Educating employees on the ins and outs of selling alcohol and tobacco in the state just got a little easier. The Vermont Department of Liquor Control is offering the online training through Burlington, Vt.-based Global Classroom, according to a report in the Burlington Free Press.

State law requires all businesses that sell alcohol and/or tobacco to train their employees on the laws, rules and regulations or face penalties, according to the newspaper. Dealing with intoxicated customers and underage customers who try to buy alcohol or tobacco are just two topics covered by the training.

The Department of Liquor Control also offers free training seminars across the state and provides training kits that businesses can use in-house. The two online courses meet state certification requirements.

A new scale that measures drug harm was devised by a group of scientists including Britain’s Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD) and an expert adviser to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA). The scientists rated drugs employing a technique called the multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) which calculated damage by various drugs according to nine criteria on harm to the user and seven criteria on harm to others.

Harms to the user included factors such as drug-specific or drug-related death, damage to health, drug dependence and loss of relationships, while harms to others included crime, environmental damage, family conflict, international damage, economic cost, and damage to community cohesion.

Drugs were rated on a scale of 100, with 100 being the most injurious drug and zero being harmless. The test results awarded alcohol a score of 72 while heroin scored a 55 and crack a 54.

Professor David Nutt, chairman of the ISCD said these findings reveal that ” aggressively targeting alcohol harms is a valid and necessary public health strategy”. In a statement about the study, he added that “It is intriguing to note that the two legal drugs assessed — alcohol and tobacco — score in the upper segment of the ranking scale, indicating that legal drugs cause at least as much harm as do illegal substances”.

Statistics from the World Health Organisation show that risks linked to alcohol such as cancer, road-accidents and heart and liver diseases account for 2.5 million deaths every year i.e. 3.8 per cent of all deaths; hence making it the third leading risk factor for premature death and disabilities worldwide.

Tobacco retailers were inspected for the first of three rounds of compliance checks to be conducted on all tobacco retailers within the community. A total of 19 tobacco retailers were inspected and zero were found to be in violation of the law by selling tobacco to a minor.

The compliance checks are performed to determine if local tobacco retailers are complying with State of Illinois minimum-age tobacco laws which prohibit the sale of tobacco to persons under the age of 18. With the help from a grant awarded by the Illinois Liquor Control Commission’s “Kids Can’t Buy ‘Em Here” Tobacco Enforcement Program, which educates local tobacco retailers on minimum-age tobacco laws and the importance of verifying the age of customers before selling age-restrictive products such as tobacco.

Pregnant women and new mothers in Canada’s North who are trying to quit smoking could get help from their elders and community health workers under a $350,000 federal project. Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq announced the funding on Monday, World No Tobacco Day, to bring the anti-smoking program to four Inuit regions across Canada. The information campaign aims to:

• Train community health workers to deliver the program.
• Engage elders to monitor participating expectant women and new mothers.
• Raise awareness of the harmful effects of second-hand smoke.
• Increase the number of smoke-free homes in Inuit communities.

The recent Inuit child health survey suggested more than 80 per cent of Inuit women in Nunavut smoke during pregnancy, national Inuit leader Mary Simon of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami noted in a speech.

“This day is not about casting judgment on smokers,” Simon said on the ITK website. “It is about providing the tools that Inuit need to take control of their health and their lives.”

Smoke-free home

When a pregnant woman smokes, the fetus gets less oxygen and nutrients. Smoking during pregnancy is a known risk factor for other health problems for the baby, including low birth weight and respiratory problems.

In a second project called the Blue Light Campaign, families will get a blue light bulb to install on their porch to signal the family has committed to smoking outdoors or to quitting altogether.

Both programs have been successfully implemented in several Nunatsiavut and Nunavik communities, and will now be extended to other communities, Simon said.

According to Statistics Canada, 58 per cent of Inuit adults surveyed between October 2006 and March 2007 smoked every day, compared with 17 per cent among all adults in Canada.

This year’s theme of the World Health Organization’s awareness day is “gender and tobacco, with an emphasis on marketing to women.”

