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Gruesome images of decaying teeth, blackened lungs, tumours and even dead people, will become the latest additions to the warnings on tobacco packets in Malta, this newspaper has learnt.
The colour illustrations are officially scheduled to be printed on cigarette boxes by April 2011, and on other tobacco products by October 2011.
The rules will implement European Union laws introduced back in 2003 on using photographs to depict the health consequences of smoking.
Tobacco packages will now carry a combined warning with pictures
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The government is shortly expected to issue a legal notice that will make pictorial messages on tobacco packaging obligatory, in a bid to discourage smoking, Director of Health Ray Busuttil said yesterday.
Speaking during the launch of an EU-wide anti-smoking campaign, Dr Busuttil said only three or four EU countries have introduced pictorial messages on tobacco packaging.
"The legal notice will be issued next week or the week after that. Tobacco manufacturers would have to use a number of pictorials recommended by the EU and the World Health Organisation (WHO)," said Dr Busuttil.
Health Parliamentary Secretary Joe Cassar said it is estimated that one in every four people in Malta are smokers, meaning that about 300,000 people could be suffering the consequences of indirect smoking.
Graphic images highlighting the dangers of smoking will soon be displayed on all tobacco products sold in Malta, director general of public health Ray Busuttil revealed on Tuesday.
A legal notice announcing the new regulations on tobacco packaging is expected to be issued by the end of this month, Dr Busuttil said at a press conference on EU anti-smoking campaign Help.
Health Promotion Department director Charmaine Gauci said that statistics showed that although the prevalence of smoking in Malta has been decreasing in recent years, the reverse was true among schoolchildren.
The number of adult smokers is dropping but more teenagers are picking up the habit, according to surveys.
The rate of 15-year-old smokers increased by four per cent between 2002 and 2006 to reach 42.8 percent according to the EU health school survey.
The number of adult smokers declined from 23.3 percent in 2002 to 20.3 percent in 2008.
Speaking during the local launching of the EU's Help Campaign - For a Life Without Tobacco, Health Promotion Director Charmaine Gauci said that 103 men and 23 women died in 2007 as a result of lung cancer.
The number of adults in Malta who smoke is appreciably on the decline but young people, particularly girls, are smoking more, a news conference yesterday was told. The news conference was given to promote World Heart Day, being held on Sunday, when radio and television stations will be running an advert to raise awareness regarding the dangers of cardiovascular diseases.
Health parliamentary secretary Joe Cassar said that not enough people in Malta are knowledgeable enough about the dangers their lifestyles can pose.
"Cardiovascular diseases are still the world's largest killers, claiming 17.5 million lives a year, even though the risk factors for heart diseases and strokes are well known.
Smoking claimed the lives of 372 people in Malta last year, Social Policy Minister John Dalli revealed.
Replying to a Parliamentary Question by Labour MP Carmelo Abela, Mr Dalli said that 260 men and 112 women died due to smoking-related causes in 2008. A further 113 Maltese residents, 78 men and 35 women, died in the first 3 months of 2009.
The 2007 Lifestyle Survey, issued by the National Statistics Organisation, shows that 33.5 per cent of adult males and 19.4 per cent of adult females smoke in Malta.
According to the World Health Organisation, tobacco - "the only legal consumer product that kills when used exactly as intended by the manufacturer" - is the second major cause of death in the world, responsible for around 5 million deaths each year. If current smoking patterns continue, tobacco is expected to cause around 10 million deaths annually by 2020.
The same smuggling routes used by the IRA to import weapons from Libya in the Eighties are now being used to import huge amounts the counterfeit cigarettes that are flooding the Irish market at a cost of between €500m and €1bn a year in lost taxes.
The dissident republicans from the "Real" IRA, based in north Louth and south Armagh, are believed to be the biggest smugglers but appear to be working alongside retired Provisional IRA bosses who are still heavily involved in smuggling.
Gardai are concerned that some portion of the massive profits being racked up by the dissidents are going to pay for weapons to carry out attacks on PSNI officers. The dissidents have been recruiting young men in Catholic areas in the North and last month were responsible for stirring up sectarian violence.
The State appears to be unable to prevent the importation of the counterfeit cigarettes, which are manufactured in China. Investigations by Interpol and other agencies have shown that Irish smugglers are sourcing their cigarettes in China, via the internet, then having them smuggled to Tripoli in Libya, probably using the same contacts in the military there who supplied the IRA with weapons in the early Eighties.
Sources say the cigarettes are shipped via Malta then by sea or land in containers to Irish ports. The fact that the Irish Customs only have one container-scanner makes Irish ports an ideal destination for smuggling. Gardai believe that the smuggling is so large and well organised that they are also trans-shipping cigarettes and tobacco into Britain.
European institutions are frequently chastised for their perceived detachment from the common citizen. The Help-EU initiative, which aims to dissuade young Europeans from taking up the habit of smoking and in persuading smokers to kick the habit, is one of those initiatives which debunk such a myth.
As rightly stated, within such an initiative there is a welter of reasons as to why youngsters should not endear to cigarettes, among which the fact that tobacco kills (one out of 10 smokers had life expectancy reduced by 20 years), tobacco is addictive, it has negative health repercussions, including impotence for men and ectopic pregnancy and spontaneous abortions in women, tobacco smoke impinges on the health of others besides the smoker and tobacco is expensive.
Especially insipid and heinous is the threat posed to young children and non-smokers in general through passive smoking. . . .
A corpulent body of scientific evidence backs the anti-smoking movement - such evidence should be watered down and made available to the layman. This is but one of the many laudable objectives of the Help-EU initiative. Visit www.help-eu.com to get to know more about how you can help your friends kick the habit and live a life free from the shackles of tobacco.
