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The head of Iran's Tobacco Company says there are 12 million cigarette smokers across the country bringing tobacco turnover to $3 billion.
“Iranians' consumption of cigarettes has been recorded as 61.2 billion cigarettes per year. The numbers shows a 1.2 percent increase compared to the figures of last year,” Mahmoud Abtahi told Mehr News Agency.
Iran's Tobacco Company's latest figure shows tobacco turnover reached 3 billion dollars.
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(Fortune Small Business) -- Want to plunge into the modern American melting pot? Try the offices of Social Smoke, a hookah manufacturer in Arlington, Texas.
Here a silk Persian rug and a piece of Arabic calligraphy, The 99 Names of Allah, share wall space with a signed photo of a Willie Nelson impersonator. There's a Chinese green tea set in the conference room, and Mom's homemade enchiladas are chilling in the fridge. Abrahim Nadimi, director of sales and marketing, is tapping a bobblehead doll of Dwight from the TV show The Office. "Welcome to the 21st century," he says. No kidding.
Social Smoke is growing gangbusters, and its success says a lot about the new international, cross-cultural landscape of American small business. It is run by Abrahim's father, Sayyid Nadimi, 51, who emigrated from Iran before the 1979 revolution, and his U.S.-born sons.
The Nadimis are tapping into America's deepening love affair with an ancient Middle Eastern tradition: hookah smoking. The company makes "authentic" Iranian and Egyptian hookahs in China, having tried and mostly failed to source them in the Middle East. Yet Sayyid is anxiously watching developments in Iran -- and praying the U.S. government will soon let him sell his product back to his homeland. Social Smoke is one of the largest and fastest-growing suppliers in the international hookah market.
About six and a half billion cigarettes are smuggled into Iran per year, the managing director of the Iranian Tobacco Company said here on Tuesday.
The smuggled cigarettes are mostly "fake" and under the brand of "Marlboro", Mahmoud Abtahi said.
Being a neighbor of the biggest drug producer in the world, the Islamic Republic has also suffered the greatest financial and human losses in its efforts to fight drug trafficking, Abtahi added. . . .
Great numbers of Iranian border control officers have died while defending their country against well-armed traffickers. They lost their lives to prevent drugs from poisoning the world.
The Tobacco Atlas estimates that tobacco use kills some six million people each year -- more than a third of whom will die from cancer -- and drains U.S. $500 billion annually from global economies.
The Iranian government canceled an agreement with R.J. Reynolds Industries the, to make Winston cigarets in Iran. but increased cigaret snuggling there is expected to cushion the sales impact.
Iran canceled the manufacturing license as part of its effort to reduce its dependence on foreign business.
According to published reports. Iran has estimated that its 1977-78 Winston production totaled more than 10 million cigarets.
R.J. Reynolds's stake in Iran is substantial. The tobacco company's 1978 Iranian sales totaled about 195 million and its Ira man tobacco assets, as of Dec. 31. 1978. toWed about $72.8 million. According to its most recent 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. sales in 1978 from all of the company's operations, including transportation and energy. totaled $258 million and related assets totaled $82 million.
Since the Iranian revolution, however. Iran has piled up a substantial debt to R.J. Reynolds.
Secretary of the 11th National Congress on Cardiovascular Update here on Thursday said that Iranians smoke about 60 billion cigarettes each year, lamenting the increasing rate of smoking among the Iranian youth and women.
Speaking at the congress closed today, Mohammad-Reza Mohammad-Hassani said that a total of 80% of heart and vascular diseases can be preventable by planning and informing the society of the major risk factors for the spread of diseases.
Semnan, Iran — A recent study indicates that there is a significant association between cigarette smoking and the development and severity of acne lesions. According to one expert, acne patients who withdraw from cigarette smoking can improve their acne condition.
Whether smoking induces acne remains controversial. However, an increasing number of studies are concluding that cigarette smoking causes a new disease entity called "smoker’s acne."
