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There are many reasons why children take up smoking but youth exposure to tobacco marketing is a key factor. Although most forms of tobacco promotion were outlawed in the UK by the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act 2002, the tobacco industry has continued to use its marketing muscle to lure children to its products through elaborate displays and fancy packaging. . . .
Naturally, the tobacco industry disputes the evidence because of its need to recruit and maintain new customers. The industry has an established track record of contesting research evidence to delay regulation. Tactics include challenging the evidence in order to create uncertainty and using apparently 'independent' researchers to do its dirty work. Such allies include the Cato Institute, for example. . . .
Furthermore there is simply no evidence to support the claim that putting tobacco out of sight at the point of sale leads to an increase in illegal sales. The vast majority of retailers are law-abiding and would not be tempted to try and sell illicit products. The rise in smuggling in both Ireland and Canada predates the implementation of display bans and there is no evidence of any causal association. Tobacco smuggling is clearly a huge problem that requires a strategic response but abandoning a policy that would stop tobacco being promoted to young people is not the answer.
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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.
A NEW court ruling could spark a price war on cigarettes in Ireland with disastrous effects for people's health, anti-smoking group Ash Ireland has warned.
The European Court of Justice yesterday declared that Ireland cannot set minimum prices for tobacco because it distorts competition and benefits manufacturers.
Although this is an interim opinion, it could open the way for cigarette sellers to start discounting heavily on price, which could lead to more young people taking up the habit and reducing the incentive to quit, said Dr Angie Brown of Ash.
The Government has ditched plans to ban smoking in cars when children are passengers, Sky News Online can reveal.
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The news comes as a woman was convicted of smoking in a vehicle containing a three-year-old child in what is believed to be one of the first prosecutions of its kind in Australia.
Britain was considering moves to introduce similar legislation next year as part of its review of 'smoke-free laws' introduced three years ago.
But a spokeswoman for the Department of Health told Sky this has now changed.
"The Government does not have any plans at this point in time to introduce legislation to prohibit smoking in private cars," she said.
A major retailer of electronic cigarettes has been sued in a multi-count civil action which seeks penalties of $25,000 for each sale as well as refunds to customers. Several other sellers of electronic cigarettes have avoided suits by entering into voluntary settlements, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), the organization which wrote to state attorneys general asking them to bring this type of legal action against the sellers.
According to the complaint, Smoking Everywhere "did not submit their electronic cigarettes to FDA for pre-approval because Defendants believed that they found a regulatory loophole that allowed them to sell electronic cigarettes without FDA approval, so long as the devices were not sold as smoking cessation devices." . . .
The complaint charges that Smoking Everywhere has engaged in the "deceptive sale and promotion of electronic cigarettes" which "causes immediate harm to public health, safety, and welfare." It says defendants made claims which were deceptive because "Defendants did not possess such evidence because such evidence does not exist." These claims included that e-cigarettes "are safer than traditional cigarettes."
The complaint also charges that Defendant wrongfully claims that its product contain "no harmful carcinogenic ingredients" and are "free of [cigarette-type] tar."
Defendants were also charged with failing to warn customers that "nicotine can cause dangerous increases in heart rate and blood pressure and should not be used by individuals with hypertension or heart disease."
Ash Ireland chairwoman Dr Angie Brown highlighted Mr Burrows links with sport and said she was surprised that "such an esteemed figure" had decided to link up with the tobacco industry.
"Mr Burrows will be well aware that millions of people die from the effects of smoking around the world each year and many of these cigarettes are developed and manufactured by BAT," she said.
"This is an industry which aggressively markets an addictive killer product - and still endeavours to maintain that passive smoke is harmless - despite it being graded as a class one carcinogen by the WHO . . .
A spokeswoman for BAT said Mr Burrows was on holidays and was therefore unable to respond to the criticism. She said there was no suggestion that Mr Burrows was going to promote smoking, or to link sport with tobacco, when he took up his new role.
Most astonishingly, the product is currently not subject to any regulation, so we have no way of knowing what other chemicals might also be given off when the user exhales into the air.
