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• Greece to ban smoking in public places: ministry 

Greece is to impose a smoking ban in public places, the health ministry announced Wednesday, after previous partial-bans were ignored in what is one of Europe's heaviest smoking nations.

Two previous laws, forcing businesses, bars and restaurants to limit smoking to designated areas, were widely flouted.

The new total ban, which will also include a provision to raise the tobacco-purchasing age to 18, will be presented to the Greek parliament in June.

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Greek Tobacco Growers Protest Against EU Subsidy Cuts - AFP 

Around 1,500 Greek tobacco growers marched in Athens Thursday in an opening protest against European Union subsidy cuts scheduled to kick off similar action around the continent.

The tobacco growers are opposed to a gradual reduction of E.U. subsidies that the bloc decided in a 2004 reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

"The money belongs to those who watered the fields with their sweat for years, " read a banner carried by the protesters who marched on the Greek parliament and blocked the city center for hours.

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Nicotine addiction among physicians in Greece 

Of those who reported smoking as “just a habit”, 30,7 % (23 of 75) scored > 6 on the FTND subscale. Scores FTND>6 indicate “Nicotine Dependance”. There were significant differences on demographic subscales between those presenting with or without nicotine addiction (i.e age, years of smoking and family conditions).

Conclusions

An extrapolation of our results to encompass all physicians in Greece would be reasonable, since physicians are a rather homogeneous group in this country. Our results are especially alarming because anti-smoking campaigns are usually more successful in doctors than in the general population. References

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Smoking, alcohol and coffee consumption in Greek adolescents 

Conclusions

Although the prevalence of smoking and alcohol consumption is lower than other epidemiological data, is still remaining high, indicating the need of the orientation of the local health system to educate and protect the adolescents of these hurtful conventions.

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• Greek tobacco growers protest against EU subsidy cuts 

Around 1,500 Greek tobacco growers marched in Athens on Thursday in an opening protest against European Union subsidy cuts scheduled to kick off similar action around the continent.

The tobacco growers are opposed to a gradual reduction of EU subsidies that the bloc decided in a 2004 reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

"The money belongs to those who watered the fields with their sweat for years," read a banner carried by the protesters who marched on the Greek parliament and blocked the city centre for hours.

"We demand a return to a 100-percent subsidy scheme for our produce," George Doubliotis, a senior member of the Greek tobacco growers federation told AFP.

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• Ban on smoking by 2010 

Greeks, among the heaviest smokers in the world, will be running out of places to light up in a few years as the government moves to adopt European Union guidelines protecting people from passive smoke.

The Health Ministry announced yesterday it will gradually ban smoking in public places, such as cafes and restaurants, by 2010.

The stricter measures, aimed at protecting smokers and non-smokers, have the backing of most Greeks.

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• Smoking after heart attack lifts risk of second  

Young people who continue to smoke after a heart attack are three times more likely to have future heart problems than survivors who kick the habit, Greek researchers said on Saturday.

People who are 35 or younger who keep smoking are far more prone to die from a heart-related event, have a repeat heart attack or need future treatments to clear blocked arteries compared to those who stopped smoking.

The study makes clear that smoking not only promotes a first heart attack, but poses heart risks in younger patients who have survived one, researchers said. The report was presented at the American College of Cardiology meeting in Chicago.

"Patients who have suffered a heart attack very early in life can significantly improve their long-term prognosis by quitting smoking," Dr. Loukianos Rallidis of the University General Hospital Attikon in Greece said in statement.

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• This coming Tuesday, don’t be an April fool, stop smoking 

This April 1, when according to custom we can make April fools of each other, is dedicated to spreading the message that smoking is harmful to one’s health and that these effects begin at an early age – even primary school children are now smoking. According to the Thorax Foundation, founded by Professor Haralambos Roussos, 90 percent of smokers took up the habit in their early teenage years or even in their childhood, so the problem is one of education, both at school and in the home environment. . . .

This Tuesday the foundation is holding an event at the Hotel Grande Bretagne to launch its campaign “Close to Children and Teenagers” and to honor its sponsors for health, education and research. The main aim of the program is to talk to young people in their own language, to get across the message that smoking is not in, but definitely out, that it is not an indication of manhood or sophistication. “Let’s talk to kids in their own language so that they will listen and understand the problem before it is too late,” said Roussos, who will be giving an address at the event. Afterward will follow a presentation of the CD-ROM “Cigarette? No Thanks!” by schoolgirl Theodora Francis and an address by children’s psychologist Katerina Laskaridou on an interdisciplinary center for the prevention of smoking as well as health education for children and teenagers.

