HEADLINES

• Fall in drug, tobacco and alcohol use among schoolchildren in England
• Counterfeit cigarettes seized during series of raids in Crewe
• Coventry City fans quit smoking after help from Sky Blues
• Prisoner ordered to pay back £370,000 he made from smuggling cigarettes
• Australia: Ban on menthol in cigarettes is urged

• Fall in drug, tobacco and alcohol use among schoolchildren in England

  Fewer schoolchildren are smoking, drinking or taking drugs, according to an NHS report which contradicts the widespread belief that such behaviour is increasingly popular with young people.

  The proportion of 11- to 15-year-olds who have taken drugs on at least one occasion has fallen from 29% in 2001 to 22% last year. And the proportion who admit to having ever used alcohol has dropped from 61% in 2003 to 51% in 2009. But the biggest decline has been in smoking. When the study began in 1982 53% of participants said they had smoked at least once, down to 29% last year.

  The findings were welcomed by doctors, health campaigners and the Department of Health, which said that better education, public health campaigns and action by agencies may be among the factors that explain the drop.

  Link to the full ONS report: http://www.ic.nhs.uk/pubs/sdd09fullreport

  Source: The Guardian, 22 July 2010
  Link: http://bit.ly/c2JGOZ

• Counterfeit cigarettes seized during series of raids in Crewe

  Thousands of counterfeit cigarettes have been seized in a series of raids in Crewe.

  Police, customs and immigration officers joined forces with Cheshire East’s consumer protection team to swoop on businesses and residential properties across the town on Thursday as part of Operation Medallion.

  Altogether 7,500 cigarettes were seized along with cannabis, suspected bootleg tobacco and counterfeit vodka.

  Four entry warrants were used during the raids.

  Three people were arrested in connection with the incident and are helping the police with their enquiries.

  Cheshire East Councillor Rachel Bailey, cabinet member for safer and stronger communities, said: “This is an excellent example of how Cheshire East Council can work with partner agencies to successfully tackle the problem of illicit tobacco.

  “Tobacco sold at very cheap prices makes it readily available to young people. I would urge any smoker to think twice before purchasing illicit tobacco and to think about the inferior products it may contain.”

  The sale of illicit tobacco has close links with organised crime.

  It is estimated duty lost to the treasury from the sale of black market tobacco products is in the region of £2.5bn a year.

  HM Revenue & Customs estimate that 45% of all tobacco seizures are counterfeit – these are imitations of branded cigarettes and tobacco made from inferior ingredients and materials.

  Although cheaper than genuine brands, they have been known to contain sawdust, tobacco beetles, pieces of plastic and even rat droppings.

  Bootlegged tobacco is illegally imported from countries with a low rate of tobacco taxation. Smuggled tobacco tends to be a legitimate product, illegally imported on a large scale and distributed on the black market for sale to the public.

  Kay Roberts, head of Cheshire East Council’s consumer protection and investigations team, said: “This operation shows our ongoing commitment to protecting residents of from unscrupulous sellers of illicit tobacco. I hope today we have sent a clear message that we will use every law enforcement power at our disposal to stop this illegal trade.”

  Source: Crewe Chronicle, 21 July 2010
  Link: http://bit.ly/9CjUg3

• Coventry City fans quit smoking after help from Sky Blues

  Sky Blues stars are celebrating a historic success before the season has even started.
  
  They are the first crop of smokers to ‘Kick the Habit’ with the help of the Sky Blues in the Community team.
  
  The programme offered Coventry City fans weekly counselling sessions and nicotine replacements therapies courtesy of NHS Coventry’s Stop Smoking service.
  
  Community manager and Sky Blues icon Dave Busst said he was delighted that nine of the 14 fans who regularly attended the programme since March had managed to quit smoking completely.
  
  Fans were also put through their paces by former Sky Blues star Claus Jorgensen during 12 weekly fitness sessions at the Alan Higgs Centre.
  
  Bleep tests and Carbon Dioxide readings even showed some of the former smokers had boosted their fitness by 20 per cent and improved their lung age by six years.
  
  City fan John Beaufoy, 60, who quit using Kick the Habit, said: “I was able to gradually kick the habit from smoking between 20-30 cigarettes a day to zero.
  
