Customs find 500,000 cigs in ferry lorry

A man has appeared in court after half-a-million cigarettes worth nearly £100,000 were found in the back of a lorry at Newhaven Port, Sussex. Customs officers stopped and searched a furniture lorry as it came off the ferry from Dieppe on Tuesday last week.  Inside, they found 500,000 cigarettes worth £95,000 hidden among furniture boxes. The driver of the lorry from Lithuania, was arrested and interviewed, and subsequently charged with duty evasion.

Bob Gaiger, HM Revenue and Customs regional spokesman in the South East, said: 'HMRC will not hesitate to take action against those involved in cigarette and tobacco smuggling. Regional ports such as Newhaven should not be seen as a soft touch by smugglers. Smuggling and selling cigarettes and other excise goods is not a harmless tax fiddle. It cheats the government of revenue which can be used to fund public services such as schools and hospitals.'

Source: Hasting & St. Leonard's Observer, 16 September 2008
Link: http://www.hastingsobserver.co.uk/509/Customs-find-500000-cigs-in.4488157.jp

Shop sells cigarettes for £2.50 a pack

A shop in Preston, Lancashire, has been banned from selling tobacco after an employee was caught with "fake" cigarettes. Abdul Mall, 40, admitted planning to sell 14 packs of counterfeit Lambert & Butler cigarettes at Pound Plush in the St John's centre. He also admitted having pouches of Golden Virginia tobacco which had no excise duty paid on them. It is the first time Trading Standards officers have secured a tobacco sales ban on a shop in Lancashire.

Preston Magistrates Court heard Mall had been selling about 30 packs of cigarettes a week for around £2.50 – about half the recommended retail price – without the knowledge of the discount shop's owner Muniur Bagyia, Mall's son-in-law. Trading Standards officers found cigarettes stashed in a bin bag at the store and tobacco in a van when they visited following a tip-off. Nick McNamara, prosecuting, said the counterfeit cigarettes had probably come from China.

He said: "The genuine articles are manufactured to strict requirements, with strict controls on what they should contain in respect of tar and so forth. There are no such controls on counterfeit copies. And for every counterfeit pack sold, the public purse is effectively defrauded." The court heard the shop, under a different owner, was prosecuted for similar offences in December last year.

John Rimmer, defending, told magistrates Mall was "extremely surprised" to discover the cigarettes were counterfeit. He said: "Mr Mall travels. He acquired a quantity of items which he believed were simply duty free. In among them, it would appear, there was a quantity of Lambert & Butler which were counterfeit. He acted through his own stupidity."

Mall was ordered to do 100 hours unpaid work and pay a fine of £325, costs of £474.74 and £15 to a victims' fund. The shop was banned from selling tobacco for six months, beginning from September 12.

Source: Lancashire Evening Post, 12 September 2008
Link: http://www.lep.co.uk/news/Shop-sells-cigarettes-for-250.4488389.jp

Government Consultation on the future of tobacco control closes

The Department of Health’s Consultation on the future of tobacco control closed on Monday September 8th.

1,257 e-postcards voicing support for the proposals were sent to the DH from the Smokefree Action Coalition website before the consultation closed and more than 8,000 people wrote to the Department of Health via Cancer Research UK.

The e-postcard calls for a long-term plan to protect children and future generations from the harm that smoking causes, including measures to remove tobacco out of the sight and reach of children - ending all displays of tobacco products at the point of sale and ending the sale of tobacco products from vending machines - and measures to protect children from tobacco marketing, including the introduction of plain packaging for all tobacco products.

Cancer Research UK's findings from the University of Stirling reveal that the more cigarette brands young people can name, the more likely they are to smoke. In fact, for every cigarette brand a young person can recall having seen at the point of sale, their chance of smoking increases by 35 per cent. The calls for stronger legislation were submitted alongside Cancer Research UK's response to the consultation. ASH has proposed setting up a new Tobacco Control Commission to monitor how regulations are changing Britain's smoking habits, and monitoring pregnant women's saliva to see if they are smoking. The UK's smoking rates are falling by about 0.4 per cent each year.

