Page 10 - TOB Magazine March/April 2013

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TOBACCO OUTLET BUSINESS
MARCH/APRIL 2013
TMA REPORT
Affordable Care Act, which allows insurers to charge
smokers up to 50 percent higher premiums for those
buying an individual policy, from being implemented.
…In his keynote address presented at the Tobacco
Plus Expo (TPE) International 2013 in Las Vegas, Nevada,
Ed O’Connor, president of TMG International, parent
company of the TPE and Tobacco Outlet Business
International, spoke about the transformation in the
tobacco retailing industry, noting that the addition of
e-cigarettes to the mix of the essential tobacco products
could offer retailers a “real opportunity” to grow in the
changing market scenario, given that in a recent survey
of 28 parent companies of 434 retail operations, 92
percent of the respondents predicted an increase in
their e-cigarette inventory in the next 18 months. Co-
presenter Dr. Brad Rodu of the University of Louisville
said that e-cigarettes are emerging as “a game changer
for the industry,” with sales “booming” and projected to
reach $1 billion in the U.S. in 2013.
…Howard Koh, assistant secretary for health at the
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said
that President Obama’s second-term health agenda
includes plans to unveil a number of new initiatives
aimed at reducing tobacco use and obesity rates, while
also focusing on implementing key provisions of the
Affordable Care Act.
…Starting January 1, 2014, the Affordable Care Act
will make it possible for millions of currently uninsured
Americans to buy private policies by providing tax credits
to keep premiums affordable, but provisions in the law
that allow insurers to charge up to 50 percent higher
premiums on smokers buying individual policies and
forbid the use of Federal tax credits to offset the cost of
such “smoking penalties” could price millions of people
out of health insurance, the Associated Press reported,
citing Karen Pollitz, an expert on individual health
insurance markets with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family
Foundation, who said that older smokers especially will
be left with a “bleak” set of financial options, as the law
allows insurers to charge older adults up to three times
as much as their younger clients.
…U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the
Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP)
Committee, has introduced S.B. 39, the Healthier
Lifestyles and Prevention America (HELP America)
Act of 2013, which calls for “wellness provisions in
a broad range of areas” to improve health, increase
physical activity and fight chronic disease, including
by: increasing the excise tax on cigarettes, equalizing
taxes for pipe, roll-your-own and smokeless tobacco,
clarifying the definition of little cigars, closing an
alleged “existing loophole to end mislabeling of
tobacco products,” eliminating “tax deductibility of
tobacco advertising,” requiring the Department of
Health and Human Services to conduct annual youth
tobacco use surveys, and creating a penalty for
tobacco manufacturers if youths use their products
and consumption does not decline.
…Swiss pharmaceutical company Cytos
Biotechnology Ltd. announced that drugmaker Novartis
decided to discontinue Cytos’ smoking cessation
vaccine project NIC002 and to return the licensed
rights it obtained for the project in 2007 to Cytos in line
with the provisions of the license agreement.
…London, UK-based Design Museum, self-described
as a museum “devoted to contemporary design in every
form,” announced that Australia’s olive green cigarette
packaging has been nominated in the graphics category
of its 2013 Designs of the Year awards for its “anti-
design” that features a “hard-hitting anti-smoking image,
with plain text and unappealing colors.”
…The UK government has launched a nine-week
graphic anti-smoking TV, poster and online campaign
that aims to shock smokers by showing a tumor
growing on a cigarette.
…Garfield, New Jersey-based Eonsmoke, LLC, which
designs, markets, and distributes electronic cigarettes
and accessories under the Eonsmoke, Spirit Vapor,
and Miami Cigs brand names, has denied rumors of
an Altria Group takeover of the e-cigarette company.
…The European Commission reappointed Michel
Petite, a French lawyer at the London-based firmClifford
Chance, who has provided legal advice to Philip Morris
International, to the commission’s three-person ethics
committee on lobbying.
…A Mackinac Center for Public Policy report on the
level of illicit cigarette trade in 47 of the 48 contiguous
U.S. states reveals that New York had the highest
inbound smuggling rate across the nation in 2011
at 60.9 percent, while New Hampshire was the top
“export” state, where for every 100 packs of cigarettes
consumed, almost 27 packs were shipped out, with
Michael LaFaive, director of the Mackinac Center’s
Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, attributing the increase
in illicit trade primarily to what he calls “prohibition by
price” through high cigarette taxes. TOB
ON cessation research & policies…
on illicit trade…