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Autoimmune condition, especially combined with smoking and oral contraceptive use, massively increases risk of stroke and heart attack in young women 

Autoimmune condition, especially combined with smoking and oral contraceptive use, massively increases risk of stroke and heart attack in young women

The autoimmune condition antiphospholipid syndrome mainly affects young women. An Article published Online First and in the November edition of the Lancet Neurology shows that women with a particular subtype of antibody called lupus anticoagulant (LA) have a more than 40-fold increased risk of stroke and 5-fold increased risk of heart attack compared with the general population (of young women). Smoking and oral contraceptive use increase the risk of these events even more. The Article is written by Dr Rolf Urbanus and Dr Philip de Groot, University Medical Centre Utrecht, Netherlands, together with colleagues from the Leiden University Medical Centre.

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• Dutch govt to change smoking law after court defeat 

The Dutch government vowed Friday to change the law to keep bars smoke free after it suffered two successive defeats in court against bar owners challenging a smoking ban.

A cabinet statement said the government would introduce changes to legislation in order to make sure that "a uniform obligation" applied to all.

Dutch bar owners won two victories earlier this year in their fight against a smoking ban on their premises.

Two different courts found that the law, aimed at protecting staff from second-hand smoke inhalation, unfairly discriminated against small, one-man operations . . .

The cabinet said the planned changes would make allowances for the introduction of "innovative air sytstems" if they could be proven effective enough to be an alternative to a dedicated smoking area in small bars.

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Iloprost Appears to Ease Lung Damage Caused by Smoking 

SAN FRANCISCO -- Treating asymptomatic ex-smokers with oral iloprost can mitigate the changes that lead to non-small cell lung cancer and other diseases, researchers suggested here.

"Former smokers who received iloprost showed a statistically significant improvement in histologic measurements of lung tissue after six months of treatment," said Robert Keith, MD, of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Denver.

"Smokers did not exhibit any improvement," Keith told attendees at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer's world conference.

Animal studies have indicated that prostacyclin supplementation prevented development of lung cancer. With those studies as background, Keith and his colleagues enrolled patients in a multicenter, double-blind, placebo- controlled, phase II trial of iloprost in patients at increased risk for lung cancer. . . .

Action Points

* Explain to interested patients that the treatment described in this trial is not presently available in the U.S.

* Note that this study was published as an abstract and presented at a conference. These data and conclusions should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

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• Netherlands' 'little brown bars' buck antismoking regulations 

Smokers have found some friendly legislative ground in the Netherlands.

A series of district court decisions, one most recently handed down in July, has partially rolled back a 2008 smoking ban, allowing customers in thousands of small bars to once again light up at their barstools.

Removing ashtrays from bar counters has become standard practice in the West in recent years, as governments from both sides of the Atlantic seek to shield citizens from the health hazards of smoke.

The decisions were made in favor of a beloved Dutch institution, the "bruin cafe," or brown bar.

Dutch cities are dotted with these hole-in-the-wall bars, often run by an individual or small group of owners who have no need to hire employees. They are engines of local gossip and connection. Popular lore has it that the "brown bar" moniker was earned due to walls stained by layers of tobacco smoke.

The legal reasoning behind lifting the ban was that, since these bars don't have employees, no one is being involuntarily put at risk by exposure to smoke.

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• Legal loophole sees hundreds of Dutch cafes escape smoking ban 

The smoking ban in Dutch cafes and restaurants has been partially suspended after a second appeal court ruled that the law does not apply to small cafes that do not employ staff.

Consequently, the health minister Ab Klink has temporarily halted enforcement of the smoking ban on possibly thousands of these smaller cafes run by their owners alone. Checks and fines imposed by the Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority will cease until the law is changed, in what is seen as a public health "disaster."

The law remains in force for larger cafes that employ staff.

Mr Klink plans to amend the law, to remove any "lack of clarity" and to create a completely smoke-free hospitality industry "without exceptions." But this must first go before parliament and so cannot come into force until the third week in September.

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• Netherlands suspends tobacco inspections in small bars  

The Dutch government has dropped spot checks on smoking in small cafes after bar owners won two legal victories in their fight against a ban on their premises, the health minister said Wednesday.

