Indonesian tobacco growers and their regional counterparts ended a two-day meeting, dubbed the first Asia Tobacco Forum, in Jakarta on Tuesday by revealing a plan that basically consisted of doing what they have already been doing — pleading with national governments not to adopt the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Countries that adopt the framework would, among other things, commit themselves to ban flavored cigarettes, which include clove-favored cigarettes, or kretek, the mainstay of the Indonesian tobacco industry.

Meanwhile, the domestic tobacco industry is fighting on another front.

The World Trade Organization on Tuesday began hearing an Indonesian trade dispute with the United States over the latter’s ban of flavored cigarettes.

Indonesia claims the ban is discriminatory because menthol cigarettes, most of which are produced in the US, were not banned.

Citing numerous studies, the US says flavored cigarettes encourage teens and children to begin smoking, and make it harder to quit.

The stakes are high for tobacco farmers and cigarette producers in Indonesia, where a toddler recently gained international renown for his clove cigarette habit.

The industry employes an estimated 6 million people, including tobacco farmers, production workers and vendors.

Around Rp 180 trillion ($20 billion) worth of cigarettes are produced each year, including $564 million of exports in 2009.

The industry claims millions of jobs could be at stake over the WHO framework and the US ban on clove cigarettes.

Sudaryanto, the chairman of the Indonesian Tobacco Alliance (Amti), said the framework presented a tremendous challenge to the Indonesian tobacco industry.

Ninety-three percent of cigarettes produced in Indonesia are kretek.

“Although Indonesia has not signed the FCTC, we will still be impacted since it will eliminate our ability to export kreteks to any country adopting the framework,” he said.

A total of 168 countries have signed the WHO framework, and are ready to debate its adoption at the domestic level.

Roger Quarles, the president of the International Tobacco Growers Association, on Tuesday vowed to take the fight to the health, agriculture and industry ministries in each country ahead of the next WHO meeting on tobacco in Uruguay scheduled for November.

Fuad Baradja, head of the education unit at the Indonesian Smoking Control Foundation (LM3), said national governments should not buy cigarette producers’ argument that adopting a ban on flavored cigarettes would devastate the industry.

“Cigarettes will always be around. There will never be a total ban on cigarettes. This particular ban is intended to discourage younger smokers,” he said.

Fuad said Indonesia needed to ratify the WHO ban on flavored cigarettes to slow the accelerating rate of smoking in the country as cigarette companies become more creative in seeking new customers.

“Flavored cigarettes are more and more creative. There are cappuccino flavors, different kinds of fruit flavors. All these flavors disguise the natural flavor of the cigarette itself,” he said.

Louise Baker, technical officer at the WHO office in Jakarta, said there was no justification for producing flavored cigarettes, which she said served only to make smoking more attractive to teenagers.

“It’s really concerning seeing a 14-year-old girl buying chocolate-flavored cigarettes, because the flavor is familiar to her. Several years later, she would be already addicted to the smoke,” she said.

Baker said the WHO was concerned about the fate of the workers and farmers that might be affected, and she urged the government to create a program to slowly shift farmers from growing tobacco to other crops and to retrain tobacco industry workers.

Yos Ginting, a director at cigarette company PT HM Sampoerna, declined to comment on the magnitude of the challenges facing his industry.

Sampoerna, as a member of Amti, would adhere to any decisions made by the organization, Yos said.

From thejakartaglobe.com, By Arti Ekawati & Faisal Maliki Baskoro, June 23, 2010

Following announcements from state attorneys general that its cigarette products should be removed from retail shelves due to non-payment of the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA), Vibo Corp., dba General Tobacco (GT), announced that it will comply with recent notices regarding the removal of its cigarette brands from certain state directories of approved brands for sale.

The company also noted the de-listing does not pertain to its filtered cigars or pipe tobacco, both of which can continue to be sold in all states without interruption.

CSNews Online reported earlier this week that General Tobacco products can no longer be sold in Washington or 17 other states as of Feb. 19, according to The Washington Attorney General’s Office, which claimed the company had not made the required payments under the MSA.

General Tobacco said in a statement it continues to dispute those states’ allegations that it is in default on its MSA obligations. It noted that any amount it currently owes to the states is far less than what the states argue, and that the company is entitled to apply more than $95 million owed to the company in credits under the MSA toward any payment due.