  “My health and wellbeing has improved dramatically as well as my finances, resulting in me saving at least £200 per month.
  
  “We all felt that if any of us relapsed then we would be letting the team down and attending each week helped us to progress and achieve our goal to quit smoking.”

  Source: Coventry Telegraph, 23 July 2010
  Link: http://bit.ly/dw9rXS

• Prisoner ordered to pay back £370,000 he made from smuggling cigarettes

  A prisoner has been ordered to pay back £370,000 he made from smuggling cigarettes.
  
  Mohmed Safi Patel was told yesterday that he has six months to pay the cash or stay in prison for another four years.
  
  Patel, of Roundhill Road, in Leicester, was jailed for six years in 2008 for smuggling 27 million cigarettes and four tons of tobacco.
  
  His co-defendant Anis Vohora, of Diseworth Street, in Highfields, went on the run before the trial and was extradited back from America in June.
  
  He was jailed for four years and three months.
  
  They were arrested by Customs & Excise investigators at the Sangra Building, in Abbey Park Street, in Leicester on August 31, 2006. Some 98,000 illicit cigarettes were seized.
  
  A search of one of the units resulted in a further seizure of nearly 300,000 cigarettes and 16 kilos of hand-rolling tobacco. A search of a Mercedes van resulted in the seizure of another 600,000 cigarettes.
  
  The operation led officers to Patel's house, where they found extensive hand-written ledgers detailing the organisation's purchase and sale of more than 27 million smuggled cigarettes and four tonnes of hand-rolling tobacco between November 2005 and August 2006.
  
  John Kay, assistant chief investigation officer for HM Revenue & Customs, said: "This was a sophisticated, well-planned and large-scale smuggling operation which resulted in substantial prison sentences.
  
  "However, this case also highlights our determination to pursue their crime profits, depriving them of returning to a life of luxury and recouping money for investment in our country's public services."

  Source: Leicester Mercury, 24 July 2010
  Link: http://bit.ly/bsmr3o

• Australia: Ban on menthol in cigarettes is urged

  Australia will be urged to ban or reduce heavily menthol in cigarettes if the US recommends a crackdown on the cigarettes.

  A 12-member US panel is considering whether menthol makes smoking more addictive, and its findings could spell disaster in Australia for Alpine cigarettes and imported brands such as Kool, Virginia Slims and Salem.

  Anti-tobacco campaigners argue that menthol coats the throat with a ''mild anaesthetic'' and encourages young people, especially women, to take up smoking.

  The US Congress has given unprecedented power to its Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco and ban additives.

  But University of Sydney professor of public health Simon Chapman said Australia had failed to regulate any tobacco additives and tobacco company chemists could add any legal substance.

  Internal tobacco company documents had shown its chemists were adding ammonia, for example, which speeds up the rate nicotine penetrates the brain, helping to hook users, he said.

  The companies were hiding the ammonia and other agents under the benign term ''processing aids'', said Professor Chapman, who was the 2008 NSW Premier's Cancer Researcher of the Year.

  These let them ''cover up the secret formula of their brands''. He called on the federal government to force the companies to disclose fully cigarette additives by displaying all ingredients where tobacco was sold, and in packets.

  ''The real issue here is whether it is sensible to allow tobacco companies to add ingredients that will make tobacco products more palatable to young smokers when they're first starting off,'' he said.

  Menthol was used to ''reduce the harshness of cigarette smoke and to cool the throat''.

  The push coincides with Australia preparing to become the first country in the world to force generic packaging on tobacco companies.

  A spokesman for Phillip Morris Australia said it was ''too early'' to say whether tobacco companies would launch threatened legal action in Australia or internationally to stop the generic packaging law, expected to take effect in 2012.

  A British American Tobacco Australia spokeswoman said the company expected to see the proposed legislation next year. It would ''defend the intellectual property which lies in our packaging. If that requires us to take legal action, then we will do so.''

  Mark Davison, a professor of law and trademark expert at Monash University, said the Paris Convention governing intellectual property granted no right to use trademarks, only to register them.

  Source: The Sydney Morning Herald, 25 July 2010
  Link: http://bit.ly/ahDYKk