STANDARDS watchdogs have banned a saucy advert which appeared in adult magazine Viz over claims it glamorises smoking.

A page in the Newcastle-born adult comic showed a scantily-clad woman with cigarette rolling papers appearing to float out of her handbag.

The model was pictured in silver high-heels, skimpy shorts, and sitting with her legs crossed next to the slogan: “OCB X-PERT: Europe’s Premium Cigarette Paper.”

But the risque image prompted a complaint against the cigarette papers company to the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA), which agreed it was irresponsible and associated glamour with smoking tobacco.

OCB Papers Ltd, which produces the cigarette papers, has been told the advert must not appear in the magazine – or anywhere else – again.

Viz is well known for its regular spoof adverts, some of which deal with controversial themes, but this is the first time a genuine ad has broken the rules.

An adjudication notice published on the ASA’s website said: “Adverts should not imply that smoking was glamorous or link smoking with people who were fashionable or possessed attributes or qualities that might reasonably be expected to command admiration.

“We considered that the woman in the ad was dressed in a stylish and glamorous manner, as though for a party or night club, and readers were likely to infer from the image that cigarette papers – and therefore smoking – were part of that individual’s life and recreational activities.

“We acknowledged that there was an element of fantasy in the image as a result of the cigarette papers apparently elevating from a handbag and drifting through the air, and recognised that readers would understand that the image was stylised and unreal. Nevertheless, we considered that the advert associated smoking and a glamorous, fashionable or sophisticated lifestyle, which was irresponsible and breached the code in relation to the marketing of cigarette rolling papers.”

The advert was deemed to breach the advertising standards code under clauses 2.2 (Responsible advertising) and 55.1 (Tobacco, rolling papers and filters).

But OCB Papers Ltd had challenged the complaint, and said the advert did not associate smoking with glamour, but rather associated a quality cigarette paper with the quality of the model featured. They pointed out that only one complaint had been made after the advert had been published throughout Europe and seen by millions of readers.

Nevertheless, the ASA’s adjudication means the cigarette papers company, who are responsible for the content of their advertising, must not publish the advert again. Nobody from Viz magazine commented on the ruling.

Seemingly innocent details of cigarette packaging, such as color, can trick a smoker into believing the cigarettes inside are somehow less harmful to their health, according to a recent study.

Conducted by researchers at the University of Waterloo in Canada, the study found you do not need words like “light,” “mild,” and “low-tar,” which have been banned from cigarette packets in more than 40 countries, to mislead a consumer.

Tobacco companies are using design elements and color to give smokers a false sense of safety regarding the harmful effects of smoking.

“Substantial proportions of adults in the study associated perceptions of risk and tar delivery with package design,” the study’s authors wrote.

In the study, specially designed cigarette packets were given in pairs to some 600 smokers and non-smokers. They were then questioned about their perception of the content of the packets based on the packaging alone.

Though the packets were designed to look and feel like real cigarettes, the brand names were completely fictional in order to avoid “contaminations” and to make sure the opinions were not based on prior assumptions about the product.

The two packs of cigarettes shown to participants in the study were identical, apart from their descriptions as “full flavored”, “light”, or a design element like color. Each pack also showed a health warning, which is required under Canadian law.

Around 80 percent of participants in the study believed that cigarettes in the light blue packet contained less tar, would have a smoother taste, and be less dangerous to health than those in dark blue packaging, the researchers said.

They also found that 70 percent of study participants thought a packet with a white symbol would deliver less tar, be smoother and pose less of a health threat than cigarettes in a packet with a grey symbol.

And 7 out of every 10 participants believed cigarettes in packets showing the words “charcoal filter” with a picture of the filter, would truly deliver that benefit.

What is equally interesting is the fact that smokers were more susceptible to deception by imagery, words, and color of cigarette packages than non-smokers because “they have greater incentive to believe that some cigarettes may be less harmful,” the study found.

The study noted that tobacco use is responsible for one in 10 deaths across the globe and is currently the leading cause of preventable deaths.

The tobacco industry considers “rising levels of health concern” as a major threat to its success, therefore it has focused in on it has made restoring consumer confidence about the risks associated with smoking “an important function of tobacco marketing,” the study said.

“A central feature of this marketing strategy has been to promote the perception that some cigarettes are less hazardous than others,” wrote the authors of the study David Hammond and Carla Parkinson.

They said that tobacco packaging “has served as a critical medium for shaping perceptions of consumer risk.”

