FROM THE DIRECTOR'S DESK

Some things happen so quietly you hardly notice. This is the case with the battle for ACC cover which the family of David Simm is undertaking at present.

David Simm, for those who do not know, made a huge contribution to raising awareness of the harm caused by second-hand smoke. David was a supermarket manager who spent a lot of time in smoky 'smoko' rooms before the Smoke-free Environments Amendment Act 2003 was passed. He contracted lung cancer of the type found in smokers. He had never smoked and the only explanation for his lung cancer was exposure to second-hand smoke. As he was exposed to second-hand smoke at work he believed he was entitled to ACC and had been seeking this cover at the time he died. His family continues the battle.

Small articles in the Dominion Post and the Southland Times reported on the latest efforts to determine this matter through the courts recently. The Court has reserved its decision.

David became a staunch advocate for smokefree environments. He presented a submission to the Health Select Committee when it was dealing with the new law and those present at the hearing of evidence report that even the industry was embarrassed at the strength of his argument.

We have a responsibility to never forget the lessons that David presented to us. No doubt there will be greater comment when the court makes its decision.

This leads me to another serious issue. In the euphoria of winning an investigation into the light and mild descriptors on tobacco packets we lost sight of the fact that the Commerce Commission declined to investigate the issue of second-hand smoke and tobacco industry denial about the harms caused. It is true that the BAT website has changed its text since our complaint was lodged, but that shouldn't have made any difference.  The reality is that this issue is seen as too hard to tackle.

I suppose there will always be something in the too hard basket. However, its time will come again.

Have a good fortnight.

Mark Peck

Director
Smokefree Coalition

IN THIS ISSUE:

• NZ smoking in cars study first of its kind
• David Simm's fight continues
• Quit Group Update - August 2006
• Callers registered with the Quitline by DHB
• Students to help test anti-smoking vaccine
• Tobacco firms sued over low tar
• The denial industry
• Smokefree Coalition AGM
• Smokefree Symposium 2006
• Tobacco use, prevention and cessation - conference
• Smoking cessation courses
• Pacific Islands Heartbeat smoking cessation service
• Train the trainer - for frontline hospital staff
• Students have graphic lesson on smoking damage
• Blast from the past
• Quotable quotes
• Media themes

NZ SMOKING IN CARS STUDY FIRST OF ITS KIND

Lighting up in cars is likely to be a significant source of second-hand smoke exposure for New Zealanders, according to new University of Otago research taking a street-level look at the problem.

The Wellington-based study, just published in the international journal Tobacco Control, is believed to be the first anywhere in the world to actually observe traffic and measure rates of smoking by drivers and passengers. Previous research has relied on survey responses by smokers, which are less reliable.

More than 16,000 cars were observed by medical students from the University's Wellington School of Medicine and Health Sciences at five sites in the Wellington region. Armed with clipboards and clickers for counting, two-member teams observed cars during weekday rush hours over a two-week period, counting how many in which smoking was occurring.

"Overall, more than four percent of the cars were being smoked in. Around one-quarter of these cars with smokers had at least one other occupant being exposed to second-hand smoke," says one of the study's authors Dr Nick Wilson. Second-hand smoke is an important source of harm to human health and wellbeing, and cars are a very confined space in which to be exposed to it, he says.

Of the five observation sites, car smoking rates reached six percent in the high deprivation area of Wainuiomata, with four percent at the three Central Business District sites and only two percent in the affluent suburb of Karori.

While this is the first study to attempt real life measurement of smoking in cars, it probably does not reveal the true potential for second-hand smoke exposure, says Dr Wilson. "Our findings are likely to greatly underestimate the prevalence of smoking per car trip. The cars were only observed at one moment in a journey. People could have finished smoking before they reached an observation site or lit up after they passed it," he says.

Nearly all the smoking was by drivers (95 percent). As well as the second-hand smoke this exposes passengers to, smoking while driving also raises road safety concerns, as overseas evidence shows smokers have higher motor vehicle crash death rates even after alcohol is factored in, he says.

