Tobacco.org

• Front of store, front of mind – but for WHO? 

Where, in an acutely sensitive regulatory environment, should the tobacco category be positioned in a duty free store?

When The Nuance Group opened its splendid new 650sq m tax & duty free store at Geneva International Airport earlier this month, it opted to place the entire tobacco category at the entrance of the store – displayed in what Nuance called a “breathtaking black and white setting”.

The logic is obvious. As many studies have proven, tobacco is not just a major drawcard in most duty free stores, it is also a tremendous fooftall (and therefore penetration) driver for other categories.

In Geneva that’s especially the case. The airport’s cigar assortment has long been a hallmark of the retail offer (it has been considerably enhanced here) and the cigarettes category is particularly important to the Geneva passenger profile.

But one wonders how that positioning sits with the approach likely to be adopted in English and Scottish duty free stores, where travel retailers have sought an exemption from proposed tobacco display restrictions that are being touted under the Health Bill. . . .

As we reported recently, The Tobacco Advertising and Promotion (Display) (England) Regulations 2010 propose wide-ranging limitations on the display and merchandising of tobacco products.

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• Tobacco deal with tennis organisation may breach UK and international law 

Six years after the ban on tobacco advertising and sponsorship in the UK, a London-based sports body stands accused of breaching the law by promoting a cigarette brand on its website.[1] The Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) which represents the world's top male tennis players, is responsible for the sponsorship contracts for the various international tournaments. The next ATP World Tour tournament, which is due to take place in Basel, Switzerland from 31 October to 8 November, is sponsored by Davidoff, a cigarette brand manufactured by Imperial Tobacco. The Swiss indoor tournament is believed to be the only one in the world to be sponsored by a tobacco company.

British-based Imperial Tobacco acquired the Davidoff cigarette brand in 2006 and has exploited the weak law in Switzerland which still allows events to be sponsored by tobacco companies, although tobacco advertising on television is banned. However, the televising of the event means that tobacco advertising will be beamed into the homes of more than one billion people worldwide, [2] contrary to Article 13 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control which has been signed by 160 countries worldwide. [3]

ASH has written to the ATP urging the organisation to end its ties with the tobacco industry when the current contract comes to an end and is seeking clarification from the Department of Health regarding the possible breach of UK law.

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• Federer fires up anti-smoking emotions  

As Roger Federer sets out to win his fourth consecutive Swiss Indoors title in Basel, a debate has reignited over tobacco sponsorship in sport.

The tournament, which has been sponsored by Swiss luxury brand Davidoff since 1994 and starts on Monday, is one of the last in the world to be sponsored by a tobacco company – and health campaigners aren't happy.

"First of all, linking sport and tobacco is utterly perverse," Jürg Hurter, president of Pro Aere, Switzerland's largest organisation against passive smoking, told swissinfo.ch.

"Second, the tobacco industry – who aren't idiots – try to get around tobacco promotion laws by sponsoring sporting events or by branding various products."

Pascal Diethelm, director of the anti-smoking group OxyRomandie, said last year "players drowned in an advertising soup for Davidoff".

"At the end of the match the young ball boys and ball girls received a medal from Roger Federer in recognition of having served the cause of Davidoff so well. Each medal bore the Davidoff logo in order to make sure that these potential smokers would know which cigarette brand to choose," he said. . . .

"This discussion is like the Loch Ness monster – it comes back every year!" Jürg Vogel, a member of the Swiss Indoors organising committee, told swissinfo.ch.

"Davidoff sells not only tobacco but also perfumes and other accessories. I think you have to see the whole picture.

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• National smoking ban draws mixed response 

The Swiss Pulmonary League has slammed the cabinet’s announcement yesterday on terms of the nationwide smoking ban, which will come into effect on May 1 next year. The ruling has, however, been broadly welcomed by the hotel and restaurant industry.

The Pulmonary League has accused the government of ‘bending over backwards’ to accommodate the tobacco industry’s lobbies, saying the law, as discussed in parliament, has been woefully watered down.

On the other hand, representatives of the hotel and restaurant sector say they’re relieved that the cabinet has steered the legislation ‘more or less back on the right track’.

