Hello again. Now I will post about the industry estrategies in Brazil and our efforts to face it. Brazil has 183,987,291 inhabitants (IBGE, 2007), and presents an enormous young population - 51.1 million people aged between 15 and 29 years, which corresponds to 27.4% of the total population (IBGE, 2006). Considering this significant part of young people with own source of income, the tobacco industry has permanently invested in marketing and political strategies to conquer them: the 6th cheapest cigarettes of the world; the great smuggled cigarette availability; the diversity of sale’s points, where the marketing is still permitted and the social and environment corporative responsibility like Cultural and Environment Dialogues and the University Dialogues are examples. These ones happens in partnership with universities and students’ representative entities, bringing to the university public free lectures with sports celebrities, intellectuals and so on that are usually well known personalities, with great credibility among the youth segment. Since its creation in 2005, they already had been in universities of all the five regions of Brazil, reaching more than 23,000 young and constructing strong bonds with the students’ management companies. The conquest of an ample students’ social acceptance is expressed in the evaluation they have made, available in the company’s site: 97% had evaluated the Program as good or very good and 99% had considered the discussed subjects as interesting or very interesting. These all explain how still 3.7% of the Brazilian population between 12 and 17 years are smokers. This percentage grows for 16% considering the population between 18 and 24 years. These strategies shock with the National Tobacco Control Program, that has been facing Industry since the decade of 1980, having as one of its more significant conquests the total smoking products advertising ban in the television, Internet, and others, besides the sports, artistic and cultural events sponsorship’s banishment, through Federal Law nº10.167/00. This important conquers has been a cause of litigation for the Industry, having Souza Cruz petitioned against the federal law with an Unconstitutionality Direct Action (ADIN) to cancel the ban. The National Cancer Institute - INCA, an office of the Health Ministery, where the National coordination is located, has already subsidized the Federal Government that has already gone to justice with a contrary legal action. The same has done the Brasilian Alliance for Tobacco Control - ACTBr, that represents the social control of the tobacco control policy in Brazil. To face this offensive we need to extend social mobilization to maintain the advertising prohibition and also to extend it to 100% of prohibiton, that is also in the points of sale. We need also to foment a critical attitude by the youngsters collectively building up strategies for the creation of a National Young Net for Tobacco Control in Brazil linked