As part of its anti-smoking efforts, the European Union signalled Monday it may soon require cigarette packages to show graphic photos of diseased organs and carry larger health warnings.

Almost 40 nations currently require or will soon require photos showing the harmful effects of smoking on tobacco packaging.

MP Hadi Rajabli declared that the fight against smoking continues to be the most urgent and problematic sphere of activity throughout the world. So, Milli Mejlis (Azerbaijani parliament) is holding a round table on the fight against smoking in national legislation: realities and prospects. The event organized by the parliamentary committee on social policy dates to the World Day without Tobacco marked on May 31 and established by the World Health Organization on 31 May 1988. Speaking at the event, chairman of the Milli Mejlis Committee on Social Policy, MP Hadi Rajabli noted that the fight against smoking continues to be the most urgent and problematic sphere of activity throughout the world.

He said smoking is a great evil and Azerbaijan should pay more attention to it. He said the so-called passive smokers who are obliged to breathe in tobacco smoke are also caused damage along with the smokers themselves. Rajabli noted that he supports introduction of amendments and alterations to existing legislative basis on this issue and considered it inexpedient to develop a separate law in this sphere.

However, deputy chairman of the parliamentary committee Musa Guliyev stressed the need to adopt a law on fighting smoking that will regulate all issues, including administrative responsibility for violation of standard acts, restricting the use and promotion of tobacco wares in Azerbaijan. Guliyev said the group of deputies he heads has already developed a bill of 12 articles on fighting smoking. He considers that before adopting such a bill it is necessary to strengthen the propaganda and informing the public about the harm of smoking. Guliyev said that the experience of most countries showed that it will be impossible to settle the problem of smoking just through adopting laws and bans and it is necessary to do everything to inform people about the harm caused by tobacco.

Guliyev nited that the bill on fighting smoking and restriction of smoking in close areas, transport and public places will be set for discussion of the autumn session of the Azerbaijani parliament.

Starting with the next January, China will ban smoking in all public places, whether indoors or outdoors, and including public transport facilities and work areas. This is a significant expansion of smoke-free areas in China. Under the prior, local tobacco regulations, smoke-free areas were basically only public spaces, not workspaces. On May 10, officials of the Ministry of Health claimed in a media conference that this new regulation was based on the request of the “Framework Convention on Tobacco Control” of the World Health Organization (WHO). Smoking kills, which is the basic reason for this ban. However, these new regulations are perhaps somewhat unrealistic, and it will be quite difficult for this ban achieve tangible results.

First of all, the implementation cost will be very high. There are 350 million smokers in China. It is difficult to impose a strict prohibition on the daily habits of such a large population. Shanghai has been running its own “smoking ban” since March.

However, the prohibition exists only in name, as smokers are keeping to their usual habits.

The effective implementation of the regulations relies on strict enforcement, which requires the support of personnel, staffing and funding.

It will take a lot of time and manpower to enforce these regulations nationwide. As the funding comes from fiscal income, this will once again increase the burden on taxpayers.

China is a huge cigarette market, and one keyed to cultural habits. Smoking and drinking social customs, and cigarettes are a symbol of identity and status. The more expensive your brand, the more weight you carry, especially in official circle and the business world.

Tobacco is also considered an important source of revenue by some local governments. On January 14, a spokesman of the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration said proudly that its business revenue reached 513.11 billion ($75.15 billion) in 2009, an increase of 55.93 billion ($8.19 billion), up 12.2 percent over the previous year. Taxes (including State-owned enterprises’ income) made up 416.34 billion ($61.07 billion) of this, up 26.2 percent from the previous year.

Tobacco thus makes up a significant proportion of government revenue. Unless the government’s tobacco monopoly is broken, it seems unlikely officials will take serious steps to enforce smoking bans and reduce the consumption of cigarettes.

Cigarettes are small, but they have very deep roots. Without changes in the tobacco financial system, the “smoking ban” will be invalid.

China signed the “Framework Convention on Tobacco Control” at the UN Headquarters in 2003.

Article 11 of the Convention says that health warnings must be printed on the packaging and labels of tobacco products. They should take up 50 percent or more of the principal display area but shall be no less than 30 percent of the principal display areas.

