 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
FROM
THE DIRECTOR'S DESK| SHOW YOUR SUPPORT On the Smokefree Coalition web site (www.sfc.org.nz) you can find a copy of the letter of complaint to the Commerce Commission, and further information about making tobacco companies accountable. See the link under WHAT'S NEW? You can show your support by writing to the Commerce Commission in support of the Smokefree Coalition's complaint. A sample letter to use or base your own letter on is available by e-mailing Mark Peck: director@sfc.org.nz. |
"Only last month, the US Surgeon General issued a report that said second-hand smoke caused disease and premature death in children and adults who do not smoke. This report confirmed that second-hand smoke caused respiratory illness, coronary heart disease and lung cancer, and that there is no risk-free level of exposure.
"How BAT can continue to understate the harm caused by breathing in other people's tobacco smoke in the face of such strong evidence is beyond me.
"There is a strong feeling among health groups and others that the tobacco industry has been allowed to get away with lies and deception for far too long.
"We have legislation in this country that forbids traders from misleading the public about the nature of their products. Let's use it. The Fair Trading Act is designed to protect people from deceit or unfair treatment."
He says the second part of the complaint - about light and mild cigarettes - relates to the deliberate misrepresentation that these products have health benefits over what are known as regular or "higher yield" tobacco products.
"We believe such labelling is in breach of the Fair Trading Act as it is designed to cause the public "to believe what is false," and to "mislead as to a matter of fact".
FACT SHEETS SUMMARISING NEW U.S. SURGEON GENERAL'S REPORT
There has been tremendous media coverage of the U.S. Surgeon General's report on second-hand smoke and the report's
main messages are loud and clear. The science is indisputable:
- second-hand smoke causes serious disease, including lung cancer, heart disease and serious respiratory conditions
- there is no risk-free level of exposure to second-hand smoke; and
- only smokefree workplaces provide effective protection against second-hand smoke - ventilation systems and smoking/non-smoking sections do not.
Two very useful fact sheets have been put together by the Surgeon General and the National Center For Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (CDC) that do a very good job of summarising the conclusions of the report in a clear, advocacy-friendly way, and would be useful to send to legislators, media and other key audiences.
One fact sheet is entitled Six Major Conclusions of the Surgeon General Report and can be found at: www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/secondhandsmoke/factsheets/factsheet6.html.
The second fact sheet is entitled There is No Risk-Free Level of Exposure to Second-hand Smoke and can be found at: www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/secondhandsmoke/factsheets/factsheet7.html.
The second fact sheet is very helpful in addressing any questions about the consequences of short-term exposure to second-hand smoke on cardiovascular and respiratory health. It is suggested that those who have information on the short-term impact of second-hand smoke exposure in their materials may want to review them according to the conclusions of the Surgeon General.
The fact sheet includes the following:
Second-hand smoke causes heart disease.
- Breathing second-hand smoke for even a short time can have immediate adverse effects on the cardiovascular system, interfering with the normal functioning of the heart, blood, and vascular systems in ways that increase the risk of heart attack.
- Even a short time in a smoky room can cause your blood platelets to become stickier, damage the lining of blood vessels, decrease coronary flow velocity reserves, and reduce heart rate variability.
- Persons who already have heart disease are at especially high risk of suffering adverse affects from breathing second-hand smoke, and should take special precautions to avoid even brief exposure.
Second-hand smoke causes acute respiratory effects.
- Second-hand smoke contains many chemicals that can quickly irritate and damage the lining of the airways.
- Even brief exposure can trigger respiratory symptoms, including cough, phlegm, wheezing, and breathlessness.
- Brief exposure to second-hand smoke can trigger an asthma attack in children with asthma.
- Persons who already have asthma or other respiratory conditions are at especially high risk for being affected by second-hand smoke, and should take special precautions to avoid second-hand smoke exposure.
NEW QUIT GROUP WEBSITE
The Quit Group has launched a new
website
www.quit.org.nz to cater for people who want online quitting advice and support.
A focus of the new site is support for people who have completed the Quitline programme and want to maintain a smokefree lifestyle. The new website is not designed to be a stand-alone quitting tool because quitters wanting exchange cards for nicotine patches or gum must speak to a Quitline Advisor.
An exciting feature of the site is a members' sign in which will give people:
- stats on how much they have saved since quitting
- personalised birthday cards
- a space to write and publish a quitting diary (blog).
Research, media campaigns and information for Quit Cards providers are all available on the new site. Click here to take a look. Please forward this information through your networks.