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• Tobacco sponsorship of tennis tournament goes ahead because of weak Swiss legislation, says campaigning group  

A Swiss antismoking campaign group is concerned that weak legislation in the country is being exploited by Imperial Tobacco to sponsor a tennis tournament and promote its brand of cigarettes and other products. The company is the fourth largest tobacco company in the world.

Switzerland is a sanctuary for the tobacco industry, said Pascal Diethelm, director of the antismoking group OxyRomandie, ahead of the Davidoff Swiss indoor tournament, which starts on 31 October as part of the Association of Tennis Professionals World Tour 500. The tournament, which is one of the last tobacco sponsored tennis events in the world, is being used by the company to intensively advertise its Davidoff brand, on court hoardings and the uniforms of line judges and ball girls and boys, said Mr Diethelm.

The last time the tournament was held in Basel in 2008, the "players drowned in an advertising soup for Davidoff," he said.

He added, "At the end of the match the young ball boys and ball girls received a medal from Roger Federer in recognition of having served the cause of Davidoff so well. Each medal bore the Davidoff logo in order to make sure that these potential future smokers will know which cigarette brand to choose when they start smoking."

OxyRomandie is appealing to the federal tribunal, Switzerland’s supreme court, against a ruling from the Independent Complaints Authority for Radio and Television that Swiss television is allowed to show the tournament even though Swiss law bans tobacco advertising on television.

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The Good Life—that is the art of living. A culture of its own that revolves around taking time, perceiving the world with all the senses in order to experience the fine nuances of pleasure.
Davidoff's "The Good Life" campaign. The Davidoff Swiss indoor tennis tournament is under fire.

• Geneva's smoking ban returns after one-year break 

A ban on smoking in public places will return to Switzerland's Geneva canton after being approved in a referendum Sunday, a year after a court ended a first bid to prohibit lighting up.

Geneva's residents voted 81.77 percent in favour of bringing back the ban, with only 18.3 percent voting against.

A canton-wide smoking ban in public places was originally introduced on July 1, 2008, after the state government used a first referendum as grounds for pushing through the move.

But the Federal Tribunal ruled three months later that the ban should not have been passed by the canton's lawmakers before the state's government enacted legislation. . . .

The new rules allow bar, hotel and restaurant owners to fit out special smoking rooms in their establishments . . .

Supporters of the ban are opposed to this compromise, however, and said Sunday they would appeal to the Federal Tribunal.

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• Talks aim to stub out illicit tobacco trade 

The growing illegal trade in cigarettes costs governments billions of dollars, causes huge health problems and finances militant groups, say activists.

The claims were made as 130 countries resumed talks in Geneva this week on expanding an international anti-smoking treaty to clamp down on the trade in black market cigarettes.

According to a report published this week by the International Union against Tobacco and Lung Disease, one in nine cigarettes – or 657 billion cigarettes a year – is sold illicitly by organised crime gangs. . . .

According to Ian Willmore of the Framework Convention Alliance, a network of some 350 anti-tobacco campaign groups, the nature of tobacco smuggling has changed but it still remains a major problem.

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• The Montenegro Connection 

“My little cat … I’m going crazy without you …. You have repeatedly betrayed me, I think …. Little cat, when are you coming? ... I love you, little cat.” On Jan. 4, 2001, Dusanka Pesic Jeknic, representative of the Montenegrin trade mission in Milan, Italy, was speaking on the phone at her home in the southwest of the city. Milo Djukanovic, at that time president of Montenegro, was calling from the capital Podgorica. Billions of people around the world had just hailed the New Millennium. Dusanka, nicknamed “Duska,” the beautiful 41-year-old widow of the late foreign minister of Montenegro, was alone, far from her country. And she spoke out freely about everything: love, tobacco, and crime.

Eight years after Jeknic’s loving conversation with her president, transcripts of her phone calls, wiretapped by the Italian police for 20 months, are attached to hundreds of thousands of court records filed by the prosecutor’s office in Bari, in southern Italy. Here, in the Apulia region’s capital, facing Montenegro across the Adriatic Sea, prosecutors Giuseppe Scelsi and Eugenia Pontassuglia have at last wrapped up their long-running investigation of Djukanovic, Jeknic, and six other Montenegrins and Serbs, as well as seven Italians allegedly tied to organized crime. Their indictment charged the group with, among other offenses, mafia association aimed at illicit trafficking of tobacco, a serious crime in Italy. The indictment and an accompanying 409-page report by Italy’s anti-mafia unit, the DIA, which have not before been made public, provide an extraordinary look inside what may be one of Europe’s biggest smuggling operations in recent years — a tale of corruption, murdered witnesses, and a billion dollars in money laundered through Swiss banks.

