Plymouth: Breaking smoking chain

Young smokers are being targeted as part of a bid to stop people lighting up in the city.

A meeting was held by the Plymouth Smokefree Alliance to discuss ways to stub out the problem of cigarettes.

This follows the news that across Plymouth a higher than average number of adults smoke, with 27 per cent reaching for cigarettes, compared to 21 per cent nationally.

"We are looking at three themes: motivating smokers to assist them with quitting, protecting communities and families and stopping the inflow of young people recruited as smokers," said Jane Bullard, tobacco control lead at Plymouth NHS Stop Smoking Service.

"I think one of the reasons young people smoke is because often they copy parents and in certain communities everyone smokes," she said.

The aims, which were discussed by members of Plymouth City Council, the police, youth service, fire service and NHS are part of a wider national strategy to slash the number of people smoking.

"What we would like is for people growing up nowadays to never even try smoking," said Jane.

"And I would love it if in 30 years time they would say: what is a cigarette?"

The meeting comes just a few days ahead of No Smoking Day which is being held on March 10.

The national event is an ideal opportunity for smokers to throw away their cigarettes and get help to quit.

The NHS Stop Smoking Service, which launched this year's event with the help of the Plymouth Raiders, works with would-be quitters to let them know about the support available to them.

Source: thisisplymouth, 04 March 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/dql3Rf

GE plans new American export: outdoor smoking ban

General Electric Co is known for exporting American products like washing machines and jet engines, and the biggest U.S. conglomerate is getting ready to ship out another American trend - the outdoor smoking ban.

The world's largest maker of jet engines this week told employees that it plans to ban smoking on all GE property - both indoors and out - worldwide starting in March 2011.

The Fairfield, Connecticut-based company already prohibits indoor smoking at about 80 percent of its 2,000 facilities globally. The new policy aims to extend that ban to apply to all GE property, meaning an assembly-line worker could not have a cigarette while walking from the factory gate to the door.

"We've made a commitment to making our employees healthier and it's a little bit of walking the talk," said GE spokeswoman Sue Bishop. "It's due to the overwhelming evidence of the ill-effects of smoking.".

The American Cancer Society estimates that smoking costs the U.S. economy $196 billion a year in medical costs and productivity losses due to smoking-related deaths.

While smoking has been on the decline in the United States for half a century, about half of GE's 304,000 employees work outside its home country, where smoking rates can be higher.

Almost one in five Americans - 19.8 percent of the population - smokes, according to data from the World Health Organization.

But smoking is far more common in some emerging markets that GE regards as key to its future growth. For instance, in China, about 31.4 percent of the population - and 57.4 percent of men - smoke; in India 57 percent of men and 10.8 percent of women smoke.

Smoking is also more common in Western Europe, with 23.2 percent of Germans and 25 percent of the French smoking.

GE is not alone in banning smoking at its outdoor facilities in the United States. Drugmaker Abbott Laboratories Inc prohibits employees and visitors from lighting up at any of its campuses in the United States and Puerto Rico.

GE's ban - which also applies to chewing tobacco and other so-called smokeless products - will be subject to local laws and labour agreements, and does not apply to employees' behaviour off GE property, Bishop said.

To give its salaried U.S. employees a further incentive to quit smoking, GE this year adopted a two-tier insurance program that requires smokers to pay an additional $625 per year in insurance premiums.

Source: Reuters, 04 March 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/dtg4yy

Fetal tobacco exposure promotes asthma

Maternal smoking during pregnancy may exert a more powerful influence on asthma development in children than postnatal secondhand smoke or breastfeeding by smoking mothers, researchers said.

Children of different ethnicities with exposure in utero to tobacco smoking were at nearly six times as likely to develop persistent asthma than children whose moms didn't smoke during pregnancy, according to Sarena Apte, MD, of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

On the other hand, there no significant relationship between children's asthma and mothers' postnatal smoking status, Apte reported at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology annual meeting.

Apte said these results add more force to recommendations that women stop smoking during pregnancy.

The study was one of several here suggesting that asthma risk is more closely linked to fetal exposures to chemical insults than exposures after birth.

Epidemiologic studies indicated that maternal folate levels during pregnancy, but not levels in infants themselves after birth, were related to subsequent asthma development.

