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ASH Daily news for 20 July 2010

HEADLINES

  • Independent retailers should gear up for a two-year sales bonanza

    Hats off to Booker. After years of doom-mongering from the independent sector, the cash & carry wholesaler this week predicted the proposed tobacco display ban could benefit indies.

    Yes, benefit. We've had everyone from lobby groups and retailers to predictably the tobacco giants warning that thousands of stores will shut when the tobacco sector 'goes dark' in 2013.

    But, as Booker points out, indies have a two-year grace period while the multis [eg supermarkets] get to grips with the ban in 2011. This window of opportunity could increase tobacco sales in indies by 10%, according to Booker; a whopping £900m in additional sales that would put indies in line for profits of £90m between 2011 and 2012.

    Of course, what happens after 2013 is up for debate and the industry will be pushing hard for the ban to be overturned by the new government.

    In the meantime, indies need to get ready for the two-year sales bonanza by preparing their stores to attract new customers in search of their nicotine fix.

    Every (smoke) cloud has a silver lining. This one could be worth £90m. 

    Source: The Grocer - 17 July 2010
    Link: http://bit.ly/dzbGk4

  • Editorial: The coalition could damage your health

    Perhaps food should join the list, alongside affairs and expenses, of issues likely to land government ministers in hot water. Edwina Currie, then a health minister, sowed concern and confusion when she claimed that "most of the egg production in this country, sadly, is now affected with salmonella". It wasn't. Two years later, with fear widespread about BSE, then agriculture minister John Gummer became a laughing stock when he tried to persuade his daughter to eat a burger in front of the media in a bid to show that beef was safe. Cordelia declined, no one was reassured and the panic continued.

    Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, scored an own goal of similar proportions when he chose the British Medical Association's annual conference to criticise Jamie Oliver's campaign to improve school food for, in his mind, personifying nanny state intrusion and the fruitlessness of "constantly lecturing people and trying to tell them what to do". The celebrity chef is not to everyone's taste. But he won widespread respect for ensuring pupils were no longer served Turkey Twizzlers and for trying to spread food knowledge, using pyramid learning techniques among people in Rotherham lacking even basic food know-how.

    Lansley's attack on Oliver earned widespread criticism. The chef called it "an insult" to all those who helped ensure that healthy school dinners, backed by legal nutritional standards, are a success. If it was a one-off, it might be possible to put it down to ministerial inexperience. But events before and particularly since show that it was part of a regressive and potentially harmful new approach to public health being pursued by the coalition government which has much of the medical establishment worried and with good reason.

    There was also Lansley's extraordinary comments, to specialist public health doctors, that makers of crisps, sweets and beer were welcome to fund Change4Life, the government's biggest-ever healthy eating and fitness drive; and, if they did, in return they would not face laws forcing them to reduce the sometimes dangerously high levels of salt, sugar and fats in many of their products. The time has come, he told the Faculty of Public Health's (FPH) annual gathering, to accept that "lecturing or nannying" people did not work as a way of getting them to change their behaviour.

    Lansley has also rejected advice from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) to introduce a minimum unit price for alcohol and to push for dramatic improvements in food quality, both seen as ways of saving many lives: from alcohol-related liver disease, and from strokes and heart disease linked to poor diet. He also plans to reduce the remit of the Food Standards Agency (FSA), a body that has helped raise awareness of good eating habits and persuaded food manufacturers to reduce their use of salt.

    Elsewhere in Whitehall, Michael Gove's Department for Education has refused to honour Labour's pledge to extend free school meals to 500,000 children with low-income working parents. Similarly, Vince Cable's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is considering not implementing a ban, approved by Brown's administration, to compel shopkeepers to remove cigarettes from public display, regarded as an effective way of discouraging smoking in general and among children in particular, lest that affect profits.

    Those who make or sell drink, cigarettes and unhealthy food can scarcely believe their luck. By contrast, many doctors, children's charities and campaign groups are deeply perturbed. Barely 10 weeks into office, the coalition seems to have made it a priority to dismantle key elements of what most doctors thought was a settled consensus on key public health measures. Labour's use of intervention, exhortation and regulation has now been junked in favour of a reliance on individual freedom, personal responsibility and industry behaving itself.

    As Lansley told the FPH, business people "understand the social responsibility of people having a better lifestyle and they don't regard that as remotely inconsistent with their long-term commercial interest" and "no government campaign or programme can force people to make healthy choices". The charge that the coalition is rolling over to profit-driven demands of companies partly responsible for creating the obesity crisis – for example by disabling the FSA because many supermarkets dislike its favoured traffic light food labelling system – is easy to understand.

    One of Britain's most senior doctors summed up the widespread despair: "If they're going to take all these backward steps, then what's next? Scrapping the seatbelt or drink-driving laws? Relaxing or even repealing the ban on smoking in public places? Or getting rid of speeding restrictions? Yes, all these things limit individual freedom, but they also save many lives."

    Last week's health white paper seeking radical reform of the NHS contained truly significant moves that the Tories chose not to mention before 6 May; indeed, some contradict health pledges contained in the coalition's programme for government published in mid-May. So too with public health. None of these hugely contentious changes was acknowledged, despite the Tories insisting, improbably, that they deemed an area often seen as the Cinderella of health policy to be so vital that Lansley's ministry would be renamed the Department for Public Health.

