Anti-smoking advert with sexual innuendo shocks French

An anti-smoking advertisement showing teenagers in a pose suggesting fellatio with a cigarette has caused an uproar in France, with critics arguing it is offensive and suggests a false analogy between oral sex and smoking.

The adverts, presented earlier this week, show an older man in a suit pushing down on the head of a teenager with a cigarette in her mouth, in a position that suggests oral sex. Another version of the advert shows a teenage boy in a similar position. The accompanying slogan reads: "Smoking means being a slave to tobacco". 

"The campaign trivialises sexual abuse - worse, it implies guilt on the part of the abused," read one angry comment on the website of "Droits des Non-Fumeurs" ("Non-smokers' Rights), the organisation behind the campaign.

Droits des Non-Fumeurs said the posters showed neither rape nor abuse, but were meant to shock. "The campaign targets young people who see cigarettes as symbols of emancipation, of freedom, when it really causes dependency and submission," Droits des Non-Fumeurs said in an online discussion.

Tobacco is the number one cause of avoidable deaths as well as of cancer in France, according to the health ministry. Half of French students over 14 have tried smoking at some point.While Droits des Non-Fumeurs argues that young smokers tend to ignore adverts focusing on health, other activists were doubtful about the effectiveness of the provocative posters.

"As far as I know, practising fellatio doesn't cause cancer," Antoinette Fouque, an activist with the Movement for Women's Liberation, said in Le Parisien newspaper on Tuesday.
 

Source: Daily Telegraph, 24 February 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/aB6von

Medical journal bars tobacco-backed research papers

A leading scientific journal in Hong Kong will no longer publish research papers that receive any funding from tobacco companies, its editorial board said on Tuesday.

"While we continue to be interested in analyses of ways of reducing tobacco use, we will no longer be considering papers where support, in whole or in part, for the study or the researchers come from a tobacco company," the PLoS Medicine (Public Library of Science) said in an editorial.

The magazine expressed concern at "the industry's longstanding attempts to distort the science of and deflect attention away from the harmful effects of smoking."That the tobacco industry has behaved disreputably - denying the harms of its products, campaigning against smoking bans, marketing to young people and hiring public relations firms, consultants and front groups to enhance the public credibility of their work -- is well documented."

PLoS Medicine is a well regarded journal covering the full spectrum of the medical sciences and belongs to the U.S.-based, non-profit organization Public Library of Science. According to the Tobacco Atlas produced by the World Lung Foundation and American Cancer Society, there will be an estimated 6 million tobacco-related deaths in 2010 worldwide, rising to 7 million in 2020.

Source: Reuters, 23 February 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/99jV9b

India: Smoking, beer-drinking Jesus picture sparks Christian fury

A picture in a school book of Jesus Christ holding a beer bottle and a cigarette has sparked Christian outrage in India and spurred authorities to draft an anti-blasphemy law for schools.

In the notebooks, which were meant for handwriting classes, the Jesus picture accompanies the word "idol" and is used to illustrate the letter 'I'.The publisher has apologised to the people of Meghalaya, northern India, and recalled all copies of the notebook from the market. The picture has also enraged Christians in the northern Punjab state and sparked protests.

Christian organisations across the state have condemned the incident and demanded the government pass a law to monitor all school books for offensive content before they are circulated. Ampareen Lyngdoh, the state of Meghalaya's education minister, said: "The proposed law will help the government take action against such publishers."

Christians make up 2.3 percent of India's 1.1 billion-plus population.
 

Source: The Metro, 23 February 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/a76S5l

USA: Star Scientific seeks FDA approval for “safer” smokeless tobacco

Star Scientific Inc. is seeking the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's approval to market its smokeless tobacco lozenges as a reduced-risk product, setting up a key test for the federal agency's new regulatory powers over tobacco.

Star, a small Richmond-area company that makes two brands of smokeless products, said yesterday that it had filed an application with the FDA to market a new version of its Ariva smokeless tobacco as a "modified risk" product. If approved, the company could make advertising claims that the product has fewer toxins and health risks than conventional tobacco products.

Star has been selling Ariva, a lozenge-like product made from powdered, flavored tobacco, for almost 10 years, and the company has long touted its use of a tobacco-curing process designed to greatly reduce certain carcinogens called tobacco-specific nitrosamines. Star's request to the FDA is likely the first of many that tobacco companies will submit to the agency to sell novel tobacco products as potentially less hazardous than conventional products such as cigarettes. Smokeless tobacco has increasingly become the focus of those efforts.

Henrico County-based Altria Group Inc., parent company of cigarette maker Philip Morris USA, has moved aggressively into the smokeless tobacco market and has submitted comments to the FDA suggesting the agency should treat smokeless products as less hazardous than cigarettes.

"FDA has to start looking at this from a standpoint of what these products are, whether they reduce risk, what is the scientific evidence for that, and how should they be monitored, marketed and labeled," said Scott Ballin, a tobacco and health policy consultant in Washington.

Congress passed legislation last year that for the first time gives the FDA authority to regulate tobacco products.The legislation says the FDA must determine that the product would "significantly reduce harm and the risk of tobacco-related disease to individual tobacco users." The FDA also must find that the product would "benefit the health of the population as a whole taking into account both users of tobacco products and persons who do not currently use tobacco products," according to the legislation.

