HEADLINES

• Rail firm stub out smoking
• Hampshire: Eight arrested after string of cigarette thefts
• Officers seize illegal cigarettes in Gloucestershire
• World set to follow Australian tobacco policy
• Rise in lung disease deaths in women
• Dutch groups appeal against “irresponsible” plan to exempt small cafés from smoking ban

• Rail firm stub out smoking

  A rail engineering works is celebrating becoming the first business in Doncaster to be officially recognised for going totally smoke free.

  The 700 strong staff at Wabtec Rail will collect the first of a new-look Doncaster Smokefree Excellence Award from officials at NHS Doncaster and Doncaster Council to mark that smoking is not allowed anywhere on the company's 22 acre site in Hexthorpe.

  Source: Doncaster Free Press - 14 October 2010
  Link: http://bit.ly/bVLpgr

• Hampshire: Eight arrested after string of cigarette thefts

  Eight people, whose ages range from 15 years to 29 years, have been arrested in connection with a string of break-ins at shops across Hampshire.

  Since the beginning of August more than 20 premises have been broken into in and around Southampton where more than £100,000 worth of cigarettes and other items have been stolen.

  Source: Daily Echo - 13 October 2010
  Link: http://bit.ly/ccfstS

• Officers seize illegal cigarettes in Gloucestershire

  Nearly 20,000 illegal cigarettes have been seized in a raid on 10 shops in Cheltenham and Gloucestershire.

  Some cigarettes were counterfeit while duty had not been paid on others.

  Source: BBC News - 14 October 2010
  Link: http://bbc.in/akKB5V

• World set to follow Australian tobacco policy

  The Australian Health Minister, Nicola Roxon has told newspapers that representatives from Ireland, Norway, the European Union and the United States at an Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development conference have expressed interest in the country's plan to introduce plain-wrap cigarettes.

  Source: Sydney Morning Herald - 15 October 2010
  Link: http://bit.ly/doUf9j

• Rise in lung disease deaths in women

  Deaths in women from lung diseases like bronchitis and emphysema have risen by 50 per cent in the last 20 years due largely to the impact of smoking according to the European Respiratory Society (ERS).

  While mortality rates from what are classed as chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPDs) have stayed roughly the same for men since 1990, for women they have risen from about 23 to 35 per 100,000.

  The ERS said that preventable lung diseases currently claimed the lives of 80 people every day. It released the statistics to mark World Spirometry Day.

  Source: The Telegraph - 14 October 2010
  Link: http://bit.ly/bnkXv6

• Dutch groups appeal against “irresponsible” plan to exempt small cafés from smoking ban

  Plans by the Netherlands’ new centre right government to scrap the smoking ban in small cafés has sparked a “moral appeal” from more than 30 leading figures and medical organisations to reject what they describe as an “irresponsible” move.

  They fear that small cafés, which may number as many as 10 000, may become the “breeding ground” for a new generation of smokers.

  Source: BMJ - 04 October 2010
  Link: http://bit.ly/ab11LH