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ASH Daily News
02 December 2002

HEADLINES

Cigarette packets to carry photos of cancer victims
Norway to ban smoking
BAT quizzed over Myanmar operations
BAT and Swedish Match in joint bid for Italy’s ETI
Fag butts and litter mountains


FULL TEXT


Cigarette packets to carry photos of cancer victims

Tobacco companies are to be forced to print colour photographs of lung
cancer victims and diseased organs on cigarette packets under European
legislation being introduced from January.

The visual health warnings are intended to be the strongest deterrent yet to
Britain’s 13m smokers. Photographs being considered for inclusion include a
young lung cancer sufferer on a ventilator, tobacco damaged hearts and
brains removed at autopsies and the discoloured mouth of a smoker with
advanced gum disease.

Canada and Brazil have already used such photographs and achieved
appreciable progress in cutting the number of smokers.

“My view is that if the evidence shows that these photographs work,
particularly in deterring young smokers, then we should have them however
gruesome they are” said Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat health spokesman
who has lobbied the government to speed up agreement on their use.

Clive Bates, director of ASH said “There is no doubt that these have been a
significant factor in encouraging people to stop smoking in other countries.
I am confident they will have the same effect here."

The tobacco manufacturers, however, remain defiant.

Source: The Sunday Times, 1 December 2002



Norway to ban smoking

Norway could become the first country to ban smoking in all restaurants and
bars.

The country’s health minister said the measure, which he hoped would be law
by 2004, was a ‘milestone in the fight against the damage caused by tobacco.
’

BBC Online coverage:
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2528127.stm>

Source: BBC Online, Daily Mail, 2 December 2002




BAT quizzed over Myanmar operations

Tobacco giant BAT is being quizzed about its operations in Myanmar by
leading socially responsible investor Insight Investment.

Insight’s head of investor responsibility, Craig Mackenzie, has written to
BAT’s chief executive asking why the firm is working in a joint venture with
the Myanmar government.

Mackenzie said: “We have written to the firm asking it to explain to us how
it believes it is right to remain in Burma, given the company has given a
number of fairly explicit commitments to corporate social responsibility and
human rights.

Source: Pensions Weekly, 28 November 2002




BAT and Swedish Match in joint bid for Italy’s ETI

British American Tobacco (BAT) has held talks with Swedish Match about
bidding jointly for Ente Tabacchi Italiano (ETI), the state owned tobacco
group being sold under the Italian government’s €20bn (£12.5bn)
privatisation programme.

Under the proposal, the two companies would agrees to split ETI’s cigarette
manufacturing and retails businesses should they emerge as the governments
preferred bidder for the €1.5bn tobacco giant.

Source: The Business, 1 December 2002




Fag butts and litter mountains

A campaign is to be launched to persuade smokers not to discard their
cigarette ends in the street.

Cigarette butts account for 43 percent of the rubbish dumped on Britain’s
roads.
“This is the world’s number one litter problem,” said Eric Pennyfather, a
director of BUTTsOUT (UK), based in Colchester, Essex.

Butts damage the environment because they contain more than 4,000 chemicals,
including hydrogen cyanide and arsenic.

A survey found that 122 tons of stubs, matchsticks and cigarette related
litter were discarded in the UK every day.

Source: The Express on Sunday, 1 December 2002


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Naj Dehlavi
Action on Smoking and Health
102 Clifton Street
London EC2A 4HW
http://www.ash.org.uk