Hey, I was as excited as the next guy to see Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless reunite onscreen in a recent “Burn Notice” episode, but the former pistol-wielding actors didn’t offer much in the way of economic intelligence. A group of prominent CEOs gathered in sunny Florida, however, did.

Every year, the Consumer Analyst Group of New York (CAGNY) convenes in mid-February to talk shop. This is a group of analysts and companies that’s skewed toward consumer staples and basic discretionary goods (think cereal, booze, and cigarettes), so I take their commentaries as a fairly reliable indicator of the consumer landscape.

This year, overt forecasts, as judged by presentations later made public, were in shorter supply than I would’ve preferred. Nonetheless, among the 20 or so attending companies, prevailing themes did emerge. Below, I summarize three such motifs.

1. Location still matters
Nowhere did the difference between domestic and international economiesfind sharper contrast than in the expectations of Big Tobacco names Philip Morris International (NYSE: PM) and its former parent, Altria (NYSE: MO) .

Altria, which hawks its cigarette, cigar, and smokeless-tobacco brands in the U.S., opened up by noting high unemployment and low consumer confidence. “Nearly 75% of adult consumers have a different set of priorities than several years ago,” management observed, further citing that “nearly 60% of adult consumers” don’t plan to spend as they once did. Those figures certainly don’t surprise.

Conversely, global player Philip Morris International revealed a bullish outlook, going so far as to assert that “the stock market does not yet fully value the underlying strength of our business and its excellent momentum.”

And the divergent forecasts show up in each company’s numbers. Altria took the opportunity to revise its midterm EPS guidance, down from 8%-10% growth to 7%-9%. Philip Morris, on the other hand, held fast to its 2010 EPS growth estimate in the high teens, not to mention its long-term guidance of 10%-12% annual currency-neutral gains.

Finally, while Philip Morris’s most recent dividend boost came in at 7.4%, Altria managed only a 2.9% increase.

With the exception of certain European markets — Spain and Russia, for instance — I expect that the international consumer will continue to show relative strength. So whether we’re talking menthol cigs or running shoes, companies that boast a strong global footprint should outperform — provided the dollar doesn’t surge, that is.

2. Value’s here to stay
Yep, companies continue to describe a choosy, better-informed, value-focused consumer. Packaged-foods producer ConAgra perhaps said it best: “We may be in an economic statistical recovery, but don’t tell consumers that just yet. We believe value is here to stay even beyond the eventual recovery on Main Street.”

Snacks-and-cereal maker Kellogg roughly seconded that notion, citing what it called “an absolutely critical data point” — coupons. Having declined for 17 consecutive years, U.S. coupon usage jumped by 20% in 2009. If, embedded in that trend, is a widespread consumer insistence on promotional pricing, then companies could eventually find themselves forced to choose between volume growth and margin preservation.

Meanwhile, both Unilever (NYSE: UL) and PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP) reminded analysts that value is not purely about price, but rather the relationship between price and product quality. In other words, there’s a lot that companies can do in terms of consumer messaging and product innovation. Even in the age of thrift, consumers are unlikely to forget that you often get what you pay for.

3. Strapped for cash? Eat this.
I’ve already described PepsiCo’s shift toward healthier products. But the snacks-and-beverage giant isn’t alone.

Campbell Soup talked up its health innovations, including a major renovation to its U.S. soup and broth portfolio. Lower sodium, added vegetables, and a low cholesterol profile are among the key features. Also, management highlighted its V8 line, where V8 Fusion sales have been on a tear.

Even deli-product and sweets specialist Sara Lee has joined the club, reducing salt content and, well, throwing its weight behind national anti-obesity initiatives. I expect that consumers will increasingly demand such products. In part, the shift is likely about health for health’s sake, but I believe that it also has to do with consumers finding small ways to feel good about themselves amid tough economic times.Â

Companies that have a head start in this regard — I’d count General Mills and Nestle among them — deserve investor attention.

Wrapping it up
Ultimately, the market is increasingly becoming a stock picker’s arena, where focusing purely on macro conditions may in fact lead investors astray. Take Latin American beverage company FEMSA (NYSE: FMX) , for instance, which has grown revenue and operating earnings at a double-digit pace despite moderate GDP contraction in its consumer markets. Meanwhile, Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) has posted higher top-line growth, and even the long-ailing Abercrombie & Fitch (NYSE: ANF) recently joined the party.© 2010 UCLICK L.L.C.

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As several people told emotional stories of losing loved ones to smoking-related illnesses, British American Tobacco New Zealand (BAT) told a Maori Affairs select committee inquiry into the tobacco industry in Auckland that visible tobacco stands were important to its business of selling a legal product.

The inquiry was called in particular to look at the consequences of tobacco use for Maori.

BAT managing director Graeme Amey said research showed removing cigarettes and other tobacco products from visibility in retail stores would have little impact on the prevalence of smoking.

But after Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei asked why BAT opposed this if it would make no impact on smoking, Mr Amey said it could lose market share as a result.

“We operate a commercial business and we are in the business of improving market share,” he said.

“Brand switching would become an issue.”

BAT’s oral submission concentrated on suggestions on how to reduce the prevalence of smoking by children.

He said there should be greater education, that cigarette sellers should be licensed, and there should be greater enforcement of the laws restricting sales to people under 18.

Under strong questioning from Maori Party MP Hone Harawira, Mr Amey said BAT took no responsibility for the high death rates from smoking and in Maori in particular, but he did say there was no safe cigarette.

He said cigarettes were a legal product and those who chose to smoke knew they were putting themselves at risk.

Mr Amey admitted he had quit smoking after 10 years, saying he did so as a personal choice.

He said banning smoking would be counter-productive as it would merely increase the black market for nicotine.

Ngaire Rae of Manaia Public Health Organisation in Whangarei said she had just buried her father, who died from a smoking-related disease at the age of 68.

She said her story was all too common in Northland, where a huge proportion of Maori were smokers.

“He should be sharing his life stories with his whanau, and instead we are deprived of his wisdom and his life stories,” she said.

“I am pleased to make sure that there are some strong actions as a result of this inquiry. Let’s not make this a talkfest, let’s make sure your time and ours is not a waste.”
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Dr Marewa Glover called for an eventual ban on smoking and improvement in accessing services to quit.

“It needs to be as effective as a sniper rather than a shotgun firing bullets in different directions, some of them contradictory.”

Dr Glover said many Maori believed smoking couldn’t be too bad if the Government didn’t think it needed to make the drug illegal.

She said some services to help people quit smoking were good but others were ineffective and involved too much time.

“That sort of help needs to be as easy as going to the dairy to buy a packet of smokes.”

Dr Glover said parliamentarians had been negligent, accusing them of “prancing around and partying with the smoking industry while our people are smoking and dying”.

She said the large GST take and excise tax take gave Government an incentive to keep smoking legal, and that only 5.5 percent of the smoking tax take was going into tobacco control, which she said wasn’t enough.

Dr Glover also said some advertising campaigns advising smokers to leave the room or car to smoke were missing the point, as these gave people the idea it was still okay to keep smoking when it wasn’t.

She also called for greater effort to be made to stop young Maori women smoking either before or during pregnancy.
By ALASTAIR BULL, Stuff

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After almost a year of mild warnings, the government has decided to shift to more powerful messages. Tobacco products will now carry pictures of mouth cancer, showing rotting teeth and lips.

A notification was issued by the health ministry on March 5 and the new warnings will come into force from June 1. These would be implemented under the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products (Packaging and Labelling Amendment) Rules, 2010.

The warnings show a real picture of mouth cancer with a caption “tobacco causes mouth cancer”. Cigarette packs will carry the same picture with the caption “smoking kills”, while chewing or smokeless products will carry the caption “tobacco kills”. The new warnings have been pretested for their effectiveness by the Voluntary Health Association of India (VHAI) and the Healis-Sekhsaria Institute for Public Health.

“The new warnings are certainly an improvement over the previous ones. Older warnings, which showed an X-ray of a lung or a diseased lung or a scorpion, were not effective,” said Dr K. Srinath Reddy of the Public Health Foundation of India.

Research in developed countries has shown that depicting the health impact of tobacco in the form of pictures was effective.

The new warnings were fieldtested in Orissa, Bihar, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh by VHAI. In Maharashtra, these were tested by the Healis-Sekhsaria Institute for Public Health.

The study was conducted using 11 images and response was sought from 735 people, including tobacco-users, women and youth. Ninety-eight per cent of people said the pictures of mouth cancer would deter tobacco-users.

“They said they will not send their children to buy cigarettes if these pictures were printed on tobacco products,” Bhavna Mukhopadhya of the VHAI said. The study was sent to the health ministry last month.

Pictorial warnings were enforced on May 31 last year after the intervention of the Supreme Court. The apex court had directed the government to enforce the rules strictly.

The pictorial warnings were proposed in July 2006 under the Cigarette and Other Tobacco Products Act, 2003. Back then, the proposal was to print warnings in the form of pictures of skull and bones, real-life pictures of cancer patients, dead bodies, and a child dying due to the effects of smoking and mouth cancer lacerations and tumours.

However, the warnings that came into effect last year were milder.

Health experts said the government should also focus on the implementation of new warnings as tobacco companies were violating the rules.

Pictorial scarier message on tobacco packs before No Smoking Day

The ministry of health and social welfare proposed new pictorial health warnings which shall be implemented from 01-Jun-2010. The health ministry has considered the findings made by the VHAI (Voluntary Health Association of India) before deciding upon the pictorial warning messages.

This move has come just days before the ‘No Smoking Day’ (every 2nd Wednesday of March month is celebrated as No Smoking Day). The critiques of smoking surely couldn’t have asked for a better gift for this day.

VHAI field tested the proposed pictorial warning in seven states in India namely Orissa, Bihar, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh and is really surprised with the results they have achieved.

VHAI tested a new pictorial warning that shows a cancerous mouth with a warning message that reads “Tobacco causes mouth cancer”. This sign shall be common for both the chewing tobacco packs and cigarette packs. It would replace the earlier picture of scorpion and lung sign. The scorpion sign was required for gutka, chewing tobacco packs and the diseased lung sign was required for cigarette pack.

The pictorial warnings were made compulsory from May 31, 2009 under the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco products (Packaging and labeling) Rules 2008 which was following a Supreme Court directive. The rule required that the pictorial message should cover atleast 40% of the entire pack and the pictorial warnings should be changed after every 12 months to ensure it meets its required effectiveness. Effectively it would be for the first time that health ministry has proposed changing the pictorial message.

VHAI field tested that having a scarier message would help 98% of the people in (the polled seven states) to quit smoking or chewing tobacco habit. 734 people were polled from seven states with the new pictorial warning before the notification was served to implement this change. VHAI also said that although the step was taken in the right direction initially the earlier pictorial message was not effective and didn’t meet its target.

This move from the health ministry is a necessary step considering that almost 40% of India’s health problems are as a result of tobacco use. Every day almost 2200 people die in India due to tobacco related diseases.

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Proposals to increase taxes on cigarettes, tobacco and alcohol would hit convenience stores hard, said Thomas Palace, executive director of the Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association of Kansas. As the Senate Taxation Committee considered hikes to the state’s cigarette and tobacco taxes Wednesday, he joked that he considered wearing a big bull’s-eye to the Capitol.

“Somewhere you are going to hit me — front, back,” he said. “I have protected my private area.”

Faced with a deepening budget shortfall that now exceeds $400 million, lawmakers are trying to find ways to close the gap. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the committee heard testimony on a bill that would raise the tax on cigarettes by 55 cents per pack to the national average of $1.34. It also would increase the tax on tobacco products, such as cigars and chewing tobacco, to 40 percent from 10 percent. The increased taxes could bring in an estimated $69.5 million in new tax dollars.

Committee Chairman Les Donovan, a Wichita Republican who owns a General Motors dealership, said he could commiserate when businesses are hit by factors beyond their control. Yet, he noted the dire budget problems.

“We have to do something on the revenue side,” he said. “We don’t know if we can cut enough more spending to get us out of here this year. If we can’t, we’re going to do something to raise some revenue some way to try to get us whole again.”

On Tuesday, supporters of the tax increase said it was necessary to help avoid dire cuts and would lower smoking among youths. On Wednesday, opponents said a tax increase would devastate their businesses.

“In my 30-plus years of observing and serving in the Kansas Legislature taxes have always been a popular topic,” said Doug Mays, a former Topeka lawmaker who spoke on behalf of the Cigar Association of America. “But in all that time, I can’t recall such stratospheric numbers being proposed in this bill.”

The tax increase, opponents said, would drive business online and to neighboring Missouri, which boasts the lowest tobacco tax in the nation. Brenda Ellsworth, operations officer for Pete’s convenience stores, said Kansas convenience stores also are disadvantaged by a higher gas tax and prohibition on selling strong beer and wine.

“Our state has provided wonderful roads for our customers to use while commuting to Missouri,” she said.

