Cigarette butt levy sparks tobacco row

A dispute has broken out over whether tobacco companies should be forced to pay a 'clean-up charge' for cigarette butts.

The environment, food and rural affairs committee's report into waste strategy, published earlier this week, called on the government to evaluate the practicalities of imposing a small 'clean-up' levy on the products most commonly littered.

"Revenues could be distributed to local authorities to help clean up their neighbourhoods," the report suggested.

The Tobacco Manufacturers' Association reacted strongly against the proposal.

It argued its support of personal ashtrays and other initiatives which encourage consumers to "properly dispose" of "each and every butt" meant it should not have to be penalised.

"Across the UK, especially since the implementation of the smoking ban, our member companies have been working with the licensed trade to encourage them to provide ashtrays and cigarette disposal facilities in outdoor areas," a spokesman said.

"The best way to prevent smoking related litter is through changing people's behaviour by encouraging personal responsibility, providing solutions and enforcing existing anti-litter laws."

In addition to litter from containers used to drink retail drinks and confectionery packaging, 'smoking materials' constitutes the most prevalent type of litter, according to Keep Britain Tidy's 2008 survey.

Amanda Sandford, from Action on Smoking and Health said, "Around 200 million cigarette butts are dropped on Britain's streets every day."

"An extra levy on tobacco products may make smokers think twice about dropping cigarette ends and tobacco packaging, and would go someway towards meeting the huge clean up cost," she commented.

Source: Yahoo News, 20 January 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/51J7M3

Secondhand smoke linked to sleep problems in children

Both adults and adolescents who smoke have reported difficulties sleeping, and young children exposed to tobacco smoke have poorer sleep quality. Recent research has found that children with asthma have more parent-reported sleep issues when exposed to tobacco smoke. The study, "Associations Between Secondhand Smoke Exposure and Sleep Patterns in Children," in the February issue of Pediatrics (appearing online Jan. 18), examined 219 children enrolled in an asthma intervention trial who were regularly exposed to secondhand smoke. 

Researchers found that exposure to secondhand smoke can be associated with sleep problems among children with asthma, including difficulties falling asleep, more sleep-disordered breathing and increased daytime sleepiness. Sleep efficiency has been shown to improve with effective asthma treatment, but study authors feel that the reduction or elimination of secondhand smoke can have significant impact on physical and emotional health and school performance among the pediatric population.

Source: Medical News Today, 18 January 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/8DuqWD

USA: L.A. Council bans smoking in outdoor dining areas

The Los Angeles City Council has unanimously voted to expand a smoking ban in outdoor dining areas, though the ordinance won't take effect for a year.

The ordinance makes it illegal to smoke within 10 feet of a restaurant or food court. That means outdoor patios and doorways will be off-limits to smokers starting in February 2011.

The ordinance also bars smoking within 40 feet of a food kiosk, foot cart or mobile food truck. Bars and nightclubs that require patrons to be 18 or older are exempt from the smoking ban.

The council gave restaurant operators a one-year grace period to give them time to educate their patrons about the new rules.

Source: Los Angeles Daily News, 20 January 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/7LS3vH

Germans cut back on smoking, but spend more as prices increase

Although new figures show that Germans are smoking less, they are spending more on tobacco products, according to the Federal Statistics Office (Destatis).

The increase in spending is despite what appears to be a move away from expensive cigars and cigarillos during the financial crisis.

Tobacco products worth €22.8 billion retail were sold in Germany in 2009, a total sum of 1.4 percent more than in the previous year, the new Destatis figures showed.

Yet the number of taxed cigarettes dropped by 1.6 percent to €1.4 billion. The financial crisis seems to have hit the luxury tobacco market in Germany particularly hard, with the taxed sales of cigars and cigarillos down by 24.6 percent.

Meanwhile the sale of fine-cut tobacco suitable for making roll-up cigarettes rose by 11.7 percent, the figures showed.

Sales of pipe tobacco were down by 57.2 percent, but this initially startling figure seems to have been largely generated by a change in the tax rules which put so-called pseudo pipe tobacco into the same category as fine-cut, as it is not suitable for pipe use.

Source: The Local, 19 January 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/5I6ixY

Tobacco smoke causes lung inflammation, promotes lung cancer growth

Repeated exposure to tobacco smoke makes lung cancer much worse, and one reason is that it steps up inflammation in the lung. Scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have found that mice with early lung cancer lesions that were repeatedly exposed to tobacco smoke developed larger tumors -- and developed tumors more quickly -- than unexposed animals. The key contributing factor was lung tissue inflammation.

The results of their study, to be published January 19 in the journal Cancer Cell, provide definitive evidence for the role of lung inflammation brought on by chronic exposure to tobacco smoke in promoting lung cancer growth. The findings also establish new lung cancer models, provide insights into both the development and growth of lung cancer, and suggest the possibility of using anti-inflammatory agents to prevent or slow lung cancer progression, said Michael Karin, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology and Pathology at the UC San Diego School of Medicine, who led the work.

"We've shown for the first time that tobacco smoke is a tumor promoter -- not only a tumor initiator -- and that it works through inflammation," said Karin, director of the Laboratory of Gene Regulation and Signal Transduction and a member of the Moores UCSD Cancer Center. "Other particulate materials, such as fine silicon dust, asbestos and coal dust, may promote lung cancer development through similar mechanisms. Such substances were never found to induce mutations, which are the essence of tumor formation. More research is needed to explore the role and biochemical mechanisms of exposure to pro-inflammatory substances in the environment in early stages of cancer development."

Lung cancer killed nearly 160,000 Americans in 2009, according to the American Cancer Society, making it the leading cause of cancer death in both men and women.

It's well known that tobacco smoke can cause cancer-inducing mutations and other types of lung disease, as well as pulmonary inflammation. Karin's team wanted to know whether tobacco smoke could actively promote tumor growth once the cancerous process began and, if so, whether the tumor-promoting ability of tobacco smoke was due to inflammation.

Karin and his group initiated lung tumors in mice, either by giving them a chemical carcinogen or by introducing a mutated gene, KRAS, into their genome. The mice were then intermittently exposed to tobacco smoke. The researchers found that exposure to smoke enhanced tumor formation, causing larger tumors that grew more quickly than those in mice that were not exposed.

Short-term tobacco smoke exposure in mice may turn on certain biochemical signals -- a pair of "signaling pathways" called IKKβ and JNK. This, in turn, ramps up the production of inflammatory substances, promoting tumor growth, Karin said. In addition to providing a more complete explanation for the cancer-causing ability of tobacco smoke, this work suggests new avenues for lung cancer prevention and treatment.

Source: Science Daily, 19 January 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/7FgTr7