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ASH Daily News

8 December 2005

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HEADLINES

Children's Health Tsar supports comprehensive smoking ban

Support for smoking ban from smokers and non-smokers alike

Snorkelling cigarette smugglers on the EU fringe

Good health advice versus bad

Honda seeks 2007 sponsor

FULL TEXT

Children's Health Tsar supports comprehensive smoking ban

While the Government favours a partial ban on smoking in public places, Dr Shribman, Tony Blair's new 'Children's health Tsar,' wants a total ban.

She also wants a new message to warn youngsters of the downsides of smoking - not just the risk of cancer.

Dr Shribman said: "They know about cancer but it doesn't stop them, so you need people they trust telling them smoking makes skin go horrible and sag. And, of course, it makes people smell.

"We need to make this something young people are not attracted to."

Source: Mirror, 8 December 2005
Article link: http://tinyurl.com/cuxkf


Support for smoking ban from a smokers and non-smokers alike

These letters of support for a comprehensive ban appear in today's Independent:

'Sir: I am a smoker and wholly support the proposed ban on smoking in public places; my desire to quit is often thwarted by the temptation to light up as soon as anybody else does.

Non-smokers daily put up with people such as myself exhaling smoke in bars, restaurants and coffee shops. Just because we have chosen a health-damaging habit, there is no reason that non-smokers should have to suffer.

The proposal to raise the legal age of buying tobacco from 16 to 18, to bring the sale of tobacco into line with the licensing laws, is also welcome. I average 20 a day. Many of the smokers I know started before the age of 16 and, like myself, were addicted before they were legally old enough to purchase tobacco products.

I didn't fully appreciate the health risk I was undertaking at the very young age at which I began to smoke. Later on I became much more aware of those risks and I truly believe that if I had not been given the opportunity to smoke until I reached the age of 18, I would not ever have begun. Stricter laws are needed on this important health issue.

Bryony Victoria King
Leeds
Sir: Steve Jones (letter, 5 December) complains of the problems he faces in running his hotel if a partial smoking ban is implemented. The solution lies not in further compromise, but in a comprehensive ban on smoking in all pubs, bars and hotels.
In Ireland, where the ban is in place and working well, there is no evidence that premises such as the White Bear are suffering significant loss of trade. When all public premises operate under the same rules, there is no reason for regulars to switch from their favourite bars.
Businesses in countries which have introduced such bans have not experienced dramatic loss in trade. Mr Jones may find that the few determined smokers who would rather stay home are more than replaced by new customers who welcome the chance to enjoy a quiet drink without inhaling cigarette smoke.
Ken Campbell,
Kettering
Sir: Banning smoking will save lots of lives and lots of nicotine addicts will be thankful for the ban, and so will the children whose parents are still alive when they grow up and have children of their own. Sensible parents make good grandparents. Children would also be thankful if their parents didn't smoke in front of them, especially in the car when they can't escape from the horrible smell'.
Nicholas Ridley, (Aged 10)
Source: Independent, 8 December 2005
Article link: http://tinyurl.com/dt59l

Snorkelling cigarette smugglers on the EU fringe
Out in the snowy darkness on Sunday night, something stirred on the inky waters of the Neman, the river that divides Russia and Lithuania.

"Sometimes it is a duck or a swan or something else," Valery Volkov, a sergeant in Lithuania's border guard, explained, "but when it is a person, it is obvious."

The sergeant's two-man patrol sped over bumpy roads to where the shadowy figure was headed on the Lithuanian shore but arrived too late.

Whoever it was who swam 300 meters across the swift, frigid river had disappeared (presumably back to the Russian side), but the reason he did had not.

Along a steep bank beneath a railroad trellis were 15 boxes - wrapped in black plastic and tethered with string - that the swimmer had managed to tow across.

Inside was the latest haul in Lithuania's cat-and-mouse fight to keep its border secure: Russian cigarettes, 9,000 packs in all, headed to the black market not only here, but also across Europe.

Had they not been intercepted they could have sold for $3,000 or more, twice what they would have cost in Russia. And here along this impoverished frontier, such profits outweigh the risks of seizure or arrest - or worse.

Even illicit activities adhere to market principles. A few years ago a disparity in prices lead to a spike in sugar smuggling. Before that it was vodka. Now the contraband of choice is cigarettes.

To comply with European Union regulations, Lithuania has increased the excise tax on cigarettes by 15 percent and plans yearly increases until the tax reaches the level of other union states by 2009.

The results might have been foreseen. In 2001, Lithuania seized 255,000 packs of cigarettes. In 2004, when the new taxes went into force, seizures rose to 3,223,646, most of them from Kaliningrad. The board guard is on pace to seize at least as many again this year.

Source: International Herald Tribune, 8 December 2005
Article link: http://tinyurl.com/dmpls


Good health advice versus bad

'Stupid health advice - like nagging people to eat less salt when you've good evidence it won't make a blind bit of difference - isn't a bad thing just because it's a patronising, expensive waste. It also gets in the way of the stuff that actually works. Smoking is a good example.

The best evidence we have about smoking comes from the Oxford study that first showed it killed people: the 50-year follow up was published last year. Smokers die 10 years younger than non-smokers. But quitting helps. If you stop at 30 your life expectancy is the same as if you had never smoked. If you quit at 50 you more than halve the extra risk you have built up.

Deaths from smoking in Britain outnumber deaths from all cancers combined. You're probably getting my drift: smoking is catastrophically bad but it's never too late to give up. As a hospital doctor, if I tell one one of my patients this I will probably make them miserable, guilty or plain irritated. That's not my job. I see enough daily misery without adding to it.

But between 1972 and 2003 there were 39 different trials that looked at the effects of doctors telling more than 31,000 people to quit smoking. They showed that being hounded to quit smoking by their doctor made people almost twice as likely to pack it in. No one imagines that smoking is good for them, and having that fact shoved in their face by their doctor led to an extra 2.5% of tobacco addicts managing to quit - an absolute difference that sounds small, but means a lot.

Around 12 million Britons smoke. Advising them all to quit should lead to almost 300,000 extra of them actually managing it. Given that every second smoker will die of their habit, that would save a very large number of lives.

There's so much rubbish health advice floating about that we have to ignore most of it just to get on with our lives. But while most of it is useless, some of it is life-saving. And the people who glibly spout meaningless trash are responsible for distracting us from that'.

Druin Burch

Source: Guardian, 8 December 2005


Honda seeks 2007 sponsor

Honda Racing F1 Team, formerly known as Bar Honda is seeking a title sponsor for the 2007 season.

Lucky Strike will retain the title sponsorship until its deal expires after the 2006 season.

The team was renamed after BAT decided to relinquish its ownership of the brand. The EU ruling banning tobacco advertising had meant that BAT branding would have ruled out of appearing at more than half of next season's races.

Honda, which owned 45 per cent of the team , has now secured the remaining 55 per cent from BAT.

It is thought that other tobacco sponsors will follow suit to downgrade their sponsorship over the coming season.

However Malboro renewed its deal with Ferrari in September, to last until 2011.

Source: Marketing, 8 December 2005

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