News dall’estero 29 giugno – 2 luglio 2018
Scottish Grocer and Convenience Retailer, 01/07/2018
Scotland: Deprived areas could see reduction in number of retailers selling cigarettes
Proposals found in the Scottish government’s five-year action plan ‘Raising Scotland’s Tobacco-free Generation’ include restricting the number of retailers allowed to sell tobacco, “particularly where smoking rates are highest such as in more deprived communities”; introducing further price increases on tobacco; and rolling out a new conditional registration or licencing regime for retailers selling tobacco. Scottish Government public health minister Aileen Campbell said: “The action plan demonstrates our commitment to the new Public Health Priorities which include an ambition for a Scotland free from the harms caused by alcohol, tobacco and other drugs.”
https://www.scottishgrocer.co.uk/2018/07/overprovision-for-cigarettes/
The Times, 29/06/2018
Tobacco giant buys stake in medical cannabis
One of the UK’s biggest tobacco manufacturers is seeking to diversify from the under-pressure cigarette market by taking a stake in a start-up researching medical uses of cannabis. Imperial Brands, the FTSE 100 company behind Winston and Gauloises cigarettes, is investing in Oxford Cannabinoid Technologies (OCT). It is thought to be the first time that a Big Tobacco company has invested in cannabis research in the UK. Deborah Arnott, chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, said: “Imperial talks of there being ‘significant potential’ in cannabinoid products but they’re not a pharmaceutical company, they’re a recreational drug company. This is all about developing the expertise they need to market cannabis not as a medicine, but as a recreational drug. It’s a bad move for a start-up like OCT to besmirch its reputation by taking money from an industry responsible for killing more than seven million people a year. And it bucks the trend. Major investors all round the world, from banks and pension funds, to insurers and sovereign wealth funds, are all getting out of tobacco.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/tobacco-giant-buys-stake-in-medical-cannabis-qpd2hlvqw
FCTC, 28/06/2018
The protocol to eliminate illicit trade in tobacco products is live
On the 27 June 2018, the conditions for the entry into force of the first legally binding instrument adopted under the WHO FCTC were met. The ratification of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, meant the necessary number of Parties to the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products was reached, paving the way to eliminate illicit trade of tobacco products. This achievement is a milestone in the history of tobacco control, as the Protocol contains a full range of measures to combat illicit trade distributed in three categories: preventing illicit trade, promoting law enforcement and providing the legal basis for international cooperation. Moreover, it aims to secure the supply chain of tobacco products, through licensing, due diligence and record keeping, and requires the establishment of a global tracking and tracing regime that will allow Governments to effectively follow up tobacco products from the point of production to the first point of sale. The Parties can now hold the First session of the Meeting of the Parties to the Protocol (MOP1) in Geneva, Switzerland, from the 8th to the 10th of October 2018, following the Eighth Conference of the Parties (COP8) of the WHO FCTC.
http://www.who.int/fctc/mediacentre/press-release/protocol-entering-into-force/en/
BBC News, 29/06/2018
Australia: WTO backs plain cigarette packets
Australia has won a major trade dispute over its pioneering plain packaging for cigarettes, in a decision handed down by the World Trade Organization (WTO). Australia made it mandatory in 2011 for cigarettes to be sold in plain packets that carry health warnings. Seven years on, the WTO has rejected complaints from four nations that the laws violate international trade. Unless there is a successful appeal, the decision is expected to hasten similar regulations around the world. “Australia has achieved a resounding victory,” its government said in a statement on Friday. Cuba, Honduras, Dominican Republic and Indonesia – all tobacco producers – had argued that plain packaging infringed on trademarks and intellectual property rights. But the WTO rejected those arguments and assertions that alternative measures could achieve an equivalent benefit to public health.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-44652049
China Daily, 29/06/2018
China: Low funding cited as top reason for lackluster smoking control
Lack of funding has become a major obstacle to the enforcement of tobacco control regulations, according to a new report based on feedback from the governments of 18 major cities on the Chinese mainland. Wang Zhenyu, the head of the law firm that carried out the study, said “We found that lack of government funding is the biggest difficulty in tobacco control for many cities, and the problem has not improved over the past few years.” Of the 18 cities, nine disclosed the amount of money allocated for tobacco control for 2016. Beijing was top, with total funding of about 4.8 million yuan ($724,000), followed by Guangzhou, Guangdong province, at 4.6 million yuan. Funding on all the other seven cities was below 500,000 yuan. However, Jiang Yuan, director of the tobacco control office of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said that although Beijing has placed more emphasis on tobacco control than most other cities in China, but the funding level is still far from adequate. She said, “Per capita funding is far below many other countries and regions, such as Hong Kong.”