On Thursday, the committee is to begin talks on a 1 cent increase to the state’s sales tax. The committee is expected to take action on both issues by March 18.

By Barbara Hollingsworth, Cjonline
March 10, 2010

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However, within one year he might have to find a new after-meal habit, and maybe a healthier one, too..

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which China signed in 2003 and ratified in 2005, the country will ban all types of tobacco advertising and promotion by 2011 in accordance with the FCTC.

Further, smoking in all indoor work places and public areas, as well as public transportation vehicles, will also be banned.

With just one year to go, and less than three months ahead of what authorities promised would be a smoke-free Shanghai World Expo, the Chinese government is fast tracking smoking control, even at this year’s annual parliamentary and advisory sessions.

Health Minister Chen Zhu said on March 3, the opening day of the annual session of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), that legislation for smoking control in public areas was currently being enacted in China.

Vice Health Minister Huang Jiefu also vowed on March 5, when the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress kicked off, that China’s smoking control progress would see a “giant leap forward” after the parliament session, which is expected to end on March 14.

A dozen political advisors even submitted a proposal to the CPPCC National Committee calling for a “smoke-free” session.

“The Chinese government’s commitments are surely good news for the country’s smoking control progress,” said longtime anti-smoking activist Gregory Yingnien Tsang.

The 77-year-old American Chinese has been advocating a smoking ban in public areas in China for the past 18 years.

“As long as the government sticks to its commitments and speeds up fulfillment of those commitments, the current situation of lax implementation of smoking control regulations in public areas, and people’s reluctance to quit smoking, will soon be resolved,” he said.

One of the world’s largest tobacco producing and consuming nations, China manufactures about 100 billion packets of cigarettes each year. The country now has a smoking population of 350 million, about one-third of the world’s total.

Each year, about one million Chinese die from lung cancer and cardiovascular diseases that can be directly linked to tobacco use, according to statistics from the Chinese Association on Tobacco Control (CATC).

“The top priority here is to adopt an anti-smoking law that bans smoking in public areas, and make sure it is fully implemented,” Tsang said.

Such a law is key to helping prevent teenagers from picking up smoking, reducing the harm of passive smoking, and encouraging people to quit smoking, he said.

However, such an anti-smoking law would inevitably affect the tobacco industry, which has long been considered a major source of government tax revenues.

Li Yizhong, minister of industry and information technology, said in January China’s tobacco industry generated 59.4 billion yuan (about 8.7 billion U.S. dollars) in taxes in 2009.

Also, the tobacco industry made positive contributions to China’s V-shaped economic recovery last year, according to Li.

But Tsang said tax gains from the tobacco industry were far less than what China lost in deaths and medical expenses related to smoking.

The Ministry of Health estimated in 2007 that about 540 million Chinese were exposed to secondhand smoking, and annually about 100,000 deaths were related to smoking.

He said printing health warnings is the cheapest and most effective way for promoting smoking controls.

According to the FCTC, adverse results from smoking must be clearly stated on cigarette and tobacco packets, and health warnings in words and pictures should take up no less than 30 percent of the package area.

But Wu Yiqun, vice executive director with the Beijing-based Thinktank Research Center for Health Development, said earlier this year China’s tobacco industry supervisory administration had failed to oversee Chinese tobacco producers in this aspect.

“Words on packets in China hardly have any warning effect,” Wu said, “The words are small and some are even in English, and many Chinese smokers don’t understand them,” she said.

Tsang said he is currently working with the Beijing municipal health bureau on a five-year campaign named “one million smoke-free families” to encourage smokers to refrain from smoking at home or with their friends.

Shanghai, now busy in preparation for the upcoming World Expo, is also promoting smoke controls in public areas.

On March 1, Shanghai implemented a regulation to ban smoking in 12 types of public places, including schools, hospitals, sports stadiums, public transport vehicles and Internet cafes, to prevent widespread passive smoking.

The city also turned down a 200-million-yuan sponsorship deal for the 2010 World Expo from a tobacco company in July last year.

“I guess I would smoke less as there would be fewer and fewer places allowing people to smoke, or maybe I would just quit smoking,” Sun Ling said.
Mar 10, 2010, Behavioralhealthcentral

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Back in 1995 the European Union adopted a Manufactured Tobacco Tax Directive according to which tobacco products’ retailers and manufacturers are allowed to establish the maximum prices for their merchandise. However, Ireland has its own tobacco regulations implemented in 1986 concerning marketing, promoting and advertising of tobacco products. Under those regulations, sales of cigarettes with a discount more than 3 percent of retail price are prohibited.

Irish officials state minimal prices are obligatory for protecting both smokers and non-smokers by assuring that cigarettes are selling at a relatively high price. They underline that EU Directive only concerns the maximum prices, and not the minimal ones. However, the European Commission is getting ready to declare that Ireland has violated its commitment in conformity with the 1995 directive. Similar challenges have been also announced against Austria and France.

Several months ago, Advocate General for European Union Justice Court, Juliane Kokott discovered the issue in Ireland. Though the views of the Advocate General are not mandatory, her opinion is often followed. Mrs. Kokott questioned the legitimacy of Irish law, stating that establishing minimal prices breached with the tobacco companies’ right to establish a maximum price, which should not be below than the limit established by the government. The Advocate General admitted that EU member-countries are able to raise the excise taxes on tobacco products, and that has been the effective way to lower smoking rates and protect public health.
The ruling of the Court of Justice is expected to be announced on March 4th.

According to last year’s data, the Revenue Commission generated nearly €1.22 billion in excise taxes in 2009, in comparison to €1.17 billion in 2008.

Also in tobacco-related news, Irish customs agents confiscated last week cigarettes worth nearly €12 million from a warehouse in Dublin suburbs. The illegal products were smuggled to the country in bulk pallets of timber.

The spokesman for the Irish Association of Tobacco Manufacturers claimed that cigarettes illegally imported into the country, deprived Ireland from €526 million in lost taxes in 2009. And such losses are simply inadmissible at the time of severe recession.
By Clark Moore, Staff Writer
Copyright © 2010 Tobacco-Facts.net All rights reserved.

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“We want to accelerate and illuminate the pathway from microscope to market,” said Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at a briefing on February 24. She noted that many promising new treatments for cancer and other diseases are based on emerging technologies, and in some cases the FDA has little experience evaluating these treatments.

The initiative aims to address this issue in part by enhancing communication between scientists at the FDA and NIH. A Joint Leadership Council could, among other responsibilities, ensure that regulatory considerations are a component of planning for biomedical research and that the regulatory review process includes the latest science.

As Secretary Sebelius noted, NIH researchers who have expertise on a particular technology could help FDA scientists develop standards for evaluating therapies based on that technology. Similarly, FDA scientists could alert researchers about which safety issues would be important to win approval for therapies involving certain technologies.

In addition, $6.75 million will be spent over 3 years to support research on regulatory science. The grants will fund projects on new methods, models, or technologies that will inform the scientific and regulatory community about better approaches to evaluating safety and efficacy in medical products.

“This is an unprecedented effort to put together the leadership of NIH and FDA in a way that will catalyze the development of new therapeutics in ways that will benefit the public as quickly as possible,” said NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins.

In recent decades, biomedical research and discovery have evolved greatly, and regulatory science must also evolve, noted FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg. “This has created an imbalance that cannot persist,” she added.

Leaders of the initiative will seek comments from the public, the advocacy community, and scientists on the best ways to advance the goals of the initiative. A meeting could take place this spring.

First Meeting of FDA Tobacco Products Advisory Committee Announced

The first meeting of the FDA’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC) will be held on March 30–31 in Washington, DC, the agency announced last week. The committee’s formation was mandated under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which President Obama signed into law last June.

Also announced were the nine voting members of the advisory committee. The committee will include three nonvoting members who represent different components of the tobacco industry, but those members have yet to be selected, the FDA noted in a statement. Dr. Jonathan Samet of the University of Southern California’s Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center will chair the committee.

“FDA will be faced with many challenging tobacco-related public health, science, and regulatory issues as we move forward with implementation of the Tobacco Control Act,” said Dr. Lawrence R. Deyton, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, in a statement. “The breadth of knowledge amassed by this highly-qualified group will supplement and enhance the agency’s understanding of tobacco control, prevention, and health promotion issues.”

The advisory committee’s first meeting will focus on menthol, a common additive in cigarettes. Although the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act banned the addition of candy-like flavorings and certain other additives to cigarettes, menthol was not part of that prohibition. The law did, however, direct the TPSAC to deliver a report to the HHS secretary on the public health impact of menthol cigarettes, and, based on the report’s findings, the FDA has the authority to take further regulatory action with regard to menthol.

Presentations at the March meeting will cover a broad array of research on menthol cigarettes, such as the demographics of menthol cigarette users, the influence of these demographics on smoking initiation, and menthol’s effect on how cigarettes are smoked.

Cancer.gov

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House Republicans originally didn’t want the largest segment of state spending — public schools — to take any cuts.

And Herbert didn’t, either.

But Republican senators were adamant that schools should at least take a small hit, considering that they have more or less been held harmless this year and next, while some other state agencies and programs have been cut 10 percent to 15 percent.

The initial deal worked out Tuesday called for a 1 percent cut or $21.1 million. But $6.3 million that was to be cut from public school transportation — the buses that take kids to school and to special activities — will be restored.

Money to cover the cost of adding the busing back in the budget is expected to come from the tobacco tax increase initially opposed by Herbert.

GOP House members talked about taking the $6.3 million from tobacco settlement money that comes into the state each year. In fiscal 2010-11, that tobacco money is around $17 million, GOP leaders said.
Story continues below

But the $1-per-pack increase in the cigarette tax already approved by both the House and the Senate would take effect May 1, two months before the new budget year begins.

That means the tax increase, expected to raise $44 million annually, would add more than $7 million to state coffers in May and June. While the governor had threatened to veto the tax, Monday’s deal all but ensures he’ll sign the bill.

So Herbert actually takes budget hits in two areas — he didn’t want an increase in the cigarette tax and he didn’t want public education cut.

Now, both of those items will be included in the 2010-11 budget bills that will be passed before the Legislature adjourns at midnight Thursday.

“It looks like we have an agreement on the budget that has addressed the governor’s key issues,” Herbert’s chief of staff, Jason Perry, said. “It has been great to see how well the House, Senate and the governor’s office have been working together to meet the needs of the state.”

Herbert is expected to announce his support for the tax increase on cigarettes when lawmakers finalize the public education budget Wednesday.

GOP legislative leaders were relieved to have resolved the only remaining major issue left this session.

“We’re done,” House Speaker Dave Clark, R-Santa Clara, said after leaving a meeting with the governor and Senate leadership. “The governor has signed off.”

Senate President Michael Waddoups, R-Taylorsville, said the mood in the meeting with Herbert was upbeat. “We congratulated each other,” the Senate president said.

However, he tempered his enthusiasm for cutting the public school budget.

“It had to be done,” he said after presenting the agreement to his closed GOP caucus early Tuesday evening.

But there was some grumbling by lawmakers.

“Why send a message that we cut public education?” Rep. James Dunnigan, R-Taylorsville, said during an open caucus of House Republicans.

Whether that cut is 1 percent, as originally sought, or less, Dunnigan said the message is still sent to residents who put public education funding as their top priority.

“I don’t think we need to do so,” he said. “We have other sources of money.”

Herbert and leaders have already decided that no new money would go to schools next fall. Thus, the estimated 11,000 new students already aren’t being funded.

That would automatically reduce the state per-student funding formula by around $90 per student, or a 4 percent reduction from what schools would see in a normal budget year.

Rep. Roger Barrus, R-Centerville, pointed out last year schools’ budgets were cut back $293 million, then legislators backfilled all of that money from one-time sources.

This year, school advocates hoped that hole would, again, be backfilled with one-time funds.

“We did more than that,” House Budget Chairman Rep. Ron Bigelow, R-West Valley, said. “We backfilled with ongoing revenues” so schools wouldn’t face, again, huge budget cuts a year from now.

Considering that, said several House Republicans, school administrators, teachers and parents should be delighted with just a small reduction to a budget that exceeds $1 billion already.

By Bob Bernick Jr. and Lisa Riley Roche, Deseret News
March 9, 2010

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The maker of Davidoff and Gauloises lost 2.5 per cent to £20.91, its sharpest fall in six weeks, after UBS said earnings growth was set to slow significantly and consensus forecasts for next year looked too high.

Imperial was running out of cost savings from its purchase in 2008 of Altadis but remained hamstrung by the debt, analyst Jonathan Leinster said.

He argued that Imperial had very few internationally recognised brands and was underweight compared with peers in emerging markets.

But Deutsche Bank said worries about an earnings slowdown were “frankly, bizarre”.

Imperial had been providing the same profit guidance in investor presentations for two years and its increased stress recently on driving organic sales growth should be reason for encouragement, the broker argued.

