ASH Daily News for 07 May 2010
HEADLINES
- Ferrari removes 'barcode' from F1 car livery
- Licensee election candidate's smoking ban plan backfires
- Cigarettes and fake DVDs seized in Gloucestershire op
- Canada: Former minister’s ties to tobacco industry hurting Ottawa’s anti-smoking work
- Money saved from quitting cigarettes helped me save up for boob job
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Ferrari removes 'barcode' from F1 car livery
Ferrari's 2010 car no longer features a controversial 'barcode' livery on its engine cover.
The Italian team last week angrily rejected reports the signage was subliminal advertising for its tobacco sponsor Philip Morris.
Even Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo slammed the suggestion, insisting the claims were "ridiculous".
But in the team's Barcelona pit garage on Thursday, the barcode was gone, replaced by a white rectangle with a red background.
However, the clothing worn by team members including drivers Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa in Spain still features the barcode.
Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro said the decision to remove the signage from the livery of the F10 was made "together with Philip Morris International".
"This decision was taken in order to remove all speculation concerning the so-called 'barcode' which was never intended to be a reference to a tobacco brand," added the team.
Source: Motorsport - 6 May 201
Link: http://bit.ly/bAfzcn -
Licensee election candidate's smoking ban plan backfires
A licensee who is contesting Neil Kinnock’s former seat in today’s general election has admitted he has been surprised by the reaction to his plans on the smoking ban.
Paul Taylor, licensee of the Rock in Blackwood, Gwent, is running as an independent candidate in the Welsh constituency of Islwyn.
As part of his manifesto, Taylor is calling for a relaxation of the smoking ban, which he blames for the current record number of pub closures.
But after a tour of around 30 pubs in the area, the licensee, who also contested the seat in 2001, confessed his idea to allow some pubs to be designated “smoking pubs” had been dismissed.
“The consensus was that people didn’t want smoking pubs, they are happy to go outside,” he said.
“It was a real eye opener.”
But Taylor said he was pleased with the number of people who promised to vote for him and is “hopeful” of getting five per cent of the vote, to ensure he gets his £500 fee back he paid to register as a candidate.
Meanwhile, a host of pubs around the country are playing their part in the election process, by acting as polling stations for the day.
[Mr Taylor came last with 901 votes, 2.6% of the vote; fewer votes than when he stood in 2001.]
Source: The Publican - 6 May 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/9JxZWV -
Cigarettes and fake DVDs seized in Gloucestershire op
Police and trading standards officers in Gloucestershire have seized a haul of cigarettes and counterfeit DVDs.
The contraband included more than 1,800 cigarettes, eight kg of hand-rolling tobacco and more than 200 unclassified DVDs, including hardcore pornography.
The UK Borders Agency arrested a 23-year-old Pakistani man in Barton Street, Gloucester.
A spokesman said he was found to be in the UK illegally and was being held at an immigration detention centre.
The two-day operation, on 26 and 27 April, also involved Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC), which seized the cigarettes for unpaid duty.
Source: BBC News - 6 May 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/9AO2ik -
Canada: Former minister’s ties to tobacco industry hurting Ottawa’s anti-smoking work
A Canadian government development agency is increasingly being ostracized by health and tobacco-control organizations around the world who feel it has been tainted by the tobacco-industry links of its chair, former Conservative cabinet minister Barbara McDougall.
The International Development Research Centre manages international projects to discourage smoking in the developing world, but many of the groups it deals with on those initiatives are cutting ties and refusing IDRC money because Ms. McDougall was until recently a member of Imperial Tobacco’s board of directors.
Ms. McDougall’s term on Imperial Tobacco’s board ended on March 31 – but the movement to cut ties with the IDRC’s tobacco programs goes on.
It started a month ago, when the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pulled a $5.2-million grant for the IDRC’s tobacco-control programs in Africa.
