U.S. teens' menthol cigarette use on the rise

Use of menthol cigarettes is rising among teenagers and is "very high" for minority youth, U.S. government advisers said in part of a draft report released Monday. More than 80% of black adolescent smokers and more than half of Hispanic adolescent smokers use menthol cigarettes, advisers to the Food and Drug Administration said in a draft chapter for a report due next week. The FDA will use the report to help decide whether to ban or limit menthol, or mint-flavored, cigarettes.

Any curbs would be a severe blow to top menthol maker Lorillard Inc, which sells the Newport brand. Reynolds American Inc's R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co and Altria Group Inc's Philip Morris also sell menthol cigarettes. Menthols account for nearly one-third of the $83 billion in annual U.S. cigarette sales, according to Euromonitor International data.

"Menthol cigarette use is very high among minority youth," the draft from FDA advisers said. Among Asian-American middle-school smokers, more than half use menthol.

It also said the rise among adolescents in general was driven by a "significant increase in the number of white youth ages 12 to 17 who are smoking menthol cigarettes."

The FDA advisers are set to hold a public meeting on Thursday and Friday to discuss their findings. In previously released chapters, advisers said there was a lack of evidence to show menthol cigarettes expose smokers to higher risk of disease but that the flavoring might make cigarettes more addictive.

The complete report is due to go to the FDA by March 23. The FDA is not bound by the panel's advice and has no deadline to take any action.

Lorillard has filed a lawsuit to prevent the FDA from considering the panel's report in making any final decision on the cigarettes.

Health advocates argue menthol flavoring masks the harshness of tobacco, making it easier to start smoking and harder to quit. Manufacturers say adding menthol does not make a cigarette more harmful or addictive.

"What is clear is that the overwhelming scientific evidence doesn't support a ban on menthol cigarettes," Lorillard spokesman Gregg Perry said.

Reynolds spokesman David Howard said the company would not comment until it can review the entire report and the committee's recommendation. A Philip Morris spokesman had no immediate comment on the draft chapter released on Monday.

Cigarettes to be sold in plain packets in England

All shops will be banned from openly displaying tobacco products by April 2015 as part of new government measures to crack down smoking, reports marketing news sources.

Large stores will only have until April 2012 to remove open displays of tobacco.

Marketingweek.co.uk reports packets would be unbranded without logos or colours with health warning the only text on display. If these proposals were confirmed, England would become the first country in Europe to introduce plain packaging.

The Department of Health believe that unbranded, colourless cigarettes will put off the 200,000 or so teenagers that take up smoking every year.

Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, said in a statement to the Commons: “Smoking is undeniably one of the biggest and most stubborn challenges in public health. Over 8 million people in England still smoke and it causes more than 80,000 deaths each year.

“Smoking affects the health of smokers and their families. My ambition is to reduce smoking rates faster over the next five years than has been achieved in the past five years,” he added.

The Guardian notes that Lansley aims to reduce smoking rates in England from 21.2 per cent to 18.5 per cent or less among adults by the end of 2015; from 15 per cent to 12 per cent or less among 15-year-olds; and from 14 per cent to 11 per cent or less among pregnant mothers.

Cigarettes the most deadly cause of house fire fatalities

Habits such as smoking whilst drinking alcohol in the home or lighting up in bed are responsible for one in three (36 per cent) of all accidental house fires resulting in deaths.

With a steady decline in the number of smokers in England, the overall number of fires triggered by cigarettes is small, but with over a third of all fire deaths in the country attributed to cigarettes the proportion of fatalities is staggering.

A working smoke alarm means you are more than twice as likely to survive an accidental house fire.

Sheila Pendlesbury sadly lost her grandson Shaun in house fire triggered by a cigarette. She said:

"Shaun was only 27 year old when he died. He had a daughter and a bright future ahead of him. His loss is something we as a family will have to live with. But it hurts enormously to know something as basic, as a working smoking alarm could have alerted him to the fire and possibly saved his life."

