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News
2010
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7 July 2010
Submission
to Inquiry: End Smoking NZ asks for tobacco multinationals to report sales by
District Health Board View submission
End Smoking NZ has asked the Maori
Affairs Select Committee Inquiry into the Tobacco Industry to hold major
tobacco transnational firms to account, by requiring them to total tobacco
sales (98% of sales) in each product category annually by District
Health Board area, and by the Territorial Local Authorities
which comprise the DHBs.
DHBs have to treat the dying smokers,
the diseases and disabilities caused by people smoking tobacco companies’
products.
__________________________________________________________________________
6 July 2010
Comment:
Ministry of Health continues to blacklist nicotine e-cigarettes
http://www.medsafe.govt.nz/regulatory/MedicalDevices/ElectronicCigarettes.asp
In a
further clarification of previous advice, Medsafe, states “Electronic
cigarettes are medicines when supplied with one or more cartridges
containing nicotine, even if they are not represented as aids to smoking
cessation.”
This maintains Medsafe’s
previous opposition to the sale of nicotine e-cigarettes, virtually banning
them.
This means that whatever the
retailer’s claims made or not made, whatever the user’s
intentions, nicotine is a medicine and can’t be sold (and Medsafe is
not offering to license any e-cigarettes as medicines).
Ministry of Health and Medsafe annual
offering to smokers wanting to quit includes $8.5 million dollars worth of
subsidized nicotine patches, gum, vapourisers, lozenges. But e-cigarettes
are blacklisted. However all e-cigarette users want is for e-cigarettes to
be cheaper than tobacco. Disposable e-cigarettes cost under 20 dollars and
give 150 puffs and there is no need to want to quit before enjoying them..
Ministry of Health wants doctors to
help smokers make more attempts to quit smoking, and to record whether
their patients smoke. Flip chart tests however show that some smokers are
very interested in the option of
e-cigarettes.
Medsafe believes the Medicines Act
would allow it to prosecute any firm importing and selling nicotine
e-cigarettes not licensed as a medicine, even if imported as a tobacco
product under the Smokefree Environments Act (See our 29
Jan 2010
letter to NZMedJ at foot of this file).
Nicotine
sold in lethal cigarettes or cigars or tobacco for smoking can be sold, but
nicotine in an e-cigarette imported as an alternative tobacco product
cannot be sold. (except as a medicine, and no e-cigarette is licensed). Those with internet savvy can import
e-cigarettes for personal use. Meantime most smokers just keep on smoking.
.
The current ban on nicotine
e-cigarettes prohibits the sale of a
substantially safer e-cig alternatives to cigarettes. E-cigarette emissions
are 100 times less toxic than tobacco cigarette smoke emissions.
Smokers don’t want nicotine in
medicines necessarily, but would like to be able to buy and enjoy their
nicotine from e-cigarettes which are obviously much safer.
In New Zealand cigarettes for
lighting up and producing smoke and nicotine can be sold (4.2 billion
cigarettes, and 5000 deaths a year in NZ), but the flameless e-cigarette
containing no tobacco and much less nicotine, and giving no smoke, cannot be
sold in New Zealand. (0 deaths so far globally, despite over a million sold
in USA and UK).
Something is seriously wrong
here.
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28 June 2010
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Feature: The last gasp
By ANTHONY HUBBARD - Sunday Star
Times
Last updated 05:00
13/06/2010
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Bars, restaurants and workplaces are smokefree, but
can smoking really be stubbed out forever?
Photo: iStock
Anti-smoking
groups are pushing for a ban on cigarette sales – but critics say
it would just lead to a huge tobacco black market. Anthony Hubbard
reports.
IT'S THE nuclear option in the war against Big Tobacco: a ban on
sales. Smoking is "slaughtering" the population, says
anti-smoking campaigner Murray Laugesen. Since 1950, it has killed more
than 150,000 people, greater than the population of Hamilton.
So now it is time to halt the massacre.
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Years of anti-smoking legislation have only slightly dented the rate of
smoking. The anti-smoking group Ash points out that in 1991 about 26% of
adults smoked. By 2007 this was down only a few points, to 23%. "This
is an unacceptable rate of decline and highlights the need for urgent
action," Ash says.
The Smokefree Coalition, a collection of more than 40 anti-smoking
groups, is now pushing for a ban on sales of cigarettes and tobacco by
2020. The push for a ban is the main thrust of the battle against Big
Tobacco, both here and abroad. More than 90% of the submissions to the
Maori Affairs select committee, which is investigating smoking's effect on
Maori, have backed the idea.
