Tobacco News

Hollywood actor Dennis Hopper has died at his home in California at the age of 74 after battling prostate cancer.
The star passed away at his house in the coastal Los Angeles suburb of Venice surrounded by family and friends.
In a career spanning more than 50 years, Hopper appeared alongside his mentor James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and Giant.
He was best known for starring in the 1969 cult classic Easy Rider, for which he received an Oscar for the movie’s original screenplay.
The film is regarded as one of the greatest films of American cinema.
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The Foodtown and Woolworths supermarket chains will remove the words “light” and “mild” from cigarette adverts on their online shopping websites, after the Herald told them of an official warning against using the “potentially misleading” terms.

The Commerce Commission in 2008 issued a public warning to New Zealand’s three main tobacco companies over “light” and “mild” on tobacco packaging, saying the terms may mislead consumers and therefore risked breaching the Fair Trading Act.

The commission said consumers may believe they were exposing themselves to less harm by smoking those cigarettes, but there was “no such thing as a safe, or safer, cigarette”.
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Asian tobacco growers are meeting in Indonesia for a two-day summit on the challenges facing the industry.

It comes after a recent recommendation by the World Health Organization (WHO) to ban ingredients such as clove and other flavours in tobacco products.

Asian tobacco growers say if the WHO ruling is enforced it could threaten millions of tobacco farmers’ jobs.

Indonesia is the world’s largest producer of clove cigarettes and is particularly concerned about the move.

Tobacco growers from India, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia are taking part in the summit in Jakarta.
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Healis Sekhsaria Institute of Public Health, an anti-tobacco advocacy group, vehemently opposed the upcoming four-day industrial Global Tobacco Networking Forum (GTNF) summit, which is scheduled to be held between October 4 and October 9 in Bangalore’s ITC Royal Gardenia, stating that the event is in violation of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control to which India is a signatory nation.

Dr P C Gupta, Director of Healis Sekhsaria Institute of Public Health pointed out that the FCTC policy that India had signed includes a restriction on tobacco advertising, trade, sponsorship and promotion. The FCTC has stringent restrictions to protect people from exposure to smoking and consumption of other tobacco products. He said by being one of the official sponsors of the event, Tobacco Board of India has clearly violated the FCTC framework and demanded that the board immediately withdraw its sponsorship and cancel the event forthwith.
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Gov. David Paterson announced over the weekend that he plans to raise cigarette tax statewide. The proposal will be included in his next budget-extending legislation.

The new tax is slated to place $1.60 tax on the cost of a pack of cigarettes, raising it from $2.75 to $4.35—higher than the previous proposal to add $1 per pack. The taxes are projected to raise $290 million in extra revenue to help close a budget gap of $9.2 billion, reported Business Week.
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SECRET stashes of exotic tobacco products have been found in a series of raids.
The swoops have uncovered a booming black market in so-called shisha, also known as hookah, on Tyneside.

HM Revenue & Customs officers seized more than 100 kilos of the tobacco, which is either chewed or smoked through water pipes, during a special operation codenamed Fairground.

The strikes happened at two ethnic food stores in Newcastle’s West End and another in Gateshead town centre.
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EVEN AS the world celebrates No-Smoking Day. Do you really think this day has any significance in our lives or is it just a gimmick. The ban on smoking at public places which was brought into effect by the former Union Health Minister A Ramdoss is nothing but a sham.
Rural India continues to be plagued by serious health problems due to lack of proper health facilities. We need to shift our focus to that area rather than chase people who are adults and are well aware about the harmful effects of smoking. As banning smoking has given rise to another fad that is hookah bars which are as lethal as smoking cigarettes.
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There certainly is a great deal of awareness at the local, national and global level around smoking, secondhand smoke and the associated health risks.

Every year, the World Health Organization celebrates World No Tobacco Day. On a national level, we celebrate The Great American Smoke Out and Kick Butts Day.

On the local level, public health advocates work in schools and at local community events to provide resources and education on the dangers of starting to smoke, the benefits of quitting and the health impact of secondhand smoke, sometimes called environmental tobacco smoke.
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Futbol or football?

From the Los Angeles Times

Despite complaints that there’s too little scoring in soccer and the possibilities of draws are anticlimactic, the U.S. television audience doubled between the 2002 and 2006 World Cups. American children are playing soccer in greater numbers, and fans are filling stadiums across the country, although they may be there as much to see the Mexican national team as our own professional league. So while from Iran to Argentina, Iceland to Australia, much of the planet was counting down the days to last week’s launch of the World Cup in South Africa, the United States remains something of an outlier.

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The American Medical Association (AMA) wants e-cigarettes regulated like other drug delivery devices. The doctor’s group adopted that policy this week at a meeting in Chicago.

A doctor with the Wisconsin Medical Society who is attending the AMA’s annual meeting says e-cigarettes are marketed as something they aren’t. Michael Miller says e-cigarettes are a scam. He says the battery powered nicotine delivery system is used by some consumers who think it can help them cut back on smoking–even though there are no studies showing that. He says e-cigarettes are often marketed as a reduction process, or sometimes a substitute.
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