UK tobacco firms have condemned the proposals. Imperial Tobacco and British American Tobacco, claim the government's intentions to put cigarettes in plain packs, outlaw packs of ten and ban displays in shops will fuel the counterfeit market and hurt small retailers. The chief executive of Imperial Tobacco has said that proposals to change the way in which cigarettes, cigars and other tobacco products are sold in Britain would not affect sales of his company's brands.

Gareth Davis, chief executive of Imperial, the world's fourth-largest tobacco company, told The Times: “If these became regulations, they would be anti-competitive and hit small retailers. How could a company launch a new brand of cigarettes? We have to allow adult smokers to make an informed decision. “We need to concentrate on making sure that existing legislation, such as the change in the age you can buy cigarettes from 16 to 18, is properly enforced.” Mr Davis said that he did not expect any negative impact on sales of Imperial's brands, which include Lambert & Butler and Gitanes, if the proposals were to become law.

British American Tobacco (BAT) said that if the Government did not do more to tackle the large black market in tobacco, more young people could take up smoking because counterfeit cigarettes were cheaper. BAT also argued that a display ban would penalise small retailers, such as corner shops, who derive up to a third of their sales from tobacco.

Michael Prideaux, BAT's director of corporate and regulatory affairs, said: “Care is needed to avoid ineffectual laws with unintended consequences: fuelling the black market that makes cigarettes more accessible to children; ruining the livelihoods of small retailers; undermining a competitive market; and breaching companies' intellectual property rights.”

The Tobacco Manufacturers Association (TMA) has also called on the Government to shelve plans to push sales under the counter because it claims that there is no firm evidence it would result in a reduction in smoking. In its response to the consultation the TMA said that where product displays have been banned in Iceland and some parts of Canada, there has been no reduction in smoking. It believes point of sale displays are necessary for fair and undistorted competition between manfacturers and retailers.

Read the Smokefree Action Coalition members' responses to the consultation
Read Imperial Tobacco's response to the consultation
Read BAT's response to the consultation

Source: The Times, 09 September 2008 / News-Medical.net, 07 September 2008 / Morning Advertiser, 09 September 2008 / World Advertising Research Centre, 16 September 2008
Link: Smokefree Action

China tobacco merger to form industry leader

Hongyun Group and Honghe Group, two major tobacco firms based in southwest China's Yunnan province, plan to merge to form the world's fourth-largest cigarette maker by volume, the official Shanghai Securities News has announced.

The merger is part of a consolidation of the fragmented tobacco industry in China, the world's largest cigarette producer and consumer with a growing market of more than 300 million smokers. Hongyun Group posted 29 billion yuan ($4.2 billion) in revenue in 2007 and Honghe reported 16 billion yuan, according to their websites (www.hongyun.com and www.honghe.com).

The semi-official China News Service said if the deal were approved, the new group would surpass Imperial Tobacco Plc to become the world's fourth-largest tobacco producer by number of cigarettes sold, after Philip Morris International, British American Tobacco and Japan Tobacco Inc.

But the two companies' combined revenues are less than 30 percent of Imperial's revenue for the year ended on September 30, 2007. Cigarettes in China, where one package can sell for less than a dollar, are among the cheapest in the world.

The deal still requires government approval, the Shanghai Securities News said.

($1=6.848 Yuan)

Source: Reuters UK, 26 August 2008
Link: http://uk.reuters.com/article/innovationNews/idUKSHA31300020080826

Consumer product giant Altria will buy US Smokeless Tobacco (UST) for $11.7bn

Altria, parent company of Philip Morris, is to purchase US Smokeless Tobacco (UST).

“The combination of Altria and UST creates the premier tobacco company in the United States with leading brands in cigarettes, smokeless tobacco and machine-made large cigars,” says Michael Szymanczyk, Altria chairman and ceo. “UST provides Altria with the leading premium brands, Copenhagen and Skoal, in the highly profitable moist, smokeless tobacco category. We will also acquire Ste Michelle Wine Estates, a premium wine business, as part of the transaction.”