Further research at the Medical School is currently underway and will provide more answers by measuring actual smoke particulate levels in cars with an air monitor. However, work overseas already shows very high levels of fine particulates from smoking in cars.

Moves to ban smoking in cars where children are present are gaining international momentum, including most recently in Arkansas and Louisiana. The potential public health benefits gained through taking this step should be considered here, says Dr Wilson.

University of Otago Media Release

DAVID SIMM'S FIGHT CONTINUES

David Simm spent years breathing the contaminated air in supermarket 'smoko' rooms, and the fight to have his lung cancer count under ACC laws has continued even after his death.

A judge in the High Court at Wellington on 15 September reserved her decision on whether his 1999 diagnosis cuts him out from ACC's resuming recognition in April 2002 for damage from passive smoking.

Mr Simm's lawyer, John Miller, said passive smoking was included in early accident compensation law but for several years it was not. Mr Simm died in June 2004 in Tauranga.

If Justice Jill Mallon was to accept Mr Miller's legal arguments, another hearing would be held to decide if the case's facts entitled Mr Simm to ACC cover.

Mr Miller said ACC history since 1992 had "generally been meaner and leaner". Mr Simm should not be excluded because of the date on which he was diagnosed, he said.

If ACC was correct, people diagnosed with the same condition just days apart would have opposite ACC rulings. However, ACC Lawyer Alistair Barnett said the first date of incapacity or treatment did determine whether ACC law applied to Mr Simm.

Each successive change in ACC laws redrew the lines for what was eligible but none had been backdated to include injuries that had happened at a time when that type of injury was excluded.

In theory Mr Simm would have been able to sue former employers if he could not get ACC, but Mr Miller said that was a "hollow right".

Southland Times, 16 September 2006

QUIT GROUP UPDATE - AUGUST 2006

A total of 2,822 callers were registered with the Quitline in August 2006. Almost 54 percent of these callers were female (1518) and about 445 percent were male (1241).

24.3 percent of registered callers were Māori (687), 72.2 percent were New Zealand European (2037), six percent identified as Pacific peoples (170) and 4.8 percent identified themselves as other ethnicities.

The highest proportion of callers was in the 35-39 years age bracket, followed by the 25-29 and 30-34 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.

CALLERS REGISTERED WITH THE QUITLINE BY DHB

Callers to the Quitline who registered to make a quit attempt during April, May, and June 2006, by District Health Board.

STUDENTS TO HELP TEST ANTI-SMOKING VACCINE

America: 250 volunteers are to receive shots aimed at helping stamp out addiction to smoking.

Nine universities will test a shot that 'immunises' smokers against feeling the effects of nicotine, as a way of helping them quit smoking.

The vaccine, NicVax, binds with nicotine to make a much larger molecule that can't cross the barrier from the bloodstream into the brain, said public and community health professor Elbert Glover, who is heading the trial. As smoking becomes less pleasurable and less reinforcing, it might be easier for smokers to combat their cravings, he said.

"When you smoke a cigarette, nicotine comes in and releases a surge of dopamine as a reward," Glover said. When smokers don't get this reward, they may look at a cigarette and think, 'What's the point?'"

The vaccine study is limited to smokers who have smoked 15 cigarettes a day for at least three years and focuses on active smokers who are motivated to quit.

So far, about 250 volunteers have signed up to receive a few randomised shots of either the vaccine or a placebo during the course of a year. They will be monitored through health checkups and counselling.

A recent report released by Massachusetts Department of Health shows the level of nicotine found in US cigarettes has risen about 10 percent in the past six years, making it harder to quit.

About 70 percent of the 49 million adults and 6 million teenagers who smoke in the US say they would like to quit, and every year about 40 percent of them try, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Less than three percent succeed.

If the results show that the vaccine works, it will be up for approval by the Food and Drug Administration.

