The alcohol industry’s sponsorship of sport should be banned and replaced with a dedicated alcohol tax modelled on those employed by some countries for tobacco, say scientists.

Writing in the latest issue of the international journal Addiction, the authors have called on governments to outlaw the practice, citing their highly publicised 2008 study that showed alcohol-industry sponsorship of elite and community sport was associated with hazardous drinking among sport participants.

Dr Kypros Kypri, from Newcastle University in Australia, and Dr Kerry O’Brien, from The University of Manchester in Britain, claim alcohol industry representatives and sports administrators in the UK and Australia were dismissive of the 2008 research findings despite their publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

Both the Portman Group — a public relations body set up by the alcohol industry — and the European Sponsorship Association, whose members include leading alcohol producers, argued that there was no causal relationship between sponsorship and alcohol misuse, which the researchers suggest is reminiscent of arguments used by the tobacco industry’s behaviour in the 1990s.

Dr Kypri said: “The latest moves by the major sporting codes in Australia to lobby against the regulation of alcohol sponsorship of sport show that these bodies remain in denial of alcohol-related problems in their sports.

“In addition, it is clear that these organisations have enormous vested interests in continuing to receive alcohol money and government should be careful to act in the public interest rather than to cave in to the sports and Big Booze.”

Co-author, Dr O’Brien added: “Sport administrators are sending mixed messages to participants and fans when, on the one hand, they embrace and peddle alcohol via their sport, while on the other they punish individual sport stars and fans when they display loutish behaviour while intoxicated.”

In place of industry sponsorship, the researchers suggest in their Addiction editorial that governments use the proceeds of alcohol taxation to sponsor sports via independent bodies. They say an opportunity exists in the UK, where a minimum unit price for alcohol is being considered, to ‘ring-fence’ revenue from any tax-driven increase in unit price for funding of sports and healthy community activities. This would allow elite and community sport to receive a dependable funding stream while ending the unhealthy relationship between the alcohol industry and sport.

Dr O’Brien added: “Sport is not only being used by the alcohol industry to encourage drinking among sportspeople and fans, it is also the primary vehicle for alcohol-industry marketing to the general public.

“For example, reports from the US show that for the first six months of 2009 Anheuser-Busch, one of the worlds biggest alcohol producers, spent more than US$194 million or around 80% of its US TV advertising budget on sport. That is a staggering amount and indicates the centrality of sport as a marketing tool for alcohol sales.”

Calls for a complete ban on alcohol advertising and sponsorship were also made in September by the British Medical Association following the release of ‘Under the Influence’, a report showing the significant impact that alcohol marketing has on drinking and associated harm.

ScienceDaily, Nov. 11, 2009

Although the Department of Defense is considering phasing in a ban on tobacco use in the military over as many as 20 years, The Pentagon reassured troops this week that it won’t ban tobacco products in war zones, according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ press secretary Geoff Morrell. But the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association isn’t taking any chances.

“This comes down to personal choice and the pleasure of enjoying tobacco – especially good cigars and pipe tobacco – and the individual rights for which our military are fighting,” said Chris McCalla, legislative director of the IPCPR. His group’s members include more than 2,000 small business owners of smoke shops and manufacturers and distributors of hand-made cigars, pipes and pipe tobacco. They represent some five percent of the tobacco industry.

“IPCPR members regularly send supplies of hand-made cigars to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to enjoy during their moments of relaxation. If anyone has earned the right to such pleasures, it’s our troops, especially those in combat,” he said.

McCalla pointed out that most people have had the image of officers smoking cigars but that cigars are enjoyed by all strata of military personnel, not unlike civilians.

“Smoking throughout the ranks is not restricted to one level or another, nor should it be. Whether they are Generals or privates and airmen, Admirals or seamen, they all have equal rights to enjoy a legal product,” McCalla said.

The IPCPR isn’t waiting 20 years before it begins its fight for the rights of military personnel to enjoy tobacco, he explained.

“We let the anti-tobacco forces get away with spreading a lot of misinformation about smoking and secondhand smoke over the last two decades. Much of their so-called research is highly questionable and their conclusions are particularly biased. As a result, smoking bans have spread unfairly. We’re not going to let that happen by default in the military,” he said.

McCalla emphasized that individual rights are attacked every time there is a legislated smoking ban.

“Each smoking ban chips away at our individual rights which leads to loss of other rights, whether or not we smoke cigarettes, premium cigars or use other tobacco products. It’s a right of choice and we are all affected,” he said.

© Transworldnews

When the landmark cigar maker Hav-A-Tampa announced plans to shut down operations in its namesake city, those smitten with Tampa’s reputation as Cigar City lamented the loss.

Stogies helped transform “Tampa town” from a sleepy fishing village with 700 residents in 1885 to a thriving city of 108,000 two decades later. Back then, 159 factories employed some 13,000 workers as cigar rollers and tobacco strippers.

A century later, only one major cigar manufacturer remains, leaving some to wonder: Is Tampa still the Cigar Capital of the World?

“That’s been gone for a long, long time,” acknowledges Patrick Manteiga, editor and publisher of the 87-year-old trilingual newspaper, La Gaceta. It was founded by his grandfather a former lector who read to cigar makers while they toiled in the factories.

Labor strikes, the Great Depression, two world wars, the Cuban embargo and taxes all helped snuff out the local industry, he said. Smaller operations, what Manteiga calls “buckeyes,” still exist, but Tampa cannot compete with the cheaper Central and South American companies.

Despite the dramatic decline in local production, cigars remain an integral part of Tampa’s culture.

“There used to be cigar factories on every corner,” recalls Carlos Fuente Jr., a fourth-generation cigar manufacturer whose grandfather started Arturo Fuente cigars from the family’s Ybor City home in 1912.

The industry was the backbone of society in Ybor City and West Tampa. Factory workers from Spain, Sicily and Cuba built wooden casitas for their growing families, creating diverse enclaves where bakers, fish mongers, butchers and haberdashers opened shops.

Social organizations including Centro Asturiano and the Italian Club provided members with lifelong medical benefits, serving as the nation’s first managed health care systems. Residents ate Cuban sandwiches and drank cafe con leche at The Columbia, and watched the Tampa Smokers play baseball.

By 1929, 500 million cigars were produced in Ybor City’s 151 factories and contributed to a little more than half of the city’s revenue, says Chantal Ruilova Hevia, executive director of the Ybor City Museum Society. That monumental achievement earned Tampa its title Cigar Capital of the World.

Today, the industry is credited with helping Ybor City become a National Historic Landmark District. Even some of the businesses born in the era are still around: The Columbia, La Segunda Bakery, La Gaceta and the social clubs, outliving the factories that gave them life.

Like many local cigar manufacturers, Fuente moved production of his grandfather’s famous cigars from the Tampa area to the Dominican Republic in 1980. Today, he has factories in four Latin American countries employing some 2,500 workers.

In 1996, Fuente partnered with J.C. Newman Cigar Co., a 114-year-old family operation led by its third-generation and the owners of Tampa’s only working cigar factory.

“We’re the last ones,” says executive vice president Bobby Newman from inside his office at 16th Street and Columbus Drive. “The last of the Mohicans.”

News of Hav-A-Tampa’s closing after 107 years in Tampa hit him hard.

Five hundred people will not have jobs. And yet another factory folds, in part, due to unfair taxation, he says. Federal and state tax increases went into effect April 1, almost doubling the price of some cigars and making it harder on manufacturers and retailers already suffering from a lackluster economy.

Hav-A-Tampa’s owner, Altadis USA, attributed most of its 30 percent drop in sales to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program or SCHIP, a federal tax that provides low-income children with health insurance.

“The government is meddling in our business,” Newman says, before taking a call from his mother.

John Oliva Sr. hopes his son, John Jr., will take over the 75-year-old Oliva Tobacco Co. someday, too, but he worries like everyone.

“It’s not just Hav-A-Tampa,” says the 67-year-old Oliva, whose father, Angel Sr., started the business. “Hav-A-Tampa is just the beginning. We have been affected astronomically since the April 1 tax.”

Sales are down 30 percent mainly because a guy buying an 80-cent cigar now has to pay $1.20 plus a markup, he says. “Now that’s a 50 percent increase.”

“It’s definitely affecting the business, it’s definitely affecting Tampa and it’s definitely going to affect Newman,” Oliva says.

But Tampa will always be Cigar City, he says.

“It’s history, and you can’t change history.”


© Heraldtribune