The FTSE 100 recovered from a fall of as much as 0.8 per cent to close barely changed, down 4.42 points at 5,602.3.

Banks weakened on profit taking, a trend encouraged by Jonathan Pierce, Credit Suisse analyst.

He said UK lenders still had to shrink their asset books by up to 18 per cent to meet new liquidity requirements in addition to raising new funding, which would temper any recovery.

Lloyds Banking Group was down 0.9 per cent to 53¼p and Royal Bank of Scotland lost 1.2 per cent to 39p. Barclays , recently the subject of rumours about a fundraising backed by a Chinese investor, closed flat at 345¾p.

Liberty International led property stocks lower, losing 4.1 per cent to 486p, after a lower than expected portfolio valuation overshadowed its break-up plans.

BAE Systems drifted 1 per cent to 380½p on news it was facing an export ban while US authorities process its plea bargain on corruption allegations. Analysts played down the potential disruption, saying the bar was likely to be brief and relatively easy to work round.

Arm Holdings faded 0.7 per cent to 229p after Tudor Brown, director and co-founder, raised nearly £1.2m with a share sale.

Other dollar earners featured among the gainers, with Aggreko taking on 2 per cent to £10.66 after UBS raised forecasts and repeated “buy” advice.

Old Mutual , which has been looking to sell its US operations, gained 1.8 per cent to 121½p ahead of tomorrow’s results and strategy update.

Credit Suisse remained positive on Compass Group , up 0.7 per cent to 503p, after a meeting with management boosted confidence that the caterer could improve profit margins.

Shanks Group headed the mid-cap fallers, down 15.1 per cent to 102¼p, after it walked away from takeover talks with Carlyle Group, which had offered 120p per share. Speculation that Carlyle might take the offer direct to shareholders helped keep the stock above 90p, which was where it was trading before the approach was made public.

In spite of sector consolidation gossip, Misys fell 3 per cent to 236¼p. Citigroup said the software maker was too optimistic about how quickly customers would adopt its banking and healthcare products. With shares trading at 25 times its current-year forecasts, any disappointment against the ambitious targets could trigger a derating, the broker said.

Logica was up 3.3 per cent to 124¼p after Evolution Securities turned positive on the IT services group, citing recovering demand and a prospective 12 per cent free cashflow yield next year.

A retread of takeover speculation helped Tullett Prebon , the inter-dealer broker, edge 0.5 per cent higher at 310¼p. Some traders were also suggesting that housebuilder Barratt Developments , down 1.6 per cent to 115½p, could be vulnerable to an offer.

Better than feared maiden results from Gartmore , up 2.6 per cent to 195p, helped buoy other fund managers. Henderson Group rose 3.6 per cent to 132p and F&C Asset Management took on 1.5 per cent to 63½p ahead of results due this morning.
By Bryce Elder and Neil Hume, The Financial Times
March 10 2010

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Mildred “Mikay” Barrentine, 30, along with Pat Manning, 37, and 45-year-old Linda Lockwood, the latter two of Altha, are enthusiastic about the e-cigarette. All three are long-time heavy smokers who have given up traditional cigarettes in favor of “vaping,” users’ common term for this alternative to smoking.

Although e-cigarettes are not marketed or proven in studies as a smoke cessation device, all three say it has worked for them.

They breathe better and cough less. They also food tastes better, and they can smell it better, too, because they are no longer using tobacco with tar and the hundreds of chemicals contained in regular cigarettes.

Their clothes no longer get the tiny holes that flying sparks from cigarettes can ignite, and they no longer have to worry about burning holes in the carpet or their cars, since there’s no ash and fire waiting to fall onto the floorboard while they’re driving.

They spend relatively less on vaping than they spent on cigarettes, they say.

They also no longer have to leave the comfort of indoors at public places to enjoy a drag – at least for now.

That could change as the nation grapples with how to regulate the devices. Whether they should be considered permissible in “smoke free” environments is part of that discussion.

The Food and Drug Administration says not enough is known about the health effects of the devices, and the FDA has in the past seized some shipments coming from China in an attempt to regulate them as drug-delivery devices. The FDA also wants to regulate their marketing techniques, and wants to know more about quality controls.

But the agency suffered a setback in January, when a judge ruled the FDA hasn’t got the authority to do so under present regulations. The judge ruled the devices should be treated like cigarettes, which are sold over the counter at almost every convenience store and in many other venues throughout the country. They are not considered a drug-delivery device, the judge reasoned.

“There is no basis for FDA to treat electronic cigarettes … as a drug-device combination when all they purport to do is offer consumers the same recreational effects as a regular cigarette,” U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon wrote in his decision.

“FDA cites no evidence that (e-cigarettes) … are any more an immediate threat to public health and safety than traditional cigarettes, which are readily available,” he continued.

Regular cigarettes carry a Surgeon General’s warning, something e-cigarettes are not subject to at present.

At least some self-governing providers, however, do place warnings on their devices advising that they’re not for children, pregnant women or non-smokers, but rather for those who already smoke and want an alternative.

The FDA did gain traction on another point, however, which will likely put e-cigarettes back under its regulatory wing soon.

The agency was recently given authority to demand that cigarette makers disclose what is in their tobacco products, and the authority to study them determine exactly what’s in them. Based on some cigarette manufacturers’ disclosures in the 1990s, it has been widely reported that cigarettes can contain almost 600 chemicals.

The FDA had done some preliminary tests of a few e-cigarettes back when they were being seized, and has issued a statement.

In a July 2009 agency news release, the FDA warned the public about the devices.

“The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today announced that a laboratory analysis of electronic cigarette samples has found that they contain carcinogens and toxic chemicals such as diethylene glycol, an ingredient used in antifreeze,” the FDA wrote.

“These products are marketed and sold to young people and are readily available online and in shopping malls,” the release continued. “In addition, these products do not contain any health warnings comparable to FDA-approved nicotine replacement products or conventional cigarettes. They are also available in different flavors, such as chocolate and mint, which may appeal to young people.”

FDA also pointed out that, while the food-flavoring ingredient has been found safe for that use, the effect when inhaled as a vapor hasn’t been studied.

Those who oppose the devices say they fear smokers will not give up traditional cigarettes but will simply augment or replace their old habit with a new smoking alternative, increasing the amount of nicotine they use and therefore their health risks.

Barrentine, Manning and Lockwood reacted to those statements, saying that the manufacturers market to adults, not children, and in fact have statements on their cartridges which say e-cigarettes are not meant for kids.

As for the chemicals found in the FDA’s limited testing, the women say traditional cigarettes have those chemicals and a host more. E-cigarettes, they say, are infinitely safer than regular cigarettes, and should be left available for those who want a less dangerous puff.

All three said they’d most likely go back to regular cigarettes if e-cigarettes are pulled from the market.

They say they’re not tempted in the least to use regular cigarettes while this is available, and are even repulsed by the smell and taste of their old habit.

Barrentine, who closely follows online forums, said she has yet to find comments about any side effects. She thinks her chances of coming to harm with e-cigarettes is far less than if she were still smoking.

There are many variations, and Barrentine prefers the “silver bullet” version that delivers more vapor per puff than the more traditional-looking type. She makes her own flavored nicotine juice, instead of buying cartridges, and “tailpipes” it by squeezing drops straight into the atomizer.

Manning and Lockwood also use similar, less traditional devices, but Manning also uses the more traditional e-cigarette as well.

In the ones that look most like a cigarette, the main body of the device is actually a 3.5-volt rechargeable battery encased in a cylinder about the size of a cigarette. A short metal atomizer, about the size of a filter, is screwed into it. A mostly hollow cartridge, of the same shape but slighter bigger than the atomizer, contains an amount of liquid nicotine, propylene glycol (a substance used in food coloring), and flavoring.

The cartridge, which has a small opening, slips over the vaporizer like a glove. It resembles the filter-end of a cigarette. The user sucks air through the opening, an action which sends voltage to the battery and activates the atomizer. An element in the atomizer get hot, and brings the warmed air to the cartridge, which turns the liquid nicotine into a vapor.

The user expels the vapor, which resembles smoke but doesn’t smell or behave like it. The vapor quickly dissipates, and does not create as much volume compared to the amount of smoke generated by a burning cigarette.

The smell of the vapor depends on the type of flavoring used — and there are many, ranging from chocolate to coffee. The smell is detectible only briefly and at close range. The end of the battery, like the end of a cigarette, lights up while the user is inhaling, but no combustion is used in the process.

Several different views of the e-cigarette can be found by searching the term online.

The local health department has weighed in, as well. Adrian Abner, Tobacco Prevention Specialist with the Jackson County Health Department, said his agency takes the position that no nicotine is safe and advocates total cessation.

The health department provides FDA-approved cessation aids free of charge, he said, along with full support to help people quit.

He cited the FDA report as one reason for the health department’s concerns about the devices, beyond the fact that they deliver nicotine.

“There is help out there for quitting completely,” Abner said. “That includes free nicotine replacement therapy for those who wish to quit. We can order these and provide cessastion services.”

Abner said county residents wanting to quit can call or e-mail the health department to participate. They can also call 1-877-UCAN-NOW, or visit http://www.floridaquitline.com.

Abner’s number is 526-2412, ext. 188.

To see more of the Jackson County Floridan or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.jcfloridan.com.

Copyright (c) 2010, Jackson County Floridan, Marianna, Fla.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

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The latest in the ongoing debate about taxing cigarettes sold on Native American lands, the Senate Finance Committee Chair issued “demand letters” Tuesday requiring that state agencies fork over everything they have about untaxed cigarettes coming into the state.

If the governor and state agencies don’t comply, subpoenas won’t be too far away, said Kruger (D-Brighton Beach, Mill Basin).

“I fear that the actions I am addressing constitute some kind of a ‘secret partnership’ to effectively stall and delay tax collection,” Kruger said. “With every day that goes by, even using the weak and ‘fuzzy math’ used by your Tax Department, triple-digit millions go flying out the proverbial window.”

Kruger believes that the state could generate about $1.6 billion a year — about half of the state’s budget deficit — if cigarettes sold on Native American lands were taxed.

Last year, he demanded that Governor David Paterson rescind a “letter of forbearance” that allows Native American tobacco retailers to avoid paying these taxes.

“The Governor has been a willing and active partner in a long-standing travesty that has hurt legitimate businesses and robbed billions from our state at a time when essential services are being threatened with deep cuts,” Kruger said.

The demand letters require the New York State Tax Department and other agencies to send Kruger’s office “books, papers, records and equipment of persons dealing with transporting or storing cigarette sales, or any person(s) having knowledge in the premises of cigarette sales tax” on Native American reservations.

Also being demanded are “bills of lading, invoices, delivery tickets, and records of cigarette orders including source, purchase price, number of cigarettes stamped and sale price.”

If these records are not brought to his office within seven days, subpoenas will be issued, Kruger threatened.

The war Kruger’s waged on untaxed cigarettes has gained some momentum of late.

While the governor balked at the possibility of rescinding the letter of forbearance and very few came out to support Kruger’s plan when it was first raised last fall, more and more people have been flocking to this particular standard.

Just recently, Governor Paterson floated the idea of taxing Native American cigarettes in next year’s budget. Those who now rally behind Kruger include State Senate Conference Leader John Sampson (D-Canarsie).

“The state’s failure to collect cigarette taxes means critical services will be cut back and the taxpayers of New York will be forced to suffer while Native American tobacco retailers flout the laws of this state,” Sampson said in a statement. “It is critical that we immediately begin to collect these rightful taxes to begin to close the growing deficit.”

New York’s Tribal Nations and Native Americans cigarette wholesalers on reservations are against the plan, although Kruger said reservation residents can get special coupons so they don’t have to pay taxes.

In previous years state officials have been hesitant to rescind the letter of forbearance, since past attempts have sparked lawsuits as well as protests by Indian tribes that one time led to the closure of the state thruway.

Kruger said that in this economy there should be no “sacred cows.”

“I don’t know one homeowner on Long Island or Nassau or Westchester County that wouldn’t go out on the Sprain Brook or the Long Island Expressway and burn some tires if they didn’t have to pay their property tax,” Kruger said in a previous interview. “And if they attempted to do it, they would be arrested.”

A spokesman for Governor Paterson would not comment if the office would abide by Kruger’s demand letters, although he did say that the governor would “make good” on enforcing new regulations issued by the New York State Tax Department.

The spokesman also said that Kruger’s predictions on how much the state can recoup from taxing cigarettes on Indian lands is off — by a lot.

“Frankly, Senator Kruger’s estimates on this issue is wildly out of whack,” the spokesman said. “He statements have not been credible on this issue.”