The tobacco manufacturer also continues to dispute the validity of the MSA under antitrust, constitutional and other federal and state laws.

Since 2004, General Tobacco has made approximately $600 million in payments to the states under the MSA, according to the company. J. Ronald Denman, General Tobacco executive vice president and general counsel, said: “The states should consider not only the vast amount of money that General Tobacco has paid them, but also the interests of the consumer at stake here. Consumers should not have to lose the choice of GT’s brands over what the company considers to be a bona fide dispute over the interpretation of the MSA and its validity under federal and state law.”

Though General Tobacco intends to comply with any de-listing, it informed the states that it is not in default on its MSA obligations because of the $95 million-plus credit, that any de-listing action should be halted while arbitration to determine application of the credit is pending, and General Tobacco and customers have not been given constitutionally adequate notice of the de-listings.

Marblehead – When North Shore Tobacco Control Officer Joyce Redford approaches a convenience store checkout counter, her eyes look past the barrage of colors of candy, gum packets, lottery tickets, knickknacks and lighters. Instead, she is searching for what she calls “crossover products,” items that, as she likes to say, are “hidden in plain sight.”

To the untrained eye, the items are easy to miss amid the dizzying array stacked near the convenience-store register.

But what she is eyeing, and what she is trying to raise awareness about, are tobacco-related products marketed specifically toward teens, which are readily available locally and throughout the country.

“There is no hiding this, which to me is alarming,” Redford said. “I cannot believe what is out there.”

Redford recently spoke about the products at a Marblehead Board of Health meeting, unloading for the board a bag of such products that she’s collected throughout the year. Her presentation left most board members in disbelief.

“Are we the only ones who don’t know about this stuff?” asked a bewildered Helaine Hazlett, the board’s chairman.

Take a walk into the 7-11 store in Marblehead, and here is what you will find: “grinders” (small metal contraptions that are used to grind up tobacco or drugs), pipes, hookah pipes for smoking specially made flavored tobacco, flavored chewing tobacco, boxes of blunt wraps (tobacco-based rolling papers), cigarettes that are packaged like Chanel perfume boxes, and smokeless-tobacco gum that comes in a candy-mint-like container. The list goes on.

None of these products are illegal to sell, although in most states, including Massachusetts, to buy any tobacco-related product a person must be 18 or older. In fact, as a local tobacco-control officer, Redford’s job is to conduct “compliance checks,” which the program has historically done twice a year to investigate whether a particular store is selling tobacco products to teens. By law, a vendor must keep all tobacco products behind the register; it’s illegal to make them self-serve. (Marblehead and Swampscott had 100-percent compliance rates for the most recent check.) But her group has also started tracking the prevalence of the newer tobacco-related products as a means of finding out what else is out there.

Cigarette companies spent approximately $13 billion on advertising and promotional expenses in 2005 for those tobacco-specific products, nearly double what was spent in 1998, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Of that money, Redford says advertisers are more often targeting women and teens.

In 2008, tobacco company Philip Morris USA unrolled its sleek “purse pack” cigarette packaging containing ultra-slim cigarettes; the packaging is made to look as if it is a cosmetics case.

While Redford said the product seems specifically targeted toward teenage girls, calling it “girl gear,” Philip Morris asserts that kids and teens are not the intended audience for any of its tobacco products.

“We design our marketing programs to enhance brand awareness, recognition and loyalty among adult cigarette smokers,” the company’s Web site states.

Whatever the case is, Redford wants parents to know that these products are out there, and that teens are buying them.

“In Marblehead, out of the 12 tobacco vendors, four were selling an extraordinary amount of this,” Redford said. “Even if one store is selling them, shouldn’t we be concerned?”

At the very least, Redford said it’s important for adults to know what these products look like.

“If adults don’t know what they’re looking at, they are not going to be alarmed,” Redford continued. “This industry is wide awake.”

Gateways

The convenience stores are part of the problem as Redford sees it. Typically, the independently run stores are selling the more varied items, while big-box chain stores often stick to the more traditional tobacco products.

“They are making a choice to carry these items, and I would say that most have full knowledge of their purpose,” Redford said, adding that it’s not uncommon for such products to be sold in proximity to schools.

