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ASH Daily news for 14 November 2011

HEADLINES

  • Imperial Tobacco says U.K. regulator must drop price-fixing case

    Imperial Tobacco Plc told a tribunal that Britain’s antitrust regulator must scrap its price-fixing trial over U.K. cigarette sales after being forced to abandon several claims in the seven-year-old case.

    Mark Howard, a lawyer for the company, told the Competition Appeal Tribunal in London that the Office of Fair Trading’s case had been “destroyed.” The court had asked the regulator to explain how it will continue fighting appeals of fines against Imperial Tobacco, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and 10 other manufacturers and retailers.

    The OFT fined the group a total of 225 million pounds ($359.3 million) last year over claims tobacco companies and retailers colluded to fix prices on cigarettes, hand-rolled tobacco, pipe tobacco and cigars from 2001 to 2003.

    OFT spokeswoman Kasia Reardon declined to comment.

    Source: Business Week, 11 November 2011
    Link: http://buswk.co/smE1eN

  • UK's oesophageal cancer rate is worst in Europe

    Heavy drinking and growing obesity are contributing to an increase in oesophageal cancer, a new analysis has claimed, as the UK topped a European survey of the disease.

    Cutting back on smoking and alcohol and eating healthier would help Britons reduce their risk of contracting the cancer, according to the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF). It rates the UK as joint 31st-worst in the world, alongside some of Africa and Asia's poorest countries.

    The figures, based on World Health Organisation estimates and adjusting them to take into account differing proportions of people in different age groups between countries, show 6.4 people per 100,000 in the UK developed oesophageal cancer in 2008, nearly double the European average (3.3). The charity said lifestyle changes could prevent most of the 7,600 deaths – more than 5,000 of them men.

    Rachel Thompson, deputy head of science for WCRF, said: "The fact that the UK has the highest rate of oesophageal cancer in Europe is a real concern because it is a type of cancer that has a particularly low survival rate.

    Source: The Guardian, 14 November 2011
    Link: http://bit.ly/ut3S5D

  • Smoking and drinking in pregnancy 'harms 10,000 babies in UK each year'

    Britain's top children's doctor has said that more than 10,000 babies each year suffer serious harm, including death, because their mothers drank alcohol, smoked, over-ate, or took drugs during pregnancy.

    Professor Terence Stephenson, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said newborns are suffering permanent harm including brain damage, disability or physical deformity. Others die because of miscarriage or stillbirth caused by their mother's smoking.

    What he called "avoidable [and] self-inflicted" harm to unborn children represented a major public health problem, an ongoing human tragedy and a high cost to the NHS, he said.

    "There's going to be tens of thousands of babies being harmed from the effects of women smoking or drinking in pregnancy and if we're talking permanent damage it's going to be over 10,000", said Stephenson, who is also an expert at the Institute of Child Health in London.

    One third of women smoke in pregnancy, which increases the risk of miscarriage, complications in pregnancy such as bleeding or a detached placenta, birth defects and cot death. Babies born to mothers who smoke in pregnancy are also a third more likely to be stillborn or die within a week of birth, research shows. Some 17,000 babies a year receive hospital treatment because of passive smoking.

    Source: The Guardian, 11 November 2011
    Link: http://bit.ly/uYRaqY

  • Telford smoking cessation clinic risks a £400,000 bill

    Services to help people in Telford stop smoking have proved so successful that health bosses could eventually find themselves facing a bill of £400,000.

    So many people are signing up for help in quitting that NHS Telford and Wrekin’s stop smoking scheme has already gone over budget by more than £48,000 and it could rise. But the trust is still struggling to get pregnant women to give up the habit.

    In his report to this week’s meeting of the trust board, managing director Dr Leigh Griffin said the ‘continuing difficulties’ posed by smoking in pregnancy was one of the challenges facing the organisation.

    Source: Shropshire Star, 14 November 2011
    Link: http://bit.ly/vJU5nA

  • Bradford and Airedale's south Asian community warned over smokeless tobacco

    The risk smoking causes to people’s health will be in sharp focus during Mouth Cancer Awareness Week.