By Thomas Tracy, Yournabe
March 8, 2010

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LOCATION: National Transportation Safety Board Conference Center, 429 L’Enfant Plaza SW, Washington

CONTACT: Cristi Stark, 240-276-3992

On March 30, the committee will cover receive presentations on the background and overview of the FDA Center for Tobacco Products, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act and the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee. The committee also will receive presentations on and discuss the published literature on menthol as it relates to the demographics of users, preferential use by persons initiating tobacco use, the health effects of menthol in cigarettes, the effects of menthol on addiction and cessation, marketing and consumer perceptions about menthol cigarettes, the sensory qualities of menthol cigarettes, and the effects of menthol on how cigarettes are smoked.

On March 31, the committee will continue the presentations and discussions of menthol. The committee also will receive preliminary information about topics planned for discussion at future meetings, including an action plan designed to ensure the enforcement of restrictions required by the Tobacco Control Act on the advertising and promotion of menthol and other cigarettes to youth, and the establishment of a list of harmful and potentially harmful tobacco product constituents, including smoke constituents.

These discussions are preliminary to the preparation of the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee’s required report to the Secretary of Health and Human Services regarding the impact of use of menthol in cigarettes on the public’s health. A second meeting of the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee, focusing on tobacco industry research and documents related to menthol and cigarettes, is planned for summer 2010.

PULMONARY-ALLERGY DRUGS ADVISORY COMMITTEE

DATE: April 7, 0800/1200

LOCATION: Hilton, 8727 Colesville Road, Silver Spring, Md.

CONTACT: Kristine Khuc, 301-827-7001

The committee will discuss new drug application from Forest Laboratories Inc (FRX.N) for Daxas, known generically as roflumilast for the maintenance treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease associated with chronic bronchitis in patients at risk of exacerbations.

ADVISORY COMMITTEE FOR PHARMACEUTICAL SCIENCE AND CLINICAL PHARMACOLOGY

DATE: April 13, 0800/1200

LOCATION: Hilton, 8727 Colesville Rd., Silver Spring, Md.

CONTACT: Anuja Patel, 301-827-7001

The committee will receive presentations from the Office of Generic Drugs and discuss two bioequivalence topics relevant to generic drug approval:

(1) Revising the BE approaches for critical dose drugs

(2) the use of partial area under the curve (AUC) for the evaluation of abbreviated new drug applications for products with complex pharmacokinetic profiles.

Bioequivalence refers to the evaluation of equivalence in the rate and extent of drug absorption between two preparations of the same drug. Critical dose drugs are medicines that require a narrow (or critical) dose range to achieve and maintain their intended effects and to reduce serious adverse drug reactions. The area under the curve is the area under a plot of drug concentration in the bloodstream versus time; it is a measure of the extent of exposure to a drug after a dose is administered.

ARTHRITIS DRUGS ADVISORY COMMITTEE AND THE DRUG SAFETY AND RISK MANAGEMENT ADVISORY COMMITTEE

DATE: May 12, 0800/1200

LOCATION: Hilton, 8727 Colesville Rd., Silver Spring, Md.

CONTACT: Anuja Patel, 301-827-7001

The committees will discuss NicOx SA’s (NCOX.PA) new drug application for naproxcinod, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) product indicated for the treatment of the signs and symptoms of osteoarthritis. (Reporting by Lisa Richwine and Susan Heavey; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

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DREGAN is a community-based participatory study of tobacco use among Southeast Asians in Minnesota. It is a collaboration between the Asian Pacific Tobacco-Free Coalition of Minnesota; Southeast Asian Refugee Community Home; Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Center for Tobacco Reduction and Health Improvement; and Clearway Minnesota.

“This is a very historic study,” said Zha Blong Xiong, Ph.D. an Associate Professor with the Department of Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. “We haven’t had any study like this in Minnesota with over a thousand people participating, using a very vigorous study design which is random sample based on a community based participatory research.”

Dr. Xiong credited BCBS and Clearway for the collaboration that enabled a study with a focus on a community goal to produce common knowledge acceptance of tobacco use and with it the dangers of exposure to direct and second hand smoke with all the related health consequences.

Dr. Marc Manley, Chief Prevention Officer, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, said his organization is pleased that the report is out and said BCBS would use it in its commitment to ensure that smoking rates continue to drop in the state.

“We’ve been working on that for a long time and we want to make sure that we are reaching as many different people and as many communities as we can and this report was one big part of that process,” said Manley.

The study is the final portion of a nearly 10 year project that produced a quantitative and qualitative report from surveys conducted with the Cambodian, Hmong, Lao and Vietnamese communities of Minnesota. The researchers said it took a lot of work to ensure it resulted in a culturally appropriate report.

“There were a lot of detailed methods and decisions along the way and everything was made in collaboration with the community, which was really important to us in this process,” said Nina Alesci, a Senior Healthcare Analyst with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. “This report closes chapter in research portion, started four years ago released qualitative portion of the study and so this adds the quantitative component to it get the complete picture.”

Karen M. Lyons, Public and Health Affairs, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, said the report provides the details to understand why health inequities exist and points out unique cultural aspects of each community as opposed to larger non specific groupings.

“In many ways this focused on culture,” said Lyons. “There really hasn’t been this kind of unique, tailored study for a community like this before, so it is really focused on unique needs.”

DREGAN had two key components of researching and developing culturally appropriate interventions to reduce the harm that tobacco causes the Asian Pacific community.

The first qualitative research stage had 16 community liaisons undergoing training on the techniques of interviewing for effective listening with awareness for bias-free recording of social research interviews and focus group meetings.

The liaisons included Phalla Keo, Channary Pen, Pengsan Ou, Lon Meak, Lah Visayvong, Kaphet Koracan, Phouratsamay Littana, Onsa Thamavong, Malichansouk Kouanchao, Valerie Tran, Dung Pham, Anthony Dang, Hiep V. Huynh, Loc Nguyen, Pang Tang Yang, Chong Moua, Jesse Kao Lee, and Xwm Dean Yaj.

The team used a questionnaire developed by anthropologist researchers and health professionals, which they helped to simplify with clear translation with an Asian Community Advisory Group.

These members included (Cambodian) Pengsan Ou, Sacha Lempiainen and Sinuon Leiendecker; (Hmong) Ayer Xong, Tou Pao Khang and Choua Thao (Laotian) Sunny Chanthanouvong, Phouninh Vixayvong and Kaphet Koracan; (Vietnamese) Phuong Dao, Nghi Huynh, Dzuy Ho, Hoa Young and Dung Pham.

The interview team completed 1,600 surveys: 550 for the Hmong and 350 each for the Cambodian, Lao and Vietnamese communities between 2003 and 2005. The survey reached 11 Minnesota counties, including the 7 county metropolitan area.

The surveys looked at differences by gender and age within the Hmong as a separate group and within the Cambodian, Lao and Vietnamese communities combined.

This first study involved 15 community leaders to uncover beliefs and attitudes surrounding tobacco use and described the experience of tobacco use among Southeast Asian cultures. The report, titled Tobacco Use in Minnesota: Perspectives from Cambodian, Hmong, Lao and Vietnamese Communities was released in 2006 and is online at www.bluecrossmn.com/preventionminnesota.

The quantitative report is a continuation of the 2006 qualitative surveys, said DREGAN Project Coordinator for both phases was Yanat Chhith, a retired executive with the Federal Bank in Minneapolis.

“The work brought more awareness about the problem of tobacco and how it relates to our cultures,” he said.

Although the study is intended to be used to develop culturally appropriate strategies and tailored programs and limited interventions.

Chhith said that one small project now stems from the strategies developed from the reports. He said that since so many people worked to produce a report to shows how tobacco perceptions and use differs by community and to better understand the risks of tobacco use and from second hand smoke – that it should result in more awareness and programs.

“This is something that should be useful for the community,” he said. “I hope that it will continue into implementation of what we have learned in the report to help the community benefit from its findings.”

Dr. Xiong said the report would help with continued efforts to change Southeast Asian behavioral norms with tobacco use in individuals and the community. The report details how attitudes and behaviors were formed from the French colonial period, the Wartime or post-war genocidal experience, or in the case of the Hmong, the wedding exchange.

He said the report led to recommendations for the 18 Council to affect change in the community with suggestions on alternative exchange gifts during ceremonies. It also helped to address the acculturation process and smoking in men, which has increased awareness of the dangers of secondhand smoke – and changed daily and cultural use to avoid smoking around others, according to the report.

At the same time it said acculturation increased tobacco use among women, youth, Hmong, and new immigrants.

The report states that the consequences of becoming ‘Americanized’ is that smoking “symbolically represents values of freedom and gender equality.” These American ‘values’ touted in advertising, by their peers, and the early empowerment youth have with the “role reversals” where some children have difficulty telling parents and grandparents to quit - and other youth are starting to smoke with a sense of empowerment.

“Acculturalization plays a significant role,” said Dr. Xiong, noting that the Hmong sample has a younger sampling than the three other population groups.

“Given just the number of the type of people that we have for the survey and an analysis alone with the Hmong population we know that acculturalization does impact smoking behaviors for this population,” he added. “Younger and younger Hmong children are exposed to smoking and so therefore are actually getting engaged in smoking behaviors. This is reflected in the survey.”

The report notes that Southeast Asians tend not to associate doctors with preventive health or see smoking as a medical problem but a self-discipline issue, making the nonprofit, civic and spiritual leaders more significant in the awareness process.

Xiong is also a founding member of the Statewide Tobacco Education & Engagement Project. STEEP is a collaborative project to build capacity with Southeast Asian community organizations with a goal to increase awareness and improve family and community health through tobacco education and community engagement.

“We need to work with the community leaders that have the trust in the community so that they could also help us send those messages to their community,” said Xiong. “We also try to expose people to the harmful effects of tobacco and approaching this at multiple levels to make significant changes.”

Efforts like this will address the areas that prevent the mainstream prevention efforts from being effective within the context of the larger mainstream efforts, he added.

Dr. Manley said BCBS goals were to both accurately measure the rate of smoking in the Southeast Asian community, and to better understand the previously undocumented cultural information. It was important that it was conducted with the communities and with people in the communities that understood the culture as well as the goals and objectives of the report to succeed as culturally sensitive and competent.

“Which is one reason that it takes a long time, it really is new work in many ways,” he added.
By Tom Laventure, Asian American Press
March 07, 2010

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Then they start swinging the ax.

That forecast serves as a marker for how much the Legislature will cut from next year’s budget. The session ends Friday, and all sides predict a frenzied, brutal week. A list of $52 million in potential cuts released last week by leaders of the majority Republican Party drew hard lines among lawmakers.

Gov. Mike Rounds – who has the power to veto the whole thing – indicated he’s got issues with the balancing plan.

Groups on the list of cuts are sure to descend upon Pierre to make their case.

And Saturday, the House Appropriations Committee chairman cast doubt on the numbers, saying he hasn’t signed off on the proposal, even though his name was on the document released to the public.

Republican leaders in the House and Senate say the pain is necessary because the budget will be balanced without using reserves, which they vowed at the start of the session. They insist those reserve funds must be preserved to deal with what they anticipate will be an even more challenging budget shortfall next year.

The list unveiled Thursday includes $43.1 million in cuts to next year’s budget, which starts July 1. Another $9.5 million in cuts goes into effect in the following year’s budget. Some of those spending decreases might not be necessary, but they’re lined up just in case.

The Republican budget proposal has touched off plenty of criticism, portending a tough week ahead.

Rounds, also a Republican, wanted the Legislature to tap reserve funds to ease this year’s budget crunch. He predicted that the cuts won’t go unnoticed.

“Once they put their details down in more complete form, and we’ve got to give them a chance to do that, I think you’ll find the halls here in Pierre start to fill up with individuals that may very well see impacts that they don’t believe are appropriate,” he said. “And that’s a part of the process. That’s a healthy part of the process.”

‘I didn’t sign on’

House Appropriations Chairman Larry Tidemann said Saturday that there are cuts he’ll vote for, but others he might not support.

Tidemann, a Brookings Republican, did not attend the news conference announcing the GOP plan Thursday.

His name was one of four that appeared on the list and the accompanying news release. But Tidemann said he didn’t sign off on the proposal.

“I didn’t sign on the sheet, but they put my name on it,” he said.

He didn’t attend the news conference for a few reasons.

First, he thought they should wait until after the revenue forecast, what he called “a critical part of the whole puzzle” to next year’s budget.

Second, he felt lawmakers should have consulted with other elected officials, the governor’s office and the judicial system before making the proposal. Also, the budget analysts who work for the Legislative Research Council should have reviewed the list before it was made public.

Those critical parts of the process didn’t happen, he said.

The fact that lawmakers didn’t consult with other officials means that some of the numbers are suspect, or wrong. For example, the list includes a $300,000 cut to the judicial system’s drug courts, but there isn’t that much money in the program, Tidemann said.

“Anybody that puts something on paper, you are quickly criticized,” he said. “I’m not going to compromise my principles and say, ‘Here they are, folks.’ ”

Senate Majority Leader Dave Knudson said Saturday he doesn’t doubt there are tweaks that need to be made, but it was important to get the plan out to the public.

