African farmers turn backs on tobacco 

According to Lutgard Kagaruki from the Tanzania Tobacco Control Forum, many Tanzanian farmers are no longer growing tobacco.

Tanzania is the second biggest grower of tobacco in Africa after Malawi, but many tobacco farmers were "enslaved in permanent debt to the tobacco companies" and wanted to get out, said Kagaruki.

"The tobacco companies give subsidies and loans for them to buy fertiliser, chemicals (pesticides) and seeds."

"But then they under-grade the crops and set low prices. The farmers can't repay the loans and find themselves enslaved in permanent debt bondage."

The 80 000 tobacco farmers in Tanzania earned an estimated US$1 a day, she added.

In addition, three-quarters of the farmers smoked and suffered from the respiratory sicknesses and cancer associated with smoking.

The TTCF encouraged tobacco farmers in the Namtambo district to grow alternative crops. In October 2006 there were 22 300 tobacco farmers in the district, but a year later there were only 6 333," said Kagaruki.

"They have started growing simsim (sesame seeds) and sunflowers and groundnuts, and they are doing well.

While tobacco is Tanzania's second biggest foreign exchange earner, bringing about $55,5-million into the country in 2003/4, one of the country's cancer institutes, the Ocean Road Cancer Institute, reported spending $30-million treating smoking-related cancers during the same period.

However, Dr Yusuf Salojee, from South Africa's National Council Against Smoking, warned that finding alternative livelihoods for farmers does not work as a tobacco control measure.

"With the collapse of Zimbabwe's tobacco farms after land seizures, all that happened was that Tanzania, Zambia and even Mozambique started to grow more tobacco," he told the conference.

Daniel Sibetchem, from Cameroon's health ministry, said there was a worrying increase in smoking among his country's young people, with 44 percent of schoolchildren having tried tobacco.

Source: IOL, 21 November 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/58dpzm

Paternal smoking indoors harms child health

According to new research from Korea, fathers-to-be who smoke and want to protect the health of their families should take it outside.

Newborns whose fathers had smoked in the home had higher levels of nicotine in their hair than babies born to non-smoking dads, Dr. Moon-Woo Seong of the National Center in Goyang and colleagues found.

They concluded that outside smoking substantially reduces maternal and fetal exposure.

The study, reported in the latest issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology, included 63 mother-father-newborn trios. None of the mothers in the study were smokers, or were regularly exposed to secondhand smoke outside the home. In 27 families neither parent smoked, fathers only smoked outdoors in 27 of the families, and in 9 families the father smoked indoors.

Mothers living with smokers had significantly more nicotine and its byproduct cotinine in their hair, Seong and colleagues found, but there were no significant differences between nicotine and cotinine levels in the hair of babies with non-smoking fathers and those with smoking fathers.

However, when the researchers looked separately at indoor and outdoor smoking, they did find higher nicotine levels in the children of indoor smokers compared to outdoor smokers.

"Our findings," the team concludes, "indicate that paternal smoking inside the home leads to significant fetal and maternal exposure to environmental tobacco smoke. We also found that paternal smoking outside the home helpfully reduces levels of environmental tobacco smoke to which the smoker's wife and her fetus are exposed."

SOURCE: American Journal of Epidemiology, November 15, 2008.

Source: Reuters News, 21 November 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/5n8hlh

USA: Philip Morris skinny cigarettes 'purse pack' come under fire

A pink purse pack of skinny cigarettes has health groups demanding that Philip Morris USA withdraw the new product.

Virginia Slims Superslims Lights, which come in a lipstick-size pack of 20 cigarettes, are "clearly designed to appeal to teen girls," says Cheryl Healton of the American Legacy Foundation, an anti-smoking group. 

She and two dozen other health and women's groups, including the American Cancer Society, sent Philip Morris a letter this week demanding the product's removal from the market. They said smoking endangers women's health and does not empower them as suggested by the longtime Virginia Slims tagline, "You've come a long way, baby."

Philip Morris, the nation's largest cigarette maker, is targeting women — not girls — and has no plans to pull the product, spokesman Bill Phelps says. He says the company has sold "superslim" cigarettes before but not in such a small box.

"This packaging is innovative," Phelps says. "We call them 'purse packs.' " He says they entered stores nationwide last month. The menthol version is in a teal box.

U.S. cigarette sales have been falling since 1998. To hold market share, tobacco companies have launched an array of smoking and smokeless tobacco products.

"Product and packaging innovation has been our focus for a few years," says David Howard of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, the nation's second-largest cigarette maker.

Last year, for example, Reynolds launched Camel No. 9, a cigarette that comes in shiny black-and-fuchsia boxes with rounded corners. The menthol flavor comes in a black-and-teal pack. Howard says focus groups of adult women called the packaging "stylish."

Public health groups, including the American Lung Association, demanded Camel No. 9's removal. They were outraged by its marketing in fashion magazines, pink packaging and name suggestive of Chanel No. 5 perfume.

The cigarette is selling well, Howard says. He says the company decided voluntarily last year to stop all print ads for its tobacco products.

"The public health community has no way to require tobacco companies to remove a product, no matter how dangerous," says Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

He added "That will change if Congress passes a pending bill to give the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco products as President-elect Barack Obama favours such legislation."

Source: USA Today, 21 November 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/57645x

WHO wants plain cigarette packages

Health experts from across the world met to discuss proposals to strip tobacco manufacturers of one of their last marketing tools: eye-catching packaging. Representatives of the 160 countries that are party to the 2003 World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control met in Durban to discuss guidelines on the implementation of the treaty.

Among the proposals under consideration is a move towards generic or plain cigarette packs, with standardized colours, fonts and “only the most objective information,” including a very large health warning, according to Heather Selin of the Framework Convention secretariat.

Gone would be the color coding that manufacturers use to denote the cigarettes’ “strength” - a notion rejected by health experts as misleading.

Plain cigarette packaging has been discussed in some countries like Canada since 1995 , according to Selin.

Given the global clampdown on cigarette advertising, packaging has become one of few remaining vehicles for brand promotion.

Manufacturers have, therefore, vigorously, resisted the push for stripped-down packs.

“Not only would a standardisation of cigarette packaging drive down pricing and put an end to the appeal of premium cigarettes, which carry higher profit margins, but it would also lead to a rise in illicit cigarette trade,” according to the Tobacco Journal International.

Even if, as Selin deemed likely, the parties to the tobacco convention meeting in Durban decide to adopt new guidelines on plain packaging, governments would not be bound by them.

But it would bolster calls for tighter regulations on packaging in countries that were already leaning that way, she said.

Also discussed at the Durban conference was a proposal to make pictorial health warnings, rather than text-only warnings, the norm on packs.

Surveys in Canada, Singapore and Brazil, have found graphic warnings to be much more effective than text in turning people off smoking, particularly among lower-income groups.

The tobacco treaty merely states that health warnings “may” include pictures or pictograms.

Source: The China Post, 23 November 2008
Link: http://tinyurl.com/59xg8l