In 44 countries, including the United States, the words “light,” “mild,” and “low-tar,” have been banned on cigarette packages, because they mislead consumers about the health risks of smoking, the study says.

The authors want the list of prohibited words to be expanded and for plain packaging to be required in order to keep the tobacco industry from misleading smokers.

“There is growing evidence that the removal of brand imagery from packaging — so-called ‘plain’ packaging — reduces the appeal of brands and increases the salience of health warnings,” the study says.

“Research to date suggests that plain packages are less attractive and engaging and may reduce brand appeal, particularly among youth.”

The study was published in the Oxford University Press Journal of Public Health.


© Redorbit

It took more than a decade for Congress to grant the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco products.

Now that the FDA has been given that job, the agency must set up a new center devoted to regulating a multibillion-dollar industry that employs tens of thousands of people — many of them in the Richmond region. The industry reaches from farm fields to retail stores, has more than 40 million U.S. customers and has long enjoyed a high degree of autonomy.

“It’s a daunting task,“ said Mitch Zeller, a former associate commissioner of the FDA and a longtime tobacco-control advocate.

“There is no infrastructure at FDA yet” geared specifically for tobacco regulation, Zeller said. “It can be built, and it needs to be done quickly. That will happen simultaneously with FDA beginning to meet the deadlines that are in the legislation,“ such as a Sept. 29 ban on candy-flavored cigarettes.

The legislation, passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama on June 22, calls for the creation within 90 days of a Center for Tobacco Products in the FDA.

Observers say the new tobacco center likely will be structured in a similar fashion to other FDA offices, such as its Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, which is responsible for making sure the nation’s food supply is safe, and its Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, which regulates over-the-counter and prescription drugs.

But the tobacco center will have a unique role for the FDA — regulating a product that, when used as intended, causes disease and death for more than 400,000 of its consumers in the U.S. each year.

In that light, the FDA’s approach to tobacco will likely be “a hybrid” of the way it regulates foods, drugs and devices, Zeller said. Tobacco doesn’t fit clearly into one of those categories, but it has characteristics of all of them.

“Tobacco is in a category by itself, given its inherent toxicity,“ Zeller said. “Having said that, I think the regulatory tools that [the FDA] will use in this unique category are pretty much the tools that we have seen the agency use for as long as there has been an FDA.“

Those tools include pre-market evaluation of products, scrutiny of marketing claims, and ingredient disclosures, he said.

Yet some issues are still left open to interpretation in the FDA legislation. For example, it requires the FDA to set product standards for tobacco that must be “appropriate for the protection of public health,“ rather than the “safe and effective” standard used for pharmaceuticals.

“That’s pretty broad,“ said Scott Ballin, a tobacco and health policy consultant who lobbied for FDA regulation of the industry. “There are going to be a lot of questions as to what the agency decides to do with that. Are they going to be reasonable standards? Are they going to be economically feasible standards?“

There is a whole spectrum of new, complex issues that need to be addressed carefully and openly and in a way that will achieve public-health goals,“ Ballin said.

The FDA’s decisions on tobacco regulations should be based on scientific evidence, Ballin and other tobacco-control advocates said. view was echoed by the nation’s largest tobacco company, Henrico County-based Altria Group Inc., parent company of Philip Morris USA.

“The FDA has a history of making decisions using a thoughtful, science-based process that includes input from the public, other stakeholders and the regulated community,“ said Bill Phelps, a spokesman for Altria Group Inc. “We believe whoever leads the [FDA] tobacco center should follow the same model, and we are hopeful that would be the case.“

Much of the decision-making on implementing the regulations will be made by the director of the Center for Tobacco Products, who has not yet been hired. The FDA closed its application process for the director position on July 9. The agency would not comment on how many people have applied, but a director is expected to be named within 45 days.

The director will have to build a staff, likely to eventually include hundreds of people with various scientific, regulatory and legal backgrounds.

The job description posted by the FDA for the director’s job called for applicants with “substantial scientific expertise” in areas such as toxicology and epidemiology, and experience in public health and “administrative procedure and regulation, including deep familiarity with congressional operations and policymaking in the executive branch.“

Whoever fills that role, said Matt Myers, president of the Campaign For Tobacco-Free Kids, “will need to be someone with exceptional leadership and management skills, and an ability to create a vision, build a staff, set priorities and meet deadlines under intense scrutiny on a highly controversial topic.“

The FDA also must appoint a 12-member scientific advisory board on tobacco products to provide recommendations and advise the agency on product regulations. That board will be heavily weighted toward public health, with seven members from medical, health-care or scientific fields. Two members will represent the interests of tobacco manufacturers, and one member the interests of tobacco farmers, but they will be nonvoting members, serving in what the legislation calls a “consulting” role.