Also, the plastics component bisphenyl A (BPA) has been reported to make mice more susceptible to experimental asthma when it was present in utero, but not in their mothers' milk after birth.

Session moderator Neil Alexis, PhD, an immunologist at the University of North Carolina who was not involved with Apte's study, said it was not surprising that exposures in utero should be more important than postnatal exposures.

"There's some evidence [from other research] that smoking in utero does alter the immune system at that critical stage of development," he said. "If you modify it at that point, things can go down a more allergic pathway."

Apte and colleagues analyzed data from 295 children, ages 8 to 16, who were participating in previous studies. Their parents provided information on their smoking habits during pregnancy and the first years of life in recent structured interviews.

All the children were African American, Mexican-American, Mexican, or Puerto Rican, and lived either in the U.S. or in Puerto Rico.

Persistent asthma was diagnosed in 194 of the children, with the remainder having intermittent illness.

In addition to the presence of persistent asthma, the researchers counted other significant symptoms such as wheezing, nocturnal symptoms, and daily symptoms.

Apte said the research team planned to look next at genetic polymorphisms involved in tobacco processing, as well as whether the magnitude of the effects was related to the duration of smoking exposure.

She said it was impossible in this study to determine whether fetal or postnatal tobacco exposure had different effects in the ethnic groups represented in the study.

Asthma prevalence and severity is generally much greater among people of Puerto Rican background relative to Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, for example.

However, there were too few participants in each group to allow for meaningful comparisons, Apte said.

Source: Medpage Today, 01 March 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/9QT2Ph

Ireland: Cigarette price-fixing infringes EU law

The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that Irish legislation fixing a minimum retail price for cigarettes infringes EU law. 

The legislation breaches Directive 95/59 which has rules on excise duty affecting the consumption of tobacco products.

The court says imposing a minimum price on cigarettes can undermine competition by preventing some manufacturers taking advantage of lower cost manufacturing prices, so as to offer more attractive retail selling prices.

The court says that while the directive [95/59] ensures health protection, it does not prevent member states from combating smoking.

In a statement, cigarette manufacturer PJ Carroll welcomed the ruling saying: 'The reality is the set minimum price for cigarettes has become irrelevant. Packs of cigarettes are being purchased up and down the country for as little as €3.50 on the black market. This is under half the current minimum price of €7.75.'

However, the Irish Cancer Society say they are disappointed with the ruling by the European Court of Justice which found Irish legislation fixing a minimum retail price for cigarettes infringed EU law.

Head of Advocacy with the Irish Cancer Society, Kathleen O'Meara, said they are disappointed with the potential impact of the ruling because it could mean a reduction in the price of cigarettes here.

Anti-smoking group ASH also said it was concerned with the ruling.

Dr Angie Brown, ASH, said: "We will be in contact with the government on this vitally important matter. Ireland has and is permitted to have a separate tax regime to all other EU countries - and it is our view that the Government has every right to apply taxes which ensures that tobacco is sold at current and even higher prices".

Source: RTE Business, 04 March 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/aXwcIz

Norway excludes tobacco investments from oil fund

Norway’s government pension fund can no longer be invested in tobacco companies under new guidelines introduced by the country’s Ministry of Finance.

“Production of tobacco has been introduced as a new criterion for exclusion, and we have already followed up the Council on Ethics’ recommendations to sell our holdings in tobacco producing companies,” said finance minister Sigbjørn Johnsen.

The $450 billion Government Pension Fund-Global, Oslo, which invests Norway’s oil and gas wealth for future generations, follows ethical guidelines set by the government.

It already excludes companies that produce nuclear weapons or cluster munitions, damage the environment, or abuse workers’ rights.

The exclusion of tobacco companies coincides with a new set of guidelines that allow for a broader assessment before a company is excluded from the fund on the grounds of grossly unethical behaviour.

“In some cases, it is more useful to put a company under observation than to exclude — for example, if there is uncertainty about how the situation will develop,” Johnsen said.

“We monitor the companies that have been placed on this watch-list closely to see if they implement measures to remedy the situation before we make a final decision on whether to exclude the company or not.”

Source: Finance Markets, 05 March 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/cZEKhY