Scotland: Claims cigarette warnings are hidden

An investigation found that major supermarkets in Dundee are “hiding” the government health warnings on cigarette packets on their shelf displays.

Retaining lips on the front of shelves in the cigarette kiosks at two of the city’s main supermarket chains, which are used to carry prices, are tall enough that they obscure most if not all of the warning on a standard packet of cigarettes.

Some other supermarkets manage to retain the packets on their shelves whilst allowing the full message, or the gist of it, to be easily read by customers.

NHS Tayside director of public health, Dr Drew Walker, said the practice, which he had not heard of before, was not helping in the battle against smoking-related diseases.

He said, “The message on cigarette cartons is there for a purpose which is to draw potential purchasers’ attention to the fact that these are dangerous products and are extremely bad for people’s health. Anything that detracts from that message getting across to potential purchasers is unhelpful.”

In most cases the design of the warning on the front of the packet meant that only the word “smoking,” or part of it, was visible. Beneath it, hidden by the price, was the word “kills.”

By way of comparison, the Morrison’s store off Dundee’s Forfar Road was displaying its cigarette stock in a way that made it possible to read the messages.

Calls were made to the two supermarket companies involved to ask if they were aware that their displays were hiding the health warning, whether there was any regulation requiring it to be clearly displayed, and if they had any intention of altering the display method.

Although many people will already have made up their minds to buy cigarettes by the time they reach the supermarket kiosks, Dr Walker said it was still possible that some might be dissuaded from buying them by reading the health warnings.

Source: The Courier
Link: http://tinyurl.com/5def3t

Smoking ban lessons from abroad

Encouraging people to quit smoking by banning the display of tobacco in shops is not a new idea, but examples from overseas suggest it may be an effective one. 

Iceland was the first in 2001, followed by a province of Canada a year later, and both countries have seen youth smoking rates fall.

As a similar ban is announced for England and Wales, what are the lessons to be learnt from overseas?

Displaying cigarettes at the point of sale has a direct impact on young people's smoking habits, according to research at the University of Stirling.

The Centre for Tobacco Control Research said 46% of UK teenagers were aware of the displays, with those who intended to smoke more likely to recall brands they had seen at the point of sale.

Research by the Centre for Behavioural Research in Cancer in Australia and Stanford University in the United States confirmed this.

It found that displays "normalised" tobacco use for children and created a perception that it is easily obtainable.

In Iceland, which has the longest experience of any such ban, smoking among 15 year olds fell from 18.6% in 1999 to 13.6% in 2003 - two years after the law was introduced.

Rates have continued to drop and in 2007 stood at 11.1%.

In Canada, smoking rates among 15 to 19 year olds fell from 22% in 2002 to 15% in 2007 - five years after the first ban was introduced.

There are now 12 out of 13 Canadian provinces and territories that have adopted the measure.

Martin Dockrell, policy manager of health campaign group ASH, said it is important to see any ban as part of a wider plan.

He said: "Countries which have a comprehensive strategy on tobacco control bring in point of sale and advertising restrictions and have the fastest declining smoking prevalence."

Tasmania will ban the display of tobacco in shops in 2011 and other parts of Australia are considering doing the same.

Health expert Professor Simon Chapman of the University of Sydney said a ban would send an unmistakeable message to communities.

In an interview with Australian broadcaster ABC, he said: "These are not products like bread and milk and sweets, they are very different killer products. Countries which have implemented it [the display ban] - notably Canada in 12 provinces and Thailand - have among the fastest accelerating downward trends in tobacco smoking in the world."

Mr Dockrell, from ASH, said the Canadian province of Saskatchewan clearly illustrated how the ban was effective in cutting smoking.

In Canada in 2002, overall youth smoking was going down but not in Saskatchewan.

After the ban was introduced in 2002, smoking rates fell amongst the province's youth, until the smoking industry won a judicial review to halt the ban.

Soon afterwards, youth smoking levelled off again, and it was not until the government reinstated the restrictions in 2005 that youth smoking rates dropped once more.

