Page 11 - TOB Magazine Jan/Feb 2013

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TOBACCO OUTLET BUSINESS
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2013
TMA REPORT
demonstrating the safety or efficacy” of electronic
cigarettes for smoking cessation, Elaine Keller, president
of the Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives
Association, said such “devious tactics may actually
prevent smokers from saving their health and their lives
by switching to this low-risk alternative.”
…BAT CEO Nicandro Durante said the company plans
to invest more than £ 100 million (U.S.$ 161.4 million)
to develop alternative products to cigarettes such as
non-combustible cigarettes, which heat tobacco instead
of burning it, and nicotine inhalers, as increasing public
smoking bans and higher taxes could force smokers to
quit or look for smokeless alternatives in the coming
years.
…In its statement of defense filed in Ontario Superior
Court in response to JTI-Macdonald’s constitutional
challenge to Canada’s updated cigarette labeling
regulation, which increased the size of health warnings
from 50 percent to 75 percent of the front and back of
packs and also included more graphic visuals of the
health effects of smoking, the Federal government
argued that the regulation does not restrict a cigarette
maker’s property rights or its right to use its trademarks
and that the 75 percent coverage requirement is
“the least restrictive option” that seeks to balance the
government’s goal of improving the effectiveness of the
health labels with the industry’s desire “to communicate
product-related information to their customers.”
…Sri Lankan Health Minister Maithripala Sirisen
has decided to implement a new cigarette labeling
regulation, which will require pictorial health warnings
to cover 80 percent of cigarette packaging, starting
March 2013, according to a ministry spokesperson.
…The High Court of Australia, which on August 15
upheld the government’s plain packaging legislation,
on October 5 released details of its 6-1 ruling, which
said that while the measure “regulated the plaintiffs’
intellectual property rights and imposed controls on
the packaging and presentation of tobacco products,
it did not confer a proprietary benefit or interest on
the Commonwealth,” i.e. the government is not using
cigarette makers’ property for its own benefit.
…Even as cigarette makers in Australia stopped
manufacturing packs with brand logos on October 1
per the plain packaging legislation, which requires all
cigarettes to be sold in “drab dark brown” packaging
with graphic health warnings starting December 1, 2012,
BAT spokesman Scott McIntyre said the High Court’s
reasons for upholding the law show that the industry
had to prove the government gained a benefit from plain
packaging, which he called the Australian Constitution’s
“peculiar requirement” that many countries do not have.
…The Dominican Republic has held consultations
with Australia in its dispute before the World Trade
Organization on Australia’s plain packaging legislation,
while the WTO has established a panel to examine the
compatibility of the measure with its WTO obligations
for a separate dispute brought by Ukraine, Farner
Consulting reported.
…An article by Prof. Simon Chapman of the University
of Sydney in Australia published in the journal PLOS
Medicine says that adopting a licensing scheme for
smokers, which would require them to swipe a card to
buy cigarettes, while restricting the number of cigarettes
to 50 per day, could cut smoking prevalence and send
a powerful message that cigarettes are not an ordinary
commodity since “they kill one in two of their users.”
In a BBC interview, Chapman compared the ease of
buying cigarettes with the need for a prescription to buy
medicinal drugs, which he called a temporary license to
consume a drug, and said that to get a license a smoker
would have to demonstrate knowledge of smoking’s
risks by answering a series of on-line questions and that
licenses would be granted for light smokers, under 10
per day, medium 10-20, and heavy 20-50. According
to the ACSH’s Dr. Josh Bloom, “Perhaps Professor
Chapman should have filled out an LSD license back
when he was in college because at some time in his life,
something clearly went haywire in his skull.”
…In the November 9 issue of Morbidity and Mortality
Weekly Report , the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention’s Office on Smoking and Health summarizes
its review of data from the 2011 National Health
Interview Survey, noting that: 19 percent of adults in
the US, or 43.8 million people, were current cigarette
smokers in 2011, representing no statistically significant
change from the 2010 rate of 19.3 percent; of these, 77.8
percent or 34.1 million smoked cigarettes every day,
while the remaining 22.2 percent or 9.7 million smoked
some days; and among daily smokers, the proportion
On LABELING and packaging…
On LICENSING SMOKERS…
on cdc/who…