This requirement has not even been implemented yet. To the contrary, the design of cigarette packaging in China has become more and more attractive and splendid.

Ironically, the packaging and design of Zhonghua cigarettes meant for export is totally different from the familiar domestic red boxes. On the upper front of the boxes for export, there is a picture of a smoker, vividly depicting his ulcerous lips and the blackened remnants of his teeth. The Zhonghua logo is printed in the cramped space below.

Therefore, the seemingly strict smoking ban is actually aimed in the wrong direction. Policymakers certainly face little risks: The people this disadvantages are China’s 350 million smokers. And they cannot stand together to react effectively to the policy. But on the supply side, tobacco companies are well organized interest groups with plenty of connections.

So these regulations will do little to actually control smoking in China, especially given the lack of enforcement. Rather than singling out the vulnerable group, the smokers, we instead need to target China’s tobacco monopoly.

We should start mandating large health warnings and other measures designed to reduce sales instead of merely restricting where people can smoke. Otherwise, the national commitment to reducing smoking looks weak, and the government’s authority will be damaged.

After years of faithfully supplying leaf to tobacco giant Philip Morris International, farmer Jess Burrier received a postcard, thanking him for his contributions and telling him his service wasn’t needed this year. “They were very courteous, but a Dear John letter’s still a Dear John letter,” said Burrier, who has seen the amount of tobacco he grows under contract shrivel from about 600,000 pounds two years ago to 20,000 pounds this year with another leaf buyer.

Kentucky, the nation’s top producer of burley tobacco, a common ingredient in cigarettes, could lose a fourth of its contracts this year, said Will Snell, a University of Kentucky agricultural economist specializing in tobacco. Many contracts also have been lost in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia as smoking continues to decline in the U.S. U.S. farmers also are seeing more competition from overseas as worldwide burley production has grown in the past two years, Snell said. And, a 2009 federal law giving the Food and Drug Administration broad power to regulate tobacco has added to cigarette makers’ uncertainty, making them even more conservative about purchasing, he said.

The cutbacks mean farmers who’ve lost contracts might not be able to pay mortgages and rural communities could lose jobs and income as farmers have less money to spend.

Some top tobacco companies acknowledged cutting contracts but wouldn’t say by how much.

“When volumes go down, you don’t need as much leaf across the board to manufacture the product,” said David Sutton, a spokesman for Altria Group Inc. — parent of Philip Morris USA, the nation’s top cigarette maker, which produces the top-selling Marlboro brand. But even with cutbacks, he said Altria will buy leaf valued at more than $100 million this year from thousands of Kentucky burley and dark tobacco farmers.

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. spokesman David Howard said the nation’s second-largest cigarette maker, whose brands include Camel and Pall Mall, is buying less burley through contracts because U.S. cigarette sales have dropped with higher excise taxes and smoking restrictions.

“We are simply doing what any business would have to do, and that’s keeping supplies in line with demand,” Howard said.

Philip Morris International, which is no longer tied to Philip Morris USA, also is buying less Kentucky burley this year, company spokeswoman Monica Montero confirmed.

The amount of contracted tobacco may plunge by 40 percent this year in Breckinridge County in western Kentucky, said Carol Hinton, the county’s agricultural extension agent. The reduction could cost growers about $2 million overall, based on a conservative 2,000-pound-per acre yield, she said.

“Every day, people were calling saying, ‘I lost my pounds,’” Hinton said. “It was a month there that was just true heartache for people.”

In North Carolina, the biggest tobacco state, contracts for flue-cured tobacco, another cigarette ingredient, are down about 10 percent from last year, said Peter Daniel of the state Farm Bureau.

North Carolina farmers have known this would be a lean year since December, when Phillip Morris International closed a receiving station in Lenoir County, the heart of eastern North Carolina tobacco country. That left farmers stuck with about 25 million pounds of tobacco, although Japan Tobacco Inc. later bought some of it, Daniel said.

In Tennessee, some producers with contracts say it’s increasingly difficult to live with the terms.

