ASH Daily News for 29 September 2008

Cigarette packets to carry graphic photo warnings

The Department of Health announced that graphic pictures of throat cancer and rotting teeth are to appear on cigarette packets from next month to illustrate the health risks of smoking.

Among the other images smokers will see are rotting lungs, a corpse in a morgue and a body cut open during surgery.

The UK is the third country in the EU to introduce the photo warnings but the first to require them on all tobacco products, not just cigarettes. The warnings will have to be in place on all cigarette packets by October 2009 and on other tobacco products by October 2010.

The photos will appear on the back of packets accompanied by a written health warning.

They replace the previous warnings introduced in January 2003, although the messages 'Smoking kills' and 'Smoking seriously harms you and others around you' will continue to appear on the front of packets.

New figures showed written warnings had motivated more than 90,000 smokers to call the NHS Smoking Helpline, the DoH said.

However smoking is still the biggest killer in England where it causes the premature death of more than 87,000 people each year.

Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson said: "I welcome the introduction of picture warnings on tobacco product packaging, which show smokers the grim reality of the effects smoking can have on their health.

"This will help to maintain the momentum of the increasing number of people who have given up smoking following England going smoke free in 2007.

"Written health warnings have encouraged many smokers to stop smoking. These new stark picture warnings emphasise the harsh health realities of continuing to smoke. I hope they will make many more think hard about giving up, and get the help they need to stop smoking for good."

The smokers' lobby group Forest criticised the new warnings as "unnecessarily intrusive" and "gratuitously offensive".

Forest director Simon Clark said: "We support measures that educate people about the health risks of smoking, but these pictures are designed not just to educate but to shock and coerce people to give up a legal product.

"They are unnecessarily intrusive, gratuitously offensive, and yet another example of smokers being singled out for special attention."

Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) director Deborah Arnott said: "The stark images in the picture warnings on tobacco products are a call to action to smokers to quit, and the evidence is that they work.

"The evidence also shows that picture warnings work better on plain packs, so we are urging the Government to also implement legislation to require the removal of pack branding to maximise the impact of the these images."

ASH said an obvious disadvantage was that the picture warnings would only appear on the back of packs, and said there was a strong case for increasing the area devoted to health warnings.

British Lung Foundation chief executive Dame Helena Shovelton said: "These images are a stark reminder that we can't treat our lungs as if they were Hoover bags, able to filter out harmful substances like cigarette smoke."

"Smoking causes disabling lung diseases like COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and kills more than 120,000 people in the UK each year."

"We hope these images will underline that more effectively than written messages."

Canada was the first country to introduce picture warnings in 2001.

Research a year later found 31 per cent of ex-smokers said the images had motivated them to quit the habit while 27% said they had helped them to remain non-smokers, according to the DoH.

Source: The Independent, 27 September 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/44b697

Lauren, Luckies and me

Below is a comment piece in The Guardian by Nicholas Lezard.

I am not in the pay of Big Tobacco – quite the reverse – but what would the allure of Hollywood be without a wreath of cigarette smoke?

Like all sceptics, I am always pleasantly surprised by coincidences, and therefore was particularly so when I read the story about how the makers of Lucky Strike had invested a great deal of time and money to persuade various Hollywood stars to endorse their cigarettes. The coincidence resided in the fact that, while I was reading it, I had just sparked up a filterless Lucky Strike myself. 

I read Lauren Bacall's comment, which, I concede, was possibly scripted, to Jack Benny on his radio show in 1947, after he had told her that the cigarette he had just given her was a Lucky Strike: "It's my favourite brand," she said. "So round, so firm, so fully packed, so free and easy on the draw." The Simpsons might take the mickey out of such endorsements with its references to Laramies, and this is pretty much in the same league of preposterousness, but to think that I was now in communion with the spirit of Lauren Bacall, and could so fully endorse her sentiments – for what she, or the copywriters at RJ Reynolds, said about the cigarette is completely true – made my head spin.

You may wonder whether I am in the pay of Big Tobacco in order to say such things. Rather the reverse, I have to say. The money flow is strictly one-way – from me to them. And not only that: I have to go to some lengths to get hold of my filterless Luckies. For various reasons, they are not available in this country, and I have to get friends returning from the US to pick up my cartons (the packs, by the way, are free of the disfiguring health warnings, and have the classic roundel design; apart from a somewhat non-committal reminder from the Surgeon General that they contain carbon monoxide, you wouldn't even know they were bad for you).

