Tobacco.org

• University's smoke-free plan first in country 

The University of Auckland will become the country's first smoke-free university next year.

From January 1, smoking will be banned on all Auckland University campuses and outdoor spaces, including places previously designated as smoking areas.

In a revision of its smoke-free policy, the university decided the old policy was not combating risks to non-smokers from passive smoking.

Staff and students were asked for their views on three options - maintaining the status quo, banning smoking within 10m of buildings and facilities or total prohibition.

Seventy-five per cent of those who responded supported total prohibition

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• University's smoke-free plan first in country 

The University of Auckland will become the country's first smoke-free university next year.

From January 1, smoking will be banned on all Auckland University campuses and outdoor spaces, including places previously designated as smoking areas.

In a revision of its smoke-free policy, the university decided the old policy was not combating risks to non-smokers from passive smoking.

Staff and students were asked for their views on three options - maintaining the status quo, banning smoking within 10m of buildings and facilities or total prohibition.

Seventy-five per cent of those who responded supported total prohibition

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• Pub ban stubs out smoking at home  

A ban on smoking in bars and pubs has prompted many New Zealanders to stop smoking at home, Ministry of Health research shows.

Next month will mark six years since the passing of smoke-free legislation that bans smoking in indoor work environments such as clubs, casinos, bars and restaurants. It came into force one year later, in December 2004.

A ministry expert on tobacco, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, says one of the positive spin-offs of the law has been that the number of smoke-free homes has dramatically increased. He attributes the trend to a change in attitude - "People started thinking, `I can't smoke in the pub so I won't smoke in my home'."

A report evaluating the law's effectiveness and impact across various sectors shows exposure to second-hand smoke in the home decreased from 20% in 2003 to 9% in 2006. And the cultural shift, which has seen smoking become less socially acceptable, has seen smoking rates fall year on year.

The research, he says, also shows "the overall economic impact [of the legislation] was not a negative one".

But Josh White of the Hospitality Association of New Zealand says there is no doubt the law has had a negative impact on licensed premises. "Everyone that's tried to survive has had to put a smoking area in at their own cost."

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• Survey shows most NZ smokers want to quit 

The 2008 New Zealand Tobacco Use Survey: Quitting Results published today shows overwhelmingly most smokers want to quit, Associate Minister of Health Hon Tariana Turia said.

Minister Turia said that helping smokers to quit was a priority for the Government and was one of the six health targets.

This report presents the quitting results of 15 to 64 year olds from the 2008 New Zealand Tobacco Use Survey, including where possible, in comparison with the previous survey (2006).

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• Time 4 u 2 quit: Text messaging found to help smokers 

Text messaging can help smokers quit the habit, according to an international study.

A review of four trials conducted in New Zealand, Britain and Norway, found that programs to help people stop smoking that included text-messaged advice doubled the chances that smokers would be able to kick the habit for up to a year.

The trials, involving 2,600 smokers, used text messages as a way to give smokers daily advice and encouragement and also offered support when quitters needed it the most.

If they found themselves craving nicotine, for example, they could text "crave" to the program and get immediate advice on what to do.

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• Editorial : A righteous war on evil weed  

Four hundred years ago this year, John Rolfe, an enterprising 24-year-old from Norfolk, arrived in the fledgling settlement of Jamestown in the English colony of Virginia. A canny businessman despite his tender years, he saw a chance to make a few bob on an old plant, genus Nicotiana, widely referred to at the time as "brown gold". . .

The tobacco companies will assuredly not answer the call to appear before the committee - fronting up is not in their corporate nature - but Harawira's determination to put the acid on them deserves applause.

It is also in tune with pressure on tobacco coming from other quarters. A Public Health Association conference in Dunedin this month discussed proposals to license tobacco retailers; to ban sales near schools; to require plain packaging bearing only health warnings; and make it easier to sue tobacco firms.

Campaigners are fond of referring to this as the "endgame" of tobacco and are talking about ending the sale of the substance within a decade. It sounds ludicrous, but it makes sense: this is a product which, used in accordance with the manufacturers' instructions, is always harmful to health and typically lethal. If it were invented today, it would be banned.

The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan became the world's first smokefree nation when it banned the sale and public consumption of tobacco almost five years ago. People who argue that it couldn't happen here should think again. In 1980, no one would have imagined this country would have smokefree workplaces, never mind bars.

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• Tobacco companies undermining law - researcher  

A major tobacco company has rejected claims it is undermining the law by not following regulations on the use of graphic warnings on cigarette packets.

