Tobacco.org

• Egypt Attempts to Curb Smoking in Public  

But some doctors and lawmakers here want to change Egypt's smoking culture. The country's parliament recently passed laws banning tobacco advertising and smoking in some public places including government buildings, schools and hospitals.

The law also calls for health warning labels to be put on cigarette packs and allows the government to increase the price of tobacco, according to parliament member Hamdi el-Sayyed, who proposed the new laws. The national cigarette brand, Cleopatra, sells for about 50 cents a pack. . . .

Sherif Omar, parliament member and professor emeritus with Cairo University's National Cancer Institute, also has doubt over the new laws. He said education was the only way to get young people to put down the water pipe and cigarettes, but anti-smoking education is not part of school curriculum here.

''Law by themselves do not work well unless you have education in schools and in the media,'' he said.

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• Women smokers all around 

I had my first real flirtation with cigarettes when I was 18 years old. I recall, while growing up, how I observed older people around me lighting up. Keen and excited, I watched as they took deep puffs, invisibly but enviably passing the smoke down to their lungs. Intrigued, I would stare at the smokers with rapt attention as the smoke streamed out of their nostrils and mouths. And I thought to myself: Wow! Isn’t that cool?

It was not until a couple of years later that I discovered how not-so-cool it all was. . . .

"I don’t want to say society has become more tolerant because, in Mozambique, there are more women my mother’s age who smoke than women of my age," she reveals.

In Mutola’s country, it was much more fashionable to smoke in the 70s than it is today. . . .

Fardos Abdul echoes these sentiments. She says: "In the Koran, smoking is forbidden for any gender. Furthermore, I support those who want the habit of smoking in public to be banned." Smoking women, she observes, paint a bad image of society.

Such harsh anti-smoking sentiments notwithstanding, some women tend to view cigarette smoking as a form of acceptable relaxation following a hard day’s work. Others tend to pick up the habit as a weight-loss measure . . .

It has been publicly said that smoking can lead to infertility in women, especially those who choose to delay conceiving until they are in their 30s or 40s. None of this, however, appears to matter to young women smokers.

As far as they are concerned, the clamouring by regulators and policy makers is nothing but a futile attempt to take away nicotine, their drug of choice.

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• BAT launches regional website 

BRITISH American Tobacco has launched a regional website known as BAT East Africa Community website.

The website, www.bateac.com, launched by the Executive Director of the Uganda Investment Authority, Ms Maggie Kigozi at the Sheraton Kampala Hotel yesterday is aimed at fostering BAT's identity as an East African business and provide information on BAT's operations in East Africa.

BAT East African community is a business unit of the BAT global that previously included Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania but has now expanded to include Rwanda and Burundi and has re-emerged at a time when the governments of the East African states are seeking political integration under the East African Community. . . .

Sheppard said the website is not intended to promote BAT products but to give people an insight into the operations of the company and the tobacco industry in general.

"The key highlights of our website are corporate social responsibility, youth smoking prevention, information on tobacco and cigarettes, and illicit trade in East Africa," he said.

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• BAT loses 1.9 billion annually to smugglers 

BAT East Africa loses Sh1.9 billion to smugglers annually, a Ugandan-based think tank has disclosed.

The Economic Policy Research Centre says that cigarettes top the list of the most smuggled goods across the borders of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and DRC Congo.

"BAT in the East African region loses about Sh1.9 billion annually and assuming the production level was to remain the same and a diversion of 10 per cent takes place, the loss to revenue bodies is estimated to average Sh91.3 million," said Dr Marios Obwona, the center chief executive. . . .

However leaders from the three East African countries have resolved to step up a joint effort to curb rising smuggling activities across common borders.

Speaking after attending a regional workshop on illicit trade organised by the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (Kippra)/ Economic Policy Research Centre-Uganda (EPRC), the leaders said the trade undermined trade expansion.

The more than 100 delegates who attended the event were drawn from regional revenue authorities, enforcement agencies, private sector and civil service.

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• REPORT ON THE HEALTH EFFECTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL TOBACCO SMOKE (ETS) IN THE WORKPLACE (PDF) 

CONCLUSIONS

ETS has many adverse health effects.