ASH Daily News for 04 December 2006
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Tobacco widower calls for people to quit
Germany faces partial ban
Snuff product criticised for bending smoking laws
Welsh smokefree pub does U-turn
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Tobacco widower calls for people to quit
A husband who lost his wife to smoking today made a plea for people to quit the killer habit - for the sake of loved ones left behind.
Earlier this year, Don and Mary Giles were sharing a weekend away when she was taken ill. She died of a heart attack the next day.
Today, Mr Giles, 75, said: "I implore every smoker to commit to quit now, if not for their own sake, then for their loved ones.
Mary, 74, had smoked since her teens. A nurse of 48 years, she encouraged others to ditch the habit as part of her job, although she could not give up herself.
However, in recent years her husband witnessed more than 50 years of smoking taking its toll.
And in May this year, Mrs Giles suffered a fatal heart attack, which doctors said was brought on by her habit.
Mr Giles, of Moorhouse Road, west Hull, said: "I can assure everyone that going on holiday as a couple and returning alone is very traumatic.
"She always discouraged other people from smoking, even though she was a lifelong smoker.
"People who have smoked for 50 years believe there's no point in giving up, that the damage has been done."
Coral Hinchliffe, tobacco control development manager for Hull Primary Care Trust, said: "Most smokers want to stop and it's the single most important thing they can do to live longer.
"Smoking can shorten your life.
Smoking also harms others, especially children who are more likely to suffer from respiratory infections if they are exposed to tobacco smoke.
"Whichever way you look at it, it makes sense to quit smoking. Quitting makes a difference right away."
Source: This is Hull, 3 December 2006
Germany faces partial ban
There was a palpable sense of panic in the exclusive Berlin VDC club on Friday, a refuge where lobbyists, politicians and a few correspondents sink into leather armchairs to drink vintage red wine and chomp on cigars at the expense of the Association of the German Cigarette Industry.
Perhaps Europe’s last bastion of unashamed public smoking seems to be crumbling. Legislation introduced to the German parliament will banish cigarettes from all public spaces, from buses to hospitals. Yes, there are loopholes, built in to save the chain-smoker from total social exclusion — Germans will be allowed to light up in bars, for example.
It seems like a revolution, yet almost every other EU country will have even stricter legislation in place by this time next year. Even the chain-smoking Queen Margrethe of Denmark, known as the Ashtray Queen, has let it be known that she will stop puffing in public when an anti-smoking law comes into force in her country next April.
The tobacco industry suspects that the Government is on course for a total public ban. The bonanza days of converting eastern Germans to western German cigarette brands — by hiring scantily clad women to press free packets into their hands — are long gone. The seven tobacco companies that sponsor the Berlin VDC club have watched their sales go up in smoke, from 145.1 billion cigarettes in 2002 to 95.8 billion last year. A steadily rising tobacco tax is also hitting profits.
The anti-smoking lobbyists are based in the cancer research centre in Heidelberg. In 1998 they were sure that parliament was ready to pass a blanket anti-smoking law. An apparent majority ebbed away as the tobacco lobby made its influence known.
“We were just left there gawping naively,” Martina Pötschke-Langer, who runs the anti-smoking centre, said. “You have to learn from political catastrophes like that.”
Political analysts will be observing carefully who turns up at the VDC club in the coming months. The tobacco barons, one suspects, will not give up easily.
17m: Number of Germans who smoke
110,000: Number of Germans who die every year from smoking-related diseases
3,300: Number of Germans who die as a result of passive smoking every year
€14.4bn: The sum generated annually in Germany by tobacco taxes
Source: Times, 4 December 2006
Snuff product criticised for bending smoking laws
A tobacco company was accused last night of "reprehensibly" bending Scotland's tough anti-smoking laws by marketing "snuff bullets" as a healthy alternative.
Toque Tobacco is also under fire after an MSP claimed its marketing strategy was using "blatant" references to drug-taking to lure young people to its smokefree product. Roderick Lawrie, the owner of Toque, said he had sold a trial batch of his snuff bullets, which cost £4.99 each, to shops in Edinburgh.
He hopes to sell them throughout Scotland if they proved a hit this winter with smokers fed up with being forced outside pubs and restaurants when they want a cigarette.
Mr Lawrie, a former smoker, said: "Toque is a pure tobacco product that is as near a substitute to a cigarette it is possible to find - but it can be used indoors."
He said major cancer charities backed-up his claim that Toque snuff bullets were a safer way to take nicotine.
Mr Lawrie cited a paragraph on the Cancer Backup website, which reads: "Although snuff, like cigarettes, contains nicotine, there is no evidence that taking snuff leads to an increased risk of getting lung cancer."
But a spokeswoman for the charity last night said he had taken the words out of context. She said: "We make it clear taking snuff is not without health hazards. We have removed all the comments, so no-one can assume we support taking snuff."
Dr James McLay, a senior lecturer in medicine at Aberdeen University, said: "All forms of tobacco cause cancers. If you inhale snuff, you risk getting cancer of the nose or tonsils and cancer of the bladder or the kidneys. If you smoke, you risk lung cancer."
He said that regardless of how tobacco is ingested, it increases the risk of other cancers, including leukaemia.
"The carcinogens in tobacco do not disappear just because it is not being lit," he said.
Source: The Scotsman, 4 December 2006
Welsh smokefree pub does U-turn
A pub in Wales has given up its non-smoking policy just four months before a total ban takes effect.
The Conway pub, initially announced itself as 'Pontcanna's first non-smoking pub.'
But landlord Shane Turner, 29, has now re-introduced smoking in the bar of the popular drinking-spot in Conway Road.
He said: 'We gained a lot of new customers but a lot left because they had the choice of being able to smoke elsewhere.'
Mr Turner said the pub's U-turn on smoking had been made with smokers' interests at heart, as the pub had not been able to build a heated, covered patio area for them.
But his customers criticised the move - even the smokers.
Smoker Debs Williams said: 'I'm really looking forward to the ban because I'm one of those part-time smokers.
'I think you should just stick with it. If you're going to ban it, ban it. I don't think we should be indulged.'
Along with all pubs in Wales, the Conway will be going non-smoking for ever in April when a nationwide smoking ban is introduced.
Non-smoker Ian Jones, 37, a television director of Cumberland Street, Canton, said people would get used to non-smoking pubs.
He said: 'In 20 years' time I don't think kids will believe it. 'What? They used to let you smoke in pubs?"
Cecilia O'Leary said the Conway's U-turn was a shame. She said: 'It was a wonderful idea and we've been coming here because it's non-smoking.'
Mr Turner said the pub had failed to get planning permission for a covered smokers' area in the beer garden.
Source: IcWales, 2 December 2006
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