Philippines may soon make smoking warnings graphic

A Philippine legislative committee approved a bill on Tuesday that would compel cigarette manufacturers to print illustrations of smoking hazards on cigarette packs to curb smoking in a country where tens of thousands die yearly from tobacco-related diseases.

The committee composed of both senators and congressmen passed the bill directing the Department of Health to issue 12 templates of pictures and illustrations that warn about the dangers of smoking.

The full Senate and House of Representatives are expected to formally pass the bill before it is signed into law by President Benigno Aquino III, who backed an earlier "sin tax" law that raised taxes on tobacco and alcohol products.

The illustrations, which could include pictures of cancerous lungs and throats, will occupy the lower half of the front and back panels of a cigarette pack. The current warning contains only words, saying that smoking is dangerous.

Philippine health officials said in 2012 that 17.3 million of the country's 96 million people smoke — one of Southeast Asia's highest rates — and 87,000 die per year from tobacco-related diseases.

"This is a big victory for health advocates," said Dr. Anthony Leachon, president of the Philippine College of Physicians.

 

FILE - In this March 20, 2013 file photo, protesters heckle at foreign delegates attending one of th …

Leachon said images of damaged body parts, such as before-and-after pictures of a lung ravaged by smoking, will have a greater impact, especially on non-smokers.

The bill also instructs the Department of Education to include the hazards of smoking in the school curriculum.
In recent years, more than 40 countries or jurisdictions have introduced cigarette labels with graphic anti-smoking warnings. The World Health Organization said in a survey done in countries with graphic labels that a majority of smokers noticed the warnings and more than 25 percent said the warnings led them to consider quitting.

The Philippine bill follows the passage in late 2012 of a "sin tax" law, which raised the excise tax on tobacco and alcohol products to discourage their use and raise revenues for health programs.

A recent survey commissioned by the Department of Health indicated that the law helped reduce smoking among the poor and young people, the main targets of the law.

It said that smoking prevalence among the very poor dropped from 38 percent in December 2012 to 25 percent in March this year. Smoking among people aged 18 to 24 also fell from 35 percent to 18 percent during the same period.

North Carolina to consider new e-cigarette tax

North Carolina, the nation's longtime leader in tobacco production, is now considering a new tax on its tobacco-free relative — the electronic cigarette — after a state committee approved draft legislation Tuesday.
The proposal will now head to the Republican-led North Carolina General Assembly to consider during its upcoming session, which begins Wednesday. A House-Senate study committee unanimously approved draft legislation for the new excise tax and support was widespread across the aisle, even coming from some unlikely groups.
The typically anti-tax Republicans are on board and Winston-Salem based tobacco giant Reynolds America essentially asked for it.
The tax rate would be applied by volume, at 5 cents per milliliter of the liquid used in e-cigarette cartridges; significantly less than current tax rates on traditional tobacco products.
Reynolds America, based in Winston-Salem, is the nation's second-largest cigarette producer and has historically opposed higher state cigarette taxes.
"I promise you, you've never heard me or anyone in any other industry stand up and ask for their products to be taxed, but yes, ma'am, we are (asking to be taxed,)" said company Vice President David Powers.
A Reynolds electronic cigarette carries a 0.5 milliliter cartridge and is equivalent in puff counts to a pack of tobacco cigarettes. Other brands can carry a cartridge of 1 milliliter or more. The new tax would add about 2.5 cents to the cost of lighting up one e-cigarette compared to the 45 cents currently added to a pack of regular cigarettes. All other tobacco products, such as snuff or pipes, are taxed at 12.8 percent of their price, according to documents produced by the state Revenue Laws Study Committee.
Powers said because the federal government has already classified e-cigarettes as a tobacco product, the company asked legislators to create the tax to ensure it would be applied fairly, and reflective of the lower health risk e-cigarettes pose.
"It's eventually going to get taxed. We want it to be done the right way," he said. By taxing the liquid volume of the e-cigarette, the proposal covers all the e-cigarette products on the market in the same way at a fair rate, he said.
Electronic cigarettes neither have tobacco nor emit smoke, but create a vapor from a nicotine liquid that is heated up with a battery.
Powers said it is hard to predict how many cigarette users will eventually move from traditional tobacco to e-cigarettes because the Reynolds company currently only sells its brand of e-cigarettes in Colorado and Utah. It plans to launch the product nationwide later this month.
Sen. Floyd McKissick, D-Durham, noted that the low rate could cause significant state revenue losses down the road.
"That will have an impact upon us when we do our budget projections for lost revenues ... moving from 45 cents to 5 cents," he said.
If the tax passes, it is expected to generate about $5 million in revenue by 2015, according to the state Revenue Laws Study Committee.
The new tax proposal also includes a provision to ban e-cigarettes from state jails and prisons and prohibits them from being distributed to minors.
Only one other state has passed an excise tax on e-cigarettes, though several others are considering similar taxes. South Carolina is proposing the same 5 cent volume rate. Minnesota adopted a plan to tax e-cigarettes at 95 percent of their wholesale rate and Washington state is considering a 75 percent tax, according to research conducted by committee staff.
The e-cigarette industry generated $1.8 billion in sales in 2013, according to Nielsen data. The state estimates that 87-102 milliliters of e-cigarette liquid is sold in North Carolina each year.