“What a majority felt like was to provide them to the public so people could react over the weekend and constituents could voice their concerns,” he said.

Knudson said he assumed that House Majority Leader Bob Faehn had gotten Tidemann to sign off on the release.

Faehn, of Watertown, could not be reached for comment Saturday evening.
Limited bipartisanship

GOP lawmakers probably will get help from Democrats on at least some proposed cuts. That’s because Democrats suggested some of them at the start of the session.

Senate Minority Leader Scott Heidepriem said he expects members of his party to support a 2 percent across-the-board cut as well as cuts for so-called “phantom FTEs,” legislative and executive travel and the elimination of some tax refunds.

“We’re going to help pass the ones that we’ve been talking about for five months,” said Heidepriem, who is running for governor. But other cuts won’t get much Democratic support, he predicted.

“I can’t understand what the Republicans are thinking of when they’re looking at programs like meth, drug courts and tobacco cessation,” he said.

The process starts Monday, when members of the Joint Appropriations Committee will get a look at the latest revenue forecasts based on February’s tax receipts. There could be some good news. Rounds indicated last week that revenues appear to be on target with initial projections made in December. If so, it means the state might have rebounded from a dismal December in which major storms were blamed for suppressing consumer spending and the lifeblood of state government – sales taxes.

After Monday’s briefing, lawmakers on appropriations will take up the general budget bill, either Tuesday or Wednesday, Knudson said. Each budget cut proposed by Republicans will be introduced as a separate amendment, and it’s expected to take at least one long day, and perhaps more, before the bill leaves the committee and heads to the House and Senate.

The committee hearing will be the setting where groups can testify for or against the cuts, said Knudson, who also is running for governor.

“I think there will be an opportunity for groups impacted by these cuts to be heard,” he said.

Rounds’ prediction that Pierre will “fill up” next week with people opposed to various cuts probably will be fulfilled. Groups already were mobilizing before the cuts were announced.

Those cuts include $2.3 million to the state’s tobacco control fund. Voters approved a tax increase on tobacco products in 2006. It generates about $35 million a year, most of which goes to property tax relief and education. But about $5 million goes to the tobacco control program, which pays for services to help people quit smoking and for school-based education programs.

Darrin Smith, senior director for the Midwest affiliate of the American Heart Association and a member of the coalition that led the 2006 ballot measure, said the group would “aggressively oppose” the Legislature’s attempt to raid the tobacco control fund. Voters approved the tax increase with the understanding that some of it would be used for prevention efforts.

“In an election year, and in an environment where the public is not enamored of incumbents in either party at every level, I don’t think it’s a smart move to cut a program that the public overwhelmingly supported at the ballot box just four years ago,” Smith said. “I think it’s a slap in the face of the public.”

Governor holds the cards

The governor could prove to be the strongest voice in the debate. On Friday, he said legislative Republicans are going to have to explain their cuts, “because some of them don’t add up.”

Republicans are counting on $11.5 million by eliminating tax refunds on large construction projects. Rounds insists they’re overestimating that amount.

He also was critical of a 2 percent across-the-board cut to all of government excluding K-12 education and Medicaid. He said he’s willing to talk about cuts to particular programs, but across-the-board cuts require the state to provide the same level of services and programs with less money.

“I can’t continue to do the programs without the appropriate money,” he said.

He declined to issue a veto threat, however, because the Republican plan “is just a concept” at this stage.

Corey Landeen, executive director of the South Dakota State Employees Organization, joined Rounds in criticizing the across-the-board cuts.

“The uncertainty created from this specific type of proposal places an increasing amount of stress on an already demoralized state work force who is facing a second consecutive year without a basic salary adjustment,” Landeen said in a prepared statement. “This proposal leaves the budget reserves untouched for a second year in a row while employees and other crucial state services go without, and in some cases are eliminated.”

One thing is certain. When the budget finally passes, regardless of what it looks like, the majority Republicans will own it. Heidepriem points out they’ve owned all of the budgets in the past eight years, and seven of them contained structural deficits.

“Now they’re acting like born-again cost cutters,” he said. “I don’t think the people of South Dakota are buying it.”

Jonathan Ellis, Argusleader
March 7, 2010

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Adam Bliss, proprietor of Hookah Bliss, the most famous hookah lounge in the town of Chapel Hill admitted that his venue would keep serving its patrons, as they are prepared to be ticketed and probably fill a lawsuit in case of any fines levied on the business.

Hookah Bliss serves alcohol and gives customers the opportunity to smoke hookah, water pipes for smoking special type of flavored moist tobacco. The business was established more than two years ago, and won the hearts of local tobacco-lovers.

Hookah lounges have not been included in the list of venues exempted from the ban, such as cigar clubs and smoke shops. Cigar clubs were determined to be getting nearly one-third of its earnings from the sale of cigars, while smoke shops generate more than 75 percent of yearly earnings from sales of tobacco products. Therefore, such businesses were defined as tobacco-dependant and should be excluded from the ban.

The statewide ban on smoking in public places was approved by North Carolina Legislature and endorsed by Gov. Beverly Purdue last spring.

Adam Bliss could stop serving alcohol and thus his business would be included in the exemption list in the capacity of a tobacco store.

However, the owner of Hookah Bliss said that certain provisions of the ban made him lose his tongue as they are definitely not related to alcohol or smoking, but to protect the health of N.C. residents from the dangers of environmental tobacco smoke in the places of recreation and employment.

He said that the officials have stated the anti-smoking legislation protects the workers from tobacco smoke, so that has been an entirely health matter, in compliance with the law. Nevertheless, four groups of public venues, and, what is especially important is that all the places exempted from the ban are oriented at wealthy tobacco-lovers, the places where the officials themselves could go any time. So, it means that people who work in the places such as cigar clubs could still be exposed to the “dangerous” secondhand smoke, and need no protection, whereas the average workers from simple businesses need it. That is a way too ridiculous.

Venues that permit puffing will get two warnings in written form. In case they don’t stop flouting the law, they would be subject to a fine of $200, which could grow even more with each subsequent offence.

So, it is still smoky in Hookah Bliss, and it is still packed with the customers willing to smoke a flavored water pipe.

Several other hookah bars are as well operating, and their owners claim the do not flout the law, as they consider they found a sort of a loophole in that law, permitting patrons to keep puffing through their favorite oriental water pipes.

Copyright © 2010 Tobacco-Facts.net. All rights reserved.

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“Cigarettes have created a brand for every personality trait,” study lead author Reiner Hanewinkel, PhD, director of the Institute for Therapy and Health Research in Kiel, Germany, said.

“If you are looking to project independence and masculinity, think of the lonely cowboy in the Marlboro ads.

On the other hand, if you’re looking to project a desire for romantic relationships, and friendships are playing a role, then you will choose Lucky Strike if you are a man and Virginia Slims if you are a woman,” Hanewinkel, who collaborated with Dartmouth Medical School, added.

Kids with high exposure to tobacco advertising were twice as likely to have tried smoking and three times as likely to have smoked in the past month, compared to those with low exposure.

Exposure to tobacco advertising also was associated with higher intent to smoke in the future among the never-smokers, suggesting that it affects how adolescents perceive smoking even before they start.

The study has relevance for the United States and other nations with partial advertising bans similar to Germany’s restrictions.

The 2008 survey involved 3,415 German schoolchildren, ages 10 to 17, in rural and urban areas. Students saw images (with all the writing and brand logos removed) of six cigarette ads and eight commercial products such as clothing, cars, candy and detergent.

With the brand information missing, researchers measured adolescents’ ad recognition by applying psychological assumptions about attention and memory.

They inquired about how frequently students had viewed each ad image and asked about smoking habits and intentions.

“We were amazed at how often they had seen the images and could correctly recall the cigarette brand,” study collaborator James Sargent, MD, a professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth, said.

“For example, 55 per cent had seen the Lucky Strike image and almost one quarter correctly decoded the brand,” he stated.

After analysing the data, the researchers assessed how likely non-smokers were to try smoking.

Researchers classified survey participants as current smokers if they reported smoking at least once a month.

“This is a well-done study. They controlled for all the things they needed to control for,” Stanton Glantz, PhD, director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research & Education at the University of California, San Francisco, said.

The study appears online and in the April issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

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More than 30 million cigars are sold annually in the Czech Republic, according to the General Directorate of Customs, adding up to millions of crowns in profits for the industry and, for the government, about 10 million Kč ($521,376) annually in taxes. But cigars are losing their luster for some smokers as the realities of economic recession set in.

The Habanos group, producer of popular Cuban cigar brands such as Cohiba and Romeo y Julieta, registered a turnover of $360 million in 2009, an 8 percent decline that is not lost on Czech cigar distributor Peter Forman.

“I’ve seen a 10 percent to 15 percent fall in midrange cigars and a 30 percent fall in lower end, machine-made cigars,” he said.

Cigar culture has become increasingly popular in the Czech Republic since 1995, when Forman became the first importer and distributor of Cuban cigars in the country. Thanks in part to Forman’s marketing efforts, cigar bars and humidors have popped up throughout Prague as business culture embraces the experience of a Cuban cigar, the most popular of which sell for between 700 Kč and 1,000 Kč.

“Once we began introducing Cuban cigars to middle and high society, they became quite popular, and sales increased rapidly,” he said.

Forman remained the largest Cuban cigar distributor on the Czech market until 2006, when Tabak Invest signed an exclusive contract to distribute Habanos cigars in the Czech, Slovak and Hungarian markets. According to Petra Amis, spokeswoman for Tabak Invest, Cuban cigar sales have slumped most significantly in Hungary.

A sales decline in the Czech Republic has mostly affected less expensive Habanos cigars, Amis said, adding that, amid sinking sales, one of the keys to Cuban cigars’ long-term stability has become clear.

“People who can afford to smoke Cuban cigars regularly will always have money to buy them,” she said.

People may be buying fewer cigars, but, when they do, they still tend to choose Cuban brands, according to Amis, who said “premium Cuban cigars market themselves.” This has been good news for Prague’s smoke shops and Cuban cigar bars, including Bar and Books in Old Town, which sells a variety of Cuban cigars ranging from 300 Kč to 1,100 Kč.

Martina Peštová, manager of Bar and Books, said its core clientele of cigar-smoking businessmen has kept business steady over the past year. But a drop in tourism has had a noticeable effect on the number of foreign customers who are willing to pay for premium goods, she added.

“We don’t see any tourists with money these days,” she said.

The price of cigars depends on the quality of the tobacco, the style of rolling and the length, with longer cigars typically being more expensive. Peštová said people are not only buying fewer cigars, but many have changed their cigar of choice.

“I’ve had to shorten the length of cigars we offer because we have a problem selling the longer cigars,” she said.

Falling sales of some types of Cuban cigars have led to more significant changes in the shape and sizes of cigars being produced, as many companies begin reaching out to women, a portion of the smoking population that has, until now, remained untapped.

The Habanos group has announced a new focus on thinner, milder cigars aimed at women, who make up only 5 percent of the Czech cigar-smoking population, according to Forman. At the same time, Bar and Books has begun offering a weekly ladies’ night, where women get complimentary cigars. The events are gaining popularity – according to Peštová, they give away about eight cigars per week – but the female-smoker segment remains a decided minority, she said.

“Some of the ladies smoke the cigars, but many of them take one puff and give it to their boyfriends,” she said.

Such concerted efforts to attract new customers could prove popular, but cigar companies will have to overcome a stigma – and lack of knowledge – among female puffers, Peštová said.

“Occasionally, women will come in to smoke a cigar with their rich boyfriends and show how ’sophisticated’ they are, but most women have no idea what they are smoking,” she said.
March 3, 2010
By Stephan Delbos, Praguepost

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Now, the company is going a step further, launching a new policy that would make all the company’s work sites tobacco-free by this time in 2011.

There are some other differences between then and now.

For one thing, the Connecticut-based company, one of the world’s largest, is addressing only at-work behavior.

Employees won’t be asked to sign a tobacco-free pledge that extends beyond the workplace, said Stephan Koller, a spokesman for GE Transportation, based in Lawrence Park Township.

But they will be asked to refrain from using tobacco of all kinds on company property.

After the success of a 2008 experiment in which GE offered a $750 cash incentive for employees who quit smoking, the company began offering a $625 discount on health-insurance premiums for nonsmoking employees earlier this year.

The smoking ban, set to take effect companywide on March 1, 2011 — sooner at some locations — is motivated by two things, Koller said.

“It’s helping our employees and their dependents — helping them make healthier choices that will improve their quality of life,” he said.

At the same time, he said, “It addresses health-care costs that have spiraled out of control.”

The company has yet to work out all the details on turning dozens of GE sites into smoke-free zones. Smoking is already prohibited inside company buildings, but many employees now step outside to smoke in designated areas during their breaks.

“We are at the front end of the process,” Koller said. “We are going to work hand-in-hand with our employees to see what is the best way to implement this.”

