Tobacco.org

HYONG-SAM: Raising cigarette prices 

Even a person who quits smoking and goes mountain trekking for health is tempted at the peak. Smoking a cigarette with a breath of fresh air is really good. . . .

Park Jae-gap, a medical school professor at Seoul National University, launched a group to ban the manufacturing and sale of cigarettes in Korea. He plans academic activities, a petition drive and a constitutional appeal to stop the production and sale of cigarettes because moderate non-smoking campaigns cannot protect people from the "addictive drug." He also petitioned for laws on the production and sale of cigarettes. Opponents say, however, that banning production and sale itself violates smokers' right. The ban will probably not eliminate cigarettes from Korea, not to mention drugs.

The best way to reduce smoking rates is increasing cigarette prices. . . .

The price of a pack of cigarettes in Korea has remained at 2,500 won (2.19 U.S. dollars) since 2005, or just half of that in developed countries. One pack is cheaper than a hamburger. Whenever the health and welfare minister is replaced, a cigarette price increase has been mentioned but ultimately fails due to criticism. Im Chae-min, who took over as health minister last month, said, "Smoking can be discouraged only when the cigarette price is raised to 6,000 won (5.25 dollars) per pack." Smokers might complain that national health insurance takes money away from cigarettes, but smoking-related diseases erode the budget for health insurance.

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IM: Cigarette smugglers from Kosovo arrested 

BELGRADE -- The Serbian police broke up a cigarette smuggling ring from Kosovo to Croatia, Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Ivica Dačić stated on Thursday.

“About 500 cartons of cigarettes with Kosovo stamps intended for the Croatian market were seized in the border area of Vajska," he said.

"Four persons have been arrested, including three citizens of Serbia and one of Croatia," stated Dačić after a press conference at which he awarded a Serbian passport to Red Star footballer Evandro Goebel, originally from Brazil.

According to Dačić, this police operation was yet another proof that "crime knows no borders or administrative lines".

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• EU police raid Kosovo ministry overfor dodgy imports 

European police Thursday raided the offices of the Kosovo finance ministry as well as the customs department as a part of probe into dodgy tobacco imports, a statement said.

Police searched "three offices in the Kosovo customs headquarters and the ministry of economy and finance," the European rule of law mission (EULEX) said in a statement.

It was part of an "ongoing investigation into abuse of official position and authority and misuse of economic authorisations related to the import of tobacco in December 2008," the statement said.

The EU police also raided three private houses in Pristina and interrogated the chief of customs offices and head of the legal department of the ministry, it added.

The EU's police and justice mission in Kosovo, EULEX, which numbers around 2,000 people, has a mandate to try cases that the Kosovo judiciary cannot or will not handle because of their sensitive nature, like war crimes and corruption claims.

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Diplomat smuggled cigarettes from Kosovo 

Austria's customs service have detained a foreign diplomat accredited to Serbia and his driver for cigarette smuggling.

They are suspected of smuggling more than 25,000 cartons of cigarettes worth about EUR 1mn in the past two years, Austrian media have reported.

The cigarettes were seized by the customs in Graz in cooperation with their colleagues from Linz. According to their statements, the diplomat accredited to Serbia was in charge of the smuggling.

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Eve-Ann Prentice obituary  

Her death robs British journalism of a doughty, principled and brave reporter, whose own long fight against cancer always came second to her insistence on pursuing a story to the end. . . .

In one of her last dispatches, in March last year, she wrote an account of her six-hour meeting with him in his prison cell. She had smuggled in two croissants, and Milosevic, courteous but pale and clearly in poor health, offered her in return one of his Davidoff cigarettes. . . .

her fairness, balance and refusal to be a propaganda outlet won her widespread respect: her disappearance after the Nato attack was front-page news.

Eve-Ann Page was born in 1952 . . .

impressing her colleagues with her passion for the plight of farm labourers in tied cottages, her dedication to smoking and her ability to drink a pint of Elgood's bitter in four and a half seconds. . . .

She died of cancer on September 20, 2007, aged 55

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• Kosovo mourns independence hero 

The future of Kosovo hangs in the balance after the death of Ibrahim Rugova, the leader of Kosovo's majority Albanian population.

Talks between the independence-seeking Albanians and the Serbian government were due to open in Vienna on Wednesday under the auspices of the Finnish statesman and UN mediator, Martti Ahtisaari. But the talks have been postponed until next month following Rugova's death. He was due to lead the Kosovan delegation.

Rugova, a chain-smoking, mild-mannered literature scholar who had spearheaded the drive for independence for 20 years, is almost impossible to replace. His death at 61, while expected after he was diagnosed with lung cancer, leaves a vacuum which analysts fear may be filled by more militant figures happy to stir up unrest and hasten Kosovan independence.

Rugova died at his villa in the Kosovo capital, Pristina, a few weeks after predicting that independence would finally arrive this year. Thousands of grieving Kosovans lit candles and laid wreaths of flowers in tribute to the lifelong pacifist.

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• Obituaries in the News: Ibrahim Rugova 

Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova, who epitomized the province's decades-long struggle for independence from Serbia, died Saturday of lung cancer. He was 61. . . .

With his trademark scarf wrapped around his neck, Rugova had gained cult status among some ethnic Albanians. The chain-smoking politician, whose 2002 election made him the province's first president since the United Nations took over Kosovo's administration, was diagnosed with cancer in September.

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Kosovo president has cancer but won't quit 

Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova, linked for decades to the ethnic Albanian majority's anti-Serb struggle, said Monday he has lung cancer, but he pledged to stay in office as the U.N.-run province nears crucial talks on its future.