Altria is the parent company of cigarette giant Philip Morris and owns 28.5% of global alcoholic beverage business SABMiller.

Altria says it will borrow $7bn from banks Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan to finance the takeover.

Murray Kessler, UST chairman and ceo, will become the vice-chair of Altria once the deal is agreed by shareholders and regulators and will report directly to Szymanczyk, who will oversee the integration.

Source: TCE Today, 09 September 2008
Link: http://www.tcetoday.com/tcetoday/NewsDetail.aspx?nid=10879

Philip Morris gets regulatory approval for $1.95 billion acquisition of Rothmans

Philip Morris International Inc. has received the last remaining regulatory approval in Canada for its proposed acquisition of cigarette maker Rothmans Inc. for $1.95 billion. The Ministry of Industry approved the deal pursuant to the Investment Canada Act, the company said.

Canada-based Rothmans has a 60 percent stake in Rothmans, Benson & Hedges Inc., which makes and sells cigarettes including Benson & Hedges, Craven A and Mark Ten.

Philip Morris International owns the remaining 40 percent of RBH. It is the world's biggest non-governmental cigarette maker.

Source: Yahoo Finance, 12 September 2008
Link: http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080912/philip_morris_rothmans.html?.v=1

Plain packaging as viewed by the industry

Interview with Adam Speilman, tobacco analyst at Citigroup

How do you think consumers might react to plain packaging? 

Clearly, smokers won’t like it. However, I suspect the majority of the population that does not smoke will be in favour of the proposal. Anything that boosts public health is good. 

Who has the final say whether plain packaging becomes obligatory?

Ultimately, this is for parliament and the European Court of Justice. The health minister would need to bring a law before parliament. I have no doubt that MPs from all parties would vote by a large majority for such a law, if one is proposed. At that point the industry will sue, taking the issue to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. From the court’s point of view, a ruling would be tricky. Under Article 17 of the Charter of Human Rights, it would appear that the most likely outcome is that the government would be allowed to do this – provided it could produce evidence of a public health benefit – but it would have to compensate the industry for the loss of brand equity. Clearly, it would be politically unacceptable for a government to pay potentially billions of pounds to the tobacco industry, so the proposal simply could not be implemented if this is a necessary precondition before it goes ahead.

On the other hand, I think it would be extremely problematic for the court to thwart the democratic decision of a national parliament.

Why do you believe it is unlikely in the near future? We have seen other restrictions for tobacco products spread relatively rapidly from one country over the rest of world, such as the introduction of low-ignition propensity cigarette paper, graphic health warnings or smoking bans.

In the short term, the government will need to gather as much evidence as it can to show that there will be a public health benefit, in order to gain confidence for the inevitable case at the European Court of Justice. At the moment, this evidence is sketchy and weak. In a couple of years it may be much stronger.

My strong advice to the industry is to gather as much evidence as possible to show that the impact will be actually to harm public health. This could be done by getting opinion pollsters to show smokers generic packages, and ask them about their likely purchasing in response, focusing on cross-border. Simply denying that this proposal is possible is not a sensible strategy.

I remember the industry saying it would be impossible to ban smoking in Irish pubs. And then they said it wouldn’t work in practice, and then they said the proposal wouldn’t spread to continental Europe. It is important to remember that every anti-tobacco proposal that has been consulted on by the UK government in the last ten years has been implemented. In addition, the industry has little hope in appealing to natural justice – no politician has any incentive to support it.

Do you think that plain packaging would be effective in combating teenage smoking or in cutting down on the number of smokers in general?

I think it will do little to help on teenage smoking, as it will encourage cross border. I think the government would have a better case if the proposal was targeted at the adult population, and implemented across the EU simultaneously.

Source: Tobacco Journal International, 02 September 2008 

Cigarettes' power may not be in nicotine itself

There may be a very good reason why coffee and cigarettes often seem to go hand in hand.

A Kansas State University psychology professor's research suggests that nicotine's power may be in how it enhances other experiences. For a smoker who enjoys drinking coffee, the nicotine may make a cup of coffee even better.

