Lots of smokers, lots of racial overtones, lots of interest. There’s so much interest in menthol cigarettes and their regulation, in fact, that the Food and Drug Administration’s newly created scientific advisory committee on tobacco products will be webcasting its inaugural meeting — focusing entirely on menthol in tobacco — on Tuesday and Wednesday, March 30 and 31.

The panel is expected to tackle the question of whether and how mentholation of cigarettes should be regulated by the FDA. You can check the meeting out here.

First, a few facts from a comprehensive collection of research on menthol and tobacco produced by the National Cancer Institute: Menthol cigarettes account for 26% of all cigarettes sold in the United States. Among adult African Americans who smoke, nearly 7 in 10 smoke menthols. Smoking menthols is biggest among black women and 18- to 30-year-olds. Latinos also appear to be drawn to the frosty taste and sensation of menthols: Among Latinos who smoke almost 3 in 10 smoke menthols, compared with about 22% of non-Latino whites.

Those facts mean that any regulation of menthol in cigarettes will weigh more heavily in minority communities — a sensitive subject for public policy. African Americans have the highest rates of lung cancer of any racial or ethnic group, and black men are far more likely than males of any other ethnic group to die of it.

Beyond those glaring demographic facts, there’s a lot of uncertainty about the role of menthol in cigarettes. Does menthol induce young people, and especially young African Americans, to take up the habit? Does it make it harder for those who smoke them to quit? Does the frosty flavoring prompt those who smoke menthols to drag harder or inhale more deeply? And are menthols any more cancer-causing than unmentholated cigarettes? These questions — to which research has provided contradictory and incomplete answers — will be discussed by the FDA’s advisory committee, the membership of which is listed here.

Menthol is derived from the oil of peppermint, and it’s also known as mint camphor. As luck would have it, it’s a compound that in used in embalming, and in masking the smell of decomposition. The first brand of menthol cigarettes, Salem, was introduced by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. on the American market in 1956, just as researchers outside the tobacco industry were beginning to collect evidence of cigarettes’ dangers.

By Melissa Healy, Latimesblogs

Despite all the evidence out there, people are still smoking.
IN THE 1940s, smoking cigarettes was socially acceptable – even considered cool, if you believe some of the ads from way back then.

For example, one ad for Camel cigarettes read: “More doctors smoke CAMELS than any other cigarette!” Accompanying the claim was a picture of a handsome doctor (you can tell he’s a doctor because he’s wearing a white coat) holding a cigarette in his hand. The message? Beautiful, intelligent, successful people are smoking Camels, so why aren’t you?

Moreover, if your doctor smokes Camels, they can’t possibly be bad for you. I mean to say, this is the guy responsible for your health. And if he thinks a Camel is better than, say, a Marlboro, who can argue with that? A couple of Camels a day might even help that hacking cough you’ve had for a while, the one that causes you to bring up blood and pieces of lung tissue.

Even if such ads were still allowed today, no doctor would endorse such a product, simply because we all know better now. Seventy years later, we all know that smoking cigarettes is bad for your health. We all know that stinking hair, and nicotine-stained teeth and fingers are neither sexy nor as cool as some would have you think. We all know that most doctors don’t look like movie stars.

I started smoking when I was 15. And no, I didn’t smoke Camels. I smoked a brand called Player’s. There was no sexy advertising, not that I can remember, but it was the cigarette that my father smoked – or at least one of them.

My father smoked three packets of cigarettes a day: two packets that guaranteed that his lungs were perpetually clogged with tar, and a packet of menthols. The menthols were for his health.

You see, way back then, we were slowly becoming aware that smoking could cause all sorts of nasty cancers, but most people chose to ignore the warnings.

My father did know better, but those menthols cigarettes were supposed to cancel out the ill-effects of the other cigarettes.

He didn’t know it at the time, but those menthol cigarettes were just as harmful as any other cigarette around. Still, that soothing menthol flavour had him fooled.