DiamondbackOnline.Com, 20 September 2006

TOBACCO FIRMS SUED OVER LOW TAR

A lawsuit which accuses tobacco firms of duping smokers into thinking low tar or "light" cigarettes are less harmful has been given the go ahead in the US. Federal judge Jack Weinstein has ruled that the case can proceed as a class action, involving potentially tens of millions of plaintiffs.

Experts estimate that if successful, the case could cost the tobacco industry up to US$200bn.

Defendants include Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds and British American Tobacco. They are joined by Lorillard Tobacco and Liggett Group. Low tar cigarettes were introduced in the 1970s.

Spokesmen for Reynolds American, parent company of RJ Reynolds, and UK company British American Tobacco said each would now be appealing the judge's decision. The appeal is likely to last up to a year.

Altria, parent company of Philip Morris, declined to comment on the ruling until its lawyers could review the decision.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs argue that the tobacco companies in question reaped between $120bn to $200bn in extra sales through the deception that light cigarettes are less harmful than full strength versions.

"They [the cigarette firms] understood that they were selling death," said attorney Michael Hausfeld. The question, he added, was "how to disguise it... They put on 'lights'."

Defence attorneys had argued that the lawsuit relied on flawed data. They also said that without surveying each and every smoker in the lawsuit it would be impossible to determine their motives for buying light cigarettes.

The link between smoking and lung cancer was first confirmed in 1954.

British American Tobacco said that to date there have been 60 class actions cases against tobacco companies in the US and none have been successful.

BBC News, 25 September 2006

THE DENIAL INDUSTRY

For years, a network of fake citizens' groups and bogus scientific bodies has been claiming that science of global warming is inconclusive. They set back action on climate change by a decade. But who funded them? Exxon's involvement is well known, but not the strange role of Big Tobacco. In the first of three extracts from his new book, George Monbiot tells a bizarre and shocking new story.

"The impacts of the climate-change deniers sponsored by Exxon have been felt all over the world."

ExxonMobil is the world's most profitable corporation. Its sales now amount to more than $1bn a day. It makes most of this money from oil, and has more to lose than any other company from efforts to tackle climate change. To safeguard its profits, ExxonMobil needs to sow doubt about whether serious action needs to be taken on climate change. But there are difficulties: it must confront a scientific consensus as strong as that which maintains that smoking causes lung cancer or that HIV causes Aids. So what's its strategy?

The website http://exxonsecrets.org, using data found in the company's official documents, lists 124 organisations that have taken money from the company or work closely with those that have. These organisations take a consistent line on climate change: that the science is contradictory, the scientists are split, environmentalists are charlatans, liars or lunatics, and if governments took action to prevent global warming, they would be endangering the global economy for no good reason. The findings these organisations dislike are labelled "junk science". The findings they welcome are labelled "sound science".

Among the organisations that have been funded by Exxon are such well-known websites and lobby groups as TechCentralStation, the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

By funding a large number of organisations, Exxon helps to create the impression that doubt about climate change is widespread. The corporate funding of lobby groups denying that manmade climate change is taking place was initiated not by Exxon, or by any other firm directly involved in the fossil fuel industry. It was started by the tobacco company Philip Morris.

In December 1992, the US Environmental Protection Agency published a 500-page report called Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking. It found that "the widespread exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) in the United States presents a serious and substantial public health impact. In adults: ETS is a human lung carcinogen, responsible for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths annually in US non-smokers. In children: ETS exposure is causally associated with an increased risk of lower respiratory tract infections such as bronchitis and pneumonia. This report estimates that 150,000 to 300,000 cases annually in infants and young children up to 18 months of age are attributable to ETS."

Had it not been for the settlement of a major class action against the tobacco companies in the US, we would never have been able to see what happened next. But in 1998 they were forced to publish their internal documents and post them on the internet.

Within two months of its publication, Philip Morris, the world's biggest tobacco firm, had devised a strategy for dealing with the passive-smoking report. In February 1993 Ellen Merlo, its senior vice-president of corporate affairs, sent a letter to William I Campbell, Philip Morris's chief executive officer and president, explaining her intentions: "Our overriding objective is to discredit the EPA report... Concurrently, it is our objective to prevent states and cities, as well as businesses, from passive-smoking bans."