GE’s move is far from unprecedented. Two other large Erie employers, Hamot Medical Center and Saint Vincent Health Center, prohibit the use of tobacco both inside and outside.

Koller vowed that GE Transportation won’t impose a new rule on its 4,000 Erie employees without offering some assistance.

“The overall direction is in place,” Koller said. “We have to see what this means to Transportation. How do we get employees to wean themselves off tobacco products? There is going to be an education effort.”

And while there might not be any cash payments to ease the pain of quitting, Koller said incentives will take the form of lower health-care premiums for employees who kick the habit.

Employees aren’t the only ones with money at stake.

A report by the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that works to improve the health-care system, estimates the annual health-care tab for cigarette smoking at $75 billion.

The foundation, which highlighted research done on smoking cessation at GE, said the average employer saves $3,400 a year for each employee who gives up cigarettes.

Local 506 of the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America, GE Transportation’s main union, is expected to meet today to discuss its stance on the company’s plans.

A union spokesman said that in broad terms, however, “Keeping our people safe and keeping them healthy is a priority of unions.”

JIM MARTIN can be reached at 870-1668 or by e-mail.

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Indeed it was. That day, Times reporter David Sanger was reporting that Obama was putting the finishing touches on a nuclear weapons policy review that would seek to reduce the U.S. arsenal by thousands of warheads but that would reject a proposal long-advocated by arms controllers — for the United States to declare it would never be the first to launch nuclear weapons. The article noted that Obama has yet to resolve a crucial matter: Would the United States reserve the right to use nuclear weapons in response to a biological or chemical attack, even if the attacker were a country that didn’t possess nuclear weapons? Also under consideration, the Times noted, is withdrawing U.S. tactical nuclear weapons — essentially, smaller nukes on smaller missiles — now based in Europe. The big issue, not yet decided, is whether Obama should declare that the “sole purpose” of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is to deter any other nation from firing nuclear weapons at us, or whether he should leave some wiggle room so the U.S. could use its nukes in another extreme situation.

This is heavy and important stuff. When people talk about the U.S. president being the most powerful person on the planet, this is what they have in mind. He controls thousands of nuclear bombs that could wipe out . . . well, everything. Yet though we all live under the shadow of possible nuclear Armageddon, this subject is hardly ever on the political radar screen. In the 1980s, when President Reagan was beefing up the U.S. nuclear arsenal and deploying nuclear missiles in Europe close to the Soviet Union, and his aides were talking about winning a nuclear war, the issue was hot. Millions marched in the streets for a nuclear weapons freeze. There were dramatic show-downs in Congress over Reagan’s nuclear plans. Politicians had to be able to talk deterrence and throw-weights.

Since then, nuclear weaponry hasn’t been on the buzz list. In the 2008 campaign, Obama tried to make nuclear weapon security — ensuring that existing warheads aren’t obtained by terrorists or dictators — something of an issue. But I doubt many voters had that on their minds when they entered the voting booths.

So I was amused when this foreign reporter suggested that White House reporters would be hurling questions at Gibbs about nuclear weapons. Instead, there were queries about Obama’s next steps on health care reform. (Gibbs promised the president would reveal his plans Wednesday.) And in the aftermath of Obama’s first physical as president, the reporters asked repeatedly about his smoking and cholesterol level. Gibbs noted that Obama is 95 percent cured of smoking but that he “loves the pastry chef.” Which prompted joshing and laughter. After Gibbs said the pastry chef would keep baking and it’s up to Obama to show “presidential restraint,” I cracked, “It’s a demand problem, not a supply problem.” There was not one question about the Nuclear Posture Review. (For the record, I asked whether the president would veto a financial reform bill if it sets up a Consumer Financial Protection Agency that’s not given sufficient authority. Gibbs said he didn’t “want to get that far ahead of the process.”)

Nuclear policy just ain’t sexy. It’s too daunting, or too abstract. Better to zero in on how many cigs the president is sneaking and whom he’s bumming them from.

It’s not that nuclear policy isn’t dramatic. Last April, Obama delivered a speech in Prague and boldly promised to work toward a “world without nuclear weapons.” Toward that end, he said that the United States “will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy.” Yet, as Julian Borger of The Guardian points out, Obama’s pending Nuclear Posture Review “is hard to square” with that pledge. In other words, Obama is backsliding.

Shouldn’t presidential backsliding regarding nukes be part of the D.C. chatter — along with Obama’s smoking habit and the fall of the White House social secretary? Still, I do want to know what desserts the guy is eating.

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Sold in chilled pouches that are placed inconspicuously under the user’s upper lip, snus is a popular form of smokefree (and spitless) tobacco that is popular among white-collar professionals throughout Scandinavia, where it first originated in the early 19th century. While the category is still in its infancy in the United States, snus has experienced tremendous growth since its first introduction domestically in 2000, the company said.

The new General Snus campaign—with the theme “Satisfaction: the Original Pursuit”—kicked off last month at the Sundance Film Festival where Swedish Match staged a visible presence as the exclusive category sponsor. A similar effort will take place throughout New York’s Fashion Week as well as at art shows and festivals in New York, Chicago and other major markets.

“In Scandinavia, snus has traditionally appealed to a higher-end demographic, which is why the focus of our General Snus ‘Satisfaction’ campaign is focused on reaching adult trendsetters,” said Brian Gray, senior brand manager for Swedish Match. We are excited at the prospect of introducing this relatively new snus category to some of the country’s more influential tastemakers. We believe that General Snus can command the category.”

In addition to its presence at fashionable events, the General Snus campaign will target four major U.S. markets, New York, Chicago, Denver and Dallas, as well as popular ski destinations throughout the Rockies (Vail, Aspen and Breckenridge, Colo., Taos, N.M., Salt Lake City, Utah and Jackson Hole, Wyo.). The emphasis will be on introducing the product to adult consumers, particularly patrons of bars, clubs and other entertainment venues as well as those professionals working in urban office buildings and office parks. The company will distribute as many as 500,000 samples.

The promotional campaign, which will take place throughout the first half of the year, also includes sponsorships of professional skiers and snowboarders as well as a major sweepstakes. More details on both elements of the campaign will be announced later. In addition, the company will undertake an email and social media campaign incorporating Facebook and Twitter in particular.

“General Snus is currently available in about 600 specialty tobacconist stores throughout the country as well as selected retailers,” Gray said. “Our goal of this promotional campaign is to double that distribution within the first year, ultimately growing to more than1, 200 outlets. Given the fact that there are an ever-decreasing number of places where tobacco users can light up, we think that General Snus will provide a convenient and enjoyable alternative to smoking.”

Swedish Match has a broad assortment of market leading brands in smokefree tobacco, cigars and pipe tobacco, matches and lighters. Some of our well known brands include General, Red Man, Timber Wolf, and Longhorn. Swedish Match U.S. Sales is headquartered in Richmond, Va.
CSP Daily News, March 4, 2010

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The newly formed Artisans of the South Carolina Tobacco Trail aims to bring together artists, artisans and retailers along the tobacco trail, which was one of several efforts established more than a decade ago to boost what’s known as heritage tourism – or tourism for those especially interested in the history and culture of an area. In this case, the history lies along a 70-mile route through Horry, Darlington, Dillon, Marion, Williamsburg, Clarendon and Florence counties.

The artisan group, which is funded by a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant to the Black Creek Arts Council of Darlington County, hopes to boost interest in the work of area artists and allow its members to enjoy the benefits of marketing, tourism, education and shared resources, organizers said.

The council and the Black Creek Arts Center have worked with artists along the tobacco trail for months to create the organization.

“We were addressing a need which has existed for a while,” said Bruce Douglas, director of the council.

The group is seeking artists and artisans who want to be part of the initiative.

Lon Calhoun, a Conway native living in Myrtle Beach, has already chosen two of his paintings for submission. One is a tobacco barn he did with a mixture of watercolors and pen and ink that has been a favorite of his clients. The other is a watercolor of the Evelyn Snider Oak in Conway.

“I think it’s going to give artists like myself a chance to spread their wings a little bit and be seen in other places. It’s a great chance to move up in the hierarchy of the art world here in South Carolina,” he said.

Calhoun said that hopefully this merging of artists from different areas will lead to local artists showing their art in shows in other areas and having artists from other areas show their art here, allowing all of them exposure to more people who buy art.

Barbara Streeter of Pops Glass in Conway was chosen to work with the group because of the leadership abilities she has shown in working with the Conway Art Walk and CreateConway, Douglas said.

“I just hope that the artists will participate because this program is going to help build a stronger community for the artists in South Carolina,” Streeter said.

Membership in the group is unlimited. Members will be selected through a two-part jury process. The first part requires e-mailing photos of work to a jury. Accepted media includes clay, drawing, fiber, glass, jewelry, leather, metal, mixed media, natural materials, painting, paper, photography, sculpture, handmade books, wood and specialty food made in the area.

In the final jury stage, selected artists will present their artwork at the South Carolina Tobacco Museum in Mullins on April 9.

The art selected there will be exhibited at the Black Creek Art Center in Hartsville in August, at a reception to publicly launch Artisans of the South Carolina Tobacco Trail.

“I am excited about any effort to promote awareness of the arts,” said artist Ruth Cox of Myrtle Beach. “Artists and artisans devote their time, energy, and resources to the creation of beautiful things. They need support, not only praise and encouragement, but people who buy art.”

“Artists love their collectors,” Cox said. “Collectors make it possible for artists to continue to create. Collectors are the heart of the arts.”

By Peggy Mishoe, The Sun News
March 04, 2010

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The Virginia Tobacco Settlement Foundation last year took on an added mission and a new name — the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth.

“The General Assembly gave us the responsibility for childhood obesity because of our success in reaching young people with prevention messages and education,” said Marty Kilgore, the foundation’s executive director.

“We can easily add on a component of eating healthy, making sure you are physically fit,” Kilgore said.

The Virginia Tobacco Settlement Foundation was created in 1999 by the General Assembly and is funded with money from Virginia’s share of a multistate master settlement with large tobacco companies.

Virginia’s smoking rate among high school students dropped from 28.6 percent in 2001 to 15.5 percent in 2007, according to the foundation’s Virginia Youth Tobacco Survey. Nationally in 2007, about 20 percent of high school students smoked.

The foundation is planning a May 17-18 summit in the Richmond area on preventing childhood obesity to bring together partners and others.

At the meeting, the organizers will release results of a telephone survey of 2,400 school-age children statewide that provides baseline data on child obesity prevalence, physical activity levels, dietary habits, and TV and gaming screen time.

Existing estimates suggest about 31 percent of Virginians age 10 to 17 are overweight or obese.

Strategies that the foundation has used to reduce youth smoking include multimedia marketing campaigns and funding research to find the best prevention methods. In addition, the foundation funds community-based prevention programs and enforcement of laws against youth tobacco purchases.

Some of those strategies could be used in dealing with childhood obesity.

The foundation also is soliciting proposals for one-year grants worth up to $75,000 for youth smoking prevention projects that may include an obesity prevention component. Any community organization can apply, Kilgore said.

A total of $1.2 million is available.

One foundation-supported study offers a glimpse in how dual health promotion messages — smoking prevention and eating healthier — could be integrated into a single initiative.

Steven J. Danish, a Virginia Commonwealth University professor of psychology, and his team’s research looked at the effect of an intervention program on smoking prevention and getting middle school children to eat five fruits and vegetables a day.

In the project, trained high school students taught eight workshops. Six rural schools received the intervention while six other rural schools didn’t.

“With kids who are in the sixth and seventh grade, the smoking numbers are so small, it’s hard to make a difference,” Danish said. “We did see changes in the five-a-day. They knew what to do. There were changes. They did not last as long as we would have liked.”

Danish said it may be difficult to change children’s eating behaviors because they don’t always decide what’s available to eat at home or school. Parents and other adults do.

Preliminary data from the research suggest that having friends and family who ate five fruits and vegetables a day increased students’ confidence in their ability to do the same.

The data are being further analyzed to look for relationships between fruit and vegetable intake and television watching, Internet usage and dinner with family, Danish said.

“I think the way to success at this is really in small incremental steps. .. What is the smallest behavior you can change? I don’t know that we do that enough with kids.”

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(b) and (c) International surveys and studies show that young people can obtain cigarettes through different channels, one of which is purchase from shops. They may also be given cigarettes by their elder family members or friends. Young people also take up smoking for various reasons, including the influence of family members, peers or their social environment. As pointed out by the World Health Organisation (WHO), young people are also highly susceptible to the influence of tobacco promotion and advertising.

A study conducted by the Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health (COSH) on the relationship between smoking experience of children and family smoking found that children with smoking family members were more likely to have smoked. Children living with one smoker were 79% more likely to have smoked than those living with non-smokers; and the chance would increase to 424% when there were three or more smokers at home.