Sales of Star's smokeless products have been rising but are still tiny in the $4 billion U.S. smokeless tobacco market. Star, which has been operating at a loss for the past six years, said in its most recent quarterly earnings report that net sales of its dissolvable smokeless tobacco products were $600,000 for the first nine months of 2009, compared to $300,000 for the same period in 2008.

Tobacco-control and public-health groups have raised objections to Star's products in the past, arguing they could be misleading to consumers and enticing to children.

The FDA, which is still in the process of establishing its new Center for Tobacco Products, responded to those concerns this month by asking Star Scientific to disclose any research or data about use and misuse of its products. The agency asked for the same information from the nation's second-largest tobacco company, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., for similar products it has introduced.

In December 2001, 18 public-health groups petitioned the FDA to classify Star's Ariva product as a drug, which would have placed it under the same regulatory scrutiny as pharmaceuticals. The FDA denied that petition, responding that the product met the definition of a "customarily marketed" smokeless tobacco and thus did not fall under the agency's regulatory authority at the time.
 

Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch, 23 February 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/9rTwO8

Canada: Pitch made to ban smoking at soccer matches

The Winnipeg Youth Soccer Association wants to ban smoking within 50 metres of any youth game following complaints from referees and parents that the air is being fouled by sideline smokers.

"There were a couple of incidents last year where a referee had to stop a game because somebody had lit up ... right on the sideline and it was wafting onto the field," association president Alastair Gillespie said Monday. "We're doing this for the protection of the kids."

 The group is consulting a lawyer and talking with city hall to ensure it has the legal authority to ban smoking on municipal fields during its games, and hopes to implement the rule this spring.

Smokers may be getting used to this kind of treatment. It is growing across the country. Toronto started banning smoking near all playgrounds and wading pools last year. The Nova Scotia community of Truro bans outdoor smoking along a popular downtown shopping strip. The Edmonton Folk Music Festival, held outside in the city each summer, has a no-smoking area that covers half of the seating area in front of its outdoor main stage.

It's getting virtually impossible to find a place to light up, according to one smoker's rights group. "This is just insanity. People have gone completely insane," said Arminda Mota, president of My Choice. My Choice was set up several years ago with funding from tobacco manufacturers, although Mota says the group no longer receives money from the industry. "What (anti-smoking advocates) want is to criminalize smokers, and they want children not to see any smokers anywhere."

But anti-smoking advocates disagree. They point to a 2005 University of Maryland study that found levels of second-hand smoke outdoors did not dissipate to low levels until travelling seven metres or more and that distance increased if there were multiple smokers standing together.Gillespie is hopeful most soccer moms and dads will support the smoking ban.

"It's not our desire to offend people or to be looking for trouble," he said. "I hope people will accept this and if they wish to smoke, they will smoke away from the (field)."

But smokers are getting fed up with the growing list of areas where they can't light up, Mota said. "Are we going to live in a world where everybody is bullied because of their way of life?," she said. "What they want is to make it virtually impossible to smoke absolutely anywhere, so basically you're criminalizing law-abiding citizens."
 

Source: CBS News, 22 February 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/cbnCae

Treasury escapes bill for billions in tax refunds

The Treasury may escape a bill for billions of pounds in tax refunds after winning the latest round of a closely followed test case against British American Tobacco (BAT). 

The UK’s Court of Appeal said today that companies seeking refunds for taxes that were unlawfully imposed by HMRC must do so within six years of the taxes being collected.The finding was part of a wider judgment in a long-running battle in which BAT, the tobacco group, has challenged HRMC’s previous policy of taxing dividend payments from foreign subsidiaries.

The Treasury’s liability has been estimated at up to £5 billion. However, accountants said that the Court of Appeal’s ruling will dramatically reduce the size of any payout, even if it ultimately loses to BAT. It's a big win for the Government," Bill Dodwell, a tax partner at Deloitte, said. "It limits their liability in a massive way." 

HMRC welcomed today’s judgment but said that it may be appealed.  BAT, which brought the test case on behalf of 20 companies, argued that HMRC’s taxation of foreign dividends was inconsistent with European law, as payments by UK subsidiaries were not subjected to a similar tax.BAT succeeded at earlier stages of its fight, winning favourable rulings in the ECJ and the High Court in London.

However, lawyers said that the Court of Appeal’s complex 180-page judgment was more favourable to HMRC than to the tobacco company.Lady Justice Arden, Lord Justice Stanley Burnton and Lord Justice Etherton referred the matter of the legality of the tax on foreign dividends back to the ECJ to decide.

The judges’ decision to restrict HRMC’s liability to payments within six years was more significant, lawyers said.Unless it is overturned by the Supreme Court on appeal, the finding will render the bulk of claims for refunds on tax paid on foreign dividends invalid, accountants said, as they relate to payments dating back more than six years. Some claims date back to the 1970s.In July, the Government changed the law on foreign dividend payments so that they are no longer subject to tax, in line with payments from UK subsidiaries.

Source: The Times, 23 February 2010
Link: http://bit.ly/ds7Lne