Before it sets product standards, the agency likely will seek out information from the tobacco industry itself, Zeller said. The legislation requires tobacco companies to disclose product ingredients to the FDA, but the agency can also go further than that by requiring companies to submit their research on toxic compounds and the health impacts of products.

“Right now much of the scientific knowledge about the delivery of toxic compounds in smoke is in the hands of the tobacco companies,“ he said. “One of the tools in the legislation that I think is very important is the power that FDA is given to demand health-related information from the companies.“

Zeller headed the FDA’s office of tobacco programs from 1993 to 2000, after the agency had asserted authority to regulate tobacco products. Tobacco companies disputed that in court, and in 2000 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that only Congress could grant the agency regulatory power over tobacco.

In the 1990s, Zeller said, the FDA had primarily focused on ways to prevent youth smoking, but the agency’s ability to continue that work was always in doubt because of the lawsuit. “Congress has spoken now,“ he said. “The day is here when those tools have been given to the agency.“

John Reid Blackwell is a staff writer at the Richmond Times-Dispatch


© Godanriver

Smokers, what if you could smoke a cigarette that didn’t contain any tobacco or carcinogens and didn’t stink?
And nonsmokers, how would you feel about walking past a pack of smokers without coughing, or worrying your lungs were filling up with chemicals from secondhand smoke?

Ivon Patel, of Naperville, waves to Shabana Mohiuddin, manager of Tobacco and Cigars in Naperville, after buying a pack of Newport cigarettes. “I wouldn’t stray from my menthols, but if they come in menthol I’ll give it a try,” said Patel of electronic cigarettes, which are smokeless so may be used in public places.

A new product on the market, widely known as the electronic cigarette, is changing the rules of smoking for those wishing to puff wherever and whenever they want.

Two businesses at Westfield Fox Valley mall in Aurora sell the e-cigarettes, including retail store Cigar Box and Chicago-based Elxtro Vapor Cigarette Co., which has a kiosk near the mall’s Carson Pirie Scott store.

Elxtro has caught the most attention by far at the mall. Employees take drags on the e-cigarettes as shoppers pass. They exhale what looks like smoke, but actually is a vapor mist.

“People tell me all the time that there’s no smoking and it’s good advertising because I unscrew (the cigarette) and say, ‘It’s not a cigarette,’” employee Chris Trajanovski said while manning the kiosk at the mall this week.

The e-cigarettes look like a real smoke at first.

Up close, each cigarette includes an LED tip that lights up when the smoker takes a draw. Unscrew the metal cigarette and inside is a battery, a microprocessor that controls heat and light, a sensor that detects when the smoker is taking a puff, a heater to vaporize the nicotine and a cartridge that holds the nicotine in propylene glycol so it doesn’t come out in the vapor.

When you exhale it isn’t hot, and there are none of the ashes that fall from the end of a cigarette.

Elxtro claims that the product contains no tobacco, tar, carcinogens, carbon monoxide or secondhand smoke.

And you can tell when you need to “recharge” the cigarette, too.

Trajanovski took a drag and a cloud of vapor barely formed. “It’s time to charge this one,” he said.

He unscrewed the cigarette and placed the battery in a charger.
Choose your poison
Trajanovski, 24, said he first heard about e-cigarettes from a fellow smoker friend. Both were trying to quit, but nothing seemed to have worked in the past.

Trajanovski decided to buy a kit, which costs about $100 for the cigarette, five cartridges and the charging equipment, so he could smoke inside his house and not disturb his roommates.

The former pack-a-day smoker says the e-cigarettes have helped him nearly quit. After about two months, he is down to smoking a few times day. His e-cigarettes do not contain nicotine though.

That’s the other thing about e-cigarettes: You can choose cartridges with low, medium or high nicotine levels or, like Trajanovski, no nicotine at all.

“We’re promoting a product to help you quit smoking or at least smoke healthier,” he said.

However, the company does not guarantee that e-cigarettes would help anyone quit smoking.

Its Web site states, “This product in no way claims to assist user in quitting or lessening frequency of smoking traditional cigarettes.”
Health officials don’t buy it
The product doesn’t sound appealing to at least one smoker, Priscilla Hollingbird, 26, of Aurora.

“It just takes the whole idea of smoking out. I would think it would be weird,” said Hollingbird, who said she has about five cigarettes a day.

