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ASH Daily News
28 November 2002

HEADLINES

Pre-Budget report and tobacco smuggling
NFRN fears ad ban - ASH say tobacco firms must take burden
Anti-smoking campaigns boost the cause
Too young to worry about lung cancer?? Think again.

FULL TEXT


Pre-Budget report and tobacco smuggling

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, in his 2002 pre-budget report
speech underlined his determination to recover up to £2bn of revenues being
lost to smuggling and VAT fraud.

To coincide with the chancellor's speech, HM Customs and Excise released its
'2002 Pre-Budget Report: protecting indirect tax revenues' which summarises
its long-term strategy on tackling the illicit trade in tobacco.

The market in smuggled cigarettes has been curbed for the first time in the
last 10 years, the Treasury said yesterday. Figures showed that the market
share in smuggled cigarettes has not risen above 21 per cent over the last
year. Customs had seized 2.5 billion cigarettes and 13 tons of hand rolling
tobacco, reducing the taxes lost from £1.5bn to £290m in two years.

Full Guardian article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,849171,00.html
HM Customs report:
http://www.hmce.gov.uk/forms/budgetnotices/pbr-2002/ce1.pdf

Source: The Guardian, The Independent, Financial Times, 28 November 2002


NFRN fears ad ban - ASH say tobacco firms must take burden

The National Federation of Retail Newsagents (NFRN) in its final response to
a government consultation on tobacco advertising has voiced its concerns
that the ban would prove expensive to its members.

In its response, the NFRN said that 80 percent of newsagents have some sort
of tobacco advertising in shops, either on branded gantries, floor tiles or
ceiling lighting with tobacco branding.

But Judith Watt of Smoke Free London says that when Australia passes a
similar ad ban ten years ago, tobacco companies lied to retailers about what
Point of Purchase (PoP) was allowed. She said: “The government must address
that issue now.”

Action on Smoking and Health are demanding that the government make it a
criminal offence for tobacco manufacturers to mislead retailers about PoP
advertising, after the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act 2002 is
implemented early next year.

Clive Bates, director of ASH added: “Manufacturers should also be
responsible for removing and disposing of all the tobacco-branded PoP
material which will be banned under the regulations. Why should retailers
face those additional costs?”

Source: Asian Trader, 22 November; Marketing Week, 28 November 2002



Anti-smoking campaigns boost the cause

Smoking cessation nurses say a government campaign is helping them persuade
patients to kick the habit.

Health secretary Alan Milburn has promised more money for cessation services
and charities campaigning against smoking, plus prominent health warnings on
cigarette packs.

Liz Vickerstaff, who manages the York NHS walk in centre, said
‘re-energising’ campaigns provided a lot of the essential groundwork needed
to persuade patients to stop smoking.

The Royal College of Nursing’s tobacco education project manager Jennifer
Percival said: “The message about anti-smoking and the ways to treat
patients has got through to staff in cessation clinics, it now needs to move
through to other nurses.”

Source: Nursing Standard, 27 November 2002



Too young to worry about lung cancer?? Think again.

Two newspapers cover the stories of two people who survived lung cancer and
live to tell their tales.

The Sun reports on the Janet Varley, 52, a nurse with two daughters, a
husband, and a 30-a-day habit.

Her husband had been telling her for years to give up, and the kids would
waft out smoke from the car windows whenever she lit up. Even when her elder
sister Betty, 72, died of lung cancer nine years previously, she didn’t want
to think about it, theorising that ‘smoking doesn’t always cause this.’

She has had to have part of her left lung removed and some of her lymph
nodes. She says: “I had to fight this. I wanted to see my children and
grandchildren grow up and most of all retire with my husband. […] My message
is just stop now.”

The Mirror carries Steve’s story. Steve Bensley was only 34 when he was
diagnosed with lung cancer and given three months to live. He had ignored
his symptoms for so long that the doctors had given up on him.

He says: “Despite smoking between 20 and 40 cigarettes a day since I was 14,
it never occurred to me that I would get lung cancer, and certainly not in
my 30s.” His was fit and active, playing football every week and working 17
hours a day as a shipping manager, when he began to lose his appetite and
feel lethargic.

By August 2000 the shadow on the lung x-ray was diagnosed as cancer; the
tumour had spread to the extent that it was pushing on his heart, causing
pain. It was too widespread to operate on and Steve was given till Christmas
to live.

But he was operated on - surgeons discovered not one but three malignant
tumours in his lung. The cancer had also spread to the lining of his heart,
rear shoulder blade, larynx and windpipe. He was finally given the all clear
although he is now usually breathless and suffering nerve pain. He has had
to quit work.

He says: I just let it drift and put my head in the sand. My message is not
to smoke and get any symptoms checked out quickly. If I hadn’t left it so
long, maybe my treatment wouldn’t have been so drastic.”

Macmillan Cancer Relief and the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation have
joined forces this month to raise awareness of lung cancer.

Source: The Mirror, The Sun, 28 November 2002


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Naj Dehlavi
Action on Smoking and Health
102 Clifton Street
London EC2A 4HW
http://www.ash.org.uk