Tobacco.org

财务公开方能禁公款买烟 

6月4日，从中国控烟协会获悉，中纪委已回应中国控烟协会公开信，将开展禁止公款买烟的相关活动。

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邹方斌 建议废除烟草专卖制度 

烟草专卖制度一实施，烟价肯定高，烟价高，消费者利益就受到损害

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• Tobacco warnings have failed to appear  

Anti-smoking groups welcome the introduction of graphic warnings on cigarette packs and other tobacco products but are sceptical they can have much of an effect on the country's 300 million tobacco users, more than half of whom live in the countryside.

The warnings, which show photos of decayed gums and diseased lungs as well as a skull and crossbones, were supposed to be in place in November but were delayed after lobbying by tobacco manufacturers.

However, last month, the Supreme Court stepped in and set a cut-off date of May 31 after which all packs of cigarettes, beedis (hand-rolled cigarettes) and gutka (a kind of chewing tobacco that also includes crushed betel nut) must carry pictorial warnings taking up about 40 per cent of the packaging area.

Anti-tobacco groups alleged that the government wanted to delay implementing the rules until after the just-completed general elections.

Yet, more than one week after the ruling and almost three weeks after the elections, the new cigarette packs have yet to make an appearance on store shelves.

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• BERLIND: Tobacco and the Tort Bar 

However, in a little-noticed provision, the bill also expressly provides that "no provision of this chapter . . . shall be construed to modify or otherwise affect . . . the liability of any person under the product liability law of any State." In other words, the regulatory regime that the legislation would establish can't protect companies from tort liability -- even if they rigorously follow every FDA rule.

This is a bizarre pairing of almost total government involvement in an industry without any government responsibility for, or even modest protection from, the damage claims sure to be generated by that industry for following the law.

The FDA legislation builds on the precedent recently established by the Supreme Court in Wyeth v. Levine. In Wyeth, the Court ruled 6-3 that even if the FDA has approved a drug, the drug maker can still be sued by patients in state court. The majority argued that a litigant is still entitled to claim that the company should have used a stronger warning label than the FDA had required.

But as Justice Samuel Alito observed in his dissenting opinion, "the real issue is whether a state tort jury can countermand the FDA's considered judgment."

The president has proclaimed a "new era of responsibility" for America. But these recent FDA developments -- in which government determines the rules, the business community takes the blame, and trial lawyers take their cut -- seems anything but.

Like elevating the rights of unions over those of secured lenders, the FDA tobacco legislation disturbingly suggests that only those disfavored by the administration will actually be held responsible for anything at all. And it's no secret that the trial bar -- among Mr. Obama's most generous campaign supporters -- has already earned billions from tobacco litigation.

If we truly believe in "responsibility" for businesses, government officials, trial lawyers and ordinary citizens, then regulatory compliance should provide a strong defense against tort claims.

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FDA on the verge of getting congressional approval to regulate tobacco  

Congresswoman Lois Capps and other public health advocates have a hard time understanding why it has taken so long to convince the federal government that tobacco should be regulated as a drug.

"It is a drug," said Capps, a registered nurse. "It's very addictive. It's so deadly."

It has taken years, but the Food and Drug Administration finally appears on the verge of getting Congress' approval to regulate cigarettes and other tobacco products.

The Senate is expected to vote as early as this week . . .

Rep Elton Gallegly, a conservative Republican from Simi Valley, supports FDA regulation of tobacco and voted for the bill when it passed the House in April.

"I don't really believe I should legislate whether people use tobacco or they don't use tobacco," Gallegly said. "But I do think we need to have oversight on the products that are going out so that people know what they are getting into."

Both of California senators -- Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer -- support FDA regulation and have signed on as cosponsors of the legislation.

Capps, a Santa Barbara Democrat who last year tangled with a dozen magazines over glossy advertising for a new cigarette marketed to young women, credits anti-smoking groups with raising awareness about the dangers of smoking and for helping build public support for government regulation of tobacco products.

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BOIVIN: Un choix de société 

(Quebec) History repeats itself. And for those who still doubt, the demand for reduction of tobacco taxes for owners of stores comes back.

They feel, rightly, been harmed by an underground economy that deprives millions of dollars. At the point where many of them are facing bankruptcy. . . .

Let's not be naïve. Obviously a reduction in tobacco taxes will draw some smokers back to the legal product market. A move in this direction in the 90s (also to fight contraband) did have a positive effect on "legitimate" tobacco sellers.

But there's another side to all this, the health effects of an increase in the number of smokers. Even worse, this rise in the number of smokers will hit the group particularly targeted by the tobacco industry, young people, who are the most sensitive to cigarette prices. Lowering the price of cigarettes by cutting taxes will only change the location of the problem and probably make it worse. The best way to stop smoking is not to start. High prices definitely have an effect on the youngest.

