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Laos government officials have launched a smoke-free Vientiane to help address health and environmental concerns in the lead-up to the 25th Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in December.
Vientiane Vice-Mayor Somvandy Nathavong said the new initiative will target local businesses and people, in particular students and teenagers. . . .
The Vientiane Administration office worked in conjunction with the ministry of public health to organise the ceremony, which was supported by the World Health Organisation (WHO), Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) Laos, Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance and Lao-Vietnam Insurance company in Vientiane.
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Laos would soon make lighting up more difficult with a ban on smoking in restaurants and inside public buildings, Radio Laos said Thursday. No date was set for implementing the ban in nearly all public places, but it would be soon, the state-run radio station said in a broadcast monitored in Bangkok.
Smoking is common among Laos' 6 million-plus people with both locally made cigarettes and imports available.
The Lao Government is planning to raise the tax on cigarettes and it is aimed at getting more people to kick the smoking habit and this was said by the Deputy Minister of Public Health, Bounkuang Phichit.
This plan was disclosed at a meeting to discuss the results of a study on the income derived from the levy on cigarettes in Vientiane on 28 November.
According to its findings the government did derive benefits from the taxation on cigarettes, albeit minimal and the main beneficiaries are the owners of cigarette companies.
Moves are afoot to ban cigarette smoking among Buddhist monks in Thailand and provide them with advice on how to kick the habit, following a three-nation seminar on Buddhism and tobacco control which concluded that tobacco was an addictive substance and thus violated the five core Buddhist principles.
The 2nd Seminar on Buddhism and the Control of Tobacco Consumption ratified the resolution of the 1st seminar, held in 2003, which described tobacco as an addictive substance harmful to health. Tobacco, according to the seminar, not only had a negative effect on personal health, the economy and society, but also ran counter to the five core principles which every Buddhist, whether monk or layperson, should follow.
Reporting on the seminar, Dr. Naowarat Charoenkha, assistant dean for international relations and training from Mahidol University's Faculty of Public Health, said that this would necessitate a programme to encourage monks and prospective ordinands to break their cigarette habit, as well as a drive to make temples into tobacco-free zones.
According to a year-long study of smoking among Thai monks, conducted by researchers from Mahidol and Rangist universities, found that 24.4 percent of monks and novices across the country were smokers. This figure concealed huge regional disparities, rising as high as 40.5 percent in the eastern and central regions, while dropping to only 14.6 percent in the north.
A recent study in Cambodia, meanwhile, suggested that 36 percent of its monks are smokers. Although no clear evidence on smoking among monks has yet emerged from Laos, the Laotian delegates to the seminar emerged equally committed to the idea of tobacco control.
January 29, 2003 11:44pm
01/27/2003
A LARGE seizure of smuggled cigarettes, this time in Danang, has drawn the nation's attention back to an issue which has local tobacco firms fuming.
Five 40-foot containers containing $640,000-worth of Jet cigarettes were busted at the province's Tien Sa Port by Economic Police and Danang Customs two weeks ago.
Shipper Hoang Dai Trading stated it had temporarily imported the cigarettes from Laos before exporting them to a third country, and so it was not required to pay duties.
The plot thickened when National Office of Industrial Property (NOIP) investigators found the cigarettes were actually imitations
Dr. Linda Hyder Ferry of Yucaipa, a physician who works at the Loma Linda University School of Medicine and School of Public Health, has been awarded a major grant by the National Institutes of Health in Washington, D.C.
Ferry, a preventive medicine and family practice physician who specializes in treatment of tobacco addiction at the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Loma Linda, was one of 11 principal investigators selected for the first International Tobacco and Health Research Capacity Building Program awards by the Fogarty International Center and eight partners of the National Institutes of Health.
The grants were awarded "to combat the growing incidence of tobacco-caused illnesses and death in the developing world," according to the official NIH announcement. The "Asian Leadership Tobacco Control" project of LLU will train more than 30 health professionals in Southeast Asia to conduct research and implement government tobacco-control strategies to prevent thousands of tobacco-related deaths. . .
The Pacific Rim nations of Cambodia and Laos will be the direct recipients of the grant
Six Vietnamese customs officers have been badly injured in a clash with hundreds of smugglers, who forced through a convoy of contraband goods from neighbouring Laos.
A state-run Vietnamese newspaper Nhan Dan said the incident happened at a major border crossing in the mountains of the northern province of Ha Tinh.
The newspaper said the customs officers had been tipped off by the Lao authorities about the convoy of 50 trucks, but were overwhelmed by several hundred people, who attacked them with knives, sticks and stones.
The BBC Hanoi correspondent says illegal smuggling of cigarettes, drugs and consumer goods is a serious problem for the Vietnamese authoritie
A delegation of south China's Hainan Provincial Tobacco Corporation (or Provincial Tobacco Monopoly Administration) led by deputy general manager Yang Ming conducted a week-long visit in Laos recently to explore ways of business development in the country.
Accompanied by Cao Xianhui, general manager of the Chinese-funded Lao Liaozhong Fortune Co., Yang met with Laotian Prime Minister Boungnang Vorachit and other senior Lao government officials, including ministers of industry and finance, to discuss issues of business development and investment.
In talks with Prime Minister Boungnang, Yang briefed him on Hainan Provincial Tobacco Corporation's business cooperation with Yuxi Hongta Group - China's No. 1 tobacco producer - and the production and operation of Lao Liaozhong Fortune Co.
Yang further expressed the sincerity of the Chinese side to continue cooperation with the Laotian side in the joint venture.
Laotian deputy premier Thongloun Sisoulith led a government delegation to visit Yuxi Hongta Group in southwest China's Yunnan Province on November 9.
Hongta Group board chairman and president, Zi Guorui, accompanied Sisoulith and his delegation in visiting the tobacco cutting and cigarette making lines at Production Department No. 2 of Hongta Group.
During the visit, Zi briefed Sisoulith on the production and operation of Hongta Group, saying that Mount Hongta of Yuxi Hongta Group is the No. 1 cigarette brand of China, which is now valued at 43.9 billion yuan (5.29 billion U.S. dollars).
A 6-year-old boy with a cigarette dipping from his bottom lip lolls out a window. Below, girls huddle around a smoldering bamboo pipe, grasping it like a prized toy and taking turns to inhale sugar-laced tobacco smoke.
At Ban Kan Don village, in the southern province of Sekong, almost every child old enough to walk has a nicotine habit. Small boys wander barefoot with cigarettes wedged between tiny fingers. Hacking smokers' coughs rattle through flimsy bamboo shacks.
"It's just like you are hungry for food," Sao Noi, a sweet-faced 12-year-old from the Katu tribe, says about the addiction she picked up at age 7. "The tobacco smells nice."
As with many hill tribes in southern Laos, some of the ways of the Katu are bad for their health. But the tribal people cling to their habits as part of their struggle to preserve timeless traditions they fear are being threatened by government resettlement programs.