Yet those interviewed who sell the products say that they are not doing anything wrong by offering them; business is business.

Aziz Ullah, who has been a manager of Marblehead’s 7-11 for 10 years, said his business has been selling blunt wraps for a long time, although he will acknowledges he recently introduced the pipes and the hookah offerings.

He added that his choice of products to sell comes from a corporate directive, and that if it’s not against the law, his store has every right to sell the products it chooses.

“It’s not in our control,” Aziz asserted. “You have to stop where it’s coming from.”

Al Barcamonte, owner of Marblehead’s White Hen Pantry, sells the blunt wraps in his store, but said they are not a big seller.

Bob Duprez, manager of Marblehead’s Howard’s News store, does not sell any of the new tobacco-related products in his store, but said he’s not making a moral decision about it. The fact is he doesn’t have a younger clientele.

“In my store I don’t think they’ll be a big seller… It’s a business judgment,” Duprez said. “My feelings are if they are going to smoke, whatever they do they are going to do, no matter what.”

Even if the teens can’t get what they are looking for in their local stores, such products are also offered online, which can be hard to track, admits Redford.

Policy

While recent legislation has made it more difficult for the tobacco companies to distribute such products, specifically cigarettes, tobacco and tobacco-related companies are still finding loopholes in the laws.

For instance, in September of this year, the Food and Drug Administration banned the manufacture, distribution, marketing, or importing of fruit, candy, or clove flavored cigarettes in the United States.

The FDA passed the regulation several months after President Obama signed legislation that gives the agency the power to regulate tobacco in the United States. According to the FDA, flavors make cigarettes and other tobacco products more appealing to youth, and studies have shown that 17-year-old smokers are three times as likely to use flavored cigarettes as smokers older than the age of 25.

However, while the federal law bans flavored cigarettes, it does not specifically relate to other flavored tobacco products. It’s also unclear how the new federal legislation relates to products like blunt wraps, which are offered in fun, fruity flavors like “French Martini,” apple, blueberry, cherry vanilla, and are packaged in such a way that they appear like nothing more than a child’s fruit roll-up snack.

Some municipalities are taking the fight into their own hands as a means of closing some of those loopholes. In October, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed into law a ban on the sale of all flavored tobacco products, which includes a ban on flavored cigarettes, little cigars and chewing tobacco.

Kevin O’Flaherty, director of advocacy for D.C.-based group Tobacco Free Kids.org, said the New York City ban is the strictest in the country.

“The rest of the country does not have protections this strong… We’re hoping the FDA sees it as a potential to enhance its own law,” O’Flaherty explained.

On a more local level, the city of Boston passed a ban on the sale of blunt wraps last winter, arguing that the products are particularly harmful to youth because of the way they are marketed and because they are often used for marijuana. However, following the ban, several blunt-wrap manufacturers sued the city, claiming legislators were unfairly targeting them. In March, the Suffolk Superior Court upheld the city’s ban, although Redford said the case is in limbo as the manufacturers continue to fight it through the appeal process.

Redford said that it is not the aim of her program to reach out on the policy level until the Boston case is resolved.

Funding cuts as product marketing soars

Instead of trying to influence legislation, at this time Redford is trying to do her part to encourage adults to take a look around the next time they happen to be in a convenience store to assess what’s there. She is also making presentations about the products to local boards of health, community leaders and legislators, like state Rep. Lori Ehrlich, D-Marblehead.

Although Ehrlich said she might not go as far as supporting a ban on some of the products like the blunt wraps, she supports the idea of furthering education.

“Because of the uncertainty of the final use of some products, awareness becomes the first line of defense,” Ehrlich said.

However, because of recent state budget cuts, funding for the North Shore Tobacco Control Program (a Board of Health collaborative), which covers nine North Shore communities, including Swampscott and Marblehead, has been drastically reduced. This past year, the state’s anti-smoking program, of the North Shore program is a part, was slashed by 60 percent. It took a further $500,000 hit just last week during the governor’s latest round of budget cuts, dropping it to $4.5 million.

Because of the cuts, the North Shore program has had to close its Lynn-based offices. At the moment, Redford is the program’s only full-time employee, and her office dropped from four per-diem staffers down to one. She worries that the budget cuts will indirectly effect people’s awareness of what’s going on in the industry at the local level.