Researchers at Otago University said a new study of bought and discarded cigarette packs showed the regulations were not being met.

Graphic warnings became mandatory in August 2008 and tobacco companies are required to evenly distribute various images over all cigarette packs.

Otago marketing professor Janet Hoek said the most offensive graphics were printed less frequently than other "less disturbing" images.

British American Tobacco today rejected the findings.

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• VIDEO: Hone Harawira interviewed by Paul Holmes 

PAUL Well talk about the reformed smoker, welcome back, Mr Hone Harawira the Maori MP, he used to smoke, now he wants to lynch the tobacco company executives. The facts are simple, more than 7,000 New Zealanders smoke, nearly half of Maori smoke.

HONE HARAWIRA Seven hundred thousand actually Paul.

PAUL More than 700,000 New Zealanders smoke, nearly half of Maori smoke and one in three Maori die from smoking cigarettes. . . .

PAUL But prohibition on drugs doesn't seem to work, we know from the United States in the 1920s with alcohol, dope is banned in New Zealand as well, but plenty of dope around, P is banned, plenty of P around.

HONE Again, those things still flourish in the blackmarket because most people still want them, most cigarette smokers don't want to smoke, it's an addiction that they don't actually enjoy. You can't create a blackmarket in a situation where people don't really want the product.

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• Maori committee to investigate smoking 

Maori Party MP Hone Harawira wants tobacco company executives to front up at an inquiry into the industry, despite his threats to lynch them.

Mr Harawira announced today the Maori Affairs parliamentary select committee would hold an inquiry into the impact of tobacco use on Maori.

The committee would talk to ''everybody, before we get to the tobacco companies'', Mr Harawira said.

There was a ''very clear public record'' of the serious negative effects of tobacco and the companies selling it must front up to the public, he said.

The inquiry would require the New Zealand-based chairpeople and chief executives, not spin doctors, to be involved.

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• Harawira: To Smoke or to Choke 

Mr Speaker, if it’s true that 5,000 Kiwis die from tobacco every year, then it’s also true that tobacco companies are responsible for the murder of 100,000 New Zealand citizens in the last 25 years.

That’s why the Maori Party supports every effort to stop this appalling waste of life, and to break the cycle of addiction that blights our society:

* 5000 deaths every year;

* 25% of ALL cancer deaths in Aotearoa;

* a major cause of blindness and respiratory illnesses;

* diseases of the urinary tract, pelvis, bladder and the digestive tract;

* 45% Maori / 32% Pasifika / 22% Pakeha / 12% Asians;

* and one in every three Maori dying from smoking cigarettes.

That’s why the Maori Party is doing everything it can to reduce tobacco consumption, and to hold accountable those companies responsible for the deaths of those 5000 Kiwis every year.

Mr Speaker, following on from the World Health Organisation recommendations of a mix of taxation, cessation, health promotion, legislation and research strategies, Tariana Turia, co-leader of the Maori Party and Minister responsible for Tobacco Control, has called for:

* a review of smoking cessation programmes;

* an increase in tobacco tax;

* and a ban on the display of tobacco products here in Aotearoa; a law recently enacted in New South Wales, next year in the Northern Territory and ACT, and in Victoria and Tasmania in 2011; because tobacco displays are a very devious and very potent form of marketing a killer product, normalising cigarettes in the eyes of vulnerable kids, and hooking them into buying smokes from a very young age; and banning displays works – we know that because when they did it in Saskatchewan, smoking rates actually dropped 25% in just 6 years!! . . .

To be brutally frank Mr Speaker, I’d like to lynch these #$^&** tobacco company executives.

I’ve watched too many people die horrible deaths because of their addiction to tobacco, and I’ve seen too much pain and heartache in those left behind to want to be objective about this.

And I’ve heard too many chilling comments from tobacco executives like – ‘We don’t smoke this shit. We reserve that right to the young, the poor, the black and the stupid’ – to have any respect for these people at all.

Hopefully Mr Speaker, with the help of the people of New Zealand, the support of my colleagues on the Maori Affairs Select Committee, and the determination of the members of this House, we can finally bring an end to all this unnecessary waste of beautiful life.

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To be brutally frank Mr Speaker, I’d like to lynch these #$^&** tobacco company executives.
Hone Harawira, MP for Te Tai Tokerau. Tobacco companies seem to have roused New Zealand's famously war-like Maori.

• Harawira wants to smoke out tobacco company bosses  

Maori Party MP Hone Harawira wants tobacco company executives to front up at an inquiry into the industry, despite his threats to lynch them.