Even when he was diagnosed with lung cancer, he continued to smoke his menthol cigarettes. He would spend half an hour every morning coughing violently in an attempt to clear his lungs, followed by several menthols with his cup of coffee.

I didn’t start smoking because of my father’s influence. If anything, his habit disgusted me. During the winter months, when all the windows and doors in my house were firmly closed against the elements, the living room was often full of smoke, the result of one man and his 60 cigarettes. And even when he wasn’t at home, that room reeked of stale nicotine.

Every spring, my father would open the windows, don a pair of overalls, and paint the living room walls. I often watched as he applied the virgin white paint, which seemed all the whiter against the yellowing walls.

It probably never occurred to him that the inside of his lungs had suffered a much worse fate. And it certainly never crossed my mind that I would be yellowing walls of my own in years to come.

Long before my father’s cancer was diagnosed, peer pressure induced me to smoke for the first time. I’d just moved to a new school, where two of the most popular girls in my year had befriended me.

I was so grateful for the friendship and eager to be accepted, so when they offered me a cigarette one day after class, I accepted without even thinking about the consequences. The first inhalation almost caused me to throw up, but I persevered.

I smoked for almost 15 years before deciding to give it up. But to this day, I regret that first puff.

Despite all the evidence out there, people are still smoking. And it’s not just middle-aged people, people who didn’t know any better way back then, who are indulging. A lot of young people are taking up the habit. Like what the heck do we have to tell them about cigarettes to stop them from starting in the first place? Of course it doesn’t help that Malaysia has been dubbed the “indirect advertising capital” of the world.

Seventy years from now, we might look back on the indirect advertising campaigns that promote cigarettes today and find them equally as insidious as the Camel ad of the 1940s.

I sure hope so.

By MARY SCHNEIDER, Thestar

British American Tobacco (BAT) on Friday forecast that the world’s consumption of cigarettes was likely to remain fairly stable at 6 trillion cigarettes a year, one-third of which are sold in China.

The cigarette company, responsible for the Dunhill, Kent and Lucky Strike brands, plans to ensure it is well-placed to meet the needs of consumers, whether they are down-trading in times of recession or up-trading as the economic situation improves.

Six years ago, the UN conducted a study of the world’s tobacco consumption and found that the number of smokers in the world was expected to grow from 1.1 billion in 1998 to about 1.3 billion this year, an increase of about 1.5 percent annually.

This is in direct contrast to BAT’s estimations in its latest annual report, which states that the global legal market had shown a decline in consumption by 1.5 percent annually over the long term.

BAT chief executive Paul Adams said trends indicated that individual smokers would consume fewer cigarettes each and smaller percentages of populations would smoke.

“However, offsetting these trends, the number of adults in the world over the age of 20 continues to grow,” he said.

He said volume declines had been evident in a number of markets last year and BAT expected global volumes to remain under pressure this year.
“We estimate that the global legal market, excluding China, fell by 3 percent last year compared with its long-term trend of declining 1.5 percent,” he said.

But pricing had remained positive, and the global profit pool was expected to continue to grow.

“In many key markets, legal volumes have been affected as consumers move to illicit products,” Adams said.

He said illicit trade in tobacco products – smuggled, counterfeit or tax evaded – was in effect one of the company’s major global competitors and represented nearly 12 percent of world consumption.

BAT reported a gross turnover of £40.7 billion (R447bn) for last year. Adams reported that acquisitions continued to play a part in its growth strategy and explained that its latest acquisition – Bentoel in Indonesia – gave the group a strong position in the fourth-largest cigarette market.

The UN in its report predicted that more tobacco would be smoked in developing countries, where tobacco consumption was expected to grow to 5.09 million tons this year from 4.2 million in 1998.

By Florence de Vries, Busrep

A 23 to 26 percent increase in tax on tobacco products will cut consumption and significantly increase excise revenue, a researcher said on Sunday.