To this end, she had hired a public relations company called APCO. She had attached the advice it had given her. APCO warned that: "No matter how strong the arguments, industry spokespeople are, in and of themselves, not always credible or appropriate messengers."

So the fight against a ban on passive smoking had to be associated with other people and other issues. Philip Morris, APCO said, needed to create the impression of a "grassroots" movement - one that had been formed spontaneously by concerned citizens to fight "overregulation". It should portray the danger of tobacco smoke as just one "unfounded fear" among others, such as concerns about pesticides and cellphones. APCO proposed to set up "a national coalition intended to educate the media, public officials and the public about the dangers of 'junk science'". The coalition will address credibility of government's scientific studies, risk-assessment techniques and misuse of tax dollars... Upon formation of the coalition, key leaders will begin media outreach, eg, editorial board tours, opinion articles, and brief elected officials in selected states."

APCO would found the coalition, write its mission statements, and "prepare and place opinion articles in key markets". For this it required $150,000 for its own fees and $75,000 for the coalition's costs.

By May 1993, as another memo from APCO to Philip Morris shows the fake citizens' group had a name: the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition. It was important, further letters stated, "to ensure that TASSC has a diverse group of contributors"; to "link the tobacco issue with other more 'politically correct' products"; and to associate scientific studies that cast smoking in a bad light with "broader questions about government research and regulations" - such as "global warming", "nuclear waste disposal" and "biotechnology". APCO would engage in the "intensive recruitment of high-profile representatives from business and industry, scientists, public officials, and other individuals interested in promoting the use of sound science".

By September 1993, APCO had produced a "Plan for the Public Launching of TASSC". The media coverage, the public relations company hoped, would enable ASSC to "establish an image of a national grassroots coalition". In case the media asked hostile questions, APCO circulated a sheet of answers, drafted by Philip Morris. The first question was: "Isn't it true that Philip Morris created TASSC to act as a front group for it?

"A: No, not at all. As a large corporation, PM belongs to many national, regional, and state business, public policy, and legislative organisations. PM has contributed to TASSC, as we have with various groups and corporations across the country."

There are clear similarities between the language used and the approaches adopted by Philip Morris and by the organisations funded by Exxon. The two lobbies use the same terms, which appear to have been invented by Philip Morris's consultants. "Junk science" meant peer-reviewed studies showing that smoking was linked to cancer and other diseases. "Sound science" meant studies sponsored by the tobacco industry suggesting that the link was inconclusive. Both lobbies recognised that their best chance of avoiding regulation was to challenge the scientific consensus. As a memo from the tobacco company Brown and Williamson noted, "Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy."

TASSC did as its founders at APCO suggested, and sought funding from other sources. Between 2000 and 2002 it received $30,000 from Exxon. The website it has financed - JunkScience.com - has been involved in almost every kind of climate-change denial that has found its way into the mainstream press.

The man who runs it is called Steve Milloy. In 1992, he started working for APCO - Philip Morris's consultants. While there, he set up the JunkScience site. In March 1997, the documents show, he was appointed TASSC's executive director. By 1998, as he explained in a memo to TASSC board members, his JunkScience website was being funded by TASSC. Both he and the "coalition" continued to receive money from Philip Morris. An internal document dated February 1998 reveals that TASSC took $200,000 from the tobacco company in 1997. Philip Morris's 2001 budget document records a payment to Steven Milloy of $90,000. Altria, Philip Morris's parent company, admits that Milloy was under contract to the tobacco firm until at least the end of 2005.

Milloy also writes a weekly Junk Science column for the Fox News website. Without declaring his interests, he has used this column to pour scorn on studies documenting the medical effects of second-hand tobacco smoke and showing that climate change is taking place. Even after Fox News was told about the money he had been receiving from Philip Morris and Exxon, it continued to employ him, without informing its readers about his interests.