The Government's Chief Fire and Rescue Adviser Sir Ken Knight said:

"Without an early alarm system in place you could lose valuable escape time in a fire. Just two to three breaths of toxic smoke can render a person unconscious. As well as the health dangers, people need to be aware of the deadly risks of smoking in the home and how smoking materials can very quickly and easily lead to a fire. When extinguishing cigarettes smokers must make sure they 'put it out, right out' and if possible refrain from smoking in the home at all."

For smokers not ready to kick the habit it is important to follow these simple precautions to prevent a fire at home:

•put it out, right out! Make sure your cigarette is fully extinguished
•fit a smoke alarm and test it weekly. A working smoke alarm can buy you valuable time to get out, stay out and call 999
•never smoke in bed. Take care when you're tired. It's very easy to fall asleep while your cigarette is still burning and set furniture alight
•avoid drugs and alcohol when smoking. It's easy to lose your concentration when using any sort of drugs or drinking alcohol, combined with cigarettes and this could be lethal
•never leave lit cigarettes, cigars or pipes unattended - they can easily overbalance as they burn down
•use a proper, heavy ashtray that can't tip over easily and is made of a material that won't burn.

More details on cigarettes seizure

A number of people in Donegal have been questioned in relations to the seizure of millions of cigerattes.

The seizure was made by custom’s official in a surveillance operation code named Operation Marble.

More details have emerged of the seizure by the Revenue’s Customs Service of seven million contraband cigarettes.

The Cigaretted have an estimated retail value of €3m and potential loss to the exchequer of €2.5m.

The cigarettes, which are believed to be counterfeit, were concealed in a 40 foot container which arrived at Dublin Port from China via Rotterdam.

The contents of the container were described as “Ceramic Tiles”.

The operation, which spanned over several days, resulted in the seizure of “Benson & Hedges” cigarettes and an articulated truck in Co. Louth.

Follow-up searches under warrant were carried out on two private premises in Donegal yesterday.

Several individuals in both Co. Donegal and Co. Louth have been interviewed.

Custom’s say Investigations are ongoing both nationally and internationally.

Cigarette to blame in fire that killed 70-year-old Tigard woman

A fire investigator has determined that an improperly disposed of cigarette caused a fire that killed a 70-year-old Tigard woman last month.

Jo-Anne Greenwood, who lived alone in the Summerfield Retirement Community unit, was killed in the Feb. 20 fire that started about 3 a.m., according to Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue. Smoke inhalation played a part in her death, but she was also burned, TVF&R said.

Investigators determined that the fire started in an extra bedroom in her condo, where Greenwood often smoked, said Brian Barker, a TVF&R spokesman.

"Our hearts go out to this woman's family," Barker said in a news release, "We've seen a number of fires caused by cigarettes recently, and they're all preventable. People don't realize that the only safe way to extinguish and discard your cigarettes is in an ashtray or appropriate metal container with a lid."

Fire crews from Tigard, Tualatin and King City responded to Greenwood's residence, in the 15000 block of Southwest 94th Avenue, after a woman staying with her mother in a neighboring unit reportedly saw fire and smoke and called 9-1-1.

Arching electrical lines made fighting the fire challenging, TVF&R said, but firefighters controlled the blaze within seven minutes of arriving on scene. Another crew entered the home and found Greenwood on the floor. They rushed her outside to paramedics, who determined she had died, according to TVF&R.

No one else was injured in the fire. Because of firewalls between the units and a quick, aggressive firefighter response, the damage was primarily contained to the one unit, TVF&R said.

Fire officials estimate the fire caused $105,000 in damage to the unit and its contents.

Barker cited statistics from the state Fire Marshal's Office that between 2005 and 2009 about 6,400 fires caused by cigarettes resulted in 34 deaths, 133 injuries and about $20 million in property loss.

After the Tigard fire, on Feb. 21, firefighters knocked on doors in the community and offered to check residents' smoke alarms, Barker said. Firefighters reportedly found that about 25 percent of the smoke alarms they tested were not working and needed replacing. Barker said non-working alarms were replaced.