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Cigarette smugglers caught at Bulgarian Greek border  

Tens of thousands of cigarettes were seized at the Kulata border crossing between Bulgaria and Greece on January 31.

Nikolai Shoushkov, head of customs at the border crossing, said the cigarettes were found in a car with a Bulgarian registration.

The cigarettes were found in the luggage and in hidden compartments in the car, Focus news agency quoted Shoushkov as saying.

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Bill aims to curb youth smoking 

A Health Ministry bill, to be submitted in Parliament soon, aims to ban the sale of tobacco to minors but does not plan the creation of the �smoke-free� bars and restaurants that have become the norm elsewhere in the European Union.

The draft legislation foresees heavy fines for the sale of tobacco products to minors as well as the strict enforcement of smoking restrictions in closed public spaces, introduced five years ago but barely observed.

State inspectors will be dispatched to conduct spot checks and fine offenders, the ministry's general secretary, Aristides Kalogeropoulos, told Kathimerini yesterday.

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• Belgian artist strikes again with ode to smoking 

In many European capitals and perhaps more so in the United States, a performance glorifying the joys of smoking may have been ill-advised.

But in Athens, one of Europe's last bastions of smoker freedom, the show felt right at home.

'I am a mistake', the latest work by controversial Flemish Belgian visual artist Jan Fabre whose performers chain-smoke on stage as images of female smokers are projected in the background, had its world premiere in a packed Athens Concert Hall on Thursday.

"It is fortunate that this script was first played in Greece where the culture of smoking is ever-present," Fabre told AFP in an interview. . . .

The play has been scored by prominent German composer Wolfgang Rihm whose music is played onstage by an orchestra, while the background images were shot by Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman. . . .

the play was received with timid applause by Thursday's audience in Athens, while there was also coughing in the front rows from the billows of smoke onstage. . . .

'I am a mistake' next travels to Vienna on Saturday, followed by stops in Amsterdam, Birmingham, Luxembourg, Brussels and Cologne for shows in venues operated by the European Concert Hall Organisation (Echo).

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It was designed as a manifesto of sorts from an artist who is himself a heavy smoker ...but the play now seems to have more relevance, with the whole world at war against cigarettes and smokers becoming a little like society's new negroes.
Flemish Belgian visual artist Jan Fabre, on his new work, 'I am a mistake.'

Greek customs officials charged over cigarette scam 

Three Greek customs officials were charged Thursday with helping a cigarette smuggling scam and defrauding the Greek state of an estimated ¤100 million (US$144 million) in lost taxes, authorities said.

The three officials work at the Evzoni border crossing with Macedonia and were all charged with fraud and falsifying and concealing financial documents _ criminal offenses that carry a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison.

They are accused of falsifying papers to allow the tax-free export of 55 container loads of tobacco, cigarette paper and filters bound for Germany and Austria.

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LETTER: Bans on smoking in public places: policy enforcement needed 

Passing laws banning smoking in public places is one matter, but as painfully seen in Greece, enforcing it is another. Declaring the environment smoke-free without proper control mechanisms that will actually deal with violators will lead to implementation of the law merely on paper and not in practice. A total ban on smoking in public places in Greece will also be openly disregarded unless feasible means of regulation are adopted and strictly complied with. Considering Greece's current situation, it is becoming apparent that the missing link in Europe's evolution from a smoky past to a smoke-free future is effective policy enforcement.

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• Greek teens are still lighting up 

Plans to bring in stricter restrictions on selling tobacco to children appear to be timely, as figures released yesterday show that around a quarter of Greek teenagers smoke, despite a slight drop over the last 20 years.

The figures compiled by the University Research Institute for Mental Health show that 38.4 percent of boys aged between 13 and 18 smoked in 1984 but by 2003 this percentage had dropped to 25.4.

There has also been a reduction in the number of girls of the same age group who smoke, but the drop has been much less.

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Tobacco's radiation dose far higher than leaves at Chernobyl 

IF NOTHING else, this should worry smokers: the radiation dose from radium and polonium found naturally in tobacco can be a thousand times more than that from the caesium-137 taken up by the leaves from the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

Constantin Papastefanou from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece measured radioactivity in tobacco leaves from across the country and calculated the average radiation dose that would be received by people smoking 30 cigarettes a day. He found that the dose from natural radionuclides was 251 microsieverts a year, compared with 0.199 from Chernobyl fallout in the leaves (Radiation Protection Dosimetry, vol 123, p 68).

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