"It is known that cigarette smoking increases the levels of carbon monoxide within the body, which in turn stimulates the sebaceous glands to produce excessive amounts of sebum.
"This increased production of sebum will inevitably clog the hair follicles, which in turn will cause the erythematous papular and nodular lesions commonly seen in acne patients.
"This increased and continual production of sebum will likely lead to a worsening of the acne condition," says Mohammad Nassaji-Zavareh, M.D., of the department of infectious diseases, Fatemieh Hospital, Semnan University of Medical Sciences, Semnan, Iran.
Smoking in Tehran Municipality’s public places is banned, Tehran Mayor Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf announced here on Sunday.
In a statement issued on the occasion of the World No-Tobacco Day, Tehran Mayor warned of the increase in rate of habitual smokers aged between 13 and 15 in the country.
World No Tobacco Day is observed around the world every year on May 31, and this years’ theme is "Tobacco Health Warnings" in a bid to make people aware of the health risks of tobacco use and convincing them to quit and finally reduce over 5 million yearly deaths from tobacco related health problems, the mayor said.
On physical, psychological, cultural, and financial devastating effects smoking has on the society, Qalibaf said that tobacco is responsible for 90% of lung cancers and “is the major cause of heart diseases.”
Some 17,400 billion rials are spent annually by Iranians on buying cigarettes. Announcing this, head of Tobacco Control Headquarters, Mostafa Ghaffari said at a news conference Tuesday that each year some 52,200 billion rials are spent for treating smoking-related diseases.
Some 50,000 Iranians die of these diseases and unless this is brought under control, the figure will reach 200,000, he warned.
Referring to successful efforts of the headquarters in the field, Ghaffari said that one of the fruitful measures was pricing and levying tax on tobacco.
Tobacco-Free World Award was presented to the head of Iran's Tobacco Control Headquarters, Mostafa Ghaffari by director general of World Health Organization (WHO).
Confirming the news, Ghaffari told IRNA that the headquarters had pursued good activities to fight and control the use of tobacco.
I am surprised that Islami and colleagues did not also collect information on the local habit of chewing the tarry residues from opium smoking, which Professor Thomas Hewer established in the 1970s as the cause of raised rates of oesophageal cancer in the region.1 Opium tar was chewed mainly by those too poor to afford opium itself.
But then this finding got Tom Hewer into considerable hot water with the Shah: perhaps the current regime would be equally antipathetic to such a result?
More than 31 million of the country’s total population are second-hand smokers, head of research center of Iran Anti-Tobacco Association (IATA) said here on Sunday.
Referring to the recent statistics from the Iranian Health Ministry and the World Health organization (WHO), Ali Abdollahinia said, “Over 45% of Iranians are exposed to passive smoking.”
Based on the figures, more than 10 million of Iranians are smokers, who light up over 58 billion cigarettes yearly.
Conclusion Drinking hot tea, a habit common in Golestan province, was strongly associated with a higher risk of oesophageal cancer.
Iran's cafe owners have demanded for hookah rights, Iran's satellite Press TV reported on Wednesday.
"Dozens of cafe owners have staged a demonstration in front of the Iranian parliament (Majlis) to protest against a ban on their activities" to sell hookah to their customers, the report said.
The demonstrators, who were from the Iran's central city of Isfahan, said that their cafes had been closed by authorities despite an official order by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that they could be reopened.
"Police and health authorities in Isfahan are preventing us from doing our jobs despite a presidential order," a demonstrator was quoted by Press TV as saying.
Reportedly, last year, Iran's police forced the cafes around the country to quit selling hookah which was circulated as a part of social health crackdown.
If selling out to Joe Camel were an Olympic event, John McCain would win a gold medal. He hired tobacco lobbyist Charlie Black to be his senior adviser and now opposes FDA regulation of the tobacco industry after years of supporting it. Then McCain joked that cigarette exports to Iran were part of his plot to kill Iranian citizens.
If joining forces with glorified drug pushers is one of McCain's moral values, then I'd hate to see what his immoral values are.