Japan: Cigarette vending machines to require ID 

Under a new system that aims to make it harder for minors to buy tobacco, smokers in Japan will no longer be able to buy cigarettes from vending machines from next year without an ID card that says they are adults.

By next July, all of Japan's 570,000 cigarette vending machines will require a smart card called 'taspo', a blend of the words tobacco, access and passport, issued only to people who are at least 20, the legal smoking age.

The blue taspo, which also functions as an electronic money card for the new machines, will be offered free of charge by the Tobacco Institute of Japan after smokers send identification papers attesting to their age.

The smoker's picture will be on the card, although the vending machines will not be able to read the images, so they won't be able to tell if the customer is legitimate.

The Tobacco Institute, whose members include Japan's three tobacco companies which include Japan Tobacco Inc, spent 90 billion yen on the machines and says it hopes the new system will prevent minors from smoking.

The number of underage smokers has been declining, but a Health Ministry survey in 2004 showed 13 percent of boys and 4 percent of girls in the third year of high school aged 17 to 18, smoked every day.

The proportion of Japanese adults who smoke has slipped to 26 percent from 34 percent a decade ago and a peak of 49 percent in 1966.

Source: Reuters News, 19 October 2007
Link: http://tinyurl.com/ysfz3g

Drivers 'ignoring smoking rules'

A motoring group claims new smoking and driving rules are not fully understood by the public while little effort is being made to comply with them.

Despite changes in the law covering drivers at work, confused employees are still driving and smoking, said GEM Motoring Assist (formerly the Guild of Experienced Motorists).

GEM also revealed that a poll they conducted showed that 72% of people want a total ban on smoking in vehicles, whether they are being driven for work purposes or not. The organisation also expressed concerns at the way cigarettes are disposed of by road users.

David Williams of GEM said: "Employers and even voluntary organisations have a duty to ensure that everyone who uses a vehicle understands the regulations and that the vehicles have proper no-smoking signs.

"It is the legal responsibility of anyone who drives, manages or is responsible for order and safety on vehicles to prevent people from smoking. If they do not apply this law, they could be liable for a court-awarded fine of up to £2,500."

He continued: "People are beginning to understand that driving with a cigarette in your mouth is not a good idea. Clearly you may not have proper control of the vehicle, especially if you drop the cigarette or try to light it while on the move."

"It has been made clear that drivers can be prosecuted under current law if an incident occurs while they are smoking because they do not have full control of the vehicle," he added.

On cigarette disposal, Mr Williams said: "Throwing them from a window into the path of other traffic, especially cyclists or motorcyclists, is very dangerous and distracting."

Source: The Guardian Unlimited, 21 October 2007
Link: http://tinyurl.com/yrr7yz

Early deaths from smoking will soon double, says report

An internatoinal conference of health workers in Beijing heard that the current worldwide total of premature deaths caused by tobacco is set to double as developing countries reap the consequences of addiction. 

China currently contains a third of the world's smokers, and the annual meeting last month of the International Pharmacy Federation was staged in the Chinese capital as its leaders begin to realise that tobacco, which is currently a state industry, does more harm than good.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) already blames cigarettes for five million premature deaths globally a year. That will double to an average of 10 million a year over the course of the 21st century unless government and health agencies take steps to cut consumption, the conference heard.

David Taylor, author of a report on the world's tobacco habit, pointed to the widely acknowledged link between rising cigarette sales and rising tobacco related deaths, which follow roughly 25 years later.

He said: "We can expect an annual global toll of 10 million because although Europe is making efforts to reduce consumption, and of course there is no certainty it will succeed, smoking is so widespread and continues to rise in countries such as China and India."

The clouds of tobacco smoke circulating in almost every building in China are an everyday hazard.  

Professor Taylor said, "Pharmacists could play an important role in helping smokers quit through advice and smoking-cessation products."

However a test of China's resolve to tackle smoking related disease was whether the country would license products such as nicotine patches to help people give up. Currently, smoking cessation aids are unavailable.

Professor Taylor's report, Ending the Global Tobacco Pandemic, stressed the bleak outlook for smokers, who tended to be among the poorer educated and less affluent people in any society.

It said: "While countries such as the UK, the US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada are now seeing reductions in smoking and declining male (but still typically rising female) tobacco-related mortality, those of southern and eastern Europe and nations such as China, India and Japan have not yet fully experienced the health impacts of increased smoking rates in men, or indeed, women."

Despite the countries post-war economic boom, Japan featured among those countries where deaths had not yet peaked because the habit was adopted on a large scale by men and then women much later than in Europe.

The report singled out California as the model to be pursued. Even within Britain, which is among the more successful European countries in discouraging smoking, rates were twice that of California.

Only 13 per cent of California's total adult population, and less than 10 per cent of women, smoke.

Source: The Telegraph, 21 October 2007
Link: http://tinyurl.com/3a6c99

Australia: Sponge to put squeeze on smokers

An advertisment which is one of Australia's best remembered and one which the tobacco industry tried to ban is to be reprised for a younger generation of smokers.  

A quarter of a century after the quit smoking advert, Sponge, was first broadcast, a new version will be on air for two months.

The idea was revived after NSW Health research found two out of three younger smokers would consider quitting after seeing the advertisement.

Despite the new adverts slick production values, the message remains unchanged, as do the images of tar being wrung out of a sponge used to represent a smoker's lungs.

The assistant Minister for Health, Verity Firth, said the advert had been sold to a multimillion dollar anti tobacco fund set up by the Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg. "They had seen it and expressed an interest, so that was really one of the motivating factors behind making it," Ms Firth said.

A campaign by the tobacco industry to have the original advert banned failed after the advertising regulator dismissed complaints made by the law firm Baker & McKenzie, which was acting for a tobacco company.

The firm argued that the adverts should not go ahead because there was no proven link between smoking and cancer, tar did not make you sick and the adverts disparaged cigarettes.

Despite the number of smokers in NSW falling by 12 per cent last year, Ms Firth said she needed to "ram the message home".

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 October 2007
Link: http://tinyurl.com/25jo2t