“A disproportionately higher tax on tobacco than income growth will reduce tobacco consumption” said Dr. Mahfuz Kabir an economist of Unnayan Shamannay, an NGO.

Presenting the findings of a research, Kabir said a 15 percent rise in tobacco product price will effectively reduce consumption.

To get the expected result, tax has to be increased by 23 percent on cigarettes and 26 percent on ‘bidi’, he added.

“A 23 percent increase in tax on cigarettes of all brands will cut consumption by 4 to 6 percent.” At the same time, the tax increase would raise cigarette price by 15 percent.

More importantly, Kabir said, tax hike by that percentage will also result in an increase of revenue earning by at least Tk. 903 crore in 2010-11 financial year.

Research has found that the consumers of ‘bidi’ are among the worst affected by tobacco consumption.

Kabir calculated that 26 percent tax increase on ‘bidi’ will cut consumption by 1680 million sticks, while increasing price by 15 percent and will yield additional Tk. 68 crore as revenue in the next financial year.

According to Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS), 43.3 percent population of Bangladesh consumed tobacco products in 2009; of them, 23 percent smoked cigarette or bidi.

Every year 57,000 people die from tobacco consumption and nearly 382,000 become disabled.

At present, the average tax on cigarette and ‘bidi’ are 64 and 56 percent respectively. Total consumption of tobacco product during 2008-09 was between Tk. 9,000 and Tk. 10,000 crore, according to the research.

Bangladesh earned a total of Tk.5,393 crore from tax on tobacco product in the last financial year.

Khondker Ibrahim Khaled, chairman of Bangladesh Krishi Bank, said that they are trying to formulate a policy that would bar any agriculture loan for tobacco farming.

He, however, hastened to add that the loan could be provided to the export-oriented tobacco farming.

Khaled also said that it is unrealistic to expect that everyone will quit smoking. To minimise the pernicious effect of tobacco consumption, he suggested that they can smoke local ‘hukka’.

Membership of the FDA’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee was recently established, with Lorillard Tobacco Co.’s principal scientist, Dr. J. Daniel Heck, assuming the role of non-voting representative of the tobacco manufacturing industry.

“With the full membership of the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee now in place, Lorillard looks forward to working with the committee and contributing to its scientific review of menthol and other topics,” the company said in a statement. “Lorillard remains confident that a serious examination of menthol science will show that the best available science does not support an assertion that menthol impacts public health.”

Heck has more than 30 years of experience in research, with a record of peer-reviewed articles and studies, according to the company, which makes Newport, the No. 1 menthol cigarette brand in the U.S. Heck earned his doctorate in pharmacology and toxicology from the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in Houston, and has served as principal scientist at Lorillard since 2003.

Other members of the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee include:

– Chair: Jonathan M. Samet, M.D., M.S.: Department of Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine.

– Acting Designated Federal Official: Cristi L. Stark, M.S.: Center for Tobacco Products, FDA

– Neal L. Benowitz, M.D.; Schools of Medicine and Pharmacy, University of California.

– Dorothy K. Hatsukami, Ph.D.: Tobacco Use Research Center, University of Minnesota.

– Mark Stuart Clanton, M.D., M.P.H.: American Cancer Society

– Gregory Niles Connolly, D.M.D., M.P.H.: Division of Public Health Practice, Harvard School of Public Health.

– Karen L. DeLeeuw, M.S.W.: Center for Healthy Living and Chronic Disease Prevention, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

– Representative of the General Public: Patricia Nez Henderson, M.P.H., M.D.: Black Hills Center for American Indian Health.

– Jack E. Henningfield, Ph.D.: Research and Health Policy, Pinney Associates.

– Luby Arnold Hamm, Jr.: Representative of the interests of tobacco growers, non-voting.

– John H. Lauterbach, Ph.D., DABT: Representative for the interest of small business tobacco manufacturing industry, non-voting; Lauterbach & Associates LLC.