Opponents, including the tobacco companies themselves, say it will lead
to a huge black market, perhaps dominated by criminal gangs. Didn't
Prohibition lead to massive bootlegging and murder? After all, even the
cigarette companies now admit that smokers are addicts. If you stop them
buying their daily fix, won't they turn to other sources?
Laugesen, a leader of the anti-smoking movement for 25 years, both as a
government official and then as a researcher and lobbyist, says the plan is
quite different from Prohibition. Growers would not be able to buy tobacco
after 2020, but they could still grow it for their own use. There would be
a gradual phase-out of sales, not an overnight ban. And there would have to
be much more help for smokers wanting to quit.
"We're not out to end smoking altogether. I think that's a bridge
too far," says Laugesen. "But taking it out of shops will have
the effect of drastically reducing smoking.
"It would be very difficult for any well-organised criminal
black market to kill more than 4500 people a year [the current death toll
from smoking]. That is the problem we have, we have a legalised trade
whose products are slaughtering the population."
Price increases usually lead to falls in smoking, and, under the plan,
the price would be steadily increased until 2020. The government's recent
tax increases – which will raise prices by 30% by 2012 – are a
good start, says Laugesen. More increases would be needed after that.
At the same time, much more help must be
given to smokers to quit. Laugesen points to electronic cigarettes,
metallic cigarette-shaped vaporisers which give smokers their nicotine hit
without the lethal smoke. At present, these are not readily available
because the nicotine cartridge they require cannot be sold here, although
smokers can import them for personal use.
By 2020, under the Smokefree scheme, the number of smokers would already
be falling. But this suggests the remaining ones will be the hard-core
addicts, the ones most likely to drive a black market. They could turn to
locally grown tobacco, known as "chop-chop" – under the
present law, you can grow up to 15kg a year for personal use, enough to
make about 60 roll-your-owns a day.
"All the reports we've had are that chop-chop apparently tastes
like absolute s--t," says Ash communication manager Michael Colhoun.
This doesn't necessarily mean that smokers won't buy it. Desperate addicts
will take what they can get. The evidence suggests that tobacco is quite
easy to grow, Laugesen says. City-dwellers could grow it in a glasshouse.
Smokers could also use smuggled cigarettes from abroad. Laugesen
believes the scope for a black market in this area is limited. The total New
Zealand market at present is about 4.2
billion cigarettes a year, including roll-your-owns: the equivalent of
about 400 shipping continers full of cigarettes.
"The quantities are substantial and cannot easily be hidden and
cannot easily be rustled up from here and there," says Laugesen.
"For example, a cigarette factory in New
Zealand would be very difficult to hide.
"Any finished product would have to come from overseas, and, to
come in in any quantity, it would have to come in in a shipping
container." Could the smugglers really bring in a shipping container
every day?
New Zealand,
says Laugesen, is surrounded by water and it is much easier to control the
border than in Europe, where cigarette smuggling is
an enormous problem.
The tobacco companies say there is already a black market and it grows
whenever the price of cigarettes is boosted.
Only one country in the world, Bhutan,
has banned sales, although the government of Finland
is discussing a plan to phase them out. The second-largest tobacco company
in New Zealand,
Imperial, told the Maori Affairs select committee that Bhutan's
experience since the ban in 2004 "demonstrated that banning tobacco
does not work. The ban was such a disaster in Bhutan
that it was lifted by the National Council in June last year".
In fact, the ban was not lifted: a bill in the National Council, the
upper house of parliament, did not proceed. However, a report by American
political scientist Michael Givel in November last year
"tentatively" concluded that "tobacco consumption and
secondhand smoke exposure remain a significant health issue in Bhutan.
In addition, the best available evidence indicates that illegal tobacco
smuggling in Bhutan
remains robust".
Givel's report shows that officials were worried about the
"porous" border between Bhutan
and its neighbours, India
and China.
It also suggests a lack of bureaucratic co-ordination in enforcing the ban,
and a lack of help for smokers wanting to quit.
The experience of a third-world land-locked country clearly cannot be
transferred, holus-bolus, to New Zealand.
What evidence do we have about the black market in this country?
British and American Tobacco, the largest cigarette company in New
Zealand, commissioned a report by Ernst
and Young this year which concluded that "overall, illicit tobacco
represents about 3.3% of total tobacco consumption in New
Zealand".