Thailand implemented its law prohibiting tobacco product displays in the same year followed by British Virgin Islands in 2007.

The British Heart Foundation estimates that 46,000 children in the UK bought cigarettes from vending machines in 2006. That accounts for nearly one in five young smokers aged 11 to 15.

The government says it will first apply age restrictions on cigarette vending machines from 2011, then consider a full ban after that.

It will consult on the methods of doing this, including the use of tokens, and machines which can only be operated by staff once ages have been checked.

A complete ban on tobacco sales from vending machines exists in Vietnam, China, Hong Kong, Russia, Singapore, Thailand, Bermuda and two US states.

In Europe, it was introduced in Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, France, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia.

Source: BBC News, 09 December 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/5gvv3p

Local NHS says stop smoking and start saving

Pharmacies across Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale will be encouraging people to give up smoking as a new year’s resolution, by giving out special piggy banks to save the money that they would otherwise spend on cigarettes. 

There are 500 piggy banks to give away to people who sign up and set a date to stop smoking, which, if they are all used for a year by someone who used to smoke 20 a day, a total of nearly £1million will be saved.

Ingrid Corcos, stop smoking manager at NHS Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale, said: “The financial and health benefits of giving up smoking will be felt almost straight away. Within eight hours, nicotine and carbon monoxide levels in the blood will be halved. After twenty four hours, carbon monoxide and nicotine are eliminated from the body, and oxygen levels are returned to normal. Coughs and wheezing will decline after three to nine months of not smoking. And in the long term, after ten years of not smoking, the risk of getting lung cancer falls to half of that of a smoker.”

The NHS offers free help and advice for people who want to stop smoking. Evidence shows that getting professional help can increase your chances of stopping for good. This free service is available from GPs and many of the pharmacies within the borough.

The ‘Stop Smoking, Start Saving’ campaign is a joint initiative between NHS Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale and Environmental Health at Rochdale Council.

Source: Rochdale Online, 10 December 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/66xzuj

Probing genetic underpinnings of nicotine addiction

A new study from the Abramson Cancer Center and Department of Psychiatry in the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine shows that smokers who carry a particular version of a gene for an enzyme that regulates dopamine in the brain may suffer from concentration problems and other cognitive deficits when abstaining from nicotine – a problem that puts them at risk for relapse during attempts to quit smoking. 

The findings, newly published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, pave the way to identify novel medications to treat nicotine addiction.

"These findings also provide an important step toward personalised therapy for nicotine addiction by clarifying the role of inherited genetic variation in smoking abstinence symptoms that promote relapse," says senior author Caryn Lerman, PhD, the Mary W. Calkins Professor in Penn's Department of Psychiatry and Scientific Director of Penn's Abramson Cancer Center.

"The new data identify a novel brain-behaviour mechanism that plays a role in nicotine dependence and relapse during quitting attempts," says lead author James Loughead, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry. Loughead and Lerman studied groups of smokers with different inherited variations in a gene which influences levels of dopamine in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that governs working memory and complex decision-making.

"Inability to concentrate after quitting is reported by many patients, and this leads them to smoke to reduce these impairments," Loughead says.

In this study, 33 smokers underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during periods of both abstinence from smoking and while smoking as usual. During the brain scans, subjects were asked to hold in their minds a series of complex geometric figures. Subjects were also asked to complete a withdrawal symptoms checklist and a questionnaire about their smoking urges. Results showed that smokers with the COMT val/val genotype suffered greater deficits in working memory and brain function when they had refrained from smoking for 14 or more hours, compared to their performance on this task when they had been smoking as usual. This group also exhibited significant increases in withdrawal symptoms during the abstinence challenge session, compared to the other two genotype groups in the study.

These indicators often play a role in the reasons why smokers relapse, and therefore, may lead to the development of personalised therapy to treat smokers who carry this gene variant – a group that is also less responsive to existing therapies for smoking cessation.

"Given the prevalence of smoking in the population, translating these findings for medication development could have a significant clinical and public health impact," Lerman says.

Source: Science Daily, 09 December 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/56lkxr