– Melanie Wakefield, Ph.D.: Centre for Behavioural Research in Cancer, The Cancer Council Victoria.

The Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee was established as part of the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which gave the FDA power to regulate tobacco. It was designed to advise the commissioner or designee in discharging responsibilities as they relate to the regulation of tobacco products, the FDA’s Web site states.

The first meeting of the committee will be March 30, when it will receive presentations on the background and overview of the FDA Center for Tobacco Products, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act and the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee, according to the FDA’s Web site. It will also receive presentations on and discuss published literature on menthol, covering user demographics, preferential use by persons initiating tobacco use, health effects, the effects of menthol on addiction and cessation, menthol marketing and consumer perceptions, sensory qualities and effect on how cigarettes are smoked.

On March 31, the committee will also discuss an action plan for the enforcement of restrictions on the advertising and promotion of menthol and other cigarettes to youth; and the establishment of a list of harmful tobacco product constituents, according to the Web site.

CITY officials have been working hard in the last year to stop shops selling illegal cigarettes.
Nottingham City Council’s Trading Standards team has held 19 training sessions with retailers warning them about the dangers of the illicit tobacco.

Many of the packets are made for sale abroad, do not contain the mandatory health and safety warnings and are sold without paying tax or duty.

Other counterfeit offerings are made to look like major brands but sold at half the normal price to entice buyers in Nottingham’s most deprived estates.

Some shops have even had enforcement action taken against them – with illegal cigarettes seized by trading standards or Customs officers.

But it is a more hidden danger that is doing just as much damage to attempt to bring down Nottingham’s sky-high smoking rate.

“Fag houses” – private homes whose owners sell illicit cigarettes to visitors – seem to have sprung up on many estates.

It is thought the sellers may have links with other criminal activities such as drug dealing and stolen goods.

And they are thought to be only too happy to sell to children aged 12 or even younger who visit after hearing about the houses by word of mouth.

Caraline Ryan, head of public protection at the city council, said selling to children was seen as easy money by fag house owners.

She said: “It is difficult for children to get them elsewhere so their only route is sometimes illegal sales.

“If you are into criminality you are not bothered about the age of people you are selling to.

“Anecdotally, we are aware of schools where children sell to other children, not necessarily packets but single cigarettes.

“It just reinforces the message that smoking is normal. It is hard for people aged 11 or 12 to think about the damage to their health. If everyone in the community is smoking it is seen as the norm and then it is much harder to give it up.”

The FAKE campaign launched today in the city is an attempt to deter fag house owners from their illegal activities.

Residents living near the houses are thought to be affected by the trade, which brings other criminals to the area and increases the fear of crime. And trading standards and police officials in Nottingham hope they will help stamp out the practice by reporting what goes on.

Campaign posters showing cigarette packets branded with the word “fake” will be on show on buses in the city from today.

Posters will also be placed in workplaces across the city to raise awareness of the dangers of illicit and counterfeit tobacco.

The issue of fag houses was raised at the Putting Health at the Heart of Nottingham event last month, where residents came up with ideas to improve the city’s health.

Eunice Campbell, the city council’s portfolio holder for health, set the target at the event of halving Nottingham’s 39% smoking rate by 2020. In areas such as Bulwell and St Ann’s the rate of smoking among adults is higher than 50%.

Unlike other cities, Nottingham’s rate has been rising in recent years – though early indications show it may have dropped in the last year.

But Coun Campbell admitted the trade in illicit cigarettes was undermining efforts to cut smoking levels in the city.

She said: “If people are aware this is happening they should come forward and make us aware of it. We want to break this chain of illegal tobacco sales but if we don’t know it is happening we won’t be able to.”

Massachusetts high school nurses say they have noticed fewer students smoking cigarettes. But, they can’t be sure if more are switching to smokeless tobacco as a substitute.