According to WHO’s advice on tobacco control policy formulation, a comprehensive and interactive strategy is necessary for any tobacco control policy targeting young people. Such a strategy must include banning all forms of tobacco advertising and promotions, implementing smoke-free workplaces and schools, public places, vehicles and homes, educating youngsters on the risks of nicotine addiction and tobacco use, addressing smoking cessation among all smokers, including youngsters and adults, as well as increasing tobacco prices through taxes and other means. Since young people can still obtain cigarettes from multiple channels including their friends and family, restricting access to cigarettes solely by way of legislation would not produce significant effects.

In view of the above, the Government has long been taking a multi-pronged, progressive approach to minimise the harmful effects of tobacco on young people. Measures adopted include publicity and education, provision of smoking cessation services, increase of tobacco duty, and enactment of legislation to ban tobacco advertisements and expand the statutory no smoking areas (to cover all indoor public places, schools, public pleasure grounds, beaches, stadia and restaurants, as well as karaoke clubs, cyber cafes and amusement game centres etc where young people frequently visit). The enforcement of the legislative provisions that prohibit the sale of cigarettes to persons under the age of 18 is also part of the Government’s tobacco control efforts targeting young people.

With regard to youth education and publicity, the Tobacco Control Office (TCO) under the Department of Health has produced tailor-made guidelines and display boards for the implementation of tobacco control measures at schools as well as promotional leaflets for young people. The Government also provides funding to non-government organisations such as COSH and the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals to organise anti-smoking activities for children and adolescents. Such activities include smoke-free educational programmes organised in collaboration with primary and secondary school principals and parents, tobacco control education programme featuring “Health Talk” and “Education Theatre” for adolescents to educate students on the hazards of smoking as well as how to resist the temptation of smoking and support a smoke-free environment.

COSH from time to time organised territory-wide large scale education promotional programmes to spread the message of a smoke-free environment, and to educate children on how to protect themselves from the harmful effects of passive smoking. Children and adolescents are the major targets of all these programmes aimed at encouraging them to support a smoke-free environment and life-style. Such programmes include the “Smoke Free Hong Kong Starts with Teens” from 2005 to 2006, the “Smoke-free Environments – Create & Enjoy!” Photo Collection Campaign in 2007 and the “Smoke-free Family” Campaign in 2008.

Looking ahead, the Government and COSH will continue to focus on raising the awareness of tobacco’s harmful effects among children and adolescents in conducting education and promotional programmes for this target group. In particular, the promotional efforts will first aim at families by encouraging adults to set a good role model at home in order to reduce the accessibility of tobacco products to children and adolescents.

On the enforcement front, tobacco control inspectors conduct frequent inspections at cigarette retail outlets. During inspections, staff of TCO would examine if a sign is displayed to indicate that the sale of cigarettes to young people under the age of 18 is prohibited. They would also explain the statutory requirements to the persons-in-charge and distribute no-smoking labels.

According to the survey conducted by the Census and Statistics Department, the percentage of smokers in the 15-19 age group in Hong Kong dropped from 3.5% in 2005 to 2.4% in 2008. This shows that the tobacco control measures aimed at young people have been largely effective. However, we will not be complacent. Continuous and simultaneous efforts in education, law enforcement, taxation and provision of smoking cessation services are essential to preventing young people from smoking. The Government will continue to devote resources to promoting a smoke-free culture, with a view to raising awareness among the youths of the harmful effects of smoking and preventing them from picking up the habit of smoking.
March 3, 2010, HKSAR Government

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The civil society organizations, like US-based Corporate Accountability International, responsible for mobilizing global grassroots support for the treaty, were also on hand to discuss the persistent and primary threat to the treaty’s full implementation: interference by the tobacco industry.

The global tobacco treaty is the world’s first public health and corporate accountability treaty — and the most rapidly embraced treaty on record.

“These countries deserve a lot of credit. Each has overcome significant industry opposition and pressure to advance the lifesaving measures of this treaty,” said Gigi Kellett, Challenging Big Tobacco campaign director for Corporate Accountability International. “The threat from Big Tobacco is still eminent. And still there is reason for great optimism, given the success of the treaty to date.”

The treaty aims to reverse the leading preventable cause of death and disease. Each year tobacco kills 5.4 million people each year. The death toll will reach more than 8 million over the next two decades, with the majority of lives lost in developing countries. The WHO projects that strong worldwide enforcement and broad implementation of the treaty could save 200 million lives by the year 2050.

The global tobacco treaty, formally called the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, is the world’s first public health and corporate accountability treaty — and the most rapidly embraced treaty on record. It today protects 86% of the world’s population.

The WHO finds that since the treaty entered into force in 2005, signatories are implementing national tobacco control coordinating mechanisms, banning advertising, promotion and sponsorship of tobacco products, and are taking measures to protect public health policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry.

There are significant challenges to overcome. Corporate Accountability International and its allies worked with governments to secure strong treaty guidelines, insulating the treaty against corporate interference. Big Tobacco has since disregarded and worked to undermine this core component of the treaty which establishes the tobacco industry’s fundamental and irreconcilable conflict of interest with public health.

Governments are standing up to tobacco lobbyists. Colombia’s federal legislators barred the tobacco industry from participating in congressional negotiations of a national tobacco control law. Their exclusion accelerated this process, which led to the establishment of strong legislation with provisions in line with the global tobacco treaty.

In July 2009, during an international protocol negotiating session, signatories kicked Big Tobacco lobbyists out of the process — a move made possible by Article 5.3. Signatories safeguarded the negotiations against the tobacco industry’s fundamental and irreconcilable conflict of interest, sending a strong message to the industry.

Notably absent from the treaty, is the US, the country that has been at the heart of global tobacco trade since its beginnings. Though former President George W Bush took a step toward enacting the treaty and signed it in 2004, he never submitted it to the Senate for a vote. While in the Senate, President Obama twice sent official correspondence to the White House calling for the treaty’s submission.

Further, the President signed a law this summer giving the FDA regulatory authority over tobacco. This bill positions the US to meet its obligations under the treaty were it to sign.

“It’s time for the United States to join the global community and reclaim a leadership role in taking on the tobacco epidemic,” said Kellett. “This treaty will outlast all of us, setting not only a strong standard for tobacco control but also a powerful precedent for safeguarding democracies against the interference and abuses of powerful industries.”

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However, last week, Jeffrey E. Streitfeld, a judge of a Broward Circuit Court overturned the highest-ever award paid to an individual.

The Judge named the $300 million verdict awarded by Jury as “shocking” and exorbitant, announcing that he would reward a smaller sum of money as the compensation for the damages due to be paid by Philip Morris USA. The Judge did not reveal the date when he would decide, but added he has been considering the case for a long time.

The history-making verdict was announced back in November for the plaintiff Cindy Naugle, a chain smoker, who quit in 1993, due to severe emphysema. Judge Streitfeld acknowledged that the panel’s ruling to give the plaintiff $244 million in exemplary damages and additional $56.5 million in factual damages resulted from rage and surpassed the reasonable amount paid in compensation and punishment

In compliance with Florida legislation, judges have to lessen the damages awarded by jury in case they are proved to be excessive. Judge Streitfeld, who took the chair on Naugle’s trial which lasted for over 20 days, stated he would estimate an appropriate reduction grounded by the evidence.

Cindy Naugle, who is by the way the cousin of Jim Naugle, ex-Mayor of Fort Lauderdale, claimed she was not able to move properly as she had severe problems with breathing and had to carry a walkie-talkie everywhere she was going, so her relatives could help her in case of emergency. The jury panel determined Philip Morris USA has been liable for her condition.

Commenting on the jury’s ruling, Richard Rosenthal, an eminent Miami attorney stated a $12 million verdict was absolutely justified award for all the suffering the plaintiff had to overcome in the past. Naugle’s lawyer Robert Kelley agreed with Rosenthal and claimed the ruling should be upheld.

Andrew Brenner, the lawyer for Philip Morris said the verdict was too excessive and said they would seek a reasonable reduction.

The Naugle case is one of more than 8,000 similar cases against cigarette makers, which were submitted when the Florida Supreme Court withdrew a state class action against the tobacco companies and annulated a $145 billion award for punitive damages. The court decided that plaintiffs should seek legal proceedings individually and base on the initial ruling by Miami jury that smoking is harmful and triggers severe health complications.

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Dr. Jeffrey Kulhmann recommended that the president, who has acknowledged smoking the occasional cigarette, stick with nicotine patches. In fact, some smokers have been able to cut back or kick the habit with the help of cessation programs. But the most powerful antismoking force in America is simple economics. Steep tax increases and a terrible economy probably reduced the number of cigarettes smoked in the United States last year by about 10 percent, one of the steepest annual declines in decades.

Cigarette sales have been declining for many years. But that slide has been slow and steady, reliably cutting consumption by about 2 percent a year. By comparison, the sales decline last year was off the charts.

“Both taxes and diminished income are playing a big role in declining sales of tobacco, and the nation is going to be healthier for it,’’ says Gregory Connolly, director of the Tobacco Control Research Program at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Harder economic times might seem like an obvious deterrent to smoking. At about $7.50 a pack in Massachusetts, the expense of cigarettes is increasingly difficult to justify for people trying to make ends meet. Looking back, one of the nation’s few sustained declines in cigarette smoking was recorded during the Great Depression.

But tax increases almost certainly played the biggest role in smoking declines nationwide last year, according to industry officials, investment analysts who follow tobacco stocks, and antismoking advocates. They say price elasticity models, which measure how price changes affect demand for products, anticipated a sales decline of about 10 percent as a result of last April’s 62-cent increase in the federal excise tax on a pack of cigarettes.

“These are really eye-popping numbers, there’s no question about it,’’ says Thomas Russo of Gardner, Russo & Gardner, a Lancaster, Pa., investment firm that owns shares of the tobacco company Altria Group Inc. “I can’t remember a time when the decline was so severe as that.’’

There are no rock-solid national cigarette sales numbers for 2009. The US Agriculture Department, which had kept the most reliable data on cigarette sales, stopped counting in 2007. But large tobacco companies such as Altria recently issued quarterly reports, which included detailed information about unit sales of cigarettes in the US market.

Altria’s Philip Morris USA unit, which sells brands including Marlboro, Parliament, and Virginia Slims, recorded a 10.5 percent decrease in 2009 domestic cigarette shipments. The decline was even steeper in the last three months of the year, when US cigarette sales at Philip Morris USA slumped by 12 percent.

“Total cigarette industry volume was down an estimated 10 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009,’’ the company said.

Here’s what those percentage declines looked like behind the counter: Philip Morris USA sold nearly 21 billion fewer cigarettes last year than it did in 2008. The company sold 3 billion fewer Marlboros in the last quarter of 2009 alone, compared with the same three months of the previous year. That’s a lot of cigarettes.

Altria and other tobacco companies have suffered through only one other year in recent decades that compares with 2009. Cigarette sales declined by roughly the same amount in 1998, when tobacco companies settled lawsuits brought by states across the country and jacked up prices to pay for it.

Comparable sales numbers provided by Altria suggest 1998 was nearly as bad as 2009, but not quite. The company’s domestic cigarette sales declined by 19.4 billion cigarettes, or 9.1 percent, that year.

National cigarette sales stabilized for a period after 1998, and Altria actually sold slightly more cigarettes the next year. But overall tobacco industry sales resumed their slow decline through the next decade, until they took the next hard punch last year.

Though industry watchers and antismoking advocates point first to the federal excise tax increase, other factors contributed to the sharply rising cost of cigarettes. Fifteen states increased cigarette taxes in 2009, and tobacco companies themselves raised prices to offset declining sales.

Researchers such as Connolly say some cigarette smokers don’t quit so much as switch to other products, including cigars and smokeless tobacco.

But most of the huge cigarette sales decline of 2009 is very real. Taxes, and basic economics, do more than anything else to make smokers quit.

By Steven Syre, Globe Newspaper Company
March 2, 2010

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Over two days, the Food and Drug Administration’s panel of outside experts will look at the health impact of the mint-like additive on smoker’s use as well as addiction and health, with another meeting set later this year, the FDA said on Monday.

The panel’s findings and any possible regulatory action against menthol could be a potential blow to Lorillard, the nation’s third-largest cigarette company and maker of the top-selling menthol brand, Newport.

“It’s the beginning of a long, slow funeral procession for menthol,” said healthcare analyst Ira Loss of Washington Analysis Corp.

Lorillard, which also makes Kent, Maverick and True brand cigarettes, had no comment on the FDA meeting.

While it is not immediately clear what action, if any, the FDA or its panel will take, the meetings will keep a heavy regulatory spotlight on the flavoring.

Menthol cigarettes, smoked by about 12 million Americans and 75 percent of African American smokers, have come under scrutiny by antismoking advocates who say the taste can be more enticing and possibly addicting than regular cigarettes.