Now, an Australian tobacco-control conference to be held in Sydney this fall has turned down the IDRC’s money, announcing it has refused a sponsor with a “tobacco link.” The Lancet, one of the world’s most respected medical journals, has revoked a request for the agency to help fund a special issue on chronic diseases. And the World Health Organization asked two IDRC representatives to withdraw from a tobacco-control conference in Ghana two weeks ago.
The movement threatens the Canadian agency’s ability to continue tobacco-control work in the developing world, not because the agency will pull out but because groups around the world increasingly won’t touch it, or its money.
On Thursday, Open Medicine, a Canadian medical journal, published an editorial calling on Ms. McDougall to resign from the agency’s board.
It’s an unusual position for the IDRC, long a respected arms-length government agency. Tobacco control is a small part, less than 1 per cent, of its research work.
“IDRC fervently hopes that anti-tobacco groups will be able to work together with IDRC on the vital issue of tobacco control in the future, as we have done in the past,” Angela Prokopiak, the agency’s communications director, said in an e-mail.
Ms. McDougall, who served in several cabinet posts under prime minister Brian Mulroney, including foreign affairs minister, was appointed by Stephen Harper’s cabinet to the agency’s board in 2007, and became chair later that year. She left Imperial’s board a month ago, and her colleagues on the IDRC board have rallied around her performance as chair.
Health and anti-tobacco organizations are extremely sensitive to ties with the tobacco industry, fearing efforts to influence research and policy. The World Health Organization has stated “the industry has and will continue to interfere in implementation of effective tobacco control.”
In 2004, Canada ratified the international Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which requires governments to protect tobacco-control policy from the industry, and in 2008 – after Ms. McDougall’s appointment – Canada agreed to guidelines that state that people with tobacco industry ties won’t be appointed to boards of agencies that deal with tobacco-control policy.
A big part of the problem, according to Cynthia Callard, executive director of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, is that neither the IDRC nor the Canadian government responded to letters in March by acknowledging there was a conflict. “They didn’t say, ‘Oops. It won’t happen again,’” she said.
In statements over the past two weeks, however, the agency has promised to ask board members about tobacco-related activities and ensure compliance with the international convention.
Ms. Callard said she never saw any sign the IDRC’s tobacco-control work was tainted but in the eyes of organizations abroad, it’s now an agency headed by a tobacco-company insider. She insisted the agency’s tobacco programs are important ones, but argued that to save them, they might have to be transferred to some other agency, at least for a few years.
Source: The Globe and Mail - 6 May 201
Link: http://bit.ly/d4FHb7 -
Money saved from quitting cigarettes helped me save up for boob job
An overweight smoker changed her life when she stopped lighting up - because the cash she saved paid for a boob job.
Gillian Pitt, 31, was unhappy with the way she looked when her weight soared to more than 14 stones and her breasts ballooned to 38G.
Sick of men making rude comments and ogling her chest, she hid her body under baggy clothes.
Gillian dreamed of having smaller boobs but thought she could not afford a reduction.
But then she gave up smoking and saved £4000 - enough to finally have the surgery she wanted.
Gillian said: "Giving up cigarettes is, for most people, about cutting their risk of cancer or a heart attack.
"But, for me, it's been so much more. I saved thousands of pounds I would never have had if I was still a smoker.
"And it has transformed my life. I have the body I've always wanted."
Gillian, of Aberdeen, began putting on weight when she was 19.
Working shifts in a petrol station, 5ft 5in Gillian snacked on crisps and sweets and her weight ballooned.
She suffered back and neck pain and became extremely self-conscious about her boobs. Last April, she joined Scottish Slimmers, desperate to slim down from a size 18.
But although she lost almost four stones in eight months, her breasts were "saggy" from the fat she'd lost.
Gillian, a coffee shop manager, thought about a breast reduction but could not afford one - until she gave up smoking 20 cigarettes a day.
In February, with the support of partner Matt, Gillian had her boob op and, after two weeks in bandages, saw her new breasts for the first time.
"They were perfect, a size 34D" she said. "It's the best thing I've ever done."Source: Daily Record - 6 May 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/ctwOt0