Ab Klink said in a letter to members of parliament that action taken to fine offenders had also been suspended temporarily.

Appeal courts at Leeuwarden in the north and Den Bosch in the south have found in favour of landlords of cafes, restaurants and hotels without staff, who said the law did not oblige them to implement a smoking ban.

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• Dutch bar owners win new victory in fight against smoking ban 

Dutch bar owners won a new victory in their fight against a smoking ban on their premises when an appeal court cleared two of them of breaking the law and quashed a 1,200 euro fine.

"The law contains no formal obligation for landlords of cafes, restaurants and hotels without staff to implement a smoking ban," the appeal court at Leeuwarden in the northern Netherlands said in a statement.

It overturned the verdict handed down in a lower court against the pair from Groningen who became the first to be prosecuted following the introduction of the nationwide ban a year ago.

In May the appeals court of Den Bosch, in the southern Netherlands, upheld the acquittal of the two owners of the Victoria cafe in Breda, near the Belgian border.

"The court finds that the (ban) is partly non-binding, as it lacks legal grounding" regarding establishments with no staff, said a court statement.

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• Big tobacco pays Dutch opposition to smoking ban 

Ton Wurtz, treasurer of the foundation 'Red de kleine horecaondernemer' (Save the small hospitality entrepreneur), has admitted to receiving "about 50,000 euros per year" from the tobacco companies. Wurtz also holds biweekly strategy talks with Willem Jan Roelofs, the chairman of the cigarette industry foundation SSI, he said.

Smoking was banned in cafes, bars, hotels and restaurants in The Netherlands a year ago. Just before the ban went into effect on July 1, 2008, Wurtz, who has been the spokesperson for a foundation that stands up for smokers since 1993, and other seasoned tobacco lobbyists established the foundation to represent the interests of small cafe owners.

The smoking ban was primarily adopted to guarantee the right of employees to work in a smoke-free environment. But critics say small bars, with no employees except the owners, should be exempt from the ban. Several court cases are underway against cafes that defied the ban.

The law firm representing the small cafe owners has been negotiating with the tobacco industry about the possibility of it bankrolling future lawsuits challenging the smoking ban. . . .

"We are talking to several parties about financing a procedure, SSI amongst them," Marco Gerritsen of the Van Diepen Van der Kroef law firm confirmed. "They haven't promised anything yet."

SSI's is a collaboration between British American Tobacco (Pall Mall), Imperial Tobacco (Gauloises) and Japan Tobacco International (Camel); Philip Morris (Marlboro) left the group in 2005. Tobacco companies fear a decline of 5 percent of sales because of the smoking ban in bars. Roelofs: "That is a substantial loss in an already contracting market." He denied the SSI has any intention to finance future court cases.

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PHOTOS: Gallery: Antique Windmills Go About Their Daily Snuff Grind  

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands — Most windmills today are used to generate electricity or pump water. But along the shores of a man-made lake in Rotterdam, two giants of antiquated machinery remain conscripted to their original purpose: pulverizing the fruits of the land for human consumption.

These two windmills, De Ster and De Lelie, both exemplars of 18th-century Dutch workmanship, are used to grind tobacco leaves into powdered nasal snuff.

Because of continued public health campaigns against smoking in Europe and the United States, the demand for alternative forms of smokeless tobacco like snuff is on the rise. And so, the giants are kept spinning.

Above: Jaap Bes is the head miller at the De Ster snuff and spice mill in Rotterdam. Bes stands on the “stage,” a platform midway up the windmill’s structure, and pulls the mill break to stop the mills’ wings from turning.

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Smokefree Innotec Names Belgian Group for Packaging Design 

Smokefree Innotec, Inc. (Pink Sheets: SFIO) (www.smokefree-innotec.com) announced today that it has entered into an alliance with Guy Bout and Olaf Cornelis, partners in The Funbox Company, a Brussels, Belgium-based group, for the packaging design of the Smokefree Innotec products. The Funbox Company design will feature a revolutionary packaging of the filters, which will have the same dimensions of a standard pack of cigarettes, but having been adapted to blister pack the mouthpieces. The package will be easy in use, attractive in design and an eye-catcher on the shelf. Perhaps more importantly, all packaging will be manufactured out of recycled paper product and, therefore, environmentally friendly, just like the Company's "tobacco innovation" itself.

