ASH Daily News for 11/12/2002

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ASH Daily News
11 December 2002


HEADLINES

Tobacco giants lose EU labelling fight
Customs wins court battle against booze bandits
RCP calls for tobacco regulatory body
Women, smoking and cancer
Snooker star fails to snooker tobacco companies
TMA ad in House mag


Full Text

Tobacco giants lose EU labelling fight

Two giant British cigarette manufacturers yesterday suffered a landmark
defeat when Europe's highest court backed compulsory health warnings on
tobacco products and a ban on the terms "light" and "mild".

The European court of justice ruling was hailed as a victory for
anti-tobacco campaigners and higher standards of public health. It paves the
way for graphic pictures of smoke-blackened lungs and yellow teeth on
cigarette packs.

"The court upholds the validity of the [EU] directive on the manufacture,
presentation and sale of tobacco products," it said, deciding against
Imperial Tobacco and British American Tobacco (BAT).

The defeat for the two companies ended a two-year battle which went to the
high court in London before being referred to the EU court.

The directive, requiring that health warnings cover 30% of the front of
cigarette packets and 40% of the back, comes into force next year.

"This gives the 'all clear' for big, bold, bleak warnings on cigarettes,"
said Clive Bates of the anti-smoking lobby group Ash. "It also signals the
end to the misleading branding which was the biggest consumer con trick of
all time. The 'light' and 'mild' descriptors misled the majority of smokers
into thinking that low tar cigarettes were safe when clearly they were not.
BAT was clearly trying to abuse the laws establishing the single market in
order to sabotage tobacco legislation that promised to save thousands of
lives in Europe, but the court had the good sense to put health first."

Full text of Guardian article:
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,857523,00.html>
Source: The Guardian, The Express, Daily Mail, Financial Times, Evening
Standard, Morning Star, 11 December 2002



Customs wins court battle against booze bandits

Several of today’s papers report that he seizure of illicit goods and cars
from hundreds of cross-Channel shoppers could have been legal, even though
Customs officials treated travellers in a heavy-handed manner and the
"stops" were invalid.

A Court of Appeal ruling yesterday cleared the way for a backlog of cases to
proceed and for destruction of the contraband goods to be sought.

Hundreds of cases have been in limbo following a lower court ruling which
heavily criticised the manner in which Customs officials had been pursuing
suspected smugglers travelling across the Channel to shop. It had been
unclear whether, if the stops were unlawful, the seizure of the goods was
also illegal.

The lower court ruling had in effect outlawed "random checks" on passengers
and vehicles returning to the UK. Because Customs officials had kept no
record of their reasons for stopping vehicles, there was no proof that they
had reasonable grounds for doing so.

Yesterday, however, three appeal court judges said the divisional court had
been wrong to conclude that "if the check was invalid, then so, necessarily,
was the ensuing seizure".

Customs will, however, need to show that it was more likely than not that
the passenger was bringing in the goods for commercial purposes, rather than
personal use.

Source: Financial Times, Times, The Guardian, The Independent, Daily
Telegraph, The Star, 11 December 2002


RCP calls for tobacco regulatory body

Highlighting the need for a tobacco regulatory authority, The Royal College
of Physicians yesterday said that many alternative products, including
"safer" cigarettes, were available but there as no mechanism for controlling
them.

A report by the college, backed by Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), said
that addicted smokers should be helped to buy alternative products easily
and safely.

Prof John Britton, chairman of the college's Tobacco Advisory Group, said:
"There are 13 million smokers in the UK and the vast majority of them are
smoking because they are addicted, not from personal choice. They smoke just
because they cannot stop.

"The only freely accessible source of nicotine for them is cigarettes, the
most dangerous form."

He said people should be able to buy properly regulated alternative forms of
nicotine "at the newsagents with their morning paper".

Present legislation prevents this, although a Swedish company which makes
Snus, sachets of nicotine which are sucked, is challenging the ban in the
European courts.

Clive Bates, director of Ash, said: "Forty per cent of tobacco sold in
Sweden is now in this form and Sweden has the lowest rates of cancer and
heart disease in Europe. The Government says that tobacco should be
regulated at EU level but there is no agency doing this.” A regulatory body
would be able to face new challenges, assess new products and set standards,
he added.

The report, Protecting smokers, saving lives was approved by the council of
the Royal College of Physicians.

A Health Department spokesman said: "Calls have been made in the past to set
up a Tobacco Regulatory Authority. We do not consider that now is the right
time."

RCP ‘Protecting Smokers’ Report:
<http://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/pubs/books/protsmokers/index.asp>
RCP press release:
<http://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/news/news.asp?PR_id=156>

Source: Daily Telegraph, 11 December 2002




Women, smoking and cancer

Women cigarette smokers face a greater risk of lung cancer than realised,
says a study.

Researchers long suspected that adenocarcinoma, comprising of more than 40
percent of lung cancer in women, was linked to unknown risk factors because
it strikes women who never smoked.

Now Dr Ping Yang of the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota, in a study of
41,000 women to be published in the American Journal of Epidemiology
strongly links adenocarcinoma of the lungs to smoking.

Source: Daily Telegraph, 11 December 2002



Snooker star fails to snooker tobacco companies

The former snooker star Alex Higgins is among about 50 smokers whose actions
for damages brought against a number of tobacco companies have been
dismissed for want of prosecution by the Master of the High Court, reports
the Irish Times.

In the cases dismissed by the Master to date, the cigarettes companies
involved have asked for orders striking out the cases because of a failure
by the smokers to provide statements of their claims.

The actions against the tobacco companies allege negligence and breach of
duty. The appellants claim their health has been damaged by tobacco related
injuries.

Source: The Irish Times, 6 December 2002



TMA ad in House mag

MPs may have voted to ban tobacco advertising - but that hasn’t stopped
their own magazine accepting sponsorship from the smokes industry, says The
Star today.

The January page in their 2003 House Magazine calendar carries an
advertisement from the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association, which led an
unsuccessful campaign against a ban on tobacco advertising. Clive Bates,
director of ASH said: “It hardly sets a good example.”

Source: The Star, 11 December 2002

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Naj Dehlavi
Action on Smoking and Health
102 Clifton Street
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