    Mouth cancer kills one person every three hours in the UK because of late detection and during the awareness week which starts today, people in Bradford will be urged to think carefully about their smoking and use of smokeless tobacco.

    Around 90 per cent of mouth cancers in Bradford are caused by smoking and many people are unaware smokeless tobacco, like paan and niswar, also causes mouth cancer, according to health professionals.

    People from Bradford and Airedale’s south Asian community who use smokeless tobacco are being invited to be screened for signs of mouth cancer at sessions run by the NHS stop smoking service and Jim McCaul, a consultant maxillofacial surgeon at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

    Two south Asian advisors have been employed for a year to work with the community in Manningham, where there is a high prevalence of smokeless tobacco use.

    Source: Telegraph and Argus, 14 November 2011
    Link: http://bit.ly/rMmgzR

  • Ireland: Cigarette sales fall as smokers cut back

    Sales of cigarettes have slumped yet again, with experts pointing to a rise in smuggling and smokers puffing less.

    Figures from Revenue Ireland showed that excise was paid on just more than 4.1 billion cigarettes in Ireland last year, down by more than 10pc from a year earlier.

    Sales quantities have been on a continuous downward trend for the past five years and are now down by a quarter from 2006. However, rises in duty on cigarettes have ensured that the revenue earned for the Exchequer is still on a par with five years ago at €1.1bn.

    The one area that has seen an increase in demand in recent years is rolling tobacco, sales of which have soared during the recession.

    It is often seen as more cost-effective than cigarttes, although anti-smoking campaigners claim it is actually similar in price per gram to cigarettes.

    Professor Luke Clancy, director general of the Research Institute for a Tobacco Free Society, said a number of factors were at play for the fall in cigarette sales and that it appeared smokers were cutting back, although not quitting in any great numbers.

    "While price does help some people to stop, it is more likely to get people to reduce their cigarettes. They are not as affordable now so people are smoking fewer," he explained.

    Prof Clancy said emigration of young people aged between 20 and 40 years, who had the highest prevalence of smoking, was also a factor, as was the departure of many European migrant workers who tended to be heavier smokers.

    Source: Independent, 14 November 2011
    Link: http://bit.ly/vbEmTB

  • New Zealand: Tobacco companies vow to fight plain packaging

    The biggest tobacco supplier in New Zealand is vowing to fight the Government if they introduce controversial plain cigarette packages.

    3 News has obtained documents revealing the dull-green packs may be introduced here next year, and already the battle lines are being drawn.

    The Australian government has this week become the first country in the world to pass a law introducing the dull-green packs but they are being sued.

    Tobacco companies are funding these television campaigns in Australia, furious the government there is introducing these plain cigarette packs.

    Cabinet papers obtained by 3 News under the Official Information Act show the government has agreed to "actively consider the introduction of plain packaging here in 2012”.

    Professor Jane Kelsey says the big tobacco companies like Phillip Morris and British American Tobacco use every legal tool that they can get their hands on to stop tobacco control policies from coming through.

    The largest tobacco supplier in New Zealand, British American Tobacco, would not appear on camera but released a statement saying they will take every step necessary to protect their intellectual property and stop plain packaging being introduced here.

    Source: 3News, 12 November 2011
    Link: http://bit.ly/uJM4Nx

  • Belgium denies massive increase in cigarette sales

    Belgium denied reports of a massive increase in tobacco sales due to the lure of the country's cheap cigarettes and tobacco for discount-seeking smokers from Britain and France.

    The finance ministry denied a cover story by the daily Le Soir and radio reports that said cigarette sales leapt 19 percent in the first nine months of the year.

    It also reported booming business in filling stations near the Franco-Belgian border, where some owners were quoted saying tobacco sales were outpacing sales of petrol.

    But Claude Monseu, an advisor to Finance Minister Didier Reynders, later told the Belga news agency that sales were expected to show a 12-month fall and that the discrepancy between the paper's report and the ministry's data resulted from a change in the way tobacco products were taxed and the timing.

    Health experts had complained in the daily that Belgium's cheap tobacco goods fanned cancer.

    Source: AFP, 11 November 2011
    Link: http://bit.ly/snQdcn