The Guardian, 19 September 2006

SMOKEFREE COALITION AGM

The Smokefree Coalition Annual General Meeting will be held at 7.30pm, Monday 16 October in the Board Room at the Health Sponsorship Council, Level 6 Fulbright House, 120 Featherston St, Wellington.

All members are invited. We hope to attract a guest speaker but details are yet to be finalised.

The agenda is as follows:

1. Welcome and apologies
2. Minutes of 2005 AGM
3. Matter arising from the minutes
4. Auditor's report for year ending 30 June 2006
5. Election of auditor for financial year ending 30 June 2007
6. Report from the Chair
7. Discussion and any other business
8. Conviviality (approximately 8.30).

RSVP to Mark Peck director@sfc.org.nz, or phone (04) 472 0157.

Papers will be available at the meeting.

We look forward to seeing you there.

SMOKEFREE SYMPOSIUM 2006

Facing the Challenges with Fresh Thinking

It's not too late to register for the national smokefree conference. This year it is again being held in Wellington at the Intercontinental Hotel, 16-17 October 2006. The Smokefree Symposium provides a valuable opportunity to meet and mingle with other tobacco control workers and hear what is happening locally, nationally and internationally.

The Smokefree Symposium provides a forum for:

• sharing research and experiences in tobacco control
• discussing future directions and priorities
• networking
• learning and contributing to improved coordination and cooperation within the sector.

The Symposium is brought to you by the National Smokefree/Auahi Kore Working Group, and the Tobacco Control Research Strategy Steering Group.

More information including a programme outline and registration form is available at the Health Sponsorship Council website: www.hsc.org.nz. 

TOBACCO USE PREVENTION AND CESSATION

And if you're not all conferenced-out after attending the Smokefree Symposium, why not consider the Conference for Oral Health Professionals, for something a bit different. Held in Melbourne, the conference provides an ideal opportunity for positive interaction towards tobacco use prevention and cessation.

Many oral health professionals may have had limited access to appropriate information to undertake the role of promoting tobacco use prevention and cessation, so this is a good opportunity to raise the issue. For inquiries and registration information contact:

             Angela Fundak +61 433 947 927
             angela@sorella.com.au 

SMOKING CESSATION COURSES

The following smoking cessation courses are available free to all health professionals. They are facilitated by Denise Barlow, or Dr Mark Wallace-Bell, Heart Foundation Smoking Cessation Specialists. Times are 9 am - 4 pm. Pre-course reading and pre-course questionnaire are required for stages 1 and 2.

Completion of stages 1 and 2 allows the participant to become a quit card provider. Stage 3 is for those who have previously completed Stages 1 and 2 and have been working in smoking cessation for at least twelve months. Further courses will be scheduled in 2007 - details to come.

Please direct all registrations or queries to Jenny Ansley, NHF Cessation Training Coordinator, 03 366 2112, or jennya@nhf.org.nz. 

PACIFIC ISLANDS HEARTBEAT SMOKING CESSATION SERVICE

Free Training for Health professionals: Cessation Practitioner Training (CPT)

This training is designed for health professionals and community health workers looking for the knowledge and skill to assist patients in the cessation process. The course provides an understanding of brief intervention skills and principles for providers offer smoking cessation services. These skills and principles are evidence-base, with a strong emphasis on what is culturally relevant and appropriate for Pacific cultures.

Workshop content includes:

Guidelines: Background Overview; The Pacific Community and their issues; Stages of Change Model; Nicotine addiction; Introduction to Motivational Intervention; Communication Skill and Pacific Culture; Environmental Tobacco Smoking(ETS); Pharmacotherapy; Subsidized Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) and Quit Cards Registration; Brief facilitation skills - Principles; Introduction to Relapse Prevention - Brief and intensive; Case studies - Application of Knowledge and skills, NRT Prescription etc; Relevant Strategies and Support for Pacific Smokers.