From 1994 to 2002, smugglers shipped up to one billion cigarettes a month from the Montenegrin port of Bar to the Italian city of Bari and nearby. . . .

At the center of this case is a hidden bit of history, say prosecutors, of how tobacco smuggling became a state enterprise in Montenegro . . .

Djukanovic is now prime minister of that “Tortuga.” Re-elected in March, he leads a country where for nearly 17 of the past 18 years he has served as either prime minister or president. And he is pushing hard for Montenegro to join the European Union, which is now considering the country’s membership. To that end Djukanovic counts on his main supporter, Italy’s premier Silvio Berlusconi, who in March lauded him during a state-visit in Podgorica. . . .

Affiliated with Serbia until 2006, Montenegro is now fully independent, but some EU nations, notably Belgium and Germany, remain skeptical that the country is ready to join the West. Djukanovic has said that the smuggling is a thing of the past . . .

Starting June 3, Bari Judge Rosa Calia Di Pinto will hold a preliminary hearing to decide whether or not the evidence gathered by prosecutors is enough to put the indicted on trial. The judge will hear a story of a “mafia war” stretching into 10 countries: not only Italy and Montenegro, but also Serbia, Croatia, Greece, Germany, Switzerland, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Liechtenstein, Aruba, and the United States. So far, two key witnesses and five others mentioned in the case have been murdered.

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• Initiative aims to stub out smoking nationwide 

A coalition of 40 health organisations has launched an initiative to ban smoking in all buildings open to the public across Switzerland.

About half of the country's 26 cantons already have rules regulating smoking in bars and restaurants, but proponents of the campaign say the country's laws are too disjointed and do not go far enough.

"We have a very peculiar situation in Switzerland," Otto Piller, president of the Swiss Lung League, told swissinfo.ch on Monday. "The way it is now, you can have a town that sits on the border between canton Solothurn, which forbids smoking, and canton Aargau, which does not, meaning half the town allows smoking and half does not. It's an impossible situation."

The new law, if passed, would make any room open to the public smoke free, including those in restaurants, bars, schools and hospitals.

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• APA 2009: Nicotine Patches Reduce Agitation in Smokers With Schizophrenia 

Nicotine replacement therapy — specifically 21-mg/day transdermal patches — can decrease agitation and aggressive behavior in hospitalized patients with schizophrenia, according to a randomized controlled trial presented here at the American Psychiatric Association (APA) 162nd Annual Meeting.

Investigators found that nicotine patches decreased agitation to levels seen in treatment with parenteral antipsychotics, according to Michael Allen, MD, from University of Colorado–Denver School of Medicine.

"Seventy percent of people with schizophrenia are smokers. And when they go into a hospital, they're forced to quit smoking. As a result, nicotine withdrawal can increase aggressive behavior. Our study shows that nicotine-replacement therapy can make a big difference in decreasing smoking patients' agitation," Dr. Allen said.

In the study, 40 smokers with schizophrenia, age 18 to 65 years, admitted to the psychiatric emergency unit at the Hospital of the University of Geneva, Switzerland, were screened at baseline for agitation with several measures

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• Tabagisme: la population suisse fume de moins en moins [Smoking: the Swiss population smokes less] 

The Swiss population smoke fewer cigarettes. Between 2001 and 2008 the proportion of smokers increased from 33% to 27% in people aged 14 to 65. Other good news: the 14-19 years are less likely to be grilled one. Their share rose from 31% to 23%.

The downward trend is observed in all age groups and in both sexes, welcomes the Federal Office of Public Health (BAG) on the occasion of the publication of a survey conducted at its request by University of Zurich. . . .

These results demonstrate that the Swiss policy on prevention of smoking is on track, continuing FOPH. He cited the increased taxes on tobacco since 2007, campaign, "BRAVO - smoke less, living more in 2006-07 and the introduction of warnings on the packages since 2006.