Contact Hayden Sanders on (04) 460 9873 hayden.sanders@quit.org.nz or Penny St John on (04) 460 9877 penny.stjohn@quit.org.nz if you have any questions about The Quit Group's website.
BIG TOBACCO'S BIG SMOKESCREEN
Anti-smoking campaigners are concerned by the way tobacco companies are encouraging smokers to alter their habits, rather than quit.
"The scientific evidence is now indisputable: second-hand smoke is not a mere annoyance. It is a serious health hazard that can lead to disease and premature death in children and nonsmoking adults." So wrote the US Surgeon General, Richard Carmona, last week in a report that called for smoking to be banned from more public spaces.
Banning smoking is only part of the story, though. Anti-smoking campaigners are just as concerned by the way tobacco companies are encouraging smokers to alter their smoking behaviour, rather than quit. "Part of the [industry's] motivation has less to do with decreasing the risk of smoking and more to do with PR opportunities to convince people that it has changed," says Mitch Zeller of health consultancy group Pinney Associates in Bethesda, Maryland.
First, tobacco firms introduced "light" brands of tobacco with lower levels of nicotine and tar; these now account for 87 percent of cigarette sales. Last week, a survey of over 12,000 smokers and former smokers revealed that 37 percent of those who smoked light brands did so because they thought such cigarettes were healthier, despite considerable evidence showing they are not.
"What's more, those who smoked lights were half as likely to quit as other smokers. These cigarettes are being marketed as a way to give smokers false reassurance that they can continue to smoke," says Hilary Tindle of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pennsylvania, who analysed the survey data.
Now the trend is to introduce "potentially reduced exposure products" - industry jargon for nicotine delivery systems that will circumvent smoking bans. This month, the Altria Group (formerly Philip Morris) has started selling small sachets of moist tobacco that users place between the cheek and gums, marketed as Taboka "pouch tobacco". Reynolds American, the second-largest cigarette manufacturer in the US, has its own version, Camel Snus, already on sale in a few US states. According to a report into the tobacco industry by analyst JP Morgan, published in August 2005, such non-combustible tobacco products could one day claim as large a share of the market as "light" cigarettes do today.
The Altria Group clearly states on its web site that smokeless tobacco products "are addictive, cause serious diseases such as cancer... and are not a safe alternative to smoking. To reduce the health effects of using tobacco, the best thing to do is quit."
Tindle is not reassured: "I'm concerned about the widespread misconception by smokers that potentially reduced exposure products, smokeless tobacco and similar products are healthier."
New Scientist, 8 July 2006
PARENTS ENLISTED IN BATTLE TO STOP KIDS SMOKING
Health researchers plan to test a new weapon in the battle to stop children smoking - their parents. The Keeping Kids Smokefree programme aims to change parents' smoking behaviour and attitudes in order to keep their children away from tobacco. Aimed at intermediate school children, the programme was created by the Auckland Tobacco Control Research Centre and was recently launched at Auckland University.
Centre director Dr Marewa Glover said research had shown clear associations between parents' and children's smoking.
But most projects aimed at stopping children smoking had focused on the children themselves, she said. Little work had been done on the parents. "Research globally suggests that parents can have an impact, even if they smoked themselves. If they send very strong messages to their children, that does have an impact."
Methods employed in the trial include the creation of pamphlets and workshops for parents on talking to their children about smoking, stop-smoking programmes for parents, and increasing public health promotion.
Researchers are looking for two South Auckland schools with high Māori and Pacific Island populations to take part in the programme for three years, from next year. The results will then be compared with two other schools to determine the programme's success. If it works, the programme will be extended.
The Health Research Council has given about $700,000 for the project's first three years.
New Zealand Herald 4 July, 2006
QUIT GROUP UPDATE - JUNE 2006
A total of 2,658 callers were registered with the Quitline in June 2006. About 55 percent of these callers were female (1467) and about 43 percent were male (1145).
25.2 percent of registered callers were Māori (671), 65.3 percent were New Zealand European (1735) and 11.7 percent of the callers identified themselves as other ethnicities (Samoan, Tongan, Niuean, Cook Island, Indian, Chinese, other European and other ethnicity).
The highest proportion of callers was in the 30-34 years age bracket, followed by the 20-24 and 25-29 years age groups.
Numbers of callers registered with the Quitline by month (registered callers are those who receive a quit pack and are offered advice and support).
ASH MEDIA ANALYSIS REPORT: MAY 2006
ASH Communications Advisor Sneha Paul regularly undertakes an analysis of print media coverage and in this issue we present her findings for May 2006.