John Rose, 45, a tobacco farmer in northern Middle Tennessee who has a Phillip Morris International contract, now must take his burley to Glasgow, Ky., a four-hour round trip, after a nearby receiving station closed.

Some Kentucky farmers without contracts still lean toward planting tobacco, which they could sell at a limited number of auctions.

“That really scares me,” said Gary Carter, the ag extension agent in Harrison County. “It’s an unknown. They’re going to be at the mercy of whatever someone wants to give them.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported in late March that farmers in all the burley states combined intended to plant 97,800 acres, 4 percent less than a year ago.

Burrier, 52, said he’ll scale back from 110 acres of tobacco last year to 12 acres. Just two years ago, he planted 200 acres on his farm just outside Cynthiana, about 30 miles northeast of Lexington.

“This is the least amount of tobacco that I have ever raised on this farm,” said Burrier, who traces his family’s tobacco-growing heritage back a century.

The small contract won’t pay his mortgage, and the money he invested in tobacco setters and sprayers will largely go to waste. In the fall, he’ll only need two of his 15 tobacco barns for curing leaf; he’ll rent a few others to farmers who snagged larger contracts.

Still, Burrier doesn’t hold any grudges with Philip Morris International. Having prepared for this day, he has a sod business and grain production to fall back on, although he likely won’t earn as much without the tobacco contract.

“Philip Morris (International) is doing what they should do as a business,” Burrier said. “They’re taking care of their stockholders. If they did any differently, they wouldn’t be in business.”

Todd Clark, a tobacco grower from Lexington, lost his entire contract with Philip Morris USA this year. The 40-year-old farmer spent an agonizing week not knowing what he was going to do.

He eventually landed a contract to supply 75,000 pounds — his smallest crop ever — to Philip Morris International. Clark supplements his farm income with hay, livestock and a greenhouse operation that produces tiny tobacco plants for other farmers.

About a month after he learned he had lost his contract, Clark received another letter from Philip Morris USA. This time, he was commended for his previous crop and told he would receive a plaque.

IT’S still a seed of an idea for the Antonello brothers at Myrtleford but growing pumpkins is a new industry they’re exploring to replace tobacco farming.

Peter and Stefano Antonello have harvested their first pumpkin seed crop in the past few weeks.

It was a first for the area too, after the Australian Pumpkin Seed Company approached local farmers to venture into the new industry.

The company’s Sharan West said she suspected the area would be good for growing pumpkin seeds because it was similar to the plant’s native Europe.

The “naked” or “hulless” dark green pumpkin seed comes from a plant unlike those grown in Australia as a vegetable.

Stefano said they look like varieties used for jack-o’-lanterns.

The pumpkins are grown for their seeds and the oil that comes from the seed.

These products have proven so popular that the company is looking to expand.

“We had a meeting with a group of farmers (at Myrtleford) to discuss our idea with them,” Ms West said.

The factory is now at Chinchilla, Queensland, but there are plans to relocate it to Myrtleford.

“The factory at the moment is too isolated,” Ms West said.

“We hope to shift the factory here sometime this year.”

But before the factory arrives, they need to be sure Myrtleford is the best place to grow them.

This is where the Antonellos come into it.

“We wanted to try a new enterprise,” Peter said.

“Nothing has been happening on the land since tobacco went.”

So they decided to trial pumpkin seeds to see if they were economically viable.

Last December they planted 2ha of the special pumpkins on their property.

“It’s the first trial crop for down here,” Peter said.

“It was direct drilled with an airseeder.”

He said there were about 22,000 plants per hectare.

They had to get bees in for pollination to produce the most seeds possible but other than that they didn’t take a lot of care.

“They use a fair bit of water,” Peter said.

This was overcome with permanent sprinklers run from moisture meters in the soil.
The full allocation, from a long-standing irrigation licence from Buffalo River, was available for them to use.

Peter said there were no pest pressures but powdery mildew could be a problem.

Harvest was conducted with a specially designed European machine that picked up pumpkin that had been windrowed.

The machine’s spikes lift the pumpkins onto a conveyor, then into a crushing drum where they are processed to separate them and store the seeds and expel pumpkin pulp.

They opened up the paddock to some of their angus cattle as they harvested.

