Tobacco.org

• Anti-Smoking Lawsuit Takes New Turn 

After a 2007 landmark court decision that recognized the cause-and-effect relationship between smoking and cancer, anti-smoking crusaders have been rearranging their focus to address the additives contained in cigarettes. This time, a court is showing renewed interest in the issue amid a growing public awareness over the harmful effects of smoking.

The legal battle dates back to 1999 when a group of lung cancer patients and distraught families filed a damages suit against KT&G, Korea's largest tobacco company by sales volume.

It took the court eight years to reach the conclusion that smoking can cause lung cancer but denied a request for compensation, stating that it couldn't be ruled out that other factors besides smoking had caused their affliction.

Now, the families and victims, supported by a group of lawyers, are changing their tack, claiming that KT&G uses additives to make cigarettes more addictive, and therefore more difficult quit.

For the first time, the presiding judge in the appeal case visited the KT&G factory to conduct an on-site inspection.

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• Stricter Regulation on Cigarettes Sought 

The tobacco business is likely to face stricter regulations in the near future ― regulated in terms of "public health" and banned from using words like "mild" or "light" on cigarette packs.

According to local media, Rep. Jeon Hae-sook of the main opposition Democratic Party is scheduled to propose a revision bill to the National Health Promotion Act.

It focuses on scrapping the Tobacco Business Act, which currently regulates the tobacco business.

The revision is aimed at putting it under the full control of the National Health Promotion Act.

"Globally, the concern over people's health is growing. The Tobacco Business Act is against the global trend, in that the tobacco business should be controlled in terms of people's health instead of promoting it as a business to collect taxes," the lawmaker said.

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• Philip Morris Korea Stretches Out Helping Hands to the Needy 

This is the first of a four-part series highlighting corporate social responsibility activities of Korea's big four tobacco makers. _ ED.

In the aftermath of the currency crisis in 1998, the Korean Council of Food Support (KCFS) was formed to provide impoverished people with surplus food and groceries.

It took little time for the KCFS to realize that it needed refrigerator trucks to collect and distribute surplus food but the not-for-profit private entity struggled to secure the expensive items.

The KCFS knocked on the doors of many homegrown companies to no avail. The help finally came from an unexpected outfit _ foreign tobacco producer Philip Morris, famous for its flagship product Marlboro.

``Back then, no firms were ready to donate the expensive freezer trucks because the economic slump was so severe, with the sole exception of Philip Morris Korea,'' KCFS Secretary General Lee Yun-hyeong said. . . .

Indeed, such a mantra was shown in April when the company had a press conference to mark its 20th anniversary in Korea.

``Philip Morris Korea supports comprehensive and strict regulation of tobacco. Given the hazardous nature of smoking, it supports the government's strong enforcement of regulation in all steps from production, taxation, to marketing, sales and consumption,'' it said in a press release at the time.

Philip Morris Korea also uses a much bigger warning on smoking than required when it promotes its products in journals.

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• Debate swirls over smoking in Air Force homes  

Some Air Force base housing residents in the Pacific say they wish their commands would offer them the option of smoke-free housing.

Others — smokers and nonsmokers alike — believe the military shouldn’t have any say in whether people can smoke in the privacy of their personal, albeit government-provided, home.

The issue came up at a Yokota Air Base town hall meeting earlier this year after residents there learned that Misawa Air Base would ban smoking in its family housing apartment towers starting May 1. During the meeting, several residents said they have neighbors’ cigarette smoke flowing into their homes and asked if the base could ban smoking in the towers.

Misawa officials said they instituted the ban because they weren’t in compliance with an Air Force instruction that states "the rights of the nonsmokers will prevail." They’ve since added other types of housing units to the ban and set the goal of making the majority of housing smoke-free as units undergo renovations.

The instruction, titled "Tobacco Use in the Air Force," gives commanders the authority to "designate areas or buildings in dormitories or family housing smoke-free when there is a common air-handling unit for multiple individuals or families ... to ensure a healthy and safe environment for all residents."

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• PHOTOS: Anti-smoking body painting 

A performer poses during a photo call for a body painting event, which is part of a government-sponsored anti-smoking campaign, in Seoul June 14, 2009.

A performer breaks off cigarettes as he poses for photographs during a photo call for a body painting event, part of a government-sponsored anti-smoking campaign in Seoul, June 14, 2009.

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• Cigarettes Replace Incense for Roh 

At memorial services, people sometimes offer up items which the deceased liked, or wanted to have, during their life. In the late former President Roh Moo-hyun's case, it was a cigarette.

Some mourners gingerly lit up a cigarette and offered it to the late President at memorial altars in his hometown in southeastern Bongha Village and other locations across the nation.

Their offerings of lit cigarettes instead of laying flowers or burning incense were prompted by the news that Roh asked for a smoke from a security guard before killing himself. . . . Mourners are apparently feeling sorry for him because he couldn't smoke at the last moment of his life.

Roh used to be a heavy smoker, going through more than two packs of cigarettes a day. He quit smoking in October 2001, but about a year later, began to smoke again as his approval rate for the presidential candidacy was only around 10 percent.

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• Smoking Statistics Defy Conventional Wisdom 

The Korean Association of Smoking & Health said Sunday that the country's smoking rate headed south from 26.4 percent in 2005 to 24.1 percent in 2006 and 21.9 percent last year.