Mr Harawira announced today the Maori Affairs parliamentary select committee would hold an inquiry into the impact of tobacco use on Maori.

The committee would talk to "everybody, before we get to the tobacco companies", Mr Harawira said.

There was a "very clear public record" of the serious negative effects of tobacco and the companies selling it must front up to the public, he said.

The inquiry would require the New Zealand-based chairpeople and chief executives, not spin doctors, to be involved. . . .

The announcement of the inquiry follows figures released to the committee early today by the Ministry of Health showing Maori women have the highest smoking prevalence (49.3 percent) followed by Maori men (41.5 percent).

Young Maori were more likely to smoke and second-hand smoke exposure was higher among Maori than non-Maori.

Shane Bradbrook, Te Reo Marama director, said it was time for the tobacco industry to be accountable.

There was no other industry operating in New Zealand or internationally that killed so many people and Maori were suffering out of proportion, he said.

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• Concern over environmental toll of outdoor heaters 

Home appliance shops estimate there are now over 100,000 outdoor heaters across the country, many installed since the public smoking ban came into force five years ago.

"100,000 homes all using a standard patio heater on average of one hour per week would generate a carbon footprint of approximately 18 000 tonnes, that's equivalent to a medium-sized car travelling from Auckland to Wellington and back again around 60, 000 times," says Kathryn Hailes, from Carbonzero programme.

That's equivalent to a medium-sized car travelling from Auckland to Wellington and back again around 60 000 times. . . .

"We probably have over 50 percent of our business in outdoor trading and on nights like tonight and in the winter it gets a bit nippy. If it's not wet and still is certainly cold and we need to keep the people warm with the smoking law people do want to be outside and if it's cold they're not going to enjoy it.

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• Row breaks out over safety of e-cigarettes 

New Zealand researchers are clashing with US health officials over a new anti-smoking aid, after a world-first trial was run by Auckland University. . . .

"They're not going to die from an e-cigarette," says Dr Murray Laugesen. "But they could die tomorrow from a heart attack due to their smoking."

The FDA, which regulates medical products in the US, isn't so sure. It says its tests found cancer-causing chemicals in e-cigarettes and wants them banned from sale until more studies are done.

"What's remarkable actually is the lack of evidence that these products are any better than standard smoking cessation treatments, and secondly the inadequate testing for their toxins," says Dr Michael Thun, American Cancer Society.

Auckland University has run the first ever trial of the e-cigarettes. It looked at withdrawal symptoms after using one compared to a nicotine inhaler and a regular cigarette.

Researchers can't reveal the results until they are published in a medical journal, but they told 3 News the FDA is getting unnecessarily alarmed over one ingredient - propalene glycol.

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• Rolled cigarettes could be worse: study 

A New Zealand study has shown that factory-rolled cigarettes may be the lesser of two evils.

The Christchurch-based study compared people smoking factory-rolled cigarettes to those smoking roll-your-owns and found that smokers tended to suck rollies more intensively, more often and more efficiently, making them at least as deadly as factory-rolled cigarettes.

The study, led by public health specialist Dr Murray Laugesen, is the first to use people rather than smoking machines to compare the two types of cigarettes.

It compared 26 men who smoked rollies with 22 who smoked factory-rolled. Each smoked a filtered cigarette every half hour over two hours, according to usual habit.

Cravings and exhaled carbon monoxide were measured before and after each cigarette smoked.

It found that participants smoking rollies took 25 per cent more puffs per cigarette and generally puffed for six seconds longer per cigarette.

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• Roll-your-own cigarettes dangerous money-savers: research 

Roll-your-own smokes could be even more harmful than factory-made cigarettes because people suck them harder and more efficiently, Christchurch research indicates.

The researchers are calling for the Government to act on their findings by applying a higher tax and specific warnings on roll-your-own tobacco.

In the first comparison between the two types of smoking using people rather than smoking machines, the study suggests rollies are "apparently no less and possibly more dangerous" than factory-made cigarettes.

Public health specialist Dr Murray Laugesen and his co-researchers found roll-your-own smokers inhaled 28 per cent more smoke per filtered cigarette, even though the rollies contained less tobacco than the factory-mades.

And both types boosted the level of carbon monoxide, measured in exhaled breath, by the same amount.

"Whereas a smoker of factory-mades lets a lot of the smoke go up in the air, these roll-your-own smokers suck like crazy and don't let so much be wasted," Dr Laugesen said yesterday. "They're getting more value out of the tobacco - and more harm."

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