She admits, though, that she despises the smell her cigarettes leave on her furniture, clothes and carpet.

The e-cigarettes have perplexed anti-smoking groups and officials — it’s still unclear if e-cigarettes obey the Illinois Smoke Free Act, said Donna Sperlakis of the Kendall County Health Department.

Because they contain nicotine, however, the products are banned in some countries and have come under fire from anti-smoking groups in the U.S.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration stopped shipments of the product at the borders earlier this year, saying it has no data on them.

In March, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American Heart Association, American Lung Association and Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids put out a joint news release lauding a New Jersey senator for calling on the FDA to remove e-cigarettes from the market. The agencies said no studies have been done on e-cigarettes regarding their health effects or cessation aides.

Lauren Johnson of the American Cancer Society in Batavia said she believes products like these are “a ploy to circumvent the law.”

“They may have found a loophole” to the Illinois Smoke Free Act, she said.

Elxtro’s e-cigarettes also come in 31 flavors like vanilla and coffee, which Johnson says makes smoking attractive to children and teens.

“The major issue here is that they’re trying to make it look like a cigarette and function like a cigarette. … It’s essentially showing that it’s normal to smoke,” Johnson said.

According to Chicago-based Elxtro, e-cigarettes cost a smoker about $2 a day.

© Suburbanchicagonews

President Barack Obama signed an anti-smoking bill Monday, which he says he hopes will keep kids from getting hooked on cigarettes.

“I started smoking at a very young age, so to limit the advertisements that kids can see, that would be a really good thing,” said one city smoker.

Obama cited his own battle with cigarettes as he signed the most far-reaching tobacco legislation ever.

“It will force these companies to more clearly and publicly acknowledge the harmful and deadly effects of the products they sell,” said the president. “And it will allow the scientists at the Food and Drug Administration to take other common sense steps to reduce the harmful effects of smoking.”

The new law rewrites the rule book on cigarette packaging and advertising. It bans tobacco advertisements near schools and playgrounds, and prohibits companies from marketing tobacco products with candy and fruit flavors.

In addition, warning labels will now have to cover 50 percent of the front and back of a pack, and they’ll be more aggressive and intimidating, similar to the way they are in other countries.

Phillip Gillingham, a tourist from Australia, says he’s seen warning labels in other countries that carry stark photographic images.

“There is a picture of a deceased man getting an autopsy and he’s got black lungs,” said Gillingham. “I remember one that has a little dead baby on it from smoking cigarettes while pregnant can cause abortions and all that sort of stuff. It’s pretty intimidating.”

The city has already issued graphic anti-smoking ads on Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s watch, and the mayor is praising the federal government for getting on board.

Critics say the new law is too intrusive, and that the FDA is not up to the job of regulating tobacco. But anti-smoking advocates see it as a triumph, and many New Yorkers who spoke with NY1 said they agreed.

“Smoking is bad,” said a New Yorker. “I smoke. Smoking is bad.”

The first changes in advertising and packaging of tobacco products will be seen in 2010.

According to statistics, people used tobacco in various forms for more than 1000 years. Native Americans smoked, chewed, and snorted it. It is believed that Tobacco began growing in the Americas about 6,000 B.C. As early as 1 B.C., American Indians began using tobacco in many different ways, such as in religious and medicinal practices.

Tobacco was believed to be a cure-all, and was used to dress wounds, as well as a pain killer. Chewing tobacco was believed to relieve the pain of a toothache.
Many physicians and politicians in Europe, including the French ambassador to Portugal, Jean Nicot, showed its medicinal properties. Then tobacco quickly became the primary export from the American colonies back to Europe during the early 17th century. An estimated 40,000 pounds of tobacco were sent from Virginia to England in 1620. Trade between European countries and others led to the spread of tobacco use around the globe.
The major reason for tobacco’s growing popularity in Europe was its supposed healing properties. Europeans believed that tobacco could cure almost anything, from bad breath to cancer.
Despite its long history, the true dangers of smoking were not fully recognized until quite recently. In fact, until just a few years ago, the tobacco industry had strongly denied that using their products could lead to addiction or cause disease.
During the 1600′s, tobacco was so popular that it was frequently used as money. Tobacco was literally “as good as gold”.
But in our days, smoking is considered the leading preventable cause of death in the United States, claiming more than 440,000 lives each year. This figure includes at least 3,000 deaths per year due to lung cancer caused by second hand smoke. The direct medical costs of treating smoking-related illnesses exceed $75 billion per year.
Reasons for the decline in smoking, just like the reasons why some people choose to smoke, are complex. Restrictions on tobacco advertising, stricter enforcement of purchasing laws, greater awareness of health risks, counter advertising, and higher taxes on tobacco products probably all contribute.
In recent, years, there is growing evidence that the tobacco industry has known all along that cigarettes are harmful, but continued to market and sell them. There is also evidence that they knew that nicotine was addictive and exploited this hidden knowledge to get millions of people hooked on this dangerous habit.