FOR A COPY OF ASH' s LEGAL PETITION, SEE BELOW.
ASH TO THE RESCUE
To help protect nonsmokers, and also smokers who might use the product instead of quitting, ASH has filed a formal legal petition demanding that it be regulated by the FDA. . . .
For all of the reasons set forth in this legal petition, the FDA should immediately issue a public statement and provide notice to the manufacturer, distributors, and others directly affected that the device falls within the FDA's jurisdiction as a "drug" or, more likely, as a "drug delivery device" ("medical device"). The FDA should also initiate, at its very earliest possible convenience, any and all appropriate regulatory proceedings, including those which might lead to interim regulations while the issues are studied more fully.
Respectfully submitted,
Law Professor John Banzhaf, Esq. Action on Smoking and Health (ASH)
No one has seen a cigarette ad on TV since New Year's Day 1971, when a ban on such ads by Congress went into effect. Congress usually gets the credit for "defeating" the tobacco companies, yet the ban was actually sought by Big Tobacco because of the FCC's Fairness Doctrine -- and the efforts of a young activist to invoke it.
In 1966, John Banzhaf petitioned the FCC to apply the Fairness Doctrine to remedy the one-sided view conveyed in radio and TV cigarette ads that smoking was a glamorous, enjoyable activity (its dangers were left unsaid). The FCC agreed and, beginning in 1967, ordered every broadcaster to air one anti-smoking message for each nine or 10 cigarette ads it aired. . . .
But as we saw with Big Tobacco, advertising's cumulative effects are not always benign. A lie can be embedded as truth through the power of unopposed repetition, especially when massively funded. And those lies are not always dressed up in bright colors on talk shows for the world to see (and to debate). How did we access "our" airwaves to challenge such lies? The Fairness Doctrine provided a way.
Like all laws, it was sometimes over-invoked by zealots. But that's what dismissals are for. . . .
Yet despite what its critics say, the Fairness Doctrine was never meant to balance Roarin' Rush with a compensatory side order of Al Franken. When selectively and wisely applied, it provided a useful remedy on those rare occasions when converging commercial interests implied -- via broadcast -- only one side of an issue affecting us all.
The number of heart attacks has fallen dramatically since the ban on smoking in public places was introduced last year, latest figures reveal.
More than half of of hospital trusts in England are treating fewer heart attacks since the ban came on July 1 last year.
Nearly six in ten NHS trusts are reporting a fall in the number of heart attack patients being admitted to emergency wards.
There were 1,384 fewer heart attacks across the county in the nine months after the legislation was introduced compared with the same period a year earlier. That translates to a three per cent fall across the country since the ban. . . .
Some hospitals have seen the number of cases fall by 41 per cent since July 2007.
The figures, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, are the first available proof that the smoking ban has had a significant impact on health across England. . . .
Experts believe the ban has triggered a drop in heart attacks due to both the number of people quitting and the reduction in passive smoking as fewer people are exposed to airborne toxins.
British American Tobacco (BAT) has been in Africa since 1902. The shareholders at the London meeting had reason to celebrate; the company made a pretax profit of more than $4.5 billion last year. But Action on Smoking and Health, a non-profit group that works to eliminate the harm caused by tobacco, used the opportunity to protest the company's growing presence in Africa.
Group spokesman Martin Dockrell says African countries are experiencing the highest increase in tobacco use among developing countries.
"The shareholders are meeting in London today to count their profits," he said. "They sold 1.1 billion cigarettes in Africa and the Middle East region last year, and we are not so happy because by our calculation that is equivalent to about 100,000 deaths."
Dockrell says since smoking is on the decline in the West due to pressure by organizations like his and the general public's awareness of the health implications of smoking, companies such as BAT have shifted their focus to Africa and Asia with aggressive advertising. . . .
BAT responded with a written statement saying Action on Smoking and Health's facts just do not stand up. It also dismissed the charge it is breaking into emerging markets to dodge regulation, since it has been in those markets for more than 100 years and abides by the laws and regulations of all the countries it operates in.
