China: Shanghai bids to curtail smoking habit

In a bid to offer a smokefree World Expo in 2010, Shanghai is likely to extend its no smoking ban from public venues to all indoor workplaces.

New legislation will be discussed by the standing committee of the Shanghai People's Congress. If passed, it will replace the current regulation that only relates to no smoking in public places.

"All places with ceilings and at least three walls will be defined as indoor areas where smoking will be strictly prohibited," Li Mingzhu, director of the tobacco control office under the municipal health bureau, was quoted as saying.

"No designated smoking areas will be allowed in the smokefree zones. This is to minimize the impact of secondhand smoke", she said.

The Shanghai authorities have also come up with a better way for smokers to quit the habit, as one in four people in the city are known to be smokers.

It has set up 58 outpatient clinics where people wanting to quit can receive advice and treatment.

Health experts said studies show that on average 10 percent of tobacco addicts who seek professional medical advice or treatment were successful in giving up the habit. If they rely on themselves, most fail.

Pan Jue, a doctor at the Shanghai-based Zhongshan Hospital, told China Daily that in recent months there had been an increase in the number of smokers going to hospitals and clinics to seek advice and treatment.

"At first they come because of a respiratory disease without knowing that it has been caused by smoking," she said.

"When we tell them the cause, and that they can only get better by giving up the habit, they are inclined to do so."

Through extensive talks and psychological intervention, more people are becoming aware of the dangers of smoking, Pan said.

As the world's largest producer and consumer of cigarettes, China is home to more than 300 million smokers.

Source: China Daily, 12 December 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/6gs69e

USA: Fewer teens smoke

The percentage of teenagers smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol fell to the lowest in almost two decades since an annual government-funded survey started interviewing kids about their habits. 

Teen use of illegal drugs also declined since 2001, by amounts ranging from 12 percent among 12th-graders to 27 percent among eighth-graders, according to findings released today in Washington.

Still, the 2008 survey found that at least one in eight high school seniors reported abusing prescription painkillers and stimulants obtained from friends, relatives or schoolmates. Researchers also said a decade long decline in marijuana use may be leveling off, and detected a softening in teens’ anti marijuana attitudes.

“Any progress is welcome but I don’t think we’re doing the job we ought to do,” said Joseph Califano, former secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under President Jimmy Carter. “We need the kind of public health campaign on marijuana and alcohol we’ve had on cigarettes.”

Califano is now chairman of the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, at Columbia University in New York.

The percentage of teenagers smoking cigarettes has declined steadily since 1997, with similar trends seen in the use of alcohol and most illegal drugs. The numbers suggest that anti- smoking campaigns succeeded, said Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

In 1991, 7 percent of eighth-graders, 13 percent of 10th- graders and 19 percent of 12th-graders smoked cigarettes daily. By this year, only 3 percent of eighth-graders, 6 percent of 10th-graders and 11 percent of 12th-graders said they were lighting up daily.

Volkow said the decline in smoking occurred equally among boys and girls.

The drop in cigarette smoking among the young means that lung cancer rates 40 years from now, when today’s teenage smokers would begin to develop the disease, will fall, Volkow said. New cases of lung cancer declined for the first time this year, according to a report.

The reduction in smoking may also lead to future drops in the use of other drugs, Volkow said.

“Nicotine is much more of a ‘gateway’ drug than marijuana,” she said. “More kids initiate drug use with nicotine than with marijuana. If you’re a smoker, that increases the risk of marijuana use and in turn the risk of other drugs.”

The yearly survey, called Monitoring the Future, conducted by the University of Michigan and funded by the institute, interviewed 46,000 eighth-, 10th- and 12th-graders from 386 public and private schools nationwide. The survey started in 1975 and began including all three grades in 1991. The results were presented today in Washington.

“The reality is we still have unacceptably high rates of substance use in this country,” she said. “We’ve made advances but we can’t become complacent.”

Califano said that interviews with teenagers conducted by his organization’s researchers show that marijuana is widely available to teens.

Source: Bloomberg, 11 December 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/64ybyo

South Korea: Cigarette maker responsible for fire ignited by cigarette?

Gyeonggi Provice said it will file a damages suit against KT&G, demanding the nation's largest tobacco company should be held accountable for losses from fire started by cigarette butts. 

"Like any other manufacturer, KT&G is obliged to remove any danger from its products. But it has neglected its duty so far,'' Choi Jin-jong of the province said. It is reaping huge gains from sales of cigarettes but citizens are paying the costs to extinguish fires. It's not fair and that's why we are filing the suit.''

He said that since 2005, the tobacco company has exported cigarettes to the United States which are self extinguishing within two to three seconds after they are thrown away. But it has not sold such cigarettes here.

Choi said the suit will demand damages to compensate for part of the costs to the province of operations to extinguish fires caused by cigarettes. He said the damages were calculated after the company's domestic market share of nearly 70 percent had been reflected.

Gyeonggi will file the suit by the end of the month, the first of its kind in Korea.

Of 176,109 fires over the last five years nationwide, 11.3 percent or 19,917 cases were caused by cigarettes, causing 24 billion won of property losses.

Source: The Korea Times, 12 December 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/5l6dek

Should smoking be banned outside?

Smoking in parks, on beaches and on the street should be banned in order to stop children taking up the habit, researchers argued.

Smoking should be banned outside to stop children taking up the habit, it has been suggested.

Further restrictions on smoking in public places would mean fewer children would be exposed to cigarettes and people smoking them making them less likely to want to take up the habit themselves, a series of experts have written in the British Medical Journal.

Others said the moves are 'nakedly paternalistic' and infringe on personal freedoms without strong evidence that such a ban would be beneficial.

Bans on smoking in enclosed public places came into effect in England in July 2007 after similar moves in the rest of the UK and certain outdoor spaces like railway platforms and NHS grounds also prohibit smoking outside.

George Tomson and colleagues at the University of Otago, in Wellington, New Zealand said: "The central argument is that outdoor bans will reduce smoking being modelled to children as normal behaviour and thus cut the uptake of smoking. Outdoor smokefree policies may in some circumstances, such as crowded locations like sports stadiums, reduce the health effects of secondhand smoke; will reduce fires and litter; and are likely to help smokers' attempts at quitting."

Countries including Finland, parts of Canada, two American states and New Zealand have already banned smoking on school grounds and in California smoking is banned within 25 feet (7.6 metres) of outside playgrounds.

Mr Thomson and his colleagues said research has shown the British public favour greater restrictions on outdoor smoking where there are children.

Simon Chapman, professor of public health at the University of Sydney, in Sydney, Australia argued against the idea.

He said: "The ethics here is about respect for the autonomy of individuals to act freely, providing their actions do not harm others. Some are affronted by the mere sight of smoking. Others have an evangelical mission to use paternalistic "tough love" to help others quit. Prohibitions on personal behaviours can be justified by the right to interfere with the liberty of people to harm to others. But paternalism is most odious when used as a justification for limiting the choices that adults make when they put only themselves at risk."

Link to the BMJ article: http://tinyurl.com/5u2k8e

Source: The Telegraph, 11 December 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/5kpo32