There were a total of 361 articles on smoking-related stories in the month of April. This is an increase from 196 in April 2006. The table below indicates the numbers of stories that were published in the print media by category.
| Category | Number of Stories |
| Cessation | 19 (12 in April) |
| General | 121 (79) |
| Harm reduction | 1 |
| Litigation | 37 |
| No smoking day | 1 |
| Pacific smoking | 1 (2) |
| Picture warnings/youth smoking | 1 |
| Picture warnings | 57 |
| Second-hand smoke | 8 (1) |
| Smoke-free Environments Act | 7 (27) |
| Smokefree environments | 8 |
| Smokefree promotion | 2 |
| Smokefree sport | 1 (4) |
| Smokeless tobacco | 1 |
| Smoking and health | 8 (16) |
| Tobacco control | 2 (2) |
| Tobacco industry | 12 (26) |
| World Smokefree Day | 47 ( 2) |
| Youth smoking | 27 |
| Total | 361 |
The stories were then broken down into three categories: positive, negative and neutral. Stories favourable to smokefree issues are classified as positive, those unfavourable are classified as negative and general stories that neither condemn nor support smokefree issues are classified as neutral.
| Positive/Negative/Neutral Stories | Number of Stories |
| Positive | 124 (41 in April) |
| Neutral | 227 (141) |
| Negative | 10 (14) |
| Total | 361 |
If you have any queries regarding this report, please contact Sneha Paul at spaul@ash.org.nz.
TOBACCO MAY KILL ONE BILLION THIS CENTURY
If current trends hold, tobacco will kill a billion people this century, 10 times the toll it took in the 20th century, public health officials have said.
Tobacco accounts for one in five cancer deaths, or 1.4 million deaths worldwide each year, according to two new reference guides that chart global tobacco use and cancer. Lung cancer remains the major cancer among the 10.9 million new cases of cancer diagnosed each year, according to the Cancer Atlas.
Reducing tobacco use would have the greatest affect on global cancer rates, health officials said. Improving nutrition and reducing infection by cancer-causing viruses and bacteria could also cut rates dramatically, they said.
"We know with cancer, if we take action now, we can save two million lives a year by 2020 and 6.5 million by 2040," said Dr. Judith Mackay, a World Health Organization senior policy adviser.
"Even if smoking rates decline worldwide, there will be a constant or even slightly increasing number of smokers due to population increases," said Michael Eriksen, director of the Institute of Public Health at Georgia State University.
An estimated 1.25 billion men and women smoke cigarettes now, according to the Tobacco Atlas.
ABC News, 10 July 2006
FLORIDA'S SUPREME COURT RULES IN FAVOUR OF BIG TOBACCO
In a major victory for America's largest tobacco companies, the Florida Supreme Court has upheld a decision to overrule a $145 billion punitive-damage award made against the industry in 2000 in the Engle case.
The case, which was filed against the five largest U.S. cigarette makers more than a decade ago, was the first personal-injury lawsuit against the tobacco companies to move to trial and the punitive damages amount was the largest such award by a jury in U.S. history.
"We vacate the punitive damages award because we unanimously conclude that the punitive damages award is excessive as a matter of law," the Florida court wrote in its 79-page ruling.
The decision is likely to free up millions of dollars that the tobacco companies have had tied up in connection with the case, and tobacco stocks jumped following the news.
A class action originally led by pediatrician Howard Engle and five other lead plaintiffs, the Engle suit was filed in Miami in 1994 on behalf of smokers nationwide. The case eventually was limited to roughly 700,000 Florida smokers, but a two-year trial, from 1998 to 2000, ended with the $145 billion punitive-damages award against tobacco companies, with jurors finding them liable for lying about cigarettes.
The $145 billion judgment was overturned by an intermediate appellate court in 2003 for several reasons, including a finding that the individuals represented in the suit were too diverse to have their claims lumped together. One year later, Florida's highest court decided to review the case, and since then, cigarette makers have been anxiously awaiting the outcome.
Altria, which has seen its litigation costs ebb of late, cleared a hurdle late last year when the Illinois Supreme Court threw out a $10.1 billion class-action lawsuit against Philip Morris claiming consumer fraud over "light" cigarettes. The claim was that Philip Morris defrauded smokers by suggesting these "low-tar" cigarettes were less hazardous than full-flavor, higher-tar brands.
Also, in May, the U.S. Supreme Court said it would review a $79.5 million award won by the widow of a former smoker against Philip Morris. A landmark 2003 high-court ruling essentially capped punitive damages, though some murkiness remains.