This represented, the report claimed, a loss of $39 million to $50m in tax
to the government each year. However, the report clearly involves a whole
series of assumptions about not only the quantity of tobacco grown in New
Zealand, but also about how much is being brought in illegally.
Ash, which is preparing its own report on the black market, disputes
Ernst and Young's findings.
Nobody doubts that a ban on sales would lead to an increase in the
tobacco black market. And nobody really knows how big it would be. END
(For public support see www.endsmoking.org.nz/polls.htm
)
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14
May 2010 Morning Report RadioNZ
Four simple policies
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/national/mnr/2010/05/14/researchers_suggest_ways_to_end_cigarette_sales
Four simple policies
to end cigarette sales in NZ by 2020
FourPolicies14May2010.pdf
Four policies to end
the sale of cigarettes and smoking tobacco in New Zealand by 2020. End Smoking NZ is not advocating prohibition
– people could legally grow their own, Ending the legal cigarette and
tobacco trade however, should result in reducing smoking prevalence from
20% now to 1% to 4 %, and reducing consumption similarly.
4 May
2010
95%
of users say e-cigarette helped them quit smoking
23% were still smoking
daily - median 12 cigarettes per day. On the other hand, 63% were no longer
smokers. Median duration of use was 100 days, median 175 puffs per day.
Etter JF et al. Electronic cigarettes: a survey of users. http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1440477701319135_article.pdf?random=19859
28 April 2010
Tobacco
tax increases – a useful kickstart to the growing campaign to phase
out commercial sales of tobacco cigarettes by 2020.
1)
The
last big increase in 2000 was marred by relapse of 80,000 smokers over 3
months. www.endsmoking.org.nz/casestudy.htm
2)
The
“equalization” of tax on RYOs and factory made cigarettes only
applies if the RYO smoker uses the same amount of tobacco per cigarette as
a FM (factory-made) cigarette smoker. (0.7 g per cig).
3)
However
in reality - the average weight of a RYO cigarette in NZ for the last many
years is around 0.5 g# ** - the gap between RYOs and FM prices will be even
further apart than before this tax increase.
4)
This
persisting and increased gap is now likely to persuade even more FM smokers
to shift to RYOs instead of quitting.
Table
1. Cigarette price changes in 2010-2012:* All cigarette prices increase,
but RYOs remain cheaper than factory-made
cigarettes.
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Mar
2010
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April
2010
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Jan
2012
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2010
– 2012
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25s Factory Made
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$13.00^
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$14.30^
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$17.30*
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+33%
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30g RYO
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$21.30^
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$25.50^
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$29.80*
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+40%
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Assuming 60 RYOs
/30 g (0.5 g/RYO cigarette # **)
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Price*/FM cig
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52.0 c
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57.6 c
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69.2 c
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+15c
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Price*/RYO cig
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35.5 c
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42.5 c
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49.7c
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+14c
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Avg RYO cigarette
(0.5 g) cheaper by
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16.5c /cig
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15.1c /cig
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19.5c /cig
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3c more /cig
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*Ministry
of Health press release 28 April 2010.
#Laugesen,
Epton, Frampton, Glover, Lea. http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/9/194
and more at www.healthnz.co.nz/News2009.htm based on weighing of tobacco in
cigarettes rolled by RYO smokers.
**http://www.endsmoking.org.nz/RYOhalfprice.htm
Table 1 National data estimating RYO weights.
^
Actual recommended retail prices from BAT. In reality, shops on low income
areas discount these prices.
Table
2. Actual taxes and prices before and after 28
April 2010
From
3 shops in Lyttelton: shop prices will not change until about May 3, 2010
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Before
28 April 2010
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From
May
2010
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%
increase
during
2010
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Excise rates www.customs.govt.nz
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Tax rate/FM
cigarette
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31.4 c
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34.587 c/cig
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10% (tax)
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Tax rate / 0.5 g RYO
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19.65 c
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24.643 c/cig
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25% (tax)
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Tax rate / 0.7 g RYO
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27.51 c
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34.587 c/cig
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25.7% (tax)
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Retail prices
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Holiday 20s
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9.50** to 10.30
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11.30*
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10%
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Holiday 25s
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13.00
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14.30*
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10%
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30g RYO Port Royal
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$19.80** to $21.30
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25.50*
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20%
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*
recommended retail price from BAT
** a
discounted price
Note:
Normal increases due to inflation
are apparently stood down until January 2010.
