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Sub-decree orders visual warnings on cigarette packages 

THE Council of Ministers is to make graphic new warning labels on cigarette packages mandatory – part of a plan aimed at combating one of the world’s leading killers.

The visual warning labels will be mandatory on all cigarette packets sold in Cambodia, with the graphics occupying no less than 30 percent of the packaging space, according to a press release from the Council of Ministers, which on Friday adopted a sub-decree ordering the new warnings.

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Indonesia is 'cash cow' for cigarette industry, says SEATCA 

Of South-East Asia's 125 million cigarette smokers some 46 per cent are in Indonesia, the only country in the region that has no legislation banning cigarette advertisements, the South-East Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA) said Monday. The anti-smoking group said Indonesia has become a "cash cow" for Philip Morris International (PMI), the owner of Indonesia's PT HM Sampoerna Company which last year claimed 30 per cent of the Indonesian market and an estimated revenue of 1 billion dollars.

"More profits for Philip Morris means more deaths for us in Asia," SEATCA Senior Policy Advisor Mary Assunta said.

Some 63 per cent of Indonesian men smoke, with an estimated 200,000 dying each year of smoking-related diseases, SEATCA claimed.

SEATCA faulted Indonesia for having the weakest anti-smoking legislation in South-East Asia.

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• Govt targets chewing tobacco 

WHILE the government prepares to tighten its control over cigarettes through new laws on their promotion and labeling, tradition appears to be winning the battle to discourage a different type of tobacco addiction.

"I have never heard that chewing tobacco causes mouth cancer," said Oum Touch, 87, a nun who lives at Wat Lanka who picked up the habit of chewing tobacco from her mother.

Roughly 600,000 women in Cambodia, most middle-aged or older, chew tobacco, while the majority of men prefer to smoke it, according to Dr Yel Daravuth, national officer for the World Health Organisation's Tobacco Free Initiative.

But while most women are aware that smoking is unhealthy, knowledge about the adverse effects of chewing tobacco is still thinly spread.

"Research by the WHO shows that chewing tobacco can cause women to develop lung and mouth cancer," Yel Daravuth said during a workshop earlier this month, calling on the government to initiate education campaigns that warn against the habit.

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Cambodia looks to graphic warnings 

Graphic warning labels will be included on cigarette packs sold in Cambodia starting from next month if the government approves a plan by the Ministry of Health, according to a report in The Phnom Penh Post quoting a government health official.

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• WHO left holding breath for tobacco control law 

Cambodia will not meet a WHO deadline for all cigarette packages sold in the Kingdom to bear graphic health warnings by early 2009 because a law on tobacco control has not yet been passed, says Sung Vinn Tak, head of the tobacco health unit at the National Center for Health Promotion.

The country ratified the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control requiring health warning messages and graphics to appear on cigarette packages in November 2005.

"To try to meet the deadline, we will soon issue a government directive," Sung Vinn Tak said. "We have created the directive to ask all cigarettes companies to comply even though we don't have a law in place yet."

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Cambodia urged to outlaw tobacco ads 

A Cambodian NGO has been honoured by the World Health Organisation for its work on tobacco control. But the WHO also wants Cambodia to honour an obligation to outlaw cigarette ads by 2010.

Presenter: Chhieng Yuth

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• Calls for Cambodia to draft anti-tobacco laws 

An alliance of non-government organisations called the Cambodia Movement for Health are urging the parliament to speed up passage of draft anti-tobacco legislation.

The Mekong Times reports the group is also stressing that stronger tobacco laws won't harm the economy.

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• Lawsuit Limits, General Re, Peregrine in Court News (Update1) 

Japan Tobacco Inc.'s Canadian unit and a former tobacco executive will conclude a hearing tomorrow urging a judge to overturn an order requiring them to stand trial. The company is facing charges it helped defraud the Canadian government of about C$1 billion ($1 billion) in the 1990s by avoiding taxes through cigarette-smuggling operations into the U.S.

The Canadian government has asked Ontario Superior Court Judge Ian Nordheimer at the same hearing to overturn the part of the May 30 ruling and order six other tobacco executives to stand trial.

The case is Regina v. JTI-MacDonald Inc., Ontario Provincial Court (Toronto).

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General Cigar Acquires Havana Honeys Premium Cigar Business 

General Cigar announces today that it has acquired certain assets of Havana Honeys Holdings LLC, a privately-held company that manufactures and markets flavored cigars under the Havana Honeys® brand. Included among the acquired assets are the Havana Honeys trademark as well as inventory and related assets to support the premium cigar segment of Havana Honeys. Terms of the purchase have not been disclosed.