It was a treat for the cattle.

“They were eating it behind us as we went,” Peter said.

The biggest problem they have faced is underestimating how much labour it would take to clean and dry the seeds with just makeshift equipment.

“We haven’t got the right machinery,” Peter said.

“It’s been a big learning curve this year.”

He said they hadn’t done the figures yet but were likely to try another trial-size crop next season.

However, he was pretty clear that without the proper equipment he wouldn’t take it on on a bigger scale.

It was just too labour intensive.

After the seeds are harvested they are washed twice — in the Antonello brothers’ case, by hand — and then dried for three days.

In Queensland the drying process takes just one day.

At Myrtleford an old hot house has been converted with racks covered in shade cloth.

The black seeds are turned with a rake.

The Antonellos also have 250 angus breeders and a vineyard of pinot gris and pinot noir on their four properties, which cover 405ha.

RICHMOND, Va. — Lorillard Inc., the nation’s third-largest cigarette maker, saw less of a decline in cigarettes sold in the fourth quarter than its competitors. One of its value brands posted big gains and its Newport menthol brand stood up to heightened competition.

Still, Lorillard, whose other brands include Kent, True and Maverick, said Monday that its fourth-quarter profit fell as it faced higher manufacturing costs and other expenses.

The company, based in Greensboro, N.C., saw the number of cigarettes sold fall 4 percent during the period, compared with its estimate of a total industry decline of 7.4 percent.

Lorillard saw a 6.5 percent decline in volumes for its Newport brand, but a 39.7 percent increase in its value-priced Maverick brand. Some smokers have traded down to cheaper cigarette brands during the recession in an effort to cut spending.

Newport’s share of the U.S. menthol segment grew by .06 percentage points to 34.61 percent of the market.

Despite the Food and Drug Administration’s pending study on the public health impact of menthol, the segment is stronger than regular cigarettes in a shrinking market, and Lorillard’s top competitors — No. 1 Philip Morris USA, owned by Richmond, Va.’s Altria Group Inc., and No. 2 Reynolds American Inc., based in Winston-Salem, N.C. — have ramped up efforts to grab some of the menthol market.

While Chief Executive Martin L. Orlowsky acknowledged the other companies’ interest in menthol, he said in a conference call that none of the entries into the market have been “game-changers or factors of any consequence.”

Lorillard’s earnings dropped 6 percent to $242 million, or $1.52 per share. That narrowly beat the $1.51-per-share estimate of analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters.

It said it had fewer shares outstanding in the current quarter, which boosted its earnings per share by 9 cents.

Sales climbed 27 percent to $1.38 billion. About $270 million of the growth was due to April’s 62 cents-per-pack federal excise tax increase. Excluding excise taxes, sales rose 2.2 percent to $932 million.

Lorillard, which was spun off from Loews Corp. in June 2008, said its revenue benefited from higher average prices, but that was somewhat offset by selling fewer cigarettes and spending more on promotions.

Its shares fell 70 cents to $73.80 in afternoon trading Monday.

Full-year profit climbed 7 percent to $948 million, or $5.76 per share.

Annual net sales rose 25 percent to $5.23 billion from $4.2 billion. Removing excise taxes, sales grew 5.6 percent to $3.69 billion.

Lorillard, the oldest continuously operating U.S. tobacco company, was the last of the country’s top tobacco companies to report its fourth-quarter results.

Results from the three tobacco makers, who account for about 90 percent of the U.S. cigarette market, show steep volume declines as tax increases, smoking bans, health concerns and social stigma make the cigarette business tougher.

Marlboro maker Altria Group shipped 11.4 percent fewer cigars and cigarettes. Reynolds American, which makes Camel and Pall Mall, saw volume decline 7.6 percent.

Those declines have have caused some tobacco companies to focus on cigarette alternatives — such as snuff and chewing tobacco — for sales growth.

Lorillard said Monday that it plans to enter the moist smokeless tobacco market, but did not elaborate. It also said it will discontinue a joint venture with Swedish Match for its Triumph Snus — small pouches like tea bags that users stick between the cheek and gum.