17 April 2010 NZ Herald
Medical
rules lead to withdrawal of electronic quit-smoking aid
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10638910
Dunedin Online
Pharmacy has withdrawn its electronic cigarettes from sale, after the
Ministry of Health “advised” it was acting illegally. One
satisfied user emailed the Herald saying he was dismayed, “since they
work”.
However public health
specialist Dr Murray Laugesen argues the products can be legally imported
and sold - but not advertised - under the Smokefree Environments Act,
although he wants the ministry first to write regulations to ensure safety.
15 April 2010 NZ Herald.
Smoker
wants e-ciggie nicotine at a shop near him
Mark Greenhalgh says e-cigarettes have enabled him to
cut his daily habit from 30 to three tobacco cigarettes. Photo / Paul
Estcourt
Full Life distributor Cecil Driver of Christchurch plans to import nicotine
e-cigarettes “within months”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10638418
Comment:
The
NZ Smokefree Environments Act permits sale of nicotine products. (see
Letter to NZ Medical Journal below).
End Smoking NZ regards the sale of effective cigarette substitutes as key
to persuading smokers that tobacco cigarette sales in NZ can be phased out
by 2020.
For clinical trials
showing e-cigarettes reduce cravings, see www.healthnz.co.nz/News2010.htm
26 March 2010
Clean,
green and tobacco-sales-free
Four out of five Kiwi
smokers would not smoke if they had their lives over again, says researcher
Marewa Glover. Source: Stuff
21 March 2010 RadioNZ
End
Smoking NZ experts’ views on ending cigarette sales
Smokefree
Aotearoa? Is a smokefree nation a realistic goal?
The Ideas
programme interviews:
University of
Auckland academic Dr Marewa Glover (End Smoking NZ board member) on why
Maori are at the forefront of those calling for a ban on the sale of
tobacco; and;
Longtime anti-smoking
campaigner and researcher Dr Murray Laugesen (chair, End Smoking NZ) on
e-cigarettes and other alternatives to tobacco products;
Also Otago
Univesity public health professor Professor Richard Edwards, on what he
calls tobacco’s end game.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ideas
End
Smoking NZ’s Submission to the Maori Affairs Select Committee
on
the Inquiry into the tobacco industry in Aotearoa and the health
consequences
of tobacco use for Maori.
Published on MASC
website February 2010
The tobacco
smoking deaths epidemic has arisen since commercial
cigarettes
became
popular in the first half of the 20th century, and
ending this
epidemic requires that commercial cigarettes be phased
out. Read how four key
policies can end the sale of cigarettes by 2020,
by making the healthy choice the easy and cheaper choice.
Read the full submission at …..SubmissionTobInquiry_EndSmoking_25Jan10.pdf
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NZ
Med J 29-January-2010, Vol 123 No 1308
http://www.endsmoking.org.nz/EcigswNic_SaleSFEAct.pdf
 Nicotine
electronic cigarette sales are permitted
under the
Smokefree Environments Act
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Summary—Here we (ML and End Smoking NZ) canvass some new
thinking on tobacco and nicotine law. End Smoking NZ is a charitable
trust dedicated to end the sale of traditional tobacco-containing tobacco
products for smoking by 2020. Before this can be done, it is essential to
free up access for smokers to effective, safer nicotine products. These
products, we find, could theoretically, probably be sold now for
recreational use under the Smokefree Environments (SFE) Act. For example,
nicotine-containing electronic cigarettes (which simulate smoking, by
vaporising nicotine into a mist without burning tobacco or creating
smoke) could provide safer alternatives to cigarette smoking. Allowing
time for regulations for safety reasons, which we support, it should be
possible to permit approved brands of nicotine electronic cigarettes by
2011. This is better than waiting years until such brands can be approved
as medicines.
Findings—Tobacco products in the SFE Act 1990, we find, are
defined broadly, as products of tobacco, made from tobacco, whether or
not they contain tobacco. Since nicotine is manufactured exclusively from
tobacco, the nicotine in nicotine ‘cigarettes’, including
nicotine electronic cigarettes, fits the SFE Act definition of tobacco
product. This means nicotine-containing electronic cigarettes, can be
sold, and sold for recreational or pleasurable purpose under the SFE Act,
without negating the powers of Medsafe to approve and license the sale of
medicinal nicotine products under the Medicines Act 1981. Some products,
perhaps with different brand names, could eventually finish up obtaining
approval under both Acts.
Current situation—Smoking cessation is a Ministry of Health
priority, but the Ministry’s enhanced cessation programme now
embarked on, aided by substantial use of subsidised medicinal nicotine,
is not expected to prevent more than a minority of smoking or
cigarette-attributable deaths in the next few decades. A raft of new
policies and products are needed to reduce cigarette smoking more
rapidly.