The fight against tobacco is a societal choice. We can't question it every time it inconveniences someone - even more so when it's... tobacco sellers.

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• Black-market smokes threaten to snuff out ‘the dep'  

Quebec's iconic corner stores, sources of livelihood for many new immigrants, survived suburban sprawl and supermarket competition - but the rise of contraband cigarettes is rapidly driving them out of business

There was always a grim math to owning one of Quebec's iconic dépanneurs , the ubiquitous corner store that rewarded mom-and-pop owners with long hours and small profits.

But the dep, as the stores are often called in Quebec English, survived in the 1970s and '80s as customers fled to the suburbs and, in the 1990s, as mega-supermarkets and 24-hour chain stores mushroomed.

Dep owners say cut-rate illegal cigarettes from Mohawk reserves are driving them toward insolvency faster than Wal-Mart or Couche-Tard ever managed.

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Tobacco farmer lobby continues to push province  

The Ontario Farmer Products Marketing Commission, which oversees the province's system of commodity marketing boards, moved in with a sledge hammer last Monday. It swept away the old Ontario Flue-Cured Tobacco Growers' Marketing Board with its leadership of 11 directors elected from across Norfolk, Brant, Oxford, Elgin and Middlesex counties, after all of them had taken exit packages from the federal government's $300-million tobacco transition program.

The commission set up a new five-member board and appointed three directors immediately, with two more to follow soon.

Neukamm, one of the three appointees, immediately gained a mandate as chairman, a position he had held in the old board for four years, before his ouster about a year ago.

And what were Neukamm's first words to the media? He said the new board will assume a double role in protecting the interests of about 1,100 former growers who took Ottawa's limited exit package, and will advance the concerns of licensed growers under the new system installed for the 2009 crop year.

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EDITORIAL: Kicking the habit 

The government's move to make it mandatory for all packets of tobacco products to carry pictorial warnings on the health hazards of tobacco consumption is well intended, but it is doubtful whether this will have the desired impact. Under the new order, all packs of tobacco products like cigarettes, bidis and gutka, will now have to carry images of diseased human lungs along with blunter statutory warnings like 'Tobacco kills' and 'Tobacco causes cancer'. The objective, apparently, is to convey the harmful effects of tobacco consumption to those who cannot read. But whether this message is sufficient to deter a person from smoking or chewing tobacco is debatable, considering that the written warning that 'smoking is injurious to health' has failed to check the consumption of tobacco among literates. Besides, it is uncertain whether unlettered smokers, many of whom may not be familiar with the human anatomy, would be able to decipher the picture to be that of an ailing lung or heart, and relate it tobacco consumption.

The problem is more complex in India than elsewhere in the world because of the varied forms and modes of tobacco use. . . .

Unlike countries where tobacco consumption is either leveling off or even decreasing, tobacco use is on the rise in India. Yet it is also true that India, despite being a major tobacco producer and exporter, played a significant role in the development of the framework convention on tobacco control (FCTC) . . .

A more comprehensive action plan for tobacco control would involve simultaneous action on several fronts, such as hikes in the taxes on all tobacco products, disincentives for the production of tobacco and its products, incentives to farmers to switch to alternative crops, and consumer education campaigns.

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Okaishie residents educated on effects of tobacco smoking 

Management of Coalition of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), in tobacco control (CNTC), on Saturday organized a durbar at Okaishie, in Accra to educate the people on the harmful effects of tobacco smoking.

Mr. Oscar Bruce, Vice President of the CNTC, said it was the desire of the coalition to "create awareness on adverse effects of tobacco smoking throughout the country in order to prevent and protect the second hand smoker in particular."

He said people needed to be educated and informed on the health hazards of tobacco smoking to ensure compliance of the Tobacco Control Bill when passed into law.

"We will not rest in carrying out outreach programmes to include those in the rural areas until the Tobacco Control Bill is passed into law," he stressed.

Mrs. Edith Wellington, Principal Health Research Officer of Ghana Health Service (GHS), expressed shock over emerging trend of teenage smokers in the country

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Govt may raise cigarette excise by 10%  

As cigarette sales are likely to grow even stronger next year in the wake of a better business environment, the government is set to increase the excise rate on cigarettes by 10 percent.

Director general of customs and excise Anwar Suprijadi told The Jakarta Post Thursday the government would impose higher excise rates for cigarettes and tobacco next year to raise more state revenue.

“There won’t be any rate increase this year as agreed between the industry and the government. That’s why we aim for the 10 percent rise next year,” Anwar said.

He said the state budget would need a boost next year as government spending would remain a key driver for the economy as in the case of this year when exports and private investments slowed. . . .