The Funbox Company will also play a pivotal role in introducing, distributing and marketing the Smokefree Innotec product in the Benelux countries (The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg) later this year.

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• Small Dutch bars cannot be held to smoking ban: appeals court 

A Dutch appeals court ruled Tuesday that small bars with no staff except their owners are exempt from a national smoking ban introduced for the hospitality industry last July.

The appeals court of Den Bosch, in the southern Netherlands, found two owners of the Victoria cafe in Breda, near the Belgian border, not guilty of having contravened the ban.

"The court finds that the (ban) is partly non-binding, as it lacks legal grounding" regarding establishments with no staff, said a court statement.

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Obituaries: Lenze Meinsma -- Dutch antismoking doctor whose message was finally heard 

Lenze Meinsma was laughed at when he appeared on Dutch television in the 1960s with the then uncompromising message "Smoking damages your health . . . it can even kill!" A nation in which 90% of men smoked dismissed Dr Meinsma, then director of the Dutch Cancer Society, as a "fanatic."

He was certainly single minded, campaigning tirelessly through speaking engagements and school visits, writing angry letters to ministers and the press. Although he remained for years a voice in the wilderness, his efforts made him a national icon. He is remembered in his regional paper, the Leeuwarder Courant, on his death aged 85 as simply "the antismoking doctor." . . .

Yet in 1971 he achieved his breakthrough. The scientific associations of four medical consultants’ groups—cardiologists; internists; ear, nose, and throat specialists; and lung specialists declared it was "no longer responsible" for them to remain silent. They wrote to the then health minister Roelof Kruisinga with facts and data over deaths and disease caused by smoking. Within weeks a special committee of the Dutch Health Council was formed to advise on measures to limit smoking.

Political action was still painfully slow but by 1974 the first government subsidised campaigns against smoking were launched. It was not until 1982 that government health warnings on cigarette packets became obligatory. Two years previously Meinsma had stood down as head of the Cancer Society, his pioneering role against the dangers of smoking complete.

Today the society has applauded his "admirable efforts and perseverance." . . .

The society, together with the Asthma Funds and the Heart Foundation, had, however, set up an organisation Stivoro to campaign specifically against smoking. Meinsma was its first director but left after about a year. He later refused invitations to anniversary events, insisting that that part of his life was closed. And in an ironic twist to his career he expressed doubts over the scientific evidence for the dangers of passive smoking.

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• Smokers may boost cancer chances by eating fruit and veggies 

Smokers may increase their chances of contracting colon cancer by eating fruit and vegetables, according to a new Europe-wide scientific study said Wednesday.

A high intake of fruit and vegetables appeared to reduce the risk among non-smokers but seemed to have the reverse effect on smokers, findings by the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) showed.

"People who eat 600 grammes or more vegetables and fruit a day appear to have a 20 to 25 percent lower chance of developing colon cancer than people who eat 220 grammes or less," said the statement.

"For smokers, the consumption of vegetables and fruit appears, on the contrary, to increase the chances of colon cancer. Protection against colon cancer through the consumption of vegetables and fruit therefore appears to depend on smoking habits." . . .

RIVM official Hans Verhagen told AFP this did not mean that smokers should stop eating their greens.

"On the contrary, the conclusion is to: 'Please stop smoking'", he said.

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Klink firm on smoking ban 

Health minister Ab Klink said on Tuesday he had no intention of amending the ban on smoking in cafes and bars, despite last week’s court ruling which said bar owners without personnel were being unfairly hit.

Nor would there be fewer inspections

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Cafe owner wins smoking ban case 

The owner of a small cafe in Breda has been found not guilty of breaking the ban on smoking, the Telegraaf reports on Friday.

The court in Breda said the smoking ban treated the owners of cafes with and without additional personnel differently.

Cafe owners with additional staff had to ensure that workers had a smoke-free working environment, the judges said. This could be achieved, for example, by a ventilation system, the Telegraaf quoted the judges as saying.

By contrast, cafes without personnel have to completely ban smoking on the premises, the judges said.

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