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• Women More Vulnerable To Tobacco Carcinogens, New Results Show 

ScienceDaily (May 3, 2009) -- Women may be more vulnerable than men to the cancer-causing effects of smoking tobacco, according to new results reported this week at the European Multidisciplinary Conference in Thoracic Oncology (EMCTO), Lugano, Switzerland.

Swiss researchers studied 683 lung cancer patients who were referred to a cancer centre in St Gallen between 2000 and 2005 and found women tended to be younger when they developed the cancer, despite having smoked on average significantly less than men.

"Our findings suggest that women may have an increased susceptibility to tobacco carcinogens," report Dr Martin Frueh and colleagues.

Dr Enriqueta Felip from Val d'Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona, Spain, conference co-chair, notes that the results support a growing awareness that smoking presents greater risks to women than men. . . .

On the positive side, other research presented at the conference suggests that women tend to do better than men after surgery to remove lung tumors.

Irish researchers led by Dr Bassel Al-Alao studied 640 patients whose non-small-cell lung cancer was surgically removed over a 10-year period, 239 of whom were women.

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• Switzerland's stinky city  

There has to be some reason why it's impossible to find anywhere to dine, drink or even enjoy a concert without going home stinking of cigarette or cigar smoke.

Coming out of Zurich airport to the hotel shuttle buses, the first thing that hits you is cigarette smoke. And throughout an entire trip, it keeps on hitting you. . . .

For Zurich is almost like last man standing when it comes to banning smoking.

Restaurants, bars, taxis, hotel lobbies are all muggy. We were unable to find a restaurant that even had a no-smoking area. . . .

For companies, the failure of Zurich - and other cities that are out of line with the increasingly global approach to smoking - there is a compliance hazard. How long is it before an employee claims that he cannot go to a city where he is forced to sit in smoke to eat or socialise with clients because it is a health hazard and covered by health and safety at work provisions?

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• Tobacco Case: Swiss Govt Protests FG's Service 

Government of Switzerland has protested the mode of service of court processes in the N130 billion tobacco suit filed by the Federal Government against British American Tobacco Nigeria Limited, and a Swiss-based cigarette company, Philip Morris International.

Philip Morris was joined in the suit as the fifth defendant.

The Federal Government is yet to effect service on the company since last year when the case was filed.

Justice Adamu Umar of a federal high court sitting in Abuja, had ordered that service be effected on the fifth defendant through a substituted means and that the court processes be published in a national daily in Switzerland.

But counsel to BATN, Mr Dapo Adeosun, told the court that the Swiss government, through a letter to the Ministry of Justice in Abuja, protested the mode of service.

At the last adjourned date, the Federal Government accused Philip Morris of evading service in the suit it filed against British American Tobacco Nigeria Limited and four other companies over production and marketing of tobacco products in the country.

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• Smoking Out the Smugglers  

It is an illicit global trade in the hundreds of billions of dollars that affects the health of millions.

It's not heroin or cocaine, but tobacco smuggling. Countries have tried to combat it for years. Now negotiators for 150 countries are working to forge a global agreement that should give some muscle to those efforts. And it will mean having tobacco companies shoulder more of the burden.

Under proposals for an international agreement being considered, cigarette makers would be required to disclose the identities of the providers of the raw materials like tobacco and paper. The companies would also have to identify which wholesalers are buying their products. Companies that refuse to reveal the information could be barred from making or selling cigarettes.

These measures, advocates say, will allow government investigators to penetrate the delivery chain, which is said to be dominated by organized crime in some countries.

"When the government seizes smuggled Marlboro cigarettes, in many countries, customs officials send the cigarettes to Philip Morris International to verify that the cigarettes are counterfeit," said Kathryn Mulvey, international policy director of antitobacco campaigner, Corporate Accountability International.

"This is like a police officer calling a known drug dealer to ask if the shipment of cocaine waiting in the dock belongs to him. If the cigarettes are authentic, the tobacco giant could be in big trouble, so there are strong incentives for the corporation to determine they are counterfeit," she said from Geneva, where she was monitoring the negotiations.

Among the steps being weighed in Geneva is requiring cigarette makers to track their cigarettes . . .

Despite its status as one the globe's top smuggling destinations, the United States won't have a definitive say in the international antismuggling efforts because it has not signed onto the 2005 global treaty.

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