Rugova, 61, said in a televised speech that he would continue to work toward his lifelong goal of Kosovo's independence from Serbian domination that ended only six years ago, when fighting against Serb troops ended and NATO and United Nations assumed control of the province.

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Kosovo President Says He Has Lung Cancer, Raising Doubt Over Talks 

The president of the United Nations-administered province of Kosovo, Ibrahim Rugova, said yesterday that he was suffering from lung cancer, putting in doubt his participation in negotiations on the future of the region scheduled to begin this fall.

Looking frail, the 61-year-old leader of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority appeared on the three main regional TV stations at midday to announce that he has "localized lung cancer."

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• Kosovo prepares to kick the habit 

The small internationally administered province, a third of the size of Wales and with an estimated population of 1.9 million Albanians and 100,000 Serbs, consumes a conservatively estimated 350 tons of cigarettes per month. . . .

Yet a draft smoking restriction law is sitting with the provinceâ?(TM)s Ministry of Health, one of many steps designed to bring the former Yugoslav province into line with European social practice. . . .

Keen to take its place in the slow, shuffling queue for EU accession, Kosovo’s proposed law would see smoking banned in public places such as schools and hospitals. . . .

Another side-effect of banning cigarette smoking in public places is that if public consumption decreases, then it would make it easier for UN and Kosovo national customs officials to track down the estimated 200 tons of contraband cigarettes passing through the country every month.

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Kosovo Hikes Tobacco Excise 

United Nations administrators have acted to reduce the huge volume of cigarettes smuggled out of the country but the move is unlikely to stop the illicit trade, especially across the porous border to Serbia.

On October 1, the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, UNMIK, raised excise taxes by two-thirds as part of measures designed to combat cigarette smuggling in the Balkans.

Importers will now pay 10 euro for every 1,000 cigarettes they bring into the protectorate. This is the second and final stage of an excise reform which saw excise rates raised from two to six euro on July 1. . .

The smugglers don't seem to be too worried by the changes. "UNMIK is just trying to frighten us, nothing real will happen," IWPR was told by a man who is one of the biggest smugglers in Mitrovica, northern Kosovo. "We will need two or three days to make fake banderols, and if you don't think we have our own people in UNMIK, you are wrong."

Another innovation is that health warnings on cigarettes intended for Kosovo will be in both Albanian and Serbian, which Robertson says will make them "a far less attractive product for Serbian consumers". However, IWPR has seen packs marked in Albanian being sold openly in the Serbian town of Kursumlija, with little negative consumer reaction.

"Dual health warnings will hardly stop cigarette smuggling into Serbia," said Nebojsa Medojevic, economic director at Montenegro's Centre for Transition, "Foreigners would be naive to think that one can stop smuggling with the introduction of a marketing act.

"Cigarette smugglers are very well connected across the region's de facto borders. They have almost reached EU standards in terms of free flow of goods and people in this region. Governments are lacking this level of cooperation."

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STEYN: Cambodians deserve better than the killing fields of tobacco 

Hard to say. But, as a general rule, whenever a great international crisis runs up against an anti-smoking policy, bet on the latter. That's been true ever since Hillary Clinton made Yitzhak Rabin go outside to smoke when he was at the White House for negotiations over the Oslo peace accords. (Mrs Clinton's husband remained in compliance with her smoking policy by keeping his cigar famously unlit.)

A couple of years later, Kosovo refugees arrived at military bases in Canada to discover that, although 98 per cent of Kosovars are smokers, the Canadian Red Cross refused to provide them with cigarettes (a breach of the Geneva Convention far crueller than anything Rummy's doing at Guantánamo). . .

People should be allowed to go about their business? As the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto remarked, try going into a New York gay bar and asking for a cigarette. Male life expectancy in Nanny's antiseptic city is 74.5 years. In Albania, where many of those Kosovar refugees lucky enough to escape Canada wound up, smoking's gone up 20 per cent in recent years . . . Yet life expectancy is 73. The New Yorker lives an extra 1.5 years, but loses all of it sitting in the Holland Tunnel going to New Jersey to buy cheap smokes.

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20 million counterfeit cigarettes destroyed in Kosovo 

Customs agents destroyed 20 million counterfeit Marlboro cigarettes in a crackdown on smuggling and organized crime in Kosovo, an official said Tuesday.

Countries across the Balkans lose millions of dollars in tax revenue annually because of tobacco smuggling, according to official estimates. Fighting the phenomenon has become a top priority.

The cigarettes were smuggled into Kosovo from Serbia and seized last year. A United Nations investigation, conducted with Marlboro maker Philip Morris, found them to be counterfeit, European Union spokeswoman Monique de Groot said.

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Finally: the truth 

In November 1995 Bill Clinton leaned across a desk at an air force base at Dayton, Ohio and handed a Cuban cigar to Slobodan Milosevic. Not much more than three years later Clinton sent bombers to drive the Serb leader out of Kosovo. The two events bookend the grandeur of Milosevic's epic fall from grace and his descent into self-destruction. . . --The Fall of Milosevic continues on Sunday, 7.30pm, BBC2

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UNMIK official describes illegal cigarette factory as "local crime" 

The investigation into the production of illegal cigarettes in Gjilan has produced one suspect - an Albanian citizen - so far, police sources in Gjilan confirmed today.

Detectives are continuing with the investigation, said Roman Ulanovskiy, a media officer of the Gjilan (East) Region. He described the tobacco seizure as being a local economic crime.

To the question of how it was possible for large quantities of tobacco to enter Kosova [Kosovo] undetected by customs, Ulanovskiy said that in the East region there are only two legal crossing points but dozens of illegal ones where goods can enter and this is a big problem.

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