I was, until now, sadly unaware that Lauren and I shared a taste. For me, the Luckies tipping point was due to another cinema association altogether. After watching Saving Private Ryan, I had to rush out and buy a pack, in honour of the cigarette which had won the war.

I have written a few articles over the years about the allure of smoking on screen, but had never really bothered about whether particular tobacco companies had been pushing their brands; it would appear that only Reynolds had had the gumption to do so. And had they, I now wonder, had a hand in the first episodes of the TV drama Mad Men, in which unscrupulous advertising executives are asked to come up with a slogan for Luckies – despite emerging evidence that smoking is unhealthy? The amount of smoking in that series is phenomenal, particularly by today's standards; and all the more poignant when you consider the habit is practically impossible to enact anywhere nowadays. I do not want to encourage smoking; it is awfully bad for one, but this only increases the allure.

Apparently, some campaigners believe a good way of getting people to cut down on smoking would be to remove all branding from packages in order to discourage the image-conscious. Well, as I recall, most of the screen smokers from Hollywood's golden age used cigarette cases. No vulgar branding necessary.
 

Source: The Guardian, 26 September 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/3hgmno

Smoke ban rebel loses appeal

Smoke ban rebel licensee Nick Hogan has lost his Crown Court appeal against convictions for flouting the smoking ban.

Hogan appealed three of his four convictions of failing to prevent people smoking at the Swan and Barristers in Bradshawgate, Bolton.

He claimed he couldn’t reasonably be expected to know people were smoking.

His appeal was thrown out at Bolton Magistrates, meaning the original fines of between £750 and £3,000 still stand. Hogan was also ordered to pay an additional £1,000 costs.

Judge Angela Nield pointed to Hogan’s well-publicised opposition to the ban, including a protest on the day of the ban and widespread media coverage of his views.

“He made it clear he did not intend to take any action to stop anyone smoking,” the judge told Bolton Crown Court. “This would have encouraged people to smoke on his premises.”

A Bolton Council spokesman said: “We are pleased that this issue has been resolved. The majority of Bolton businesses have complied with the legislation since it came into force last July and they continue to do so for the benefit of the whole community.

“Mr Hogan represented a very small minority who insisted on flouting the law. The court, by its decision, has emphasised that compliance with this law is not optional and we will continue to enforce against anyone who chooses to break it.

Source: The Morning Advertiser, 25 September 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/473ram

Great Harwood grandad's smoking warning

A brave grandfather is showing off his operation scars in a bid to turn East Lancashire people off smoking. 

Leslie Swain, 55, of Kipling Place, Great Harwood, underwent an eight-hour quadruple heart bypass operation just two weeks ago.

After smoking 30 cigarettes a day for 20 years, he had blockages throughout his four main coronary arteries.

Mr Swain said he owed it to the surgeon who saved his life to never smoke again, and to keep spreading the smokefree message.

He said: “If what's happened to me makes one young person think again about having that first one, or someone older makes the decision to stop, then its worth telling people about it like this.

"They don't want to end up like me. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, and it doesn't just affect me. It also affects the people I love, my wife Rita, my sons Danny and Chris, and my grandchildren."

Surgeon Mohamad Bittar broke open his rib cage and disconnected his heart, replacing his coronary arteries with blood vessels taken from his leg.

Mr Swain knew when he went under the knife that he might not survive the operation, but without it, a heart attack could have killed him at any time.

Now, he has horrific scars down the length of chest and leg, and is facing further high-risk surgery to repair an aneurysm in his aorta – the main blood vessel linking the heart to the lungs.

He said: "I had been diagnosed with emphysema and angina, but that hadn't stopped me smoking. After I was told I would need the operation, I said I would give up, and I cut down to the odd couple, but even that couldn't make me stop completely."

"But actually having the bypass is an experience and a half – and a frightening one. And I'm not out of the woods yet, by a long way."

Source: The Lancashire Telegraph, 29 September 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/52w7ah

Essex: More pregnant mums turning to cigarettes

The number of pregnant women smoking in south east Essex has risen to the highest level for three years. 

Figures for January to March show that 17 per cent of pregnant women in Southend, Rochford district and Castle Point declared themselves to be smokers at the point of giving birth.

The statistics, which come from the primary care trust NHS South East Essex, compares to about 14.5 per cent for the same period in 2007 and 16 per cent for 2006.

Source: Echo, 29 September 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/3w3s8v