I was wrong on cigarettes but believe me, I’m right on cannabis

I used to fall for the old arguments about smoking and freedom – that people were entitled to do this stupid thing if they wanted to. I may even have used the expression ‘nanny state’, though I try very hard to avoid it now.
Sometimes even grown-ups need a bit of nannying.
I even campaigned, in an office I worked in, against a planned smoking ban, though I have never smoked myself. I was quite wrong.
It is perfectly sensible and justifiable to use the law to try to stop people from harming themselves, unless there are very good reasons for the risk. Because when you harm yourself, you harm plenty of other people too.
No, I never believed the stories about second-hand smoke, and still don’t.
Cigarettes stink and spoil the atmosphere, and anyone who smokes them near others who are eating is inconsiderate and rude. But I think the evidence that they give cancer to anyone apart from the people actually smoking them is very thin indeed.
The real harm to others is quite different. If you fall seriously ill, you are not the only one who suffers. Everyone close to you suffers too, often more than you do. And after your (often unpleasantly lingering) death from lung cancer, it is the others who are left to grieve and cope without the help, company and income of the carefree smoker who said it was a risk worth taking and discovered too late that it wasn’t.
And I have no doubt at all that the bans on smoking, in trains, cinemas, buses, pubs, restaurants and hotels are helping many people give up a habit that is actually much harder to quit than heroin.
And one measure of the rightness of these bans is how quickly it has begun to seem strange that smoking was ever allowed in these places.
Did we really watch films through columns of bluish effluent? Were trains on the London Underground stained a noxious yellow, full of stale fug and strewn with butts? Was the back end of every aeroplane a sordid zone of wheezing and spluttering?
Yes, it was so, though I really can’t work out why we put up with it for so long. Something so self-evidently ugly and dirty obviously wasn’t good for us.
I realised that I couldn’t really believe – as I do – that the law can be used to discourage cannabis, or drunkenness, or drunk driving, if I continued to support the futile, fatal freedoms of smokers.
So I changed my opinion. The ban on displaying cigarettes in shops will cause fewer people to smoke, as all the other measures have since the first health warning appeared on the first packet.
And in time this strange, self-destructive habit, which is actually very new and only really invaded the civilised world during two disastrous wars, will be banished to the margins of life.
Then we will have proof prohibition does sometimes work, if it is intelligently and persistently imposed.
And the stupid, fashionable claim that there is no point in applying the laws against that sinister poison, cannabis, will be shown up for what it is – selfish, dangerous tripe. Where we can save people from destroying themselves, we must do so.

hy collecting more cigarette taxes makes sense

The health of the nation continues to be a compelling reason why more cigarette taxes should be collected, and this has been the subject of several of my columns in the past.

Recently, I came across a study which cited University of the Philippines Dean and Professor of Law Marvic MVF Leonen as one of the authors that systematically tackled the issue of the ill-effects of tobacco smoking on the health budget.

As I had also written in this column before, the paper likewise noted the “popularity” of smoking in the Philippines not just among adults, but even with our youth despite the popular notion that this generation is more supportive of healthy and “green” living.

Accordingly, the country has 17.3 million adult smokers, which squarely puts us as having one of the highest smoking prevalence rates in the world. In fact, we are ranked 12th among males, and 5th among females. More alarmingly, the paper talks about the growing population of youth smokers, one that has increased by almost 40 percent during a span of four years.

Even if there is a law prohibiting sale to minors, at least a fourth of our youth has started to smoke. According to the 2000 Global Youth Tobacco Survey, there are even cases of children younger than 10 years old who have started to pick up the filthy habit.

Smoking ills raise health cost

No wonder then that the cost to our society because of smoking ills is also on the rise. An estimated 30,000 Filipinos die yearly of smoking-related illnesses, including diseases of the heart, nervous system, pulmonary system, and various cancers.

Another 30,000 people, second-hand smokers or individuals exposed to the smoke of those who drag on the nicotine of their cigars or cigarettes, are estimated to be afflicted by this smoking mania. Particularly vulnerable are children with asthma.

The cost of smoking to the country, both in terms of health care and productivity losses, is estimated to be between P220 to P460 billion. Worse, those affected belong to the lower levels of the income strata, and subsequently pose a higher burden on the public health care system.