would have a massive effect on the audience. The government should be leaning on shows like this."

Meanwhile, the Roy Castle Foundation's chief executive Dr. Rosemary Gillespie has suggested that smoking should be reserved for soap villains only.

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• Today Show and American Legacy Foundation(R) Team Up to Help Smokers Call it Quits 

The American Legacy Foundation is collaborating with NBC's Today Show to help three parents quit smoking and motivate families nationwide to follow their lead. The three-part series launches today and will continue through March.

Throughout the series, viewers will witness the challenges and successes of three parents who are attempting to end their tobacco addictions using three different techniques. Each smoker will create a comprehensive quit plan, seek quit coaching and social support and use medication or other forms of therapy. The three participating smokers are: Kim Clark of Baltimore, MD, Gregory Roberts of Upper Marlboro, MD and John Puglisi of Clifton, NJ.

Currently, 43 million Americans smoke and 70% report wanting to quit. Former smokers have reported making an average of 8-11 quit attempts before they were successful long term.

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• Comparing the effects of entertainment media and tobacco marketing on youth smoking  

Methods: Cross-sectional study of 4524 northern New England adolescents aged 10–14 in 1999 with longitudinal follow-up of 2603 baseline never-smokers. Cross-sectional outcomes included ever tried smoking and higher level of lifetime smoking among 784 experimenters. The longitudinal outcome was onset of smoking among baseline never-smokers two years later. Movie smoking exposure was modelled as four population quartiles, tobacco marketing receptivity included two levels—having a favourite tobacco advert and wanting/owning tobacco promotional items. All analyses controlled for sociodemographics, other social influences, personality characteristics of the adolescent and parenting style.

Results: In the full cross-sectional sample, 17.5% had tried smoking; both exposure to movie smoking and receptivity to tobacco marketing were associated with having tried smoking. Among experimental smokers, the majority (64%) were receptive to tobacco marketing, which had a multivariate association with higher level of lifetime smoking (movie smoking did not). In the longitudinal study 9.5% of baseline never-smokers tried smoking at follow-up. Fewer never-smokers (18.5%) were receptive to tobacco marketing. Movie smoking had a multivariate association with trying smoking (receptivity to tobacco marketing did not).

Conclusions: The results suggest separate roles for entertainment media and tobacco marketing on adolescent smoking. Both exposures deserve equal emphasis from a policy standpoint.

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• Patrick Swayze Talks Cancer Battle & Why He’s Still Smoking 

one thing Patrick hasn’t done yet is kick his habit of smoking.

“I’ve seriously cut down,” Patrick told Barbara. “I was one of those dumb ones that started back in the Marlborough Man days whose — you know, it was cool. I’m a cowboy. But I’ll tell you one thing. I will talk so hard core against, against smoking for kids. That’s one reason I’ve never smoked in front of children.”

When asked if he thought his smoking caused his cancer, Patrick said it may have had an effect.

“Ooh, I don’t know… I will go so far as to say probably smoking had something to do with my pancreatic cancer,” he said.

Patrick said one reason he continues to smoke is to lesson his daily battles.

“I’ve got… priorities,” he said. “It’s just I’ve been dealing with one thing as it comes at time, you know… in the… order that it’s trying to kill me. Will stopping smoking now stop anything, change anything? No. But, when it looks like I may live longer than five minutes, I’ll drop cigarettes like a hot potato.”

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I will go so far as to say probably smoking had something to do with my pancreatic cancer. . . . I’ve been dealing with one thing as it comes at time, you know… in the… order that it’s trying to kill me. Will stopping smoking now stop anything, change anything? No. But, when it looks like I may live longer than five minutes, I’ll drop cigarettes like a hot potato.
Actor Patrick Swayze, on the Barbara Walters special.

• TAIWAN: Media guilty of promoting smoking, research study says 

The media may be guilty of promoting smoking among young people, with many cartoons ranking among the top television programs that show characters smoking, a recent study found.

The study on cigarettes and smoking conducted by the Bureau of Health Promotion monitored various types of television programs, television news, movies, magazines, marketing events and electronic games between July and September. The results showed that cigarette smoking scenes showed up an average of 12.55 times in movies this year. This is 20 to 26 times as much media exposure as in television shows, National Communications Commission commissioner Chung Chi-hui said.

Several movies that have topped box office sales contain scenes with characters smoking, including Cape No. 7, Lust, Caution, Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer, she said.

From 1999 to last year, 171, or 73 percent, of movies and television programming produced by the Walt Disney Company or one of its divisions contained smoking scenes, the study showed.

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