Let us remember tobacco remains the only legal consumer product that kills half of its regular users - WHO.
Need a nicotine fix? Say hello to the e-cigarette, the world’s first electronic cigarette that gives the human body a simulation of the chemical effect of tobacco smoking. Except that there is no tobacco or nicotine, and that means no health hazard.
But the answer to guilt-free smoking may take some time to appear in Maltese shops. That’s because the product has been classified as a tobacco product by the health authorities.
The agent for the UK’s Electronic Cigarette Company says he has full certification and lab analyses that prove the product is tobacco-free, and that he was allowed to import it without paying the excise duty that is levied on other tobacco products.
But as freely as it is to import the product, the government still decided to ban e-cigarette smoking in public places, after health authorities wrongly assumed that all of its varieties contain tobacco.
The e-cigarette substitutes traditional cigarettes by means of an electronic simulation of tobacco smoking. Containing neither tobacco, nor tar, it is a non-nuisance solution for passive smokers. . . .
Whereas three of the patent recipes contain tobacco flavourings, the variety imported to Malta is tobacco-free. . . .
MaltaToday contacted the Health Ministry to point out that an e-cigarette recipe downloaded from the web showed that there are tobacco-free varieties, but a government official did not accept our source as reliable.
In turn, it was sent the full EU-registered patent of the product, which describes one of the recipes as completely free from tobacco.
The spokesperson assured us that the information we sent was being investigated, and that until the EU patent is recognised by the Maltese government, the legal position on e-cigarettes remains unchanged.
"The world in general has experienced an increase in contraband sales," despite enforcement of import and export controls, said Finance Minister Tonio Fenech yesterday.
"Smuggling remains a key problem in the cigarette trade and is likely to be the cause for disrupting legitimate sales in the near future," he added.
Mr Fenech was speaking at the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) annual meeting on cigarette smuggling, being held until tomorrow in St Julian's.
Mr Fenech said Malta's internal market was more prone to illegal activity due to higher prices of tobacco products when compared to prices in a number of foreign countries.
He explained that Malta experienced large-scale cigarette smuggling in transiting containers. Often, smuggling focused on well-known international brands, for instant recognition and confidence which resulted in quick sale.
Mainland operations by the Customs department have also proved to be significant
A total of 341 deaths last year were related to smoking - an average of nearly one a day - and 241 of the people who died were men, Charmaine Gauci, director of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, said yesterday.
Addressing a joint press conference on the EU's "Help, For a Life Without Tobacco" campaign, Dr Gauci said it is difficult to gauge the number of deaths directly caused by smoking. . . .
Malta was one of the first countries worldwide to adopt the smoking ban in public places, and this has certainly contributed to lower levels of tobacco smoke in the air.
However, as Ms Buttigieg pointed out, a lot still has to be done in terms of enforcement. She also stressed the importance of anti-smoking campaigns such as "Help", which raise awareness on the harmful effects of carbon monoxide (CO), a toxic gas produced by smoking any form of tobacco.
The "Help" campaign included a study, the "Help-COmets study", which was a survey of 221,650 smokers and non-smokers across the EU.
Shisha is becoming more common among teenagers even though one filling of this Arab water pipe is equivalent to about 70 cigarette drags, a study revealed.
Depending on the amount of shisha tobacco mixed with water, the pipe gives off as much toxic carbon monoxide as 15 to 52 cigarettes and as much tar as 27 to 102 cigarettes, Anne Buttigieg, the Health Department's senior occupational therapist and project coordinator, said.
She unveiled the local results of the Help-COmets study, conducted among EU member states as part of the Help Campaign aimed at persuading people to quit smoking, or not to start.
The study, revealed during a press conference yesterday, required EU citizens to volunteer to have their breath tested in order to measure tobacco-related carbon monoxide exhaled (COex).
The aim was to provide an interactive and entertaining method for people to recognise the effects of tobacco smoke on their health.
Four years after smoking was banned from indoor public places, outdoor venues such as open air restaurants and bars, have become the natural smoking zones, and it may be time to consider whether these too should become smoke-free.
Joe Gerada, the chief executive officer of the Foundation for Social Welfare Services, explained to maltastar.com that the European Commission's proposed new regulations to increase tax on tobacco is a move in the right direction, as studies show that higher prices of tobacco will lead to lower consumption. The Commission says that if the new legislation is introduced, smoking across the EU will decrease by 10% in the next five years.
The proposed regulations will see prices of cigarettes in Malta rise by at least 8.1% by 2014. Other countries will see a sharper hike in cigarette prices, as unlike Malta, their current tax rates are much lower than the newly proposed minimum rates.
The World Health Organisation's Health Behaviour in School-age Children shows that smoking in Malta among 15-year-olds is on the increase.
A new approach will be taken to warning youngsters away from tobacco as the number of teenage smokers in Malta continues to rise.
According to a study by the World Health Organisation, the number of 15-year-old boys who smoke has gone up to 40.2 per cent in 2006 from 37.6 per cent in 2001/2002. . . .
A ban on smoking in public places came into force in 2005 and the advertising of cigarettes has been made illegal. Now the department is working on pictorials for cigarette packets, he said.
Another initiative of the department is the Quit and Win competition that encourages smokers to stop smoking and win prizes, said Anne Buttigieg, senior occupational therapist at the department.
In October 2004, smoking was banned in all enclosed public spaces, including public transportation, clubs and restaurants, although smoking areas are allowed.
Between October and December 2004, 45 people were charged in court for breaching the smoking regulations. There has since been a steady increase in the number of infringements, as 230 people were charged in 2005, 776 in 2006, going up to 1,275 people who were caught breaching the law in 2007. Between January and April of this year, 560 people have been charged in court.
The introduction of the smoking ban had not been easily accepted.