And that may explain why smoking is so hard to quit.

"People have very regimented things they do when they smoke," said Matthew Palmatier, assistant professor of psychology at K-State. "If you think about where people smoke or who they smoke with, you realize that it occurs in very specific places, often with a specific group of people. Maybe it's a reason why nicotine is so addictive — if you get used to having that extra satisfaction from things you normally enjoy, not having nicotine could reduce the enjoyment in a given activity.

"People may not be smoking to obtain a pleasurable drug state. They may be smoking in order to regulate their mood, and that effect could make nicotine more addictive than other drugs."

Palmatier said much previous research on nicotine addiction has looked at the drug itself rather than the other factors he is studying.

Palmatier has a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to understand how this phenomenon can be used to better design tobacco addiction treatments, usually offered in patches and pills. He began psychological research in addiction as a graduate student and later began researching the reinforcing effects of nicotine.

"The big picture is trying to figure out why people smoke," Palmatier said. "There are a lot of health risks, and the majority of smokers already know what they are. They want to quit but can't. It's not because nicotine is a potent drug; it doesn't induce significant amounts of pleasure or euphoria. Yet, it's just as difficult if not more difficult to quit than other drugs."

At K-State, Palmatier studies rats that are allowed to self-administer nicotine by pushing a lever. The main source of light in their testing environment shuts off when the rats earn a dose of nicotine. After about a minute, the light comes back on to signal that more nicotine is available.

By manipulating this signal, Palmatier and his colleagues found that the rats weren't really that interested in nicotine by itself.

"We figured out that what the rats really liked was turning the light off," Palmatier said. "They still self-administered the nicotine, but they took more of the drug when it was associated with a reinforcing light."

Palmatier and colleagues published a paper on their research in the August issue of Neuropsychopharmacology.

Palmatier has begun looking at how rats respond to sweet tastes after having nicotine. He said preliminary results show that nicotine has comparable effects on sweet tastes. That is, rats respond more for sugar-water solutions after getting nicotine.

"The taste aspect is really important because we can actually figure out how nicotine is increasing the subjects' behavior," Palmatier said. "If it makes a reward more pleasurable, then it may increase the palatability of a sweet taste."

Palmatier said that a future phase of research would be determining whether nicotine can make unpleasant experiences more tolerable, helping explain why lighting up after a bad day at work can be tempting.

Source: Metabotropic Glutamate 5 Receptor (mGluR5) Antagonists Decrease Nicotine Seeking, But Do Not Affect the Reinforcement Enhancing Effects of Nicotine. Neuropsychopharmacology (2008) 33, 2139–2147; doi:10.1038/sj.npp.1301623; published online 28 November 2007. Matthew I Palmatier 1, Xiu Liu 1, Eric C Donny 1, Anthony R Caggiula 1 and Alan F Sved 2
Link: http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v33/n9/abs/1301623a.html

Smoking cessation reduces cardiovascular risks in patients with kidney disease

Nearly 47.5 million Americans currently smoke, and the habit is one that increases the risk and progression of chronic kidney disease (CKD). Patients with CKD also develop cardiovascular issues as the disease worsens, and researchers are calling for more studies that will help reduce cardiovascular mortality in this patient group. 

Smoking cessation may decrease cardiovascular disease as well as slow the progression of CKD. In the July-August 2008 issue of Nephrology Nursing Journal, Harold J. Manley and Nicole M. Stack describe smoking cessation therapies for the CKD population, an area in which little guidance exists.

Because nicotine use is an addiction, Manley and Stack say it requires pharmacologic as well as behavioral interventions. They review a variety of drug therapies, including nicotine replacement therapies (NRT), which supplement the need for nicotine; buproprion, a non-nicotine-containing medication which reduces a patient's craving; and varenicline, which targets tobacco dependence by reducing cravings and blocking the pleasurable sensations of nicotine. The authors say clinicians should use reduced doses of bupropion and varenicline and recommended doses of NRT.