Date: 25- 27 October 2006
Venue : St Josephs Church
Bill Pearce Room
32 Ellice Street Mount Victoria
Wellington

Starting Time: 9:00 am - 4:00pm

Morning tea and Afternoon tea will be provided

For more information Contact

Anthony Leaupepe
Smoking Cessation Training Facilitator
(04) 472 2780 ex 2
anthonyl@nhf.org.nz

TRAIN THE TRAINER - TRAINING SPECIFICALLY FOR FRONTLINE HOSPITAL STAFF

The 2005 National Heart Foundation initiative aimed at upskilling frontline hospital staff in each of New Zealand's District Health Boards (in tobacco specific brief intervention techniques) has reported a successful year.

This 'Train the Trainer in Effective Brief Intervention' initiative met recently in Nelson to update their knowledge, resources and share success stories.

Two Train the Trainer courses have been held with another planned for late September.

About 16 trainers from Northland, Auckland, Waikato, BOP and Lakes, Taranaki, Wellington/Hutt Valley, Marlborough/Nelson, West Coast, Canterbury and Southland have found the training extremely useful when teaching frontline staff about working with patients addicted to tobacco.

The trainers are hospital staff and have been trained in learning techniques which enable them to upskill frontline hospital staff to analyse, assist and refer patients who smoke.

This initiative encourages hospitals to better record and document their patients' smoking history by offering standard systems, processes and resources in line with the government subsidised Systems First approach.

This means a huge increase in the number of medical and nursing staff who are now confident and competent to intervene with patients who smoke. This supports the General Practitioners and other primary health care services to promote messages about the harmful effects of tobacco and encouragement for smokers to quit.

For further information please contact Denise Barlow or Mark Wallace-Bell of the National Heart Foundation or your local Smokefree Hospital Co-ordinator.

STUDENTS HAVE GRAPHIC LESSON ON SMOKING DAMAGE

Concerned at the number of their peers taking up smoking, Kapiti College students Sally Day, 17, and Mark Hammond, 15, decided it was time to show students how damaging it could be. The pair recently organised a Smokefree talk for 300 year nine students.

Lower Hutt heart transplant recipient Mohi Waihi, who arrived with his former heart in a bag, was the guest speaker. Last year Mr Waihi, 61, received a donor heart to replace his own heart, damaged by 30 years of smoking. "I wasn't even a heavy smoker - just an average smoker. After the operation it took me five weeks to recover. I was a pretty sick man," he said.

Mr Waihi invited the students to give their thoughts on what caused heart disease and told them his reasons for taking up smoking. He admitted peer pressure had an influence on the choices he made. "When I was your age I wanted to do what my mates were doing. Now I'm on medication for the rest of my life," he said.

Mr Waihi gave the students the opportunity to view his diseased heart in the hope that would repel them from smoking. "That's why I kept my heart, so I could do this sort of thing. That's what smoking does to you. It's real and it's serious," he said.

Mark and Sally said they did not want to lecture the students so labelled the talk Your Choice. "We wanted to give them the facts and let them make a choice," Mark said.

Researching and planning the event gave them a considerable insight into the damaging effects of smoking. "Four thousand and seven hundred New Zealanders die every year from smoking - that's more than from road crashes, suicide, skin cancer, drowning, homicide and AIDS combined," Sally said.

The students had the assistance of health promoter Sharon Leadbetter from Regional Public Health, Whitireia Polytechnic lecturers and local doctors and nurses. The Health Sponsorship Council donated boxes of smokefree merchandise.

Kapiti Observer, 11 September 2006

BLAST FROM THE PAST

The man who thinks for himself knows (1959)
Brand: Viceroy, ; Brown & Williamson

Full Text: The Man Who Thinks For Himself Knows... Only Viceroy Has a Thinking Man's Filter... A Smoking Man's Taste! This man thinks for himself. Knows the difference between fact and fancy. Trusts judgment, not opinion. Such a man usually smokes VICEROY. His reason? Best in the world. He knows for a fact that only VICEROY has a thinking man's filter and a smoking man's taste.

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

"Compensatory smoking: This is also a particularly tricky subject. On the one hand it is commercially sensitive. On the other, it must be in the interest of the industry to get data and speak out against those who claim that the low delivery programme is misleading in that smokers compensate for the low deliveries."

