Author Archives: ash

The superannuation fund for health and community services workers has become the latest fund to dump its investments in tobacco. HESTA chief executive Anne-Marie Corboy confirmed the fund had started removing tobacco investments from its portfolios this year, following a decision by the fund’s board late last year. Ms Corboy said she expected the fund,… Read the full article >

An extra £500 million a year could be raised in tobacco tax if an independent regulatory agency to cap cigarette manufacturers’ profits was set up, academics have said. The creation of an ‘Ofsmoke’ agency to regulate the industry – similar to those in force for utility companies – would increase tax revenue and protect public… Read the full article >

California Department of Public Health director and state health officer Dr. Ron Chapman has unveiled new ethnic-market advertisements that will continue to educate Californians on the harmful effects of tobacco use. An anti-tobacco ad from a previous campaign The advertisements, which include radio and print ads for the African American market, will start airing in… Read the full article >

The UK government could raise at least £500m a year by capping the amount of profit tobacco companies can make from cigarettes, academics have said. They are calling for state regulation similar to that used to limit the price of water. Writing in the journal Tobacco Control, they say reducing profits would allow for higher… Read the full article >

Last week South Africa became the first country to sign a new international treaty aimed at combating tobacco smuggling. Minister of Health, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, signed the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products at a ceremony held at the WHO headquarters in Geneva on Thursday. Eleven other countries including China, France, Panama, Turkey… Read the full article >

SMOKING MAY be the world’s greatest global health threat. It kills nearly 6 million people a year around the world — more than HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. The United States has done an admirable job of combating this threat within its own borders. But Washington has done embarrassingly little to address the problem overseas. The… Read the full article >

Women who smoke while pregnant can triple the chances of their child succumbing to a major cause of meningitis, according to new research. Several studies have already suggested a link between passive smoking and meningococcal disease. To investigate the association, scientists at the UK Centre for Tobacco Studies carried out a systematic review of 18 studies and… Read the full article >

Study: You’ll Likely Feel Worse After Drinking if You’ve Been Smoking, Too For smokers, it may seem only natural to light up while imbibing at this month’s holiday parties. But a new report published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs suggests that those who smoke cigarettes on the same day they drink heavily suffer worse hangovers than those… Read the full article >

Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death in the world today. Developing countries are now the top tobacco-consuming nations, where men and women are addicted to tobacco at higher rates than in developed countries, and have less success stopping. Nations have responded in domestic law by implementing warning labels and anti-teen smoking measures,… Read the full article >

Tobacco giant, Philip-Morris, has recently bought actions under investor-State arbitration mechanisms in investment treaties to challenge laws limiting (in Uruguay) or prohibiting (in Australia) the display of its trademarks in tobacco packaging. This has caused the Australian government to take a strong stance against any investor-State arbitration provisions in free trade agreements (FTAs), including exemptions from the proposed investor-state settlement… Read the full article >

A Quebec judge has agreed to hear the testimony of a prominent witness in a massive class-action lawsuit against Big Tobacco, a man the industry has labelled as biased and ill-informed. Robert Proctor is a historian from California’s Stanford University who has published extensively on the tobacco industry in books and academic papers. He’s also… Read the full article >

Although the number of adult smokers in the United States declined slightly between 2005 and 2011, there was no significant change between 2010 and 2011, health officials said Thursday. Smoking dipped from 20.9 percent to 19.3 percent of the U.S. population between 2005 and 2011, but in the last year the decline slowed to 19… Read the full article >