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ASH Daily News
23 November 2001

Headlines

WHO calls for tobacco free sport
Tobacco giant’s antismoking course flops
A pervasive ban on smoking

Full Text

WHO calls for tobacco free sport

A campaign for tobacco-free sport was launched by the World Health Organisation and top sports organisations as the WHO’s 191 members began a third round of negotiations on the Framework Convention for Tobacco Control.

The Olympic Committee, Fifa, the football governing body and the International Automobile Association (FIA) which runs Formula One motor racing are backing WHO’s call to ban smoking at sporting events and put an end to tobacco advertising, promotion and marketing in sports.

The 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City in the US and the 2002 football World Cup in Japan and South Korea are already planned as tobacco-free events. The FIA is expected to proceed with its own global ban on tobacco sponsorship in motor sports from 2006, even though a European directive banning tobacco sponsorship was annulled last year.

Tobacco sponsorship in motor sport alone may exceed £350m a year according to the FIA, and in Formula one, tobacco sponsors top teams such as Ferrari.

But Derek Yach, the WHO director of non-communicable diseases, pointed out this week that contrary to the public image, the motor industry and not the tobacco manufacturers was the main source of sponsorship in motor sport. Commenting specifically on Formula One, he said that many teams had already dropped their tobacco sponsors in favour of media and IT based sponsors. “No team has gone bankrupt from the loss of tobacco sponsorship,” he added.

The WHO sees sports sponsorship by the tobacco companies as one of the industry’s most effective ways of attracting children who then carry their addiction into adulthood. According to the United Nations agency tobacco sponsorship of the 1996 Cricket World Cup in India was followed by a five-fold increase in smoking among Indian teenagers.

Recent surveys suggest that one third of young smokers start before the age of ten.

A statement issued by WHO yesterday said: “How do you package death as life, disease as health, and a deadly addiction as the taste of freedom and a celebration of life? – Look no further than your nearest playground or that shirt on your favourite athlete’s back or the shoe, or the bag, or the jacket. – Tobacco kills. To replace those who die, the tobacco industry needs to recruit smokers around the world. Nothing is taboo – not even a forlorn sports ground where children gather to play.”

Most vulnerable are the populations of developing countries in Asia and Africa, and representatives from these countries are pressing for tough measures in the treaty. But claims emerging from the negotiations in Geneva suggest that the US, Latin American countries and the European Unioin, pushed by Germany, were weakening their stance under industry pressure.

Source: Financial Times, Wall Street Journal Europe, 23 November 2001


Tobacco giant’s antismoking course flops

Simon Chapman, writing for the British Medical Journal reports that a series of workshops for teachers on how to encourage children to "say no to illicit drugs, underage smoking, drinking alcohol and bullying," sponsored by tobacco multinational Philip Morris, got a cold reception from Australian teachers this week.

Advertised to run in four states, the workshops failed to get off the ground everywhere but Adelaide, where a tiny audience, swollen by public health workers, questioned the director of the course about his links with the tobacco company. Seminars in Melbourne and Sydney were cancelled through lack of interest, and the hotel listed as the venue in Brisbane had no record of a booking.

The programme, "I’ve Got the Power," resurfaced in Australia after a controversial launch in 1999, when its director, Kevin Donnelly, an educational consultant, was asked to explain why the course failed to acknowledge that Philip Morris had sponsored it. South Australian director of Quit, Andrew Ellerman, asked Donnelly this week to explain the same absence. Donnelly replied that during consultations in the development of the kit it was suggested that acknowledging Philip Morris "could be interpreted as advertising."

The programme is part of a worldwide effort by the tobacco industry to show politicians and the public that it has no ambitions to market its products to children. Anne Jones, director of Action on Smoking and Health Australia, described the programme as a case of "letting the fox into the chicken coop."

She said that certain documents from Philip Morris Australia "salivate over the prospects of the teenage market." One, a marketing plan for the Marlboro brand, says that the 23% of the Australian population that is under 15 years old represents a "significant market opportunity."

Source: British Medical Journal, 2001; 323:1206, 24 November 2001


A pervasive smoking ban

The inclusion of tobacco smoke in a US county’s indoor air quality standards, which regulates potentially harmful pollutants such as asbestos, radon, moulds or pesticides is being seen as the most anti-smoking measure in the country.

The Montgomery County Council in Maryland, near Washington DC, on Tuesday approved the standards which sets up stiff fines for people who compromise a neighbour’s air quality by smoking in their own home.

Smokers and landlords or condominium associations that fail to ventilate buildings properly would face fines of up to $750 per violation if they failed to mitigate the problem.

“This does not say that you cannot smoke in your own house,” said a council member Isaiah Leggett. “What it does say is that you cannot smoke across property lines.”

Under the new a standards, an individual can complain to the County’s Department of Environmental Protect if a tobacco smoke manages to waft in from a neighbours property through a door, open window or a vent. [In ASH’s experience however, complaints of this nature nearly always originate due to smoke permeating (rather than wafting) through poorly insulated floorboards and walls, chimney flues and vents.]

But tobacco companies are already threatening a legal challenge enlisting the support of the American Civil Liberties Union. They claim that the law unfairly targets the poor.

Source: International Herald and Tribune, 22 November 2001




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