This sharply contrasts to Bank of Korea data, which shows that the overall expenditure on tobacco rose from 4.65 trillion won in 2005 to 4.95 trillion won in 2006 and 5.58 trillion won last year.

This means Koreans households channel up to 1.5 percent of their expenditure in purchasing cigarettes. Put otherwise, Koreans lit up a smoke about 65 billion times in 2008.

Experts came up with various explanations for the mystery such as the facts that foreigners are excluded from the smoking rate survey or smuggled tobacco is disappearing of late. But they struggle to explain the widening gap between the two figures.

Whatever the reason may be, lawmakers from both governing and opposition parties argue that the Seoul administration is lukewarm in its anti-smoking campaign.

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• Sweeping Smoking Bans Set for Year`s End 

Smoking will be banned as early as this year in all public areas and inside buildings.

The Health, Welfare and Family Affairs Ministry said yesterday that it will designate 16 types of public facilities as non-smoking areas under a government roadmap on anti-smoking policy.

The facilities where smoking will be banned are large buildings; performance halls; private academic institutes; large sales outlets; lodging facilities; schools; indoor sports facilities; medical institutions; social welfare centers; public transportation venues; public bathhouses; game arcades; large restaurants; comic book stores; government buildings; and childcare facilities. . . .

Game arcades, comic book stores and restaurants allow smoking as long as over half their floor sizes are designated as smoke-free zones, but the plan is to ban smoking at those places completely.

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• SKorean company takes tough anti-smoking stance 

South Korean steelmaker Posco has sent its employees a tough no smoking message and may require them to take blood tests to check if they have kicked the habit.

Company officials said Tuesday that CEO Chung Joon-yang wants Posco, which employs 16,000 people, to be smoke-free by the end of year. . . .

But Noh Hee-bum, a spokesman at the Constitutional Court, says the move could violate South Korea's Constitution, which guarantees the people's right to seek happiness.

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• Tobacco companies target girls 

Tobacco marketing in South Korea has been deliberately aimed at girls and young women. Research published in the open access journal Globalization and Health has shown that transnational tobacco companies (TTCs) are using tactics long used with devastating effect in Western countries to snare new female smokers in Asia.

Kelley Lee from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine led a team of researchers who studied internal documents from the tobacco industry that reveal the scheme to seduce a generation of girls. She said, "Since the opening of the South Korean tobacco market in the late 1980s, females have been targeted by TTCs as an important source of future market growth and profitability. The rise in smoking rates among females within certain age groups since the late 1980s suggests that these efforts have been successful".

The tactics used recall advertising campaigns carried out in the United States and Europe since the 1920s that link smoking with feminism and the liberation of women.

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• Cigarette Maker Responsible for Fire Ignited by Cigarette? 

Gyeonggi Provice said it will file a damages suit against KT&G, demanding the nation's largest tobacco company should be held accountable for losses from fire started by cigarette butts.

``Like any other manufacturer, KT&G is obliged to remove any danger from its products. But it has neglected its duty so far,'' Choi Jin-jong of the province told reporters. ``It is reaping huge gains from sales of cigarettes but citizens are paying the costs to extinguish fires. It's not fair and that's why we are filing the suit.''

He said that since 2005, the tobacco company has exported cigarettes to the United States that have devices extinguishing the butts two to three seconds after they are thrown away. But it has not sold such cigarettes here.

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• Dad's in-home smoking may harm family's health  

Fathers-to-be who smoke and want to protect the health of their families should take it outside, suggests new research from Korea.

Newborns whose fathers had smoked in the home had higher levels of nicotine in their hair than babies born to non-smoking dads, Dr. Moon-Woo Seong of the National Center in Goyang and colleagues found. But infants whose fathers smoked, but only did so outdoors, had no more nicotine in their hair than babies whose fathers did not smoke at all.

"Outside smoking substantially reduces maternal and fetal exposure," they conclude.

The study, reported in the latest issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology, included 63 mother-father-newborn trios.

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• Online Sale of E-Cigarettes Banned  

The Ministry of Government Legislation on Wednesday declared illegal the online sale of so-called electronic cigarettes designed to help users give up smoking. Since electronic cigarettes fall under the category of tobacco prescribed in the Tobacco Business Act, they can be sold only at retailers and thus their online or telesales are illegal.

Electronic cigarettes are electronic devices in the shape of a normal cigarette that allow people to inhale a gasified liquid comprising various ingredients including nicotine.

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• Antismoking Association Launched 

An antismoking association has been launched for the first time here to academically and scientifically inform people of the harmful aspects of smoking.

The Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs announced Friday the launch of the association, which will study antismoking polices and define the scientific background for antismoking campaigns.

It will hold its first meeting on Nov. 19 with the participation of experts in the fields of modern and Oriental medicine, nursing science, sociology, economics and psychology.

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• Smoking Rate Among Male Adults Falls to 40% 

Smoking among South Korean male adults continues to fall amid cigarette tax hikes and anti-smoking campaigns.

South Korea's smoking rate for adult males stood at 40.4 percent in the first half of this year, down 1.4 percentage points from last year, according to a survey of 2,000 adult males conducted by Gallup Korea on behalf of the Health Ministry.

The smoking rate peaked at 79.3 percent in 1980,

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