Meanwhile, a decision also could come at any time in a high-profile suit brought by the Justice Department. That suit suffered a body blow when the U.S. Supreme Court barred the collection of as much as $280 billion from tobacco companies in the case.
Wall Street Journal, 6 July 2006
BLAST FROM THE PAST
 |
Dunhill of London proudly presents DUNHILL EUROPEAN CUP WINNERS' CUP FINAL Retrieved from: 20th Century Tobacco Ad Collection Collected by Richard Pollay, catalogued by Roswell Park Cancer Institute http://roswell.tobaccodocuments.org/pollay/dirdet.cfm |
QUOTABLE QUOTES
"The movies show us Clint Eastwood squinting down a cheroot to blow away three bad guys at once. But do they ever demonstrate how the next morning Clint's mouth tasted like the inside of a vacuum cleaner bag?
Michael Booth,
the Denver Post, 27 June 2006
"Now that we have concrete research about the serious dangers of second-hand smoke and we know that tobacco is a leading cause of preventable death, it is critical that we do all we can to protect the health of our residents and visitors by providing public venues that are truly smokefree. Hawaii's new smokefree law will save lives."
Hawaii Governor, Linda Lingle,Mbr
JoeCherner-announce@smokefree.net, 10 July 2006
"With the other public health crises of today, like SARS or avian flu, we're not sure [about the outcome]. But we all know what will happen if we don't intervene with tobacco."
John Seffrin, CEO, American Cancer Society (ACS),
at a World Cancer Congress 11 July 2006
MEDIA THEMES
Smoking crackdown
Health ministers in Britain are to ban the sale of tobacco to 16 and 17 year-olds from 2007, changing a law that was put in place 70 years ago. The government will begin to "consult" next week on the ban, although privately the decision has already been taken to make it law. It will mean that from 2007, a 17 year old boy will be old enough in law to drive a car, fight in Iraq, have sex and get married - but too young to vote or buy alcohol or cigarettes.
Bay of Plenty Times, 1 July 2006
Virtual coach
Dutch researchers are developing a virtual coach to provide smokers with round-the-clock help to quit, New Scientist magazine has reported.
Smokers will be able to log on to a web site and type questions into a chat box. A female "auto-responder" will be programmed to have human characteristics and respond with answers and facial expressions used by human counsellors.
If successful, the researchers may extend it to help alcoholics and people trying to overcome phobias.
Nelson Leader, 28 June 2006
Irish pub customers numbers up 11 percent
A NEW study into the effects of the smoking ban has found that Irish pub customer numbers increased by 11 percent after the ban was introduced.
The study of 38 pubs throughout Dublin found that while staffing levels in pubs fell by almost 9 percent after the ban was introduced in March 2004, 11 percent more customers visited the pubs. It also found there was a huge reduction, 77.8 percent, in the number of people smoking on a visit to a pub.
The results of the study, entitled Smoking, Occupancy and Staffing Levels in a Selection of Dublin Pubs pre- and post- a National Smoking Ban, Lessons For All, have been published in the latest edition of the Irish Journal of Medical Science.
It was conducted by members of the Physics Department at University College Dublin and Dublin Institute of Technology, along with Prof Luke Clancy of the Research Institute for a Tobacco Free Society.
As well as measuring the fall in pollutants in the air since the ban, the team also visited the pubs in October 2003 and March 2004 and then revisited the venues on the corresponding time and dates one year later.
Prof Clancy said the findings showed that warnings from vintners' federations of plummeting customer figures and drastic job losses were "ludicrous".
He said arguments that a ban simply displaced the problem elsewhere were also incorrect. "Smokers smoked less while they were at the pubs," he said. "This shows that the ban has been good for people and it's good for business, despite all the predictions of disaster."
Donal O'Keeffe, of the Licensed Vintners Association, said industry figures would have shown a drop in drink sales and a fall in staff numbers in the first year after the smoking ban, but in the past six months there had been "strong stabilisation and growth" in the industry in Dublin.
He said more smoking facilities had been created and publicans had expanded the food aspect of their business to attract customers.
Vintners Federation of Ireland president Paul Stevenson said the data had "no relevance" to pubs in rural areas.
Irish Examiner, 4 July 2006
If you have received this email newsletter in error or wish to unsubscribe click here.
Produced by The
Smokefree Coalition. PO Box 12-084, Wellington.
Tel. +64 4 472 0157. Fax +64 4 472 0167. Mobile +64 274 591 664. Email director@sfc.org.nz
If you are considering using any material from the Smokefree Coalition Tobacco Control Update, please first seek permission from Mark Peck - director@sfc.org.nz