For
tobacco addicts, medicines have their limitations. Most smokers, most of
the time, do not want medicines or to see the doctor about their smoking.
Indeed, most probably regard themselves as healthy. Even when they quit,
only 30% use medicinal nicotine. Smokers want to smoke, except for a few
days per year when under half make a serious quit attempt. It is mostly
nicotine they smoke for. An electronic cigarette emits about 100 times
less toxicant than a regular cigarette. So why not let them inhale their
nicotine without the toxic smoke?
Most
drugs of pleasure, whether legal or not, attract regulation, and need a
regulatory “home”. Until now, we all assumed nicotine for
human consumption only had only one home - the Medicines Act 1981. This
has meant all nicotine must perforce be medicinal, whereas patently, it
is not. Currently, non-nicotine electronic cigarettes can be sold, but
any nicotine-containing electronic cigarette for sale must first be
approved as a medicine –an expensive process, and none is, so far.
Some are imported for personal use. In reality, 99% of nicotine is
non-medicinal, inhaled for pleasure and regulated under the SFE Act.
Inhaling vapour from a simulated cigarette for pure nicotine pleasure,
subject to safety checks, could in fact gratuitously assist in reducing
smoking mortality and morbidity, just as methadone is used successfully
to treat heroin addiction.
The proposal—We propose that nicotine-containing electronic
cigarettes be on general sale by the 2011 at the latest, under the SFE
Act. This timetable allows for passage of the necessary Regulations in
2010, enabling testing and shop sales in 2011, which would:
·
Be popular with smokers;
·
Provide safer choices for smokers;
·
Provide a cheaper, safer, alternative for smokers
facing rising prices;
·
Reduce consumption of tobacco cigarettes;
·
Provide in future, a permanent alternative to
continued cigarette sales.
The
Minister of Health with suitable regulation of e-cigarettes, would be
able to do what no previous Minister of Health has been able to do, that
is, promise 100-fold risk reduction for continuing “smokers”,
something impossible, even with the strictest regulation, of commercial
tobacco cigarette smoke.
For
human consumption, it seems clear, we now have two Acts for nicotine,
depending on how the purchaser wants to use the product – for
recreational or medicinal purposes:
The
SFE Act provides for recreational (non-medicinal) use of nicotine,
General sale of cigarettes and electronic cigarettes is permitted, but no
therapeutic claims can be made. No dose is prescribed.
The
Medicines Act provides for the medicinal use of nicotine by various
routes; and allows therapeutic claims, for example, about giving up
smoking (example, nicotine patch). Some sales may be restricted to
pharmacies, as with current medicinal nicotine inhalers. Guidance on dose
and duration of treatment is given.
Definition of a tobacco product—“Tobacco product
means any product manufactured from tobacco and intended for use by
smoking, inhalation, or mastication; and includes nasal and oral snuff;
but does not include any medicine (being a medicine ..... that is sold or
supplied wholly or principally for use as an aid in giving up
smoking.”1
The
definitional wording suggests that it is the intention of the seller
or supplier that determines whether it is wholly or principally for
use as an aid in giving up smoking. Thus the seller cannot make claims
that it helps smokers quit.
Regulations to control for possible hazardous substances in
nicotine electronic cigarettes—The Smokefree Environments
Act at Section 31, permits Regulations to limit or remove hazardous
substances or additives of concern. Although in the one brand studied
(Ruyan), few hazardous substances were identified, and only in small
amount,2
this cannot be assumed to apply to all brands without a monitoring system.
Regulations should ensure ongoing, regular and random monitoring, and
could be financed from charges on the brands to be licensed for sale.
Competing interests: None declared. The author and End Smoking NZ has no
financial interest in any nicotine, pharmaceutical or tobacco company.
Murray Laugesen
Lyttelton, New Zealand
www.endsmoking.org.nz; chair@endsmoking.org.nz
References:
1.
Smoke-free Environments Act 1990, Reprint as at 1 February 2005. http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1990/0108/latest/DLM223196.html
2.
Laugesen M. Ruyan e-cigarette bench top tests.
Poster. Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. 15th Annual
Conference Dublin April 2009. www.healthnz.co.nz/DublinEcigBenchtopHandout.pdf
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Dr Murray Laugesen QSO chair; Prof Ross McCormick, Sir John Scott KBE, Trish
Fraser MPH, Dr Marewa Glover, Trustees
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