Manley and Stack report only three studies to date have investigated how quitting smoking preserves kidney function and say more research in this area is needed. They advise making concerted efforts to encourage CKD patients to stop smoking.

Source: "Smoking Cessation Therapy Considerations for Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease."
Harold J. Manley, FASN, FCCP, BCPS; Nicole M. Stack, PharmD
Nephrology Nursing Journal; July-August 2008
Link: http://www.annanurse.org/journal
 

Big Tobacco's grip on colleges and students loosens, but still holding strong: new report examines trends on campuses

US College students are falling victim to aggressive tobacco industry marketing tactics as one in five continue to smoke, according to a new report released by the American Lung Association. 

The report provides a comprehensive overview of the current status of tobacco use and policies on college and university campuses. The American Lung Association analyzed published research, surveys and tobacco industry documents to provide a wide-ranging look at the impact tobacco has in today's college life.

The report found fewer college students are smoking than ever before, but the American Lung Association warned that smoking rates were nearly this low in 1989 and then skyrocketed in the following decade to a new peak high of 30.6 percent. Contributing to that unstable smoking trend is the tobacco industry. In 2005, the tobacco industry spent more than $1 million a day sponsoring events and giveaways targeting college students. The report also notes that of 119 schools surveyed in one study, students at 109 schools reported seeing tobacco promotions in an event on campus.

"The industry's return on investment is staggering," said Bernadette A. Toomey, American Lung Association President and CEO. "Nearly 20 percent of today's college students are regular smokers. Even worse is their continued campaign to increase these numbers. Every college student in America has a target on their back as far as the tobacco industry is concerned."

The report also notes that the smoking habits of college-age adults are more fluid - switching more easily between daily and occasional smoking-than that of older adults. This characteristic indicates a key opportunity to intervene and reduce smoking rates among young adults.

A review of the tobacco industry's own archives revealed campaigns to target young adults during transitional life stages. Moving from high school to college or work has been identified by the industry as a prime time for developing and cementing new behaviors like smoking. Tobacco companies exploit this vulnerability by sponsoring promotions in bars and nightclubs to encourage smoking as a social norm in efforts to move students from "experimental" to pack-a-day smokers.

The report indicates many students view smoking as a social norm among their peers. In the fall of 2006, the American College Health Association reported that 86 percent of college students perceived that their peers smoked at least one cigarette a month. Conversely, data from that same survey indicated that just 22 percent of college students smoked cigarettes at some point in the preceding 30 days.

The American Lung Association urges university leaders to stand up against Big Tobacco and implement measures to protect their students from the industry's predatory practices.

"Colleges and universities have a responsibility to provide safe spaces in which their students can learn and live," said Toomey. "This should include an environment free from secondhand smoke and advertising that encourages young adults to use deadly tobacco products."

The American Lung Association calls upon the higher education community to join the Smokefree Air 2010 Challenge, a nationwide movement to eliminate exposure to secondhand smoke in public places and workplaces no later than 2010 and reduce smoking-related illnesses, by implementing the following policies and initiatives in this school year:

- Prohibit tobacco use at all indoor and outdoor facilities, private offices, residence halls and dormitories.
- Stop the sale and advertising of tobacco products on campus and in college controlled publications, properties and events.
- Refuse all research and sponsorship funding from the tobacco industry.
- Provide smoking cessation programs to all students, faculty and staff.
- Implement and enforce strong policies to aid in the prevention, cessation and elimination of tobacco use across campus.
- Educate students and faculty about the harmful effects of using tobacco products, the resources available for cessation and campus policies.
- Promote and fund research to design and implement smoking and tobacco use interventions that specifically target college students.
- Lobby state legislatures to create laws to prohibit tobacco use on campus.

For a copy of the American Lung Association's report on smoking trends on college campuses titled: Big Tobacco on Campus: Ending the Addiction, visit: http://www.lungusa.org . Additional resources for students can be found on our Facebook community at: http://apps.facebook.com/healthylungs /. This report is supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in Princeton, New Jersey.

Source: mediLexicon, 12 September 2008
Link: http://www.medilexicon.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=121208