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Illegal cigarette destroyed in Mekong Delta 

More than 71,000 packets of smuggled and counterfeit cigarettes were destroyed Monday in the Mekong Delta province of Long An, the local market management department reports.

With the bust, the total of illegal cigarettes seized this year comes to four million packets nationwide.

Most of the illicit products are under trade name Hero and Jet, smuggled mainly from the neighboring country Cambodia.

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• Tobacco smuggling in 2006 cost nations $40 billion 

The illicit trade in tobacco last year cost governments $40 billion in lost tax revenues and amounted to 10.7 percent of the world trade in cigarettes, experts told a global health conference here Monday.

'Smuggled and counterfeit cigarettes are sold at lower prices than legal products, contributing to higher consumption and greater rates of smoking-related illness and death,' said Luk Joossens, senior policy advisor of the Framework Convention Alliance (FCA), in his opening address to a global conference on tobacco-related issues.

'The illicit tobacco trade also deprives governments of billions of dollars of tax revenue reducing funding available for public health and other programmes,' said Joossens.

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• Tobacco control policy to receive enormous support in Cambodia 

A recent survey by the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) showed that a tobacco control policy will receive enormous support in Cambodia, local media said on Wednesday.

Over 90 percent interviewers supported the government's adoption of a law on tobacco control, according to the survey of a sample of 144 staff members from the ministries of Education, Youth and Sport, Women's Affairs, and Defense across the country.

It also found that more than 96 percent of the respondents wanted a ban on cigarette advertising, reported Cambodian daily newspaper the Koh Santepheap.

The survey aimed to encourage the government to push for an immediate adoption of such a law, reported another Cambodian daily newspaper the Kampuchea Thmey.

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• Over 70,000 Cambodians die of smoking annually 

Cambodia loses 38 million U.S. dollars and over 70,000 lives each year due to cigarette smoking, according to a recent survey jointly conducted by Ministry of Health and World Health Organization.

From 1996 to 2006, 82 percent of rural men, 62 percent of urban dwellers, and 82 percent of youth nationwide were cigarette smokers, said the survey.

Meanwhile, 54 percent of men and seven percent of women in Cambodia were cigarette smokers, it added.

"The danger of cigarette smoking is not as cruel as that of rampant disease like cholera, but it goes into our body slowly, destroys our health and finally leads to death," Lim Thai Pheang, president of the Institute of Public Health of Cambodia, was quoted by local media as saying.

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• Panel: Smoking Ban Hurts Casino Revenue  

Smoking bans are snuffing out casino revenue, but more marketing and investment can lure customers back, a panel of experts told a gambling conference.

Since the Canadian province of Ontario imposed a smoking ban in public places in May, casinos along the border with the United States have suffered a revenue drop of 10 percent to more than 20 percent, said Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. vice president Karl Gagesch.

"Short-term pain," Gagesch told the conference Tuesday. "Long term, we think we're going to be OK."

The largest impact has been at Casino Windsor, which laid off more than 300 employees over the summer as American smokers stayed in Michigan and New York to gamble, he said. Visitation was also hurt by a strong Canadian dollar and tougher border security, he said. . . .

A similar smoking ban at three racinos, or race tracks that also offer slot machines, in Delaware also had a negative impact, with slot machine revenue down 10 percent to 19 percent since the ban was imposed in 2002, said Richard Thalheimer, an economist and president Thalheimer Research Associates.

Slot revenue has since rebounded, he noted, mainly because of the introduction of more slot machines.

Karen Blumenfeld, a member of the New Jersey Group Against Smoking Pollution (GASP), heralded the panel's openness to adapting to a wave of anti-smoking legislation sweeping the country.

"It's not the gloom and doom," she said. "I'm very relieved that the industry is now embracing these changes."

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Anti-smoking ads blow by auditor, irk Tories 

The Dalton McGuinty Liberals have channelled millions of taxpayer dollars into the Heart and Stroke Foundation's media campaigns which endorse the government's own smoking law.

The $3.17-million "Smoke-Free Ontario" campaigns were completely financed by provincial taxpayers, but were exempted from Liberal legislation requiring government advertising be vetted by the provincial auditor to avoid partisan messaging.

The ads -- which featured the tagline, "A Smoke-Free Ontario. It's about health. It's about time." -- ran throughout the period when the Liberal government's Smoke-Free Ontario Act was coming into effect this spring.

Conservative Leader John Tory said the Liberal government was clearly searching for a "back door" to get around its own ban on partisan government advertising.

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