Bipartisan legislation that gave the FDA oversight of cigarettes and other tobacco products banned other flavors such as chocolate, clove and fruit. But lawmakers exempted menthol, the most popular flavoring accounting for about 27 percent of the cigarette market, and instead called for an FDA review.

The meeting will also offer the first public glimpse into the FDA’s handling of the industry since the agency in August set up its new tobacco center, opposed by most tobacco companies except the nation’s largest cigarette maker, Altria Group Inc’s Philip Morris unit.

Credit Suisse in January downgraded the U.S. tobacco sector to “market weight” from “overweight,” citing concerns about the growing threat of regulations.

Mark McMinimy, an analyst with Concept Capital’s Washington Research Group, said the meeting highlights the FDA’s potential power even as the impact on the industry is still unclear. “There’s going to be a lot of concern about where this is heading exactly,” he said.

At the meeting, scheduled for March 30 and 31, FDA panelists will focus on who smokes menthol cigarettes and the flavoring’s effects on how cigarettes are smoked. Another meeting this summer will feature industry research and documents.

Matthew Myers, president of Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, which backed the new law, said it was too early to say what action the panel or the FDA may take. “We have to give them time to collect the scientific information,” he said.

Some experts and financial analysts have said they do not expect an outright ban on menthol, although the FDA could take such action, among other steps such as product label changes.

The whole process could take years, McMinimy said.

Despite the cigarette flavoring ban, coffee, mint and others are still used in controversial dissolvable tobacco products sold by Reynolds American Inc and Star Scientific. Some experts had expected FDA’s panel might first tackle such candy-like tobacco products.

Shares of Lorillard closed off 0.4 percent at $72.76 on the Nasdaq. Shares of Reynolds closed up 0.8 percent at $53.24, while shares of Star Scientific ended unchanged at 95 cents.

Susan Heavey, Reuters
March 1, 2010

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In the report entitled, “Comparison of advertising strategies between the indoor tanning and tobacco industries,” published online in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, dermatologist David A. Jones, MD, PhD, FAAD, in private practice in Newton, Mass., presented results of an observational study which concluded that both industries employ advertising strategies to counteract health concerns of their products in order to positively influence the consumer’s perception of smoking and indoor tanning and drive industry demand.

“The indoor tanning industry reported domestic sales in excess of $2.7 billion in 2007(1), and it relies heavily on advertising to sell the misleading idea of a ’safe’ or ‘healthy’ tan to the public,” said Dr. Jones. “Even though it is well documented that UV radiation from natural sunlight and indoor tanning devices is a known cause of skin cancer, the public is not always aware of the serious health risks associated with indoor tanning – and the tanning industry’s advertising practices capitalize on this fact.”

In reviewing 2,000 advertisements from four large tobacco advertising image databases, Dr. Jones and his colleague, Jennifer Herrmann, MD, identified four key strategy profiles that were used to sell their products. These strategies included: mitigating health concerns, appealing to a sense of social acceptance, emphasizing psychotropic effects, and targeting specific population segments. Dr. Jones added that tobacco advertising was selected as a reference framework because it is well documented and designed to promote a product with known health hazards.

Subsequently, a collection of approximately 350 contemporary tanning advertisements was compiled from a variety of sources – such as industry magazines, salon and industry Web sites, and in-store promotional materials – and evaluated based on the four key strategies identified in the tobacco advertisements.

As the increased incidence of lung cancer, respiratory and cardiovascular diseases and other health risks linked to smoking continued to mount over the years, the tobacco industry adjusted its advertising strategy to mitigate these known health risks. Specifically, the tobacco industry recruited physicians as crucial allies in marketing their products, reassured the public that their brands had competitive health advantages, and commended the intelligence of smokers for choosing cigarettes marketed as “safer” cigarettes.

Using Physicians as Allies

Dating back to the 1930s and 1940s, Dr. Jones and his colleague found that physicians wearing white lab coats frequently appeared in cigarette advertisements – using the doctor’s image to reassure consumers that cigarettes were safe. Similarly, indoor tanning advertisements have resorted to using physicians and citing medical research studies to try to persuade the public that indoor tanning is somehow “safe” or “safer” than tanning outdoors.

“The thinking behind these ads is that if physicians do something, then somehow it must be okay,” said Dr. Jones. “However, these ads omit the results of a recent survey indicating that 100 percent of dermatologists and 84 percent of non-dermatologist physicians would discourage UV tanning for non-medical purposes, even in healthy patients.”

Promoting Misleading Health Advantages

When awareness of the health risks of cigarettes began to grow in the 1950s and 1960s, the tobacco industry responded with what it coined as “safer,” “filtered” cigarettes. Dr. Jones noted that the goal of these ads was to convince consumers that filtered cigarettes provided protection from harmful effects of smoking, but without admitting that smoking was detrimental to one’s health.

To dispel growing concerns about the dangers of UV exposure, the indoor tanning industry countered with “harm reduction” campaigns that were similar to those used by the tobacco industry. For example, some advertisers began promoting their tanning beds as “UVB-free” or “99% pure UVA” during the 1980s when research confirmed that UVB rays are carcinogenic. These ads, of course, failed to mention that UVA rays also are harmful and can cause skin cancer.

Another popular harm reduction tactic used in tanning advertisements is to promote the health benefits of vitamin D production from UV exposure. In these types of ads, consumers are led to believe that UV exposure from both natural sunlight and tanning beds is beneficial in producing vitamin D, which research suggests may provide protection against heart disease and other cancers.

“What these ads omit is that UV exposure increases your risk of skin cancer, and there are safer ways to get this important vitamin,” said Dr. Jones. “An adequate amount of vitamin D can be obtained from vitamin D supplements – without the health risks of obtaining vitamin D from intentional UV exposure.”

Nothing Smart about Ads that Appeal to the Consumer’s Intelligence

Another tactic used by tobacco manufacturers in advertising is to try to somehow make consumers believe they are “smart” by smoking a certain brand of cigarettes over another brand. Dr. Jones and his colleague found that the indoor tanning industry makes similar appeals to the intelligence of consumers by promoting sunburn prevention at tanning bed facilities through trained professionals who teach consumers how to “tan safely” without getting sunburned.

“This tactic fails to mention that tanning to prevent sunburn provides only an SPF protection of 3, while simultaneously causing damage to the skin that can lead to future skin cancers,” said Dr. Jones. “In addition, studies also show that staff members of indoor tanning facilities do not always enforce the tanning intensity of tanning beds and time regulations of their patrons.”

While Dr. Jones and his colleague concluded that further consumer education about the dangers of tanning is needed, they also point out that the lack of government regulation has allowed the tanning industry to thrive on the public’s misconceptions about tanning through deceptive advertising practices.

FTC Bans Misleading Indoor Tanning Ads

Recognizing the seriousness of this issue, in January 2010 the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a consent order that prohibits the Indoor Tanning Association (ITA) from making false health and safety claims about indoor tanning. The American Academy of Dermatology (Academy) raised its concerns about the false statements being made by the ITA with the FTC in 2008 after the ITA launched an advertising campaign designed to portray indoor tanning as safe and beneficial.

“The American Academy of Dermatology commends the FTC for its investigation into the false and deceptive health and safety claims about indoor tanning being perpetuated by the indoor tanning industry,” said dermatologist David M. Pariser, MD, FAAD, president of the American Academy of Dermatology. “The scientific facts are clear: Exposure to UV radiation – either from the sun or from artificial light sources such as indoor tanning – increases the risk of developing skin cancer, including melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.”

Headquartered in Schaumburg, Ill., the American Academy of Dermatology (Academy), founded in 1938, is the largest, most influential, and most representative of all dermatologic associations. With a membership of more than 16,000 physicians worldwide, the Academy is committed to: advancing the diagnosis and medical, surgical and cosmetic treatment of the skin, hair and nails; advocating high standards in clinical practice, education, and research in dermatology; and supporting and enhancing patient care for a lifetime of healthier skin, hair and nails. For more information, contact the Academy at 1-888-462-DERM (3376) or www.aad.org.

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Developing countries are the new frontier for tobacco companies, which often target women and girls, and smoking rates remain high among poor people in affluent countries, it said.

Tobacco kills more than 5 million people a year from cardiovascular disease, cancers, diabetes and other chronic illnesses, including about 600,000 from second-hand smoke, according to the United Nations agency.

“Most alarming of all, tobacco use is actually increasing in many developing countries. If Big Tobacco is in retreat in some parts of the world, it is on the march in others,” Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO director-general, told a meeting to review implementation of a landmark tobacco treaty five years after it came into force.

“As we all know, the tobacco industry is ruthless, devious, rich and powerful,” she said.

The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, under review at the WHO, is the world’s first and only public health treaty and has been ratified by 168 countries including China.

It obliges governments to protect their populations from exposure to tobacco smoke and reduce demand through price and tax measures, regulating packaging and labeling of tobacco products and curbing tobacco advertising and sponsorship.

SMOKE-FREE LAWS

But WHO monitoring has revealed huge gaps in implementing the treaty.

“For example, just slightly more than 5 percent of the world’s population is protected by national smoke-free laws,” Chan said.

Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most populous nation, the United States, and tobacco-producing Zimbabwe are among those that have stayed outside the pact.

Many countries have implemented smoking bans in government buildings and health-care facilities, but have much lower rates in the entertainment and hospitality sectors, a WHO report said.

Tobacco taxes are the most effective way to reduce tobacco use, but only 21 countries have tobacco tax rates greater than 75 percent of the retail price, Chan said.

Fewer than one third of treaty members restrict advertising, promotion and sponsorship of tobacco products, the WHO says.

Tobacco companies had argued that the treaty threatened the livelihoods of tobacco farmers, advertising revenues, and the survival of restaurants, bars and sporting events, Chan said.

The main threat to fully implementing the treaty remains interference by the tobacco industry, activist groups including Corporate Accountability International said in a statement.

“Big Tobacco promotes its addictive and deadly product to kids with images like Philip Morris’s Marlboro Man, by sponsoring rock concerts and sporting events, and by putting tobacco brand names and logos on everything from T-shirts to patio umbrellas,” they said.

Philip Morris International, which sells Marlboro cigarettes and is the world’s largest non-state-owned tobacco firm, declined to comment on Chan’s comments, but said it supported regulation and many of the treaty provisions.

“We really hope the process focuses on implementing effective regulations that work, such as measures to reduce youth smoking and illicit trade in tobacco products, to reduce harm caused by smoking,” spokesman Ben Russell told Reuters.

A British American Tobacco spokesman voiced dismay at the WHO’s unwillingness to talk to the industry.

“The WHO thinks its aims such as encouraging retail display bans and plain packaging will make a difference. There is no evidence to show this – it just drives illicit trade,” he said.
Chinadaily, March 1, 2010

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However, this daring initiative has many influential opponents, including UK Business secretary and all major tobacconists. British American Tobacco, Japan Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco, and Philip Morris International have all declared their disagreement with the plan, arguing that it would hurt their businesses and make it easier to falsify their products.

The officials have promised to consider the plan and all the potential consequences of requiring black-and-white packaging for tobacco products. Meanwhile they have implemented other measures that would contribute to the intention to halve the smoking rates in the country by 2020.

The reanimation of plan to demand plain packaging was declared shortly after the leading tobacco company in UK, Imperial Tobacco revealed its 2009 Earnings statement and reported about a 1 percent growth of cigarette sales in 2009. This is the first growth in sale volumes after four years of persistent drops.

At the same time, the loose tobacco market segment also showed an impressive performance, selling 4.650 tons of tobacco, a growth of 21 percent from 2008. This is the highest-ever rise in that segment in the history of UK tobacco market and the first rise in the last 40 years.

Industry experts admit that there are two major factors behind the rise, and both of them are related to difficult economic situation: firstly, in order to cut their expenses, people prefer staying in the country rather than going abroad on holidays, and thus, they don’t stock up with less expensive cigarettes selling in Europe; secondly, smokers turn to fine cut rolling tobacco, as it is much cheaper to roll own cigarettes than to purchase branded ones.

Tobacco companies have objected that black-and-white packages could not prevent teenagers from taking up cigarettes, in case they want to do it. Imperial Tobacco spokesman declared that there is no reliable data proving that adolescents try smoking because of brightly-colored tobacco packaging. Therefore, obliging all brands to be packed in identical plain packs would contribute only to further growth of illegal sales and spoil the government’s efforts to crack down tobacco smuggling into the country

Imperial’s major rival, British American Tobacco as well stated that the officials’ intention to consider the plain packaging plan provides a hand of help not to smokers, but to criminal groups, as it would make it much easier for the criminals to manufacture or import illicit products and selling them on the black market.

Another important player in UK tobacco market, Philip Morris International went one step further by launching a website www.plain-packaging.com, in order to promote their campaign to oppose the implementation of black-and-white generic packaging in the country, saying it would not help reducing the number of smokers, but on the contrary, increase the rates, as more people would turn to illicit market.
Copyright © 2010 Tobacco-Facts.net All rights reserved.

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