China: Seven cities join 'Tobacco Free Cities' campaign

Shanghai and Luoyang are among six cities, including Wuxi (Jiangsu), Changsha (Hubei), Ningbo (Zhejiang) and Tangshan (Hebei), which joined Qingdao in a campaign called "Tobacco Free Cities" launched in the coastal capital of Shandong province yesterday.

The five-year program, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, will provide the cities with funds to implement anti-smoking policies. Most of the seven cities that have joined the campaign already have smoking bans in place, but "hope to tighten controls and raise awareness" about the harmful effects of smoking.

Li Aihong, an official with the Luoyang disease prevention and control center, said her research found that 80 percent of people in her city are "forced to inhale secondhand smoke in their own homes".

"As most families now have only one child, we want to start with newlyweds, pregnant women and new mothers to urge their husbands not to light up at home for the sake of the baby," she said.

As the world's largest cigarette market, with annual sales of 2 trillion cigarettes, China has more than 350 million smokers, about a third of the world's smokers.

Shanghai hopes to use the program to achieve its target of becoming a "tobacco free" city ahead of the World Expo next year.

Shen Xiaoming, vice mayor of the metropolis, said they expect the program to help "create a tobacco-free environment for the people" of Shanghai.

"Later this year, Shanghai will promulgate a local tobacco-control regulation to strengthen its anti-smoking efforts," he said.

Between June and September, experts from the US-based Emory University and ThinkTank Research Center for Health Development in Beijing will help the seven cities appraise their current tobacco control measures, and help them chalk out targets for the future.

Each city will have access to $100,000 a year, provided by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

At the end of next June, the performance of each city will be evaluated to determine if the program must continue.

"What is the most important (for the success of the program) is the political will," said Jeffrey P Koplan, director of the Emory Global Health Institute.

The seven cities have been picked from a pool of 34 cities and the program is expected to expand to more regions next year, said Wang Ke'an, director of ThinkTank Research Center for Health Development
 

Source: China Daily, 24 June 2009
Link: http://tinyurl.com/ne4tn9

Pub plans to make tobacco history

A 17th century pub near where Sir Walter Raleigh is rumoured to have first smoked a pipe of tobacco is to run a stop-smoking course.

The Long Arms in South Wraxall near Bradford-on-Avon, in Wiltshire, is just two fields away from South Wraxall Manor, where legend has it tobacco was smoked for the first time in England.

Landlady Jacqui Price, who has run the pub with her husband Bob for the past four years, is signing up to the sessions along with head chef Dan Hinds. The scheme will be run for customers in the autumn.

Sir Walter is said to have been the first to bring tobacco to Britain from the New World in the late 16th century, and a maid at South Wraxall Manor reputedly doused him in water after thinking he was on fire as he puffed away on his pipe. But The Long Arms has been badly hit by the nationwide smoking ban, introduced in England in July 2007, and is now also suffering as a result of the credit crunch.

Mrs Price said she has lost a lot of regulars since the ban, and is even considering having to open later in the evening if she can't find a way to tempt them back into the pub. Mrs Price, who smokes 20 a day, said: "It's ironic that we are running a stop smoking course somewhere so closely associated with the start of smoking in this country. We hope a place on the course might be a nice present for somebody. Giving up smoking is hard enough, so it would be great if people were able to enjoy themselves and have a drink while they're doing it. We don't want to alienate the smokers, it's really sad that since the smoking ban they've been forced to stand outside in the rain."

Mrs Price is employing the services of Tessa Kirby, an expert in hypnosis and mind training techniques, to run the course.
 

Source: Channel 4 News, 25 June 2009
Link: http://tinyurl.com/mh9ndz

More mums-to-be quitting smoking

Teeside hospitals are winning their fight to reduce the number of women who smoke during pregnancy.

In February the Gazette revealed shocking figures showing one in three mums-to-be in the area were still smoking at the point of delivery - despite the habit increasing the risk of miscarriage and low birth weights.

But records for April show this has fallen to almost one in five (21.62%) for North Tees and Hartlepool - well below its current target of 24.68% and March’s figure of 25.94%.

Judith Stout, pictured, community and birthing centre matron at North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We are very pleased with the April figures but we are not getting complacent as next month’s figures may not be as good because we will be dealing with a different set of women.

“I think we are slowly but surely seeing the figures drop.”

She said midwifery assistants are talking to mums-to-be early on in pregnancy and offering those who smoke one-to-one support to cut down or quit.

“We have well-established links with Tees Stop Smoking Services and we are working with them now even more closely.”

She said the hard work of midwives, midwifery assistants and smoking cessation advisers, and appeals such as the Gazette’s Quit For Baby’s Sake campaign, are beginning to create positive results. She said: “We know it’s a hard thing to crack, especially in our area, but we are working as hard as we can to help these women.”

Additional work will be focused this year on increasing intervention initiatives from midwives and stop smoking teams and the launch of an incentive scheme. “We are trying to offer a friendly and more sympathetic service,” said Judith. “We are not here to judge.

“We know how dreadfully difficult it is to stop smoking at the best of times.

“Mums and dads across the world try to do the best for their children and I think if mum and dad can stop smoking during pregnancy and during the postnatal period, and reduce the baby’s exposure to smoke, then they are giving their baby the best start.”

South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said one in four of the mums-to-be booking into its hospitals are smokers but teams were on hand to offer support to those who want to quit.
 

Source: Gazette Live, 25 June 2009
Link: http://tinyurl.com/mvq72e

Pressure for Health Bill to ban cigarette machines

MPs have backed calls for cigarette vending machines to be banned. At a meeting hosted on Tuesday by the British Heart Foundation, former cabinet minister Ian McCartney said Parliament had an "absolute duty" to close a "loophole" which allowed people under the age of 18 to purchase cigarettes.

And Liberal Democrat MP Bob Russell gave his backing to the campaign, saying there have been "massive advances in the anti-smoking process, but there is a long way to go".

Peter Hollins, chief executive of the BHF, noted that every year in the UK some 114,000 people die as a result of smoking. "Smokers are almost twice as likely to have a fatal heart attack as non-smokers," he said.

While only one per cent of cigarettes are sold through vending machines, he said Department of Health statistics show that in 2006 more than one in six children who were regular smokers said they bought cigarettes from vending machines.

"There are a whole load of fixes which are suggested as an alternative to an outright ban - age verification technology and a variety of other technical gizmos, all of which, as far as we are concerned, are entirely unproven and in practice are unlikely to be used," Hollins added. We cannot see the case for continuing with cigarette vending machines."

And McCartney said the tobacco industry "kills a customer every minute of every day. Young people are targeted in our communities every day to take up smoking," he said. "Why? Because their relatives are already dying prematurely because of smoking."

The BHF is backing amendments to the Health Bill, currently being considered by Parliament, to ban cigarette vending machines.

McCartney said it was time to "get rid of what I think is the last loophole in the progress that we have made over the last decade or more in tackling the issues around tobacco smoking and the powerful lobby that surrounds it. We have a duty in this House to close that loophole, an absolute duty. This country's talent is its people. Its future is its children. We have to protect that talent and that future. That means banning vending machines. It's a life and death issue as far as I'm concerned. I'm voting for life every time. The tobacco industry will try and tell you that this is a regulation to far. Well, if we have to have 1,000 regulations to save 1,000 lives, let's do it."

And Russell told the event: "I certainly back the whole campaign here." Noting that the Commons used to sell its own branded cigarettes, he said that "things have advanced. There have been massive advances in the anti-smoking process, but there is a long way to go," he noted.

Source: Yahoo News, 25 June 2009
Link: http://tinyurl.com/mdj466