Want to quit smoking but can’t kick the habit? Try chewing a stick of licorice root instead. Not only does the root have a similar look and feel (simply place stick in hand and move toward mouth), it also has a similar flavor. In fact, licorice root is actually used to flavor cigarettes.

Of course, smoking is more than a physical habit. But according to The New Whole Foods Encyclopedia, licorice’s adaptogenic properties also help lessen the nicotine craving.

Want an added bonus? How about clean teeth and  fabulous fresh breath. In Africa, licorice roots are used as a toothbrush for those very reasons!

So now you have no excuse not to quit and every reason to kick that bad habit to the curb.

Source: Glam

With its slim white body and glowing amber tip, it can easily pass as a regular cigarette. It even emits what look like curlicues of white smoke.

The Ruyan V8, which produces a nicotine-infused mist absorbed directly into the lungs, is just one of a rapidly growing array of electronic cigarettes attracting attention in China, the United States and elsewhere – and the scrutiny of world health officials.

Marketed as a healthier alternative to smoking and a potential way to kick the habit, the smokeless smokes have been distributed in swag bags at the British film awards and hawked at an international trade show.

Because no burning is involved, makers say there’s no hazardous cocktail of cancer-causing chemicals and gases like those produced by a regular cigarette. There’s no secondhand smoke, so they can be used in places where cigarettes are banned, the makers say.

Health authorities are questioning those claims.

The World Health Organization issued a statement in September warning there was no evidence to back up contentions that e-cigarettes are a safe substitute for smoking or a way to help smokers quit.

It also said companies should stop marketing them that way, especially since the product may undermine smoking prevention efforts because they look like the real thing and may lure nonsmokers, including children.

“There is not sufficient evidence that [they] are safe products for human consumption,” Timothy O’Leary, a communications officer at the WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative in Geneva, said in February.

The laundry list of WHO’s concerns includes the lack of conclusive studies and information about e-cigarette contents and their long-term health effects, he said.

Unlike other nicotine-replacement therapies such as patches for slow delivery through the skin, gum or candy for absorption in the mouth, or inhalers and nasal sprays, e-cigarettes have not gone through rigorous testing, O’Leary said.

Nicotine is highly addictive and causes the release of the “feel good” chemical dopamine when it goes to the brain. It also increases heart rate and blood pressure and restricts blood to the heart muscle.

Ruyan – which means “like smoking” – introduced the world’s first electronic cigarette in 2004. It has patented its ultrasonic atomizing technology, in which nicotine is dissolved in a cartridge containing propylene glycol, the liquid that is vaporized in smoke machines in nightclubs or theaters and is commonly used as a solvent in food.

When a person takes a drag on the battery-powered cigarette, the solution is pumped through the atomizer and comes out as an ultrafine spray that resembles smoke.

Hong Kong-based Ruyan contends the technology has been illegally copied by Chinese and foreign companies and is embroiled in several lawsuits. It’s also battling questions about the safety of its products.

Prices range from about $60 to $240. Kits include battery chargers and cartridges that range in flavors (from fruit to menthol) and nicotine levels (from zero – basically a flavored mist – to 16 milligrams, higher than a regular cigarette.) The National Institutes of Health says regular cigarettes contain about 10 milligrams of nicotine.

On its Web site, Gamucci, a London-based manufacturer, features a woman provocatively displaying one of its e-cigs. “They look like, feel like and taste like traditional tobacco, yet they aren’t,” the blurb reads. “They are a truly healthier and satisfying alternative. Join the revolution today!”

Smoking Everywhere, a Florida-based company, proclaims it “a much better way to smoke!” while a clip on YouTube features an employee of the NJoy brand promoting its e-cigarettes at CES, the international consumer technology trade show.

Online sales make it even more difficult to regulate the industry, which still falls in a gray area in many countries.

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has “detained and refused” several brands of electronic cigarettes because they were considered unapproved new drugs and could not be legally marketed in the country, said press officer Christopher Kelly.