Dave West faces court for smoking ban violations

Dave West, owner of HeyJo club, will appear before magistrates on charges of flouting the smoking ban. 

West along with designated premises supervisor, Mark Fraher, have both been charged by Westminster council with failing to display no smoking signs and failing to advise customers to stop smoking.

Undercover environmental health officers visited the club and restaurant before the summons was served.

Club executive Harry Barnett said, ”We have made no secret of the fact that we are allowing smoking so why do they need to send in undercover officers at the taxpayers expense?”

“This law is supposed to be about the dangers for staff in smoking environments yet Westminster council are sending their troops into danger zones without masks.”

Barnett also believes it is unfair of Westminster to serve DPS Fraher with a summons as he does not decide on club policy.

Source: The Morning Advertiser, 11 December 2007
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2zlrqf

It's time to stop dumping cigarette butts

Chichester and Arun district councils have launched a joint Christmas campaign to stop smokers dumping their cigarette ends in public places.

The move follows an increase in smoking related litter as a result of smokefree legislation, with warnings that the problem is getting worse.

Chichester portfolio holder for health Cllr Heather Caird said: "I applaud this new campaign as it is England's most common type of litter, being present on 79 per cent of streets."

She added, "It is also harmful to the environment, time consuming and costly to clean up. Chichester District Council spends just under £1m a year on street cleaning."

Arun's cabinet member for the environment Cllr Paul Wotherspoon said: "We want to encourage people to take responsibility for their cigarette litter, especially over the festive period when more parties and socialising will take place."

Source: Chichester Observer, 06 December 2007
Link: http://tinyurl.com/34c9e3

Taipei and Tokyo are the most affordable cities for smokers

A worldwide study found that tobacco taxes are not high enough to deter smoking in more than half of the sixty cities surveyed, with smoking most affordable in Taipei and Tokyo.

The study compared cigarette prices with median incomes to determine affordability. In New York, Seoul, Amsterdam, Rome and 30 other cities, affordability was high.

According to the study by Ming-Yue Kan, a researcher at the Committee on Youth Smoking Prevention in Hong Kong, cigarettes were least affordable in Kiev, Beijing and Shanghai.

The study, published in the journal of Tobacco Control this month, stated that most cities within high income economies have a high cigarette affordability level. As newly emerging economies approach high income levels, immediate measures should be taken to avoid experiences of their predecessors and tax increases should be given high priority.

In the study, Kan defined the affordability of cigarettes as the ratio of the price of one pack of cigarettes to daily income. Cigarette prices in 2006 came from the Economist Intelligence Unit and income was calculated using the mean of the seven occupations with the lowest daily wage.

Cities with the lowest cigarette prices include Manila, Bogota and Bratislava. The most expensive are Oslo, Dublin, Sydney and Auckland.

China has 300 million smokers, equal to the combined population of Russia, Germany and Japan. Although 1 million people die from tobacco related deaths each year, doctors say the country may struggle to lower smoking prevalence rates as tobacco industries contribute a considerable sum to the government's annual revenue and supports the economies of some of China's poorest provinces.

Cigarettes are becoming more affordable in China, where a stock market and property boom helped to boost disposable incomes among urban households by 13.2 per cent in the first nine months of this year when adjusted for inflation.

Burke Fishburn, Manila-based regional coordinator for the WHO's Tobacco-Free Initiative said, "In many of the low income countries, especially China, the price of cigarettes are not in line with the rapidly increasing income. As a result cigarettes are becoming much more affordable for both youth and poor people."

He added, "In terms of preventing the uptake of cigarette smoking and getting people to quit, taxation is the most effective measure by far and there is a lot of room to increase taxes in both high income and low income countries.

Source: Bloomberg, 07 December 2007
Link: http://tinyurl.com/3dyjmj

Canada: The cost of smoking is more than just the price of cigarettes

A new survey suggest that smokers in British Columbia could save between 2,000 and 4,000 Canadian Dollars a year by quitting and that is only the half of it.

Smokers, their family and friends, who would be spared the perils of their secondhand smoke would all have a dramatically improved health outlook and lower life insurance premiums,

In addition, Dr Fred Bass, an expert in smoking cessation and consultant to the Health Heart Society of British Columbia, found that smokers and their cohorts across Canada could save the health care system more than one billion dollars a year.

He added, "About seven per cent of our total health care bill is attributable to smoking, and those costs are not just in the last years of a smoker's life. Research shows that smoking also interferes with recovery from surgery and those who stop just two months before surgery face fewer pulmonary and cardiovascular complications and spend fewer days in intensive care."

There is no doubt that smokers themselves are most aware of the impact that smoking has on their wallets. What many smokers may not realise is how much it adds up to in the long term. The average 45-year-old smoker, who quits today and puts the money into savings, could have more than 100,000 dollars to spend during retirement while they enjoy their smokefree health, according to a survey commissioned by Pfizer Canada, a pharmaceutical company.

Almost five million Canadians, or 19 per cent of the population, are smokers. According to Health Canada, close to half of smokers will die from smoking before they turn 70 years old.

British Columbia has the lowest smoking rates in Canada at 16.4 per cent, Bass said, although it jumps from a teenage rate of 12.4 per cent to 24 per cent between the ages of 20 to 25 when young people have money, are out of school, and are targeted by tobacco marketing.

Source: The Vancouver Sun, 11 December 2007
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2url4p