http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201806/29/WS5b35c762a3103349141dfc15.html
Reuters, 27/06/2018
China: Paternal smoking linked to miscarriage risk
Would-be fathers may increase their partner’s risk of miscarriage by smoking during the pregnancy, or even during the time leading up to conception, a large study from China suggests. Based on data for nearly 6 million pregnancies, researchers found that women whose partner smoked during the first few months of the pregnancy were 17% more likely to miscarry than women with nonsmoking partners. Women whose partners quit smoking around the time of conception had an 18% lower risk of miscarriage than those whose smoking partner didn’t quit, the study team reports in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. “Although we have known for a long time that if the mother smokes there is an increased risk for adverse pregnancy outcomes, dads who smoke also influence the ‘success’ of the pregnancy,” Dr. Alison Holloway, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
Reuters, 28/06/2018
Japan: Smoke exposure during pregnancy and infancy tied to hearing loss
Kids exposed to tobacco smoke in the womb and early in infancy could have double the odds of developing hearing loss compared with children who were not exposed to tobacco at all, a Japanese study suggests. Researchers examined data on 50,734 children born between 2004 and 2010 in Kobe City, Japan. Overall, about 4% of these kids were exposed to smoking during pregnancy or infancy, and roughly 1% had tobacco exposure during both periods. Hearing tests done when kids were 3 years old found that 4.6% of the children had hearing loss. They were 68% more likely to have hearing loss if they were exposed to tobacco during pregnancy, and 30% more likely if they inhaled second-hand smoke during infancy, the study found. When kids had smoke exposure during both periods, they were 2.4 times more likely than unexposed kids to have hearing loss.
Guardian, 29/06/2018
US: Opinion: 12-year-olds can’t buy cigarettes. Why can they work in tobacco fields?
In the US, a 12-year-old cannot legally walk into a store and buy cigarettes, but the law allows that same child to work in a tobacco field. A 16-year-old child tobacco worker told Human Rights Watch that tobacco was “the hardest of all the crops we’ve worked in. You get tired. It takes the energy out of you. You get sick, but then you have to go right back to the tobacco the next day.” When the seminal legislation the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed in 1938, it exempted agriculture from its extensive labor protections, including child labor. In 2011-12, the Obama administration attempted to ban teen work in tobacco, but farm groups claimed this would “kill the family farm” and the Obama administration promised to never implement them again during Obama’s tenure. Now, the Trump administration is working to remove hazardous work restrictions for students and apprentices that would allow minors to use chainsaws, meat slicers, compactors and other dangerous machinery for longer hours than currently allowed. We call on the tobacco industry to raise the minimum age of work on tobacco farms to 18 in the US and around the world immediately. It’s bad enough that the tobacco industry is willing to kill its customers with a dangerous product; it really should move to protect the workers who produce that product.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/28/tobacco-field-workers-cigarettes-work
Guardian, 01/07/2018
$39m cost of defending Australia’s tobacco plain packaging laws
The Australian government spent nearly $40m defending its world-first plain packaging laws against Philip Morris Asia, a tobacco multinational, according to freedom of information documents. The legal battle lasted six years and finished last Thursday, when the WTO ruled in favour of the Australian government. Philip Morris had taken its case to the permanent court of arbitration in 2012, using a clause in a 1993 Hong Kong-Australia trade deal to sue the Australian government. Philip Morris Asia lost its multi-year case, with the court ordering the tobacco giant to pay Australia’s legal costs in 2017, but the commonwealth government has resisted freedom of information requests for the past two years to reveal the full legal costs.
News 18, 30/06/2018
Study: Posts on social media about shisha pipes may promote usage
Posts with hashtags, such as #hookah or #shisha, on social media platforms may portray its use in an overwhelmingly positive manner despite its serious health risks, a new study suggests. The findings, published in the journal Health Education and Behavior, suggest that the portrayal and promotion of hookah smoking on social media can normalise its use and pose public health challenges. A team of researchers from Florida International University, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Miami, the Syrian Centre for Tobacco Studies, and the University of Pittsburgh performed a qualitative content analysis on a sample of 301 Instagram posts made with the hashtags #hookah or #shisha in October 2016. They found that 99.6% indicated positive sentiments towards hookah use and only one post (0.4%) mentioned its negative health effects. “A growing body of evidence suggests that smoking hookah can lead to nicotine dependence and many other known smoking-related illnesses such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory disease.” the researchers said.