The company says the health risks associated with smoking are well-known and warnings about the hazard are printed on every single pack of cigarettes it makes whether the law requires it or not.
Contrary to the obituary in today's New York Times, former Surgeon General Dr. William H. Stewart did not "put the first health warnings on cigarette packs," notes the public interest law professor who caused the first decline in US smoking by getting free time for antismoking messages on radio and TV.
"Although Dr. Stewart urged health warnings, he had no authority to order them," notes law professor John Banzhaf of George Washington University. In fact, the story is somewhat more complicated, he explains. . . .
Unfortunately, something that Stewart could not have anticipated -- but which Congress should have foreseen -- occurred. Years later the major tobacco companies were successful in defending themselves from law suits claiming that they failed to adequately disclose the dangers of smoking by arguing that they put on their packs exactly the warning Congress had required.
None of this should detract from Stewart's legacy, however, says Banzhaf.
As British American Tobacco celebrates 100 years of trade in Africa at its AGM in London (on Wednesday, 30th April), campaigners will be outside, protesting about the heavy footprint it leaves on the continent - death, hunger, poverty, and environmental destruction.
A new report by ASH, BAT's African Footprint [1], says that while smoking is declining in the West, BAT's profits in Asia and Africa grew by £2 million to £470 million last year. The growth in sales means more ill-health and ultimately rising tobacco-related deaths.
According to an analysis carried out for the campaigning charity ASH, one person dies for every million cigarettes sold. BAT sold 101 billion cigarettes in the Africa and Middle east region last year. Sir Richard Peto, Professor of Medical Statistics at Oxford University said: "If BAT continues selling 100 billion cigarettes a year in Africa and the Middle East, this will, in the long run, cause 100,000 deaths per year."
The consultant cardiologist Keith Ball, who has died aged 92, will be remembered as one of the earliest campaigners on the harmful effects of tobacco and for coronary prevention. He was also a co-founder of the influential anti-smoking pressure group, Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) and its first honorary secretary
THE distribution of smokers across England, showing the areas where people are the most dependent on nicotine, is revealed today as part of a service designed to encourage smokers to quit.
An online map compares the proportion of smokers to the level of economic and social deprivation among more than 8,000 electoral wards.
The districts with the highest percentage of smokers are Bransholme East, in Hull, and Windmill Hill, in Halton, Cheshire, where an estimated 54 per cent of the population smoke -- more than double the national average of 25 per cent. The wards with the lowest number of smokers include Ponteland South, Northumberland, and Little Aston, in Birmingham, where only 9 per cent of residents smoke.
The map, published online by Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), the anti-smoking pressure group, is based on estimates of smoking rates and a government index measuring deprivation, and indicates a strong correlation between smoking and poverty.
Maureen Moore, Chief Executive of ASH Scotland said,
"Scotland's smoke-free legislation was brought in on the grounds of health, not on anecdotal reports concerning the profit margins of a minority of SLTA members. In March this year we took decisive action to remove a known carcinogenic substance from Scotland's enclosed public places and workplaces. In this we followed the best available international knowledge about the effects of second-hand smoke and followed the lead of countries like Ireland and Norway where the health of bar workers has measurably improved and predictions of economic disaster have been shown to be unfounded. Â Before the legislation came in, The SLTA made a number of forecasts regarding its supposed impacts. They predicted a huge decline in profits for licensed premises, mass job loses within the licensed trade and that some 142 average-sized licensed premises could close down as a result of decreased trade. This scale of devastation has clearly completely failed to materialise. Â Six weeks ago the SLTA criticised ASH Scotland for publicising reports from publicans of how positively Scotland's smoking ban has come in. They claimed it would take at least a year to be clear on the impact of legislation, and said we were talking 'premature nonsense'. Now they are publicising the unsubstantiated opinions of a small minority of their members, without factoring in all the wider economic pressures on pubs and small businesses, and presenting these as if they told us something meaningful. It smacks of desperation. Â Across Scotland, the message is clear. The majority of Scots have welcomed and embraced the legislation. Many people have used the legislation as a motivation to quit or to smoke less when they are out. The overall picture is a positive one."