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SMOKING

Norway backs plain packets for cigarettes

Norway and New Zealand on Tuesday became the latest countries to announce they will remove branding from cigarette packets, in a move hailed by the WHO as an effective way to cut smoking rates.

Norway backs plain packets for cigarettes
Health Minister Bent Høie said the plain packaging could be rolled out in 2017. Lise Åserud / NTB scanpix
The announcements, which coincide with World No Tobacco Day, mean cigarettes must be sold in drab boxes plastered with health warnings and gruesome pictures of smoking-related diseases.
 
“Plans by New Zealand and Norway to introduce plain packaging to reduce demand for tobacco send a powerful signal that this initiative works,” Oleg Chestnov, the World Health Organization Assistant Director-General for noncommunicable diseases told AFP in an email.
 
Plain packaging, which removes what is seen as a powerful tool used to get young people hooked on tobacco, “will save lives,” he insisted.
 
According to WHO, one person dies from tobacco-caused disease every six seconds, amounting to nearly six million people each year — a number expected to rise to more than eight million by 2030.
 
Norway's proposed legislation for plain packaging will also apply to snus, the smokeless tobacco popular in Scandinavian countries, Health Minister Bent Høie said. 
 
“The objective of plain packaging is to prevent tobacco use among children and adolescents. I think most people support this goal. We know that young people are affected by the appearance and design of tobacco packaging, and it is time to stop this type of marketing to young people,” Høie said in a statement. 
 
In New Zealand, associate Health Minister Sam Lotu-Iiga pointed out that “12 New Zealanders die prematurely every day from smoking-related illnesses.
 
“Each of these deaths is preventable,” he stressed.
 
Høie told news agency NTB that he's confident that the Norwegian parliament will approve the legislation, which he plans to present within the next few weeks. 
 
“If parliament handles the issue before Christmas, I hope it will be implemented during the course of 2017,” he said. 
 
'Going global'
In a new report, the WHO said data from Australia, the first country to introduce so-called plain packaging four years ago, showed the measure had a clear impact on the number of habitual smokers in the country.
 
With similar laws taking effect earlier this month in Britain and France, and a range of other countries discussing following suit, WHO voiced hope the push to remove logos and distinctive colours from cigarette packs is “going global”, despite strong opposition from the tobacco industry.
 
“Plain packaging reduces the attractiveness of tobacco products,” WHO chief Margaret Chan said in a statement.
 
Imposing neutral cigarette packs, she said, “kills the glamour, which is appropriate for a product that kills people.”
 
Smoking in Australia has been steadily declining for years, but WHO said 0.55 points out of a total 2.0-percentage point drop in the three years after the law was introduced in December 2012 could be directly attributed to the neutral packaging.
 
That equates to more than 108,000 people quitting, not relapsing or not starting to smoke during the period, said the report, citing Australian statistics.
 
WHO said it hoped the data would help inspire more countries to climb aboard.
 
The new packs sold in Australia, and being phased in in Britain and France are intentionally ugly, covered with graphic health warnings, with no promotional information allowed and brand and product names displayed in standard colour and font size.
 
Plain packaging is only one of many tactics called for in WHO's 2005 Framework Convention for Tobacco Control aimed at reducing tobacco consumption, alongside protecting people from exposure to tobacco smoke, banning tobacco advertising and sales to minors, and requiring health warnings on all products.
 
Big Tobacco
The tobacco industry fought particularly hard to block the introduction of plain packets, and has mounted numerous legal challenges against countries seeking to impose them.
 
Høie told NTB that he expects “the tobacco industry to use all of its means to fight this in Norway”.
 
New Zealand first proposed plain packaging in 2013, but it was put on hold pending the outcome of tobacco giant Philip Morris' legal action against the Australian government's introduction of the packets a year earlier.
 
That lawsuit failed last December, and tobacco giants Philip Morris International, British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco and Japan Tobacco International (JTI) also failed earlier this month to block the British legislation.
 
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key admitted Tuesday the fact that so many countries were adopting the packaging had emboldened his government to ignore the threat of legal action from Big Tobacco.
 
“They may well take a case against the government, but the advice we have been getting over time now has been that the risks of them being successful… is reducing,” he told reporters.
 
“The industry fights hardest against the measures that are most effective,” Douglas Bettcher, who heads WHO's non-communicable disease prevention unit, told reporters in Geneva ahead of the report launch.
 