“(There is) definitely less smoking that we can detect on their clothes,” said Marlborough High’s Virginia Gadbois, a school nurse since 1986, following the release earlier this month of survey that indicates teens have switched from cigarettes to other tobacco products.

The report, conducted by the state health and education departments and funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, surveyed middle and high school students about their tobacco habits. It concluded that for the first time, high school students are using more smokeless tobacco and cigars than regular cigarettes.

The study says 16 percent of high school students said they had used cigarettes in the past 30 days, whereas 17.6 percent said they had used other kinds of tobacco products.

High school nurses say they haven’t noticed any increase in such products, but don’t deny students are using them.

“I’m not saying it’s not here, I’m sure it is. I’m saying I’m not seeing it,” Gadbois said.

She said she no longer smells smoke wafting from the girl’s bathroom.

Nicole Marcinkiewicz, a nurse at Natick High School, said she hasn’t dealt with any complications due to smokeless tobacco, such as oral cancer.

Still, organizations like Tobacco Free Mass, a policy organization based in Framingham, say youth are drawn to products like flavored tobacco lozenges, small flavored cigars and dissolvable bags of flavored tobacco.

“It’s not surprising given the fact that the tobacco industry markets their products to young people,” Executive Director Russet Morrow Breslau said.

These products cost between $1 and $7 she said, whereas a pack of cigarettes costs around $9.

“That points to the fact that youth are price-sensitive. They are turning to these less expensive products that are marketed to them,” Morrow Breslau said.

The education department’s study follows a proposal in Gov. Deval Patrick’s fiscal 2011 budget to increase the sales tax on smokeless tobacco and cigars to the same level as regular cigarettes.

While these products are already taxed at rates varying from 30 to 90 percent, the governor’s budget would raise the taxes to equal about 110 or 120 percent of their cost – the same increase imposed on cigarettes in 2008.

“These things weren’t increased back then, and the idea is to sort of catch up,” said Robert Bliss, a spokesman for the Department of Revenue.

Some Massachusetts legislators say raising the tax is a good way to discourage young people from buying tobacco.

“This is a product that’s causing a lot of damage to people, hurting a lot of people, killing a lot of people. It makes no sense to me that a product like that wouldn’t be taxed,” said Sen. Jamie Eldridge, D-Acton, the Senate sponsor of a bill mirroring Patrick’s budget proposal. The bill was recently sent to a study committee.

Rep. Peter Koutoujian, D-Waltham, who led the 2008 effort to increase cigarette tax by $1-a-pack, spoke Wednesday at an anti-smoking rally.

“I’m not interested in taxes for raising money. However, if you can reduce consumption of a product that’s going to be addictive, that’d be a tax I’d consider,” Koutoujian said yesterday.

Other legislators, including Rep. Danielle Gregoire, D-Marlborough, and Rep. Alice Peisch, D-Wellesley, are wary of any new taxes.

Peisch said she likes the idea of an increased tax to dissuade young people from using tobacco, but she is hesitant to support any new taxes this year.

Peisch said her stance “is less connected to the merits of the particular tax on smokeless tobacco and more connected to the lack of support for taxes at this point in general.”

Speaker Robert DeLeo has said the House budget will not include new taxes.

By Laura Krantz,Daily News Tribune

Nearly one in three smokers worldwide lights up in China, where cigarettes – commonly given as gifts – are so tightly woven into the culture, some believe it’s an impossible habit to kick. But a new report suggests the keys to quitting lie in the country’s own backyard.

Hong Kong has successfully fought tobacco for two decades and seen its smoking rate drop from 23 percent in 1982 when the campaign began to 12 percent in 2008 – the lowest in the world. The former British colony, now under Chinese rule, hit cigarettes hard with taxes up to 300 percent, banned indoor smoking and promoted education through schools and public service announcements – proving that smoking and Chinese culture aren’t necessarily married for life.