The Food and Drug Administration is giving tobacco manufacturers less than three months to provide proof that any product introduced since February 2007 is "substantially equivalent" to products already in the marketplace. If a manufacturer does not file a report by March 22, or cannot substantiate its evidence, the FDA said Wednesday that it could remove the product from store shelves. The announcement updated the guidance provided to manufacturers in June 2009 as part of enacting the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. Manufacturers of any product introduced after March 22 must submit an application and obtain a marketing order from the FDA before placing the product on the market. The emphasis of the new rules puts R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. , the manufacturer of Camel cigarettes , in the bull's-eye because it has been the most prolific developer of tobacco products in recent years, including Camel Snus and the Camel orbs, sticks and film like strips for the tongue. "No known existing tobacco product is safe, and a market order issued by the FDA for these products should never be interpreted as such," said Dr. Lawrence Deyton, the director of the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products. "These products will not be safer, but we are required by this law to not allow even more dangerous products to cause further harm to those Americans who use tobacco products." The FDA defined "substantially equivalent" as "being the same in terms of ingredients, design, composition, heating source and other characteristics to an existing, single-predicate product or have different characteristics, but not raise different questions of public health." Manufacturers that submit evidence will be allowed to continue to market their products "unless the FDA issues an order finding the product to be not substantially equivalent" to the product already in the marketplace. Bill Godshall, the executive director of Smoke Free Pennsylvania, said he would not be surprised if the FDA uses the substantially-equivalent requirement "to try to ban many or most new tobacco products, especially the least hazardous ones." "The FDA could claim that substantially equivalent means virtually identical, and/or that a slightly different color, shape, size or even a 5 percent difference in any constituent means the products aren't substantially equivalent,' Godshall said. The new rules likely cover the dissolvable Camel products that Reynolds placed in test markets in January 2009. Reynolds recently said it is reconfiguring the test markets. Maura Payne, a spokeswoman for Reynolds, said in June 2009 that the products are substantially equivalent to dissolvable sold by Star Scientific Inc.'s Ariva and Stonewall. It is not clear whether the rules apply to Camel Snus. Reynolds began test markets for Camel Snus in June 2006 before taking it national in January 2009. Analysts said that any substantial changes to Camel Snus, including potentially new or altered flavoring, could make it susceptible to the new rules.

A proposed new tax on electronic cigarettes

Gov. Chris Christie’s budget proposal, delivered last month, suggests raising taxes on the “e-cigarettes” to the regular rate for cigarettes — which is $2.70 per pack — saying they’re “unregulated and subject to standard State sales taxes only.”
But at the state Assembly Budget Committee’s meeting today at Montclair State University, Steven Clark — a Union City resident who said he quit smoking regular cigarettes a year ago thanks to e-cigarettes that provide nicotine through liquid vapor instead of smoke — called the idea of raising taxes on them “reckless and harmful.”
“Electronic cigarettes have the potential to make smoking obsolete within a generation,” Clark said. “With the right combination of tailored regulation and cost-incentives, e-cigs might end smoking as we know it.”
Clark said he’s a member of Consumer Advocates for Smoke Free Alternatives, a pro e-cigarette advocacy group, but that he’s not speaking on its behalf. He said the group is not funded by the e-cigarette industry.
Because the products are so new, there is not much data on their safety. According to a Feb. 28 press release from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), e-cigarette vapor has “far fewer of the toxins found in smoke compared to traditional cigarettes,” but “the impact of e-cigarettes on long-term health must be studied” and “research is needed to assess how e-cigarette marketing could impact initiation and use of traditional cigarettes, particularly among young people.”
CDC Director Tom Frieden said nobody knows at this point “whether they will decrease or increase use of traditional cigarettes.”
Mark Anton, a Flanders resident who owns company that imports and sells e-cigarettes, said he plans to begin manufacturing the liquid nicotine for the products soon. But if the tax kicks in, he said, he’d open the manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania instead.
“We would be forced to compete with states that do not have such a tax in place,” he said.
The opponents of the tax – five in all — had a sympathetic ear in the committee’s chairman, Assemblyman Gary Schaer, a smoker for more than 40 years.
“You’ll forgive me as I hold my own e-cig in my hand,” Schaer (D-Passaic) said. ‘I will admit to you that after having gone through every anti-smoking possibility… it’s something which I will agree with you has given me some small modicum of help and, more importantly, it’s given my wife and kids some modicum of health.”
Assemblyman John Burzichelli (D-Gloucester) said the state Treasurer estimates the tax would generate $35 million in revenue annually but that the administration has often been “creative” in its estimates.
Other concerns raised at the budget committee included how the state funds higher education, increasing college financial aid, how the state does not meet the school funding formula, services for the autistic, and a cut in Charity Care funding for hospitals and a reduction in NJ Transit funding.
Sister Patricia Codey — the president of Catholic HealthCare Partnership of New Jersey and sister of state Sen. Richard Codey (D-Essex) — said it makes no sense for the state to cut $25 million from the Charity Care program, while giving the same amount to University Hospital in Newark, which was set to lose more than $23 million funding under the Charity Care formula.
“Why should every hospital in the state be subject to the Charity Care formula and University Hospital be given special treatment at the expense of other safety net providers. Is this fair?” Codey said.
Montclair State University President Susan Cole said she’s thankful for an infusion of borrowed money to help schools build infrastructure, but called the way the budget distributes higher education funding “appalling.”
“There are huge inequities in how the campuses are treated with no rationale whatsoever, and there continues to be appropriation without policy,” Cole said. “This is a situation I have talked to you about for a number of years, but unfortunately we are still there.”
Joan Migton, a parent of an autistic daughter and member of the Supportive Housing Association of New Jersey, urged the committee to increase funding for “shelter workshops” where the developmentally disabled can do contract work for businesses. Migton said the workshop her daughter attends needs more funding, and she’s afraid the state will eventually stop paying for them because they’re not eligible for federal Medicaid dollars.
“Sheltered workshops offer individuals with disabilities a safe environment where they can be productive and do actual contract work for local businesses,” Migton said. “A well run workshop is an appropriate setting for my daughter who has some work skills but does not know how to keep herself safe in a public workplace and could wander off with anyone.”
David Peter Alan, who chairs the Lackawanna Coalition — a transit rider advocacy group — said the proposed budget cuts NJ Transit by $13 million.
“The riders have to make that up, either through increased fares or transit cuts,” Alan said, adding that it’s particularly unfair after riders endured a 25 percent fare increase in 2010. “We believe it was unfair to do that, to single out transit riders to pay so much more.”