Plain packaging, he said, was so effective because it “very clearly labels tobacco for what it is: the only legally available product worldwide that when used as intended, kills up to half of its users,” he said.

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HEALTH

How Spain could stamp out smoking

A fifth of Spain's population smokes on a daily basis. With such high numbers, here's how the country's pulmonologists propose to get smokers to quit.

Spain plans to get people to quit smoking
How Spain plans to get people to stop smoking. Photo: Khalil MAZRAAWI / AFP

For many outsiders, Spain is a nation of smokers. 

The stats from Spain’s Ministry of Health show that 23.3 percent of men smoke every day in Spain, compared with 16.4 percent of women.

For both males and females, the highest number of smokers are aged between 25 and 34, meaning that it’s the younger population who are smoking slightly more than the older generations. 

Spain’s pulmonologists are now pushing for the country’s tobacco laws to be tightened, claiming that reform is needed after the last legislation was approved a decade ago.

READ ALSO: Spain warns against smoking and vaping in public to avoid Covid infections

Why is smoking such a problem in Spain and what is being done about it?

The latest stats from the Spanish Ministry of Health show that lung cancer, often caused by smoking, is the third most frequently diagnosed cancer in Spain, with 29,549 cases diagnosed so far in 2021.

Given these high figures Spain’s Spanish Society of Pulmonology and Thoracic Surgery (SEPAR) has proposed five measures to help get people to stop smoking.

SEPAR points out that every time anti-smoking legislation is reformed and things for smokers made more difficult, the prevalence of smoking decreases.  

Smoking on terraces was banned in some regions during the pandemic. Photo: CRISTINA QUICLER / AFP
  • Price of tobacco to rise in 2022

The first point on their list is to raise the price of tobacco, which must cover all forms, from cigarettes to cigars, through to rolling tobacco, and electronic cigarettes.  

This first measure may soon become a reality as the Spanish government has already predicted that the price of tobacco will rise in 2022, after several years of stagnation.  

It is expected that tobacco will be responsible for almost a third of all special taxes received in 2022, equating to €21.8 billion.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “cheap tobacco” in Spain guarantees “a percentage of smokers above 30 percent”.

In Spain, the price of a pack of tobacco is around €5, which is much cheaper than in other countries. In Australia for example, a pack of tobacco costs around €22, and in the United Kingdom and France, each pack of tobacco costs around €12.4 and €10.5, respectively.

According to Dr. Carlos A. Jiménez Ruiz, pulmonologist and president of the society, the current anti-smoking law has “some deficiencies” that need to be addressed in order to develop legislation that is more effective and efficient, especially with regard to the prevention of tobacco consumption in young people, but also in helping smokers to stop smoking and in protecting the health of non-smokers. 

READ ALSO – Maps: Which beaches in Spain have banned smoking?

Besides increasing the cost of tobacco SEPAR proposes four other measures to get Spain to quit smoking. These include:

  • Banning the consumption of tobacco in public spaces, even outdoors
    During the pandemic, several regions approved a regulation to prohibit smoking on terraces. SEPAR proposes that smoking be prohibited not only in spaces such as terraces but also in sports stadiums, beaches, parks and bullrings, and that fines should be imposed for those who do not comply.

  • Establish generic packaging
    SEPAR also wants Spain to introduce generic packaging, which means no logos and images of the tobacco companies. This measure has also proven to lower the sales of tobacco in countries where it has been implemented, such as Australia and New Zealand. According to the latest statistics from the Australian National Drug Strategy Household Survey around 11.6 percent of adults in Australia smoke daily. 

  • The regulation of other smoking devices
    Despite the fact that all products that burn tobacco such as cigarettes are already regulated, SEPAR believes that it is also necessary to regulate the sale, consumption and advertising of electronic cigarettes. This is because e-cigarettes have become particularly popular among young people. 

  • Promote help for those seeking to quit smoking
    The last proposal is the creation and development of special units in public health departments to help people to stop smoking and to put more funds towards these programmes. 

How does Spain compare with other European countries when it comes to smoking?

According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), while Spain does have a high number of smokers there are still several European countries that have more. The European countries with the highest number of smokers are Greece, Bulgaria and Hungary.

The latest European survey from 2020 shows that 42 percent of Greeks claim to be smokers, which is only slightly above Spain. 

On the other side, the European countries with the lowest number of smokers are mainly Nordic countries, such as Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Norway.

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