According to data released by publicly listed PT HM Sampoerna, the nation’s biggest cigarette maker by volume, cigarette sales totalled 59.6 billion sticks between January and March this year as against 53.5 billion sticks recorded in the same period last year.

The company recorded a 27 percent jump in net profits during the first quarter of this year

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EDITORIAL: Not Only Pictures 

The Indian tobacco Control Law, the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Act, (COTPA) 2003, which came into effect in 2004 and became a law on 2nd October 2008, prohibits smoking in public places. It provides for strict regulations on tobacco promotion and bars all forms of direct and indirect advertisement.

‘Catch them young’ is the trend with which tobacco companies the world over target Indian youths. For a country with a population of over 40 crore being less than 18 years of age, tobacco consumption is a major threat to our economy playing with the health of the individuals. The law has finally come down heavily on the assassinating character of tobacco products by taking a stringent stand on portraying pictorial warnings.

So, in addition to pictorial warnings, there is need to sensitize the people on the fatal effects of tobacco use the NGOs, local clubs, hotels and restauras, private agencies etc. Ban on public smoking also needs to be strictly implemented through the initiative of hotel and restaura owners, security people etc.

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EDITORIAL: Tobacco Taxes 

Cigarette smokers are easy targets for unfair taxation...especially in Vermont.

The thought seems to be that since smokers are outcasts, you might as well tax 'em to death before the cigarettes get them.

And, of course, there's the "Don't dare smoke anywhere around me, even if you're outdoors" crowd.

We say "hold on" to both. . . .

You're just punishing the poor for an entirely legal habit you just don't like.

That's unfair, and so's this.

Burlington Parks and Rec wants to ban smoking in some OUTDOOR areas.

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• The Reintroduction of Kirsten Gillibrand 

After her clerkship, Gillibrand returned to Davis Polk, where she worked for nine years, logging long workweeks for a series of clients including the tobacco conglomerate Philip Morris. During her 2008 congressional reelection, operatives for Sandy Treadwell, her Republican opponent, compiled boxes of information that documented Gillibrand’s involvement with Philip Morris, but the media was largely uninterested. The New York Times revisited the material after Gillibrand’s Senate appointment. The Times’ 2,700-word front-page story depicted Gillibrand as a key player on the account, making trips to Philip Morris’s European cigarette-testing lab and using her office as a war room to plot strategy to defend the company against government claims that it knew tobacco was a carcinogen and hid that information from consumers. The story noted that Davis Polk allowed associates to decline to work for certain clients if they found the work ethically objectionable, but that Gillibrand appeared to have thrown herself wholeheartedly into her Philip Morris assignment.

. . . I asked her if she regretted her work, she answered with a defiant “No.” She didn’t defend the work on its own terms, however. “I had an opportunity to work with Robert Fiske on the case, and he is universally regarded as one of the great lawyers of our time,” she told me. Then she said, “And the work on that case allowed me to do pro bono cases.” . . .

Gillibrand says it was Bible study that awakened her to public service. “When I was working in New York, I taught a Bible class for 10-year-olds,” she says. “My favorite parable is the one Jesus tells about the talents.” She’s referring to the story in which a master becomes angry with a servant for wasting a coin, or “talent,” he was given. “What I took from that is we have to do the most with the talents God has given us. I was working as a corporate lawyer, where I wasn’t helping people. I was just helping big companies make money. And I wanted to do more.” The story may be true, but it clearly sounded rehearsed. . . .

It’s Schumer, more than anyone, who is responsible for Gillibrand’s relaunch. At Gillibrand’s lowest point, shortly after the Times tobacco story, New York’s senior senator agreed to cooperate with (and some suspect he orchestrated) what was viewed by some as a Times makeup call, a front-page story about how Schumer was taking Gillibrand under his wing. The piece implied that Schumer was supporting Gillibrand because he could manage her. The message Schumer meant to send was clear: He is on Gillibrand’s side and expects others to be as well.

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I had an opportunity to work with Robert Fiske on the case, and he is universally regarded as one of the great lawyers of our time. . . . And the work on that case allowed me to do pro bono cases.
NY Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand defends her work for Philip Morris in a NY Magazine article.

Smokers cost businesses £2.1bn a year due to 'fag breaks' and sickness 

Smokers are costing businesses £2.1billion each year through sickness and time-wasting cigarette breaks, a report has claimed.

It found that 1.77 extra sick days a year are taken by each smoker at a cost of £1.1billion to firms.

And smoking breaks during the working day were found to be just as costly, amounting to almost £1billion.

The report, by the London School of Economics, described the costs as ‘staggering’ and said that firms could make major savings by helping the staff to quit smoking.

Professor Alistair Mcguire, of the LSE, said: ‘The formula reveals just how much of businesses’ bottom line is going up in smoke every year.

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