Smoking in bed likely cause of fatal Penticton motel fire

Smoking in bed likely sparked the fire that killed a woman last summer in a Penticton motel room, a coroner’s investigation has determined.
Kimberly Lynn Lakey, 27, died late on Aug. 15, 2013, in her room at the Jubilee Motel, where she’d been staying for three months, coroner Jed Maddock wrote in his report, which was released publicly this week.
Fire investigators found an open pack of cigarettes on the bed, an unlit cigarette between two pillows, and cigarette butts throughout the unit, plus several spent matches at the foot of the bed.
Also at the foot of the bed was an upright box spring that appeared to have been used as a room divider, Maddock wrote, and that’s where the fire is believed to have started.
Most of the heat damage in the room was found on the ceiling above the foot of the bed, while investigators found evidence that unattended smoking material likely began smoldering between the end of the bed and the upright box spring. Chesterfield Blue
“The smouldering material would have caused a great deal of smoke and carbon monoxide inside the sealed motel unit,” Maddock wrote, adding that fire officials believe the blaze extinguished itself after it burned up all available oxygen in the room.
Lakey’s body was found just inside the door of the suite.
Maddock also noted that a smoke detector inside the room wasn’t functioning and that motel management said tenants often disconnected the devices.
Based on toxicology tests, the coroner concluded the cause of Lakey’s death was carbon monoxide poisoning due to smoke inhalation, but he also listed “a high level of intoxication” from illicit drugs as a contributing factor.
Lakey’s body reportedly contained an amount of methamphetamine and amphetamine “in the toxic range but slightly below the lethal range.”
Maddock ruled the death an accident and made no recommendations.

Smokeless tobacco products sold in Massachusetts from 2003 to 2012

Abstract

Background Sales of smokeless tobacco products have increased in the USA. More than one in eight males in the 12th grade are current users of smokeless tobacco. Surveillance data examining nicotine levels of smokeless tobacco subsequent to 2006 have not been reported in the literature. Davidoff iD Blue cigarettes.

Methods Data on nicotine levels and design features (eg, pH, moisture content, leaf cut and flavour) of smokeless tobacco products sold in Massachusetts were obtained from manufacturers between 2003 and 2012. Design features, levels and temporal trends in unionised (free) nicotine and nicotine content of smokeless tobacco products were analysed overall and by manufacturer and product type.

Results The annual total number of moist snuff products increased from 99 in 2003 to 127 in 2012. The annual total number of reported snus products increased from 4 in 2003 to the highest level of 62 in 2011, before decreasing to 26 in 2012. Overall, mean unionised (free) nicotine remained relatively stable (β=0.018 (95% CI −0.014 to 0.050) mg/g dry weight/year) from 2003 to 2012. However, both levels and temporal trends of mean free nicotine varied significantly among manufacturers (p<0.001). Since 2003, the free nicotine content of snus has increased at an overall rate of 0.192 (95% CI 0.138 to 0.246) mg/g dry weight/year, but varied by manufacturer (p<0.001).

Conclusions The number of smokeless tobacco products increased in the Massachusetts market. Further, mean unionised (free) nicotine levels in smokeless tobacco products of several manufacturers continued to rise despite decreasing levels from other manufacturers. The current success in tobacco control is very likely undermined without government surveillance, regulation and widespread public disclosure of nicotine levels in these products.