    The approach adopted so far by the government is deeply worrying and potentially dangerous. It also exposes big flaws in government health policy. If doctors' judgments are deemed so vital by last week's white paper to improving their patients' treatment, why ignore the same medics' views on public health? Likewise, Lansley has proclaimed that policy will be strictly evidence-based, but ignores evidence from teachers and parents that Oliver-inspired school lunches improve children's concentration and thus learning.

    Everyone knows Britain has huge health problems caused by smoking, drinking and poor food. The coalition's path so far is not just the wrong direction of travel; it is also utterly inadequate as a response to the scale of the problems we face. Rethink the state's role in this difficult area, by all means, but remember that without government action, public hygiene would still be Victorian, immunisation and disease screening nonexistent, and pubs the horribly smoky places of not too distant memory. Ideology should never trump common sense in matters of life and death.

    Source: The Observer - 18 July 2010
    Link: http://bit.ly/b1azFE

  • Health chiefs launch plan to stamp out smoking on estate

    Health bosses will target smokers on Colchester’s Greenstead estate.

    The town’s St Andrews ward is one of six problem areas NHS North Essex Essex is desperate to tackle.

    But the primary care trust has refused to say name the other five tobacco troublespots.

    Initiatives include giving residents incentives to make a stop-smoking pledge.

    Tim Young, ward councillor, speaking at a community meeting in Greenstead, said: “The figures for women smoking during pregnancy are not so good for this area, so I have asked NHS officers to look at the demographics of this.

    “We think it is younger age groups that are smoking during pregnancy and people living in deprived wards in the borough.”

    According to figures from NHS North East Essex, 19 per cent of people living in Colchester and Tendring smoke.

    The national figure is 21 per cent.

    A total of 22.5 per cent of pregnant women in north-east Essex smoke. The national average is 14 per cent.

    Alison Woolnough, senior public health specialist at NHS North East Essex, said: “Smoking, particularly during pregnancy, is a persistant problem in this area.”

    Council officials, health bosses and Essex County Fire and Rescue Service have joined forces to encourage people to make their homes smoke free.

    The Smoke Free Homes campaign asks householders to promise to turn their homes into healthier places by banning or restricting tobacco smoke.

    People who sign up will get a support pack containing information leaflets, smoke-free signs, a certificate and a free fire safety visit.

    Source: Chelmsford - 19 July 2010
    Link: http://bit.ly/90r8I5

  • Lancashire: Padiham cigarette smuggler jailed for a year

    A man from Padiham who was involved in a massive operation to smuggle two million tax-free cigarettes into the UK hidden inside wheelie bins has been jailed.

    Henry Mooney, 47, of Stockbridge Road, was part of a Europe-wide conspiracy to evade duty on massive consignments of foreign cigarettes, which were shipped from Germany to a warehouse in Manchester, via Holland.

    Preston Crown Court previously heard how Mooney worked with fellow smugglers Darren Cooper and Danish Amin to set up the operation.

    The trio first arranged for the duty-free cigrarettes to be loaded onto wagons in the Rhine border city of Emmerich in late October 2008.

    Contraband cigarettes had been hidden inside wheelie bins and legitimate transport firms were used to transport the load to the UK, so duty could be avoided on the tobacco.

    Mooney flew out to Amsterdam in December, at the request of Amin and Cooper, to assist in a second load.

    Customs officers recovered the second haul, totalling two million cigarettes, from the Manchester warehouse a few days later. The first load was never found.

    Mooney, described by a judge as a 'career criminal', was jailed for 12 months after pleading guilty to conspiracy to evade tax duty.

    Cooper, 43, of St Annes was jailed for three years and three months.

    Danish Amin, 35, of Wesham, was jailed for 38 months.

    Five other gang members, from across central Lancashire, Liverpool and North Wales, were also jailed after admitting the conspiracy charge or money laundering.

    Michelle Whittaker, 31, of Catherine Street and Amin's girlfriend, was convicted by a jury of conspiracy to evade tax duty and was jailed for 14 months.

    The group was targeted by Lancashire Constabulary's Serious and Organised Crime Unit as part of a lengthy operation - codenamed Bittern - which began in May 2008.

    Detective Inspector Jo Edwards, who led the investigation, said: "This should a strong warning to people who think they can get away with illegitimately bringing cigarettes, or other goods, into the country.

    "We will not tolerate it, you will be targeted and you will be brought to justice and put behind bars."

    Source: Lancashire Telegraph - 19 July 2010
    Link: http://bit.ly/aryNia

  • Neeson got hooked on cigars again during a-team filming

    Liam Neeson found working on the A-Team a real drag - because he had to chomp on cigars despite turning his back on the habit 17 years ago.

    The Irish star plays John 'Hannibal' Smith, the role made famous by George Peppard in the hit 1980s television show, in the blockbuster big screen remake.

    The character famously smoked Havana cigars on all of The A-Team's missions, and Neeson was pleased when he was handed fakes at the beginning of shooting, because he had worked hard to quit smoking years earlier.

    But after the props were exchanged for the real thing, Neeson admits he got hooked again.

    He tells News of the World, "I've been off them for 17 years and I was very conscious of that. So the only thing I needed to prepare for was smoking a cigar.

    "The props guys got me these amazing fake Cuban cigars but then I was given real ones. I said, 'I can't do this, I'm an addict.' By day two of filming, I had discovered cigars again and I was in trouble. If we do a sequel, I think I'll have to insist on rubber cigars."

    Source: Scottish Daily Express - 19 July 2010
    Link: http://bit.ly/byVNLb