HEADLINES

• Children's deaths in house fire caused by cigarette an accident, finds coroner
• Abu Dahbi: 35t of tobacco seized from tyre shop
• USA: Half a million die from smoking yearly
• Australia: Pricey cigarettes mean fewer teens smoke
• Australia: McCabe smoking lawsuit settled out of court

• Children's deaths in house fire caused by cigarette an accident, finds coroner

  The deaths of three children in a house fire in Bridlington, East Yorkshire, probably caused by a discarded cigarette, were accidental, a coroner has ruled.

  Maddie Hudson, three, William Beale, nine, and Anthony Fothergill, five, died in a blaze which left their mother, Samantha Hudson, brain-damaged, an inquest at Hull coroners' court heard.

  Fire investigators concluded that a discarded cigarette was the likely cause of the fire. It smouldered for a time before igniting clothing, possibly school uniforms, left in the room under a bay window.

  Source: The Guardian - 31 March 2011
  Link: http://bit.ly/i58BZU

• Abu Dahbi: 35t of tobacco seized from tyre shop

  The Municipality of Abu Dhabi City has seized a large quantity of tobacco, estimated at 35,000kg, from a tyre sales and repairs shop on Al Diffaa Road, near Al Saadah Bridge in Abu Dhabi.

  The quantity seized comprises 700 sacks, each weighing 50kg in addition to 20 large barrels of raw tobacco, and 20 cartons comprising hundreds of bottles used for packing tobacco as well as processing, wrapping and grinding utensils. All the seized tobacco, processing equipment and packing tools from the site were confiscated.

  Source: The Gulf Today - 01 April 2011
  Link: http://bit.ly/fkyFI1

• USA: Half a million die from smoking yearly

  Smoking causes half a million deaths each year in the U.S., killing slightly more men than women, new statistics show.

  The rates of smoking-related deaths in men were comparable to what's been found in other recent analyses. The numbers for the women, however, were higher than expected.

  For the new report, Dr. Brian Rostron, then of the University of California, Berkeley, used data from a national health survey that asked nearly 250,000 people if and how much they smoked currently and in the past.

  Participants were tracked for 2 to 9 years after filling out the survey. By the time the study ended, in 2006, about 17,000 of them had died.

  Rostron, who now works at the Food and Drug Administration, calculated the odds of dying for smokers and non-smokers of different ages and genders.

  Then he applied the extra risks due to smoking to the total U.S. population. According to his calculations, there were an average of about 290,000 smoking-related deaths in men each year between 2002 and 2006 and 230,000 in women - a total of over half a million deaths.

  In all, about 2.5 million people in the U.S. die every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

  Source: Reuters Health - 31 March 2011
  Link: http://reut.rs/eCn1VU

• Australia: Pricey cigarettes mean fewer teens smoke

  In a study published in the journal Addiction, researchers led by Dr. Melanie Wakefield of The Cancer Council in Victoria set out to determine the effect of anti-smoking policies and hikes in cigarette taxes on teen smoking.

  Every 3 years, from 1990 through 2005, the researchers surveyed more than 20,000 Australian high school students, asking them if they had smoked a cigarette in the last month. Wakefield and her colleagues compared rates of teen smoking with changes in cigarette prices over those 15 years - adjusted for inflation - and with the state of anti-smoking policies, such as bans on smoking indoors.

  The rate of teen smoking dropped from about 23 percent in 1990 to about 13 percent in 2005. In that same time period, the cost of cigarettes doubled, from almost 20 cents each to 40 cents each, due to increases in tobacco taxes.

  The authors also found that as government spending on anti-smoking campaigns went up, teen smoking went down. The same was true for regulations on indoor smoking; the tighter the regulations, the less teenagers smoked.

  Source: Reuters - 31 March 2011
  Link: http://reut.rs/fbBmTK

• Australia: McCabe smoking lawsuit settled out of court

  A long-running court battle between the family of a former smoker and British American Tobacco has ended in an out of court settlement.

  In 2002, Rolah McCabe became the first Australian and the first person outside the US to win a compensation case against an international tobacco company.

  British American Tobacco was ordered to pay $700,000 but the Court of Appeal overturned the damages decision.

  Mrs McCabe died seven months after her court victory.

  Eight years on, British American Tobacco and the lawyers for the McCabe family have announced the dispute has been settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.

  Source: ABC News - 31 March 2011
  Link: http://bit.ly/fMUKCD