“Obviously these are devastating cuts especially at a time when the industry is working so hard to attract and addict a new generation of youth customers by introducing all the emerging and crossover products,” Redford said. “I just do not believe that the tobacco industry is not taking full advantage of these volatile fiscal times with some belief that this is the prefect opportunity for them to slide under the radar with the hope that these products go unchecked, unnoticed and thus become unstoppable.”

By Nikki Gamer
Nov 04, 2009 Wickedlocal

Smoking Gun Interactive, formed by ex-Relic people, today launched its first installment of the graphic novel series titled “X”. Written by controversial, award-winning author and social critic Douglas Rushkoff, the series is illustrated by Smoking Gun’s lead concept artist Cheoljoo Lee and Younger Yang.

The preview will be delivered over the course of four weeks starting today, and can be experienced online and provides a first glimpse into the universe and characters of Smoking Gun’s as-of-yet undisclosed debut franchise. With a focus on real-world mystery, ancient locations, and deep conspiracy, X promises to explore the secret history of mankind in a way that has never been done before.

As a small, scattered group of people stumble onto the truth, they find that they are too late: every great power on earth has already aligned itself against humanity. The war is all but over. Their struggle to discover the truth will lead them into a massive conspiracy that predates humanity itself – from the world’s most ancient sites to the global centers of power.

For those few brave enough to resist, reckless enough to see, and foolish enough to fight history itself, the war has never been over. For those few, the struggle will not be complete until the old prophecy has been fulfilled:

“FROM OUR BONES WILL ARISE AN AVENGER

FROM OUR WAR WILL ARISE THE TRUTH”

The first novel is scheduled to be released next year and is the first in a series of stories that will continue to expand the X universe.

“One of our main goals as a studio is to constantly innovate in how we tell our stories”, said Smoking Gun CEO and Creative Director John Johnson. “Our perspective is, if you can interact with it, then it can be part of the experience we deliver. And if you cannot interact with it, then we will evolve it to the point where it can be part of our universe. There are no boundaries to where we can go or what we can accomplish.”

“It has been insanely challenging and insanely fun to dive head-first into Smoking Gun’s universe,” explained Douglas Rushkoff. “And while I work on threading one narrative through this material, other artists are building it out on many other levels, all at once, for different people to engage with in so many different ways. So for the audience this multi-faceted, multi-media approach brings new dimension to the epic struggle that we’re talking about here: nothing short of how humanity defines itself.”

MOORPARK, Calif. – Kretek International’s Djarum Clove Cigars, introduced in January 2009 after two-and-a-half years of development, testing and government approvals, are not covered under the FDA’s (Food and Drug Administration) new ban on flavored cigarettes.

According to the company, Kretek’s 12-pack, filtered clove cigars were evaluated and analyzed in 2007 and again in 2008 by the Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau of the Treasury Department, and an advanced ruling stating that they met the legal standard as a cigar product was issued.

The new FDA law prohibits cigarettes with a characterizing flavor other than tobacco or menthol, but cigars are not covered by the new FDA ban. During development, Kretek and Indonesian manufacturer Djarum were especially careful to avoid the likelihood that the new product would be sold as or purchased as a cigarette, a company spokesman told CSNews Online.

Djarum’s cigars are made with an HTL wrapper, different than cigarettes, air-cured cigar tobacco weighing more than 3 pounds per thousand sticks, and are packaged in 12-packs, not 20-packs like cigarettes are. The word ‘CIGAR’ appears on the package at least seven times, with a cigar excise tax structure and cigar label warnings. The carton and packs are designed so they won’t fit in a standard cigarette plan-o-gram and the new Djarum merchandising racks identify them as cigars.

The company maintains that the difference between cigarettes and cigars has been clearly defined by standing law for more than 30 years and that this longstanding legal distinction between cigarettes and cigars was included as part of the new FDA law.

The FDA ban on flavored cigarettes was the agency’s first act under a law giving it the power to oversee tobacco and it has caused confusion throughout the industry. According to The Wall Street Journal, Kretek filed suit against the FDA when the agency issued a letter saying the new law applied to anything that fits a cigarette’s profile, even if it’s labeled a “cigar.” The suit seeks a permanent injunction preventing the FDA from enforcing the flavor ban on these cigar products.

Kretek estimates the number of clove cigarette users at about 1.2 million, averaging 5.2 smokes a week — less than a tenth of 1 percent of U.S. cigarette consumption. A University of Minnesota study in 2006 actually found a 40 percent drop in 12th grade clove cigarette smokers since 2001.

October 27, 2009 – Csnews

WASHINGTON — The top distributor of clove-flavored tobacco products in the U.S. is asking a federal court to decide whether its new filtered cigars fall under a new federal ban on flavored cigarettes.

Kretek International Inc., which imports Djarum brand tobacco products from Indonesia, sued the Food and Drug Administration Sept. 22.

The company claims the FDA, which was granted authority to regulate tobacco in June, has threatened to ban its products and the regulator is causing the company to lose money.

The FDA’s ban on manufacturing, importing, marketing and distributing candy-, fruit- and clove-flavored cigarettes took effect Sept. 22. It does not include menthol or other flavored tobacco products like cigars — issues that the FDA is studying.

Moorpark, Calif.-based Kretek International recently began selling small filtered spice-flavored cigars that are close to the size of a cigarette but are wrapped in tobacco rather than paper and contain cigar tobacco. As part of the lawsuit, it is asking for a judgment from the court that its new products do not fall under the FDA’s current ban.

Kretek says its Djarum cigar products meet federal standards for cigars. The company said the difference between cigarettes and cigars has been defined by laws that have been on the books for more than 30 years.

“We have made every effort to meet the letter and spirit of the law,” John Geoghegan, Kretek’s director of brand development, said in a news release.

FDA spokeswoman Kathleen Quinn said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.

Dude, the government lets cigarettes be legal even though they kill like thousands of people. But weed is illegal. And now, dude, cloves are illegal. Cloves! The taste proves they’re not killing you! Clove-smoking hippies are fighting back. With cloves!

See, the government outlawed flavored cigarettes, so Kretek, which makes all the cloves you smoke, is now selling clove cigars. Problem solved!

Lake Isabella, Calif., resident Terry Day, 42 years old, used to drive 240 miles round-trip to buy clove cigarettes when he lived in rural Valentine, Neb. He said he might try the cigars but was dubious about whether he would like them.

That is even farther than most heroin addicts are willing to drive. Fun fact(?) about the origin of the healing powers of cloves:

Studebacher Hoch, a resident of Kudus, Java, created kreteks in the early 1880s as a means to deliver the medicinal eugenol of cloves to the lungs, as it was thought to help asthma. It cured his chest pains and he started to market his invention to the village, but he died of lung cancer before he could mass market it.

CLOVES: Also known as kreteks (pronounced “cree-techs”) for the crackling sound they make when burned, the cigarettes contain tobacco blended with cloves.

WHERE THEY STARTED: They originated in the 1880s in Indonesia and are a staple of the Indonesian smoking culture — so much so that companies like Philip Morris International Inc. have created their own blends of clove cigarette bearing the famous Marlboro name in Indonesia and India. The company also has a controlling interest in Sampoerna, another Indonesian maker of clove cigarettes.

POPULARITY: Indonesia exports more than $500 million worth of the product per year, with about a fifth of the shipments coming to the U.S., according to the Indonesian embassy in Washington. The industry employs about 11 million Indonesian workers.

Q: I read the information on the differences between clove cigarettes and regular cigarettes, but am still wondering if clove cigarettes are addictive. I’ve heard they do not contain nicotine, therefore are not physically addictive. I’ve also heard that smoking one clove cigarette (such as the brand Black) is like smoking a pack of regular cigarettes. I’ve researched this online and found contradicting information. What’s the truth?

A: The truth is that most clove cigarettes (kreteks) are made with 2/3 tobacco and 1/3 minced dried clove buds. The blend is flavored with fruit and spice essences, rolled and sprayed with a sweetener. The tobacco in clove cigarettes contains at least as much tar and nicotine as regular cigarettes. Testing reveals just as much nicotine and carbon monoxide in the blood of clove cigarette smokers as in regular cigarette smokers. Djarum Black cigarettes sold in Indonesia and available online actually contain much higher levels of tar and nicotine than the same brand sold in the Americas and in Europe. So the truth is that clove cigarettes are in fact both harmful and addictive.