Tobacco News

International tobacco company Philip Morris has filed another legal challenge against the Federal Government’s plain packaging laws for tobacco products.

It already is challenging the laws under Australia’s bilateral trade treaty with Hong Kong and is seeking damages. Philip Morris is the third tobacco company to lodge a case in the High Court against the new laws.
British American Tobacco and Imperial Tobacco already have launched their own challenges to the legislation.
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RoBritish American Tobacco (BAT) is gearing up to take on the Australian government in a High Court challenge against its plan to enforce a plain packaging law for cigarettes. According to AFP, BAT is claiming the legislation violates its intellectual property rights.

The new law, which goes into effect December 1, 2012, would require all tobacco products sold in the country to be packaged in plain, beige wrapping. The packaging would also feature health warnings and disturbing images, such as diseased lungs and sick babies.
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The new “cancer comedy” 50 / 50 takes its name from the survival odds delivered to its protagonist as he’s diagnosed with cancer.

Your chance of not gagging when you see the new cigarette warning labels introduced this week by Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq? Far less. Companies have until June to get their art departments on the horror show, which will see 75 per cent of cigarette packaging plastered with diseased and rotting tongues, bloody urine in a toilet bowl and the gaping hole where a smoker named Leroy had his larynx removed.
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Drastic plans by Australia to become the first country to enforce plain packaging for cigarettes could cut smoking rates, and are likely to be emulated by Canada, New Zealand, and Britain, reinforcing Australia’s record as a world leader in antismoking measures.
The Australian government has announced draft legislation to outlaw all logos, colors, brand imagery, and promotional text from cigarette packets. The move will “take away the tobacco industry’s final capacity to promote its product,” says John Daube, professor of public health at Curtin University’s Institute of Public Policy in Perth. Ream more »

After a ban on plastic packaging for tobacco products, the Supreme Court is now considering a total ban on gutka and other smokeless tobacco products.
Srinath Reddy, PHFI said, “Tobacco is the number one killer. It kills more than 1 million Indians every year. If you are considering this as a food product, clearly its a very hazardous food product. So the PAFA act comes into play.” Ream more »

The Cabinet will on Tuesday take a call on the implementation of the new pictorial warning on tobacco products. The warning, a cancer-affected mouth, was to replace the current pictures — a scorpion on bidi packs and a cancer-affected lung on cigarette packs — from December 1.

The Union Health Ministry decided to go to the Cabinet after a GoM headed by Pranab Mukherjee informally met Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad last month and disapproved the new picture.
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Stressing the need to save young Filipinos from the dangers of cigarette smoking, a group of lawyers has asked the incoming administration to regulate further the packaging and labeling of tobacco products. The lawyers belonging to the non-government anti-tobacco coalition Health Justice, in a statement, also expressed full support for a Department of Health plan that would require tobacco manufacturers to print graphic picture health warnings on cigarette packs. Read more