“We all learn from shared experiences. The U.S. tobacco program has learned from Australia, Canada and others,” said Jeffrey Koplan, from Emory Global Health Institute in Atlanta, who wrote a commentary published online Friday in The Lancet medical journal. “Hong Kong is very relevant to Chinese conditions, and the big lesson for all of us to learn is that effective health promotion programs are multidimensional.”

About 30 percent of the world’s smokers live in China, a number roughly equal to the entire U.S. population. Within the next 15 years it will kill an estimated 2 million Chinese annually, the report said. The country is home to both the world’s largest tobacco grower and cigarette producer.

The mainland has taken some steps to reduce smoking, such as banning TV and radio ads and adding health warnings to cigarette packaging, and it was successful in banning smoking at both indoor and outdoor venues at the 2008 Olympics.

But the government now needs to step up and confront its state-owned tobacco monopoly by slapping cigarettes with steep taxes, said Dr. Judith Mackay, a World Health Organization senior policy adviser who’s been a long-standing vocal leader of anti-smoking campaigns across Asia, working with China since the 1980s.

“You have to price them out of the hands and the pockets and the mouths of children,” she said, adding that China did levy a tax, but it was absorbed by the companies and smokers were never hit with a price increase. “If you can get kids by the age of 19, they don’t start smoking hardly after that.”

The price of locally made cigarettes varies widely in China, but a pack can be bought for as little as $1.50 in Beijing. By comparison, in Hong Kong, an imported pack costs just over $5.

In Hong Kong, cigarettes have been taxed a number of times at high rates starting at 300 percent in 1983. When the territory left the tax rate unchanged from 2001 to 2008, it saw a rise in tobacco use, including an increase in the average number of cigarettes being smoked by young people from nine a day in 2005 to 11 three years later. Last year, the government levied a 50 percent tax increase to counter the resurgence.

Mackay, who has lived in Hong Kong for 40 years and was not part of the Lancet commentary, said the WHO recently challenged the territory of 7 million to become the first place to push its smoking rate below 10 percent.

She said it’s a target that can hopefully be met, showing China what’s possible with enough direction. Hong Kong’s leaders, along with WHO chief Dr. Margaret Chan, the financial hub’s former health director, are also key to helping China realize just how much smoking will cost the country in the long run.

“Some people in China always think that Chinese are a special case, and actually I don’t buy it at all,” she said. “I’ve worked with kings and communists in this region and the product is the same, the health effects are the same, the obstacles are the same, what has to be done is the same.”

Earlier this week, a national study revealed that China is now home to the most people living with diabetes. Smoking is a major risk factor for that chronic ailment along with heart disease, the country’s top killer. Tobacco-related diseases are already linked to about 1 million deaths a year.

“The huge tobacco and cigarette industry and its economic impact are serious challenges to tobacco control,” said Koplan. “But not much different from the tobacco industry in the U.S. Good health eventually trumps commercial profits.

The Yurok Tribe, Resighini Rancheria, Wiyot Tribe, and Blue Lake Rancheria have passed a policy that prohibits commercial tobacco companies from giving away free tobacco samples on their tribal lands. The use of non-commercial tobacco for traditional and ceremonial purposes is excluded from this policy.

United Indian Health Services’ NATIVE Tobacco Project would like to thank the Yurok Tribe and the Resighini Rancheria for taking a stand against commercial tobacco companies and stopping them from giving away free tobacco samples to lure new smokers.

The commercial tobacco industry has identified American Indian communities as an untapped and unprotected opportunity to maximize profits beyond the limits of state and county regulated jurisdictions. The commercial tobacco companies have sought to manipulate the sacred use of tobacco by improperly suggesting that commercial cigarette and smokeless tobacco products are retail substitutes for tobacco approved by elders for ceremonial use.

By prohibiting tobacco sampling, the Yurok Tribe and Resighini Rancheria are showing their commitment to the health and wellness of all people.