Imperial, 1983

"There is no science behind the accusation that advertising causes smoking initiation."

Thomas Lauria, Tobacco Institute (USA), 1991.

"If we see you smoking we will assume you are on fire and take appropriate action."

Douglas Adams (author of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

MEDIA THEMES

India: All films with smoking scenes to get 'A' certificate

If Anbumani Ramadoss, the Union Health Minister has his way, all films with smoking scenes will be certified 'A' (for adults only) and the actor concerned in the film will have to inform viewers about smoking being injurious to health during the interval of the film.

Ramadoss, who is campaigning against on-screen cigarette smoking, said that the Union Health Ministry along with the Information and Broadcasting ministry will be bringing out detailed guidelines to be followed by films with scenes of smoking. "We will be submitting the new set of guidelines to the Court by the end of this month," said the Union Minister, who was in Mumbai to announce the 14th World Conference on Tobacco or Health, scheduled to be held in the metropolis in February 2009.

The Centre will be submitting its new set of rules to the Delhi High Court, because earlier filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt had challenged the Central Government's May 31 notification banning smoking on screen.

Meanwhile, Ramadoss's new mechanism entails setting up a committee which film producers will approach to convince them about the necessity of the smoking scene. "The composition of the committee is yet to be decided," he said.

If the film with the smoking scene is cleared, the actor who has performed the scene, will tell viewers about the disastrous effects of cigarette smoking. The clipping will be aired before, during interval and after the movie ends, according to Ramadoss. Also the statutory warning, "Cigarette smoking is injurious to health" will be flashed on screen one minute prior to the smoking scene and after its conclusion.

All movies, having smoking scenes, will invariably be awarded an 'A' certificate by the censors. Similar guidelines will be used for the small screen too. However, historical characters like Winston Churchill will be spared from these guidelines.

Mumbai Mirror, 15 September 2006

Penn gets hotel fined

Actor Sean Penn flouted no smoking laws at the recent Toronto film festival. Now his hotel is paying the price. Penn lit up during a press conference for his film All the King's Men, at a Toronto hotel which has been slapped with a fine of C$605 (NZ$818) for allowing him to smoke.

Penn himself is escaping the incident with a slap on the wrist in the form of a sternly worded letter from Toronto public health officials.

New Zealand Herald, 18 September 2006

Study links ADHD cases to cigarettes

One-third of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder cases are linked to prenatal exposures to cigarette smoke or childhood exposures to lead, researchers in the US have reported.

The study, led by researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, was the first to estimate the number of ADHD cases attributable to environmental toxins.

The report "provides further evidence that we need to find ways to dramatically reduce prenatal tobacco smoke exposures and childhood lead exposures," said lead author Dr. Bruce Lanphear.

ADHD is a condition marked by impulsivity, poor concentration and hyperactivity, making it difficult for children to pay attention in school. Two million, or one of every 25 school-age children in the United States, have ADHD.

Researchers analysed data gathered on 4,704 children ages 4 to 15 as part of the federal National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The survey was conducted from 1999 to 2002.

Of children in the study, 8 percent were diagnosed with ADHD and 4.2 percent were prescribed drugs to treat the condition.

The study contained information on prenatal exposure to cigarette smoke and the concentration of lead in blood samples taken from the children. It confirmed the link found in previous studies between prenatal exposure to cigarette smoke and ADHD. The latest study found that children exposed to tobacco smoke prenatally had a 2.5-fold greater risk of ADHD than unexposed children.

Lanphear said that, taken together, prenatal tobacco smoke and childhood lead exposures accounted for 480,000 of an estimated 1.8 million ADHD cases.

But Dr. David Feinberg, medical director of the Stewart & Lynda Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the estimates sounded too high. The study didn't account for inherited genetic factors, which are one of biggest predictors of ADHD, Feinberg said. "Was it the genes, the smoking, the lead or some combination?" Feinberg said. "It is not sorted out in the study."

Lexington Herald-Leader, 20 September 2006

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