HEADLINES

• Tobacco industry's smokescreen in plain packaging debate
• USA: Smoking rate declines, but at reduced rate
• TMA announces new secretary general
• Children who live with smokers miss more school
• Kenya urged to switch farmers from tobacco

• Tobacco industry's smokescreen in plain packaging debate

  The FT’s Asia Regional Correspondent Kevin Brown discusses Australian plans to introduce plain packaging.

  The Australian senate, the upper house of parliament, will decide in the next couple of weeks whether to approve the world’s toughest anti-smoking legislation.

  Under the Labor government’s proposals, all tobacco products would have to be sold in identical plain green packaging, without logos or design variations. Brand and product names would be in identical type, making it very hard to target specific market segments such as women or young adults.

   

  The legislation, already approved by parliament’s lower house, has triggered a furious assault from British American Tobacco. BAT says it will challenge the law immediately in Australia’s High Court if it passes in the upper house.

   

  Superficially, the fuss is surprising. From the perspective of the big international tobacco companies, Australia is a tiny market, its $7.9bn of sales accounting for just 1.8 per cent of the global total in 2010. But Big Tobacco has a broader view.  Australian backing might give the idea fresh traction across the developed world.

   

  From the point of view of their shareholders, the tobacco companies are right to fight. If the Australian proposals are implemented, similar laws will emerge elsewhere, with damaging effects on profits. But that is an argument located in the wallet, not on the moral high ground. It is not a reason for the Senate to vote no.

   

  
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  Source: Financial Times, 06 September 2011
  Link: http://on.ft.com/pLpcXD

• USA: Smoking rate declines, but at reduced rate

  Fewer adults in the United States are smoking and those who do are smoking fewer cigarettes each day, but the trend is weaker than the government had hoped. A report by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention showed that 19.3 percent of adults said they smoked last year, down from 21 percent in 2005.

  The rate for smoking 30 or more cigarettes daily dropped to 8 percent from almost 13 percent over the same period.

   

  The C.D.C. reported previously that the 2009 rate was 20.6 percent and that rates had fluctuated in the previous five years. Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the agency’s director, said the recent findings indicated a much slower drop than the one seen over the previous 40 years. If the slower rate of decline
  continues, adult smoking rates will reach 17 percent by 2020, higher than the government’s goal of 12 percent, the report said.
  Source: New York Times, 07 September 2011
  Link: http://nyti.ms/pP154j

• TMA announces new secretary general

  
  The Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association (TMA) has announced the appointment of a new Secretary General, Jaine Chisholm Caunt.

  Caunt, who is currently Director of Stakeholder Relations and policy at Cogent, will take up her new appointment from 10 October, upon the retirement of Christopher Ogden, the current TMA Chief Executive.

   

  The appointment follows the recent organisational restructuring of the TMA. Whilst some positions are being made redundant in the course of the restructure, new roles have been created and the staff headcount at the TMA will remain the same.
  Source: Talking Retail, 05 September 2011
  Link: http://bit.ly/qVFQVa

• Children who live with smokers miss more school

  According to a new report in the online edition of Pediatric, children who live in households where they are exposed to tobacco smoke miss more days of school than do children living in smoke-free homes. The report from investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) finds that children exposed to tobacco have higher rates of respiratory illnesses that can be caused by second-hand smoke and details the probable economic costs of their increased school absence.

  
  "Among children ages 6 to 11 who live with smokers, one quarter to one third of school absences are due to household smoking," says Douglas Levy, PhD, of the Mongan Institute for Health Policy at MGH, the paper's lead author.
  Source: Science Daily, 05 September 2011
  Link: http://bit.ly/qyGZB5

• Kenya urged to switch farmers from tobacco

  The Kenyan government is being urged to raise cigarette tax to fund a scheme to get farmers to stop growing tobacco.

  The Kenya Tobacco Control Alliance, the Institute for Natural Resources (INR) and Technology Studies and the Institute of Legislative Affairs (ILA) want the government to set up a fund to help 20,000 tobacco farmers switch to alternative agricultural activities.

   

  Under the proposal, the capital for the fund would come from raising the excise tax on tobacco products from 42 per cent to 70 per cent of the retail price.

   

  The ILA said the tax hike would raise cigarette prices by at least 10 per cent, thus discouraging smoking, especially among low and middle income groups.

   

  INRS co-ordinator, Samuel Agonda Achola, said the institute's studies had found that fish and livestock rearing, beekeeping, and bamboo, soybean and cereal farming were viable alternatives to tobacco cultivation.
  Source: Tobacco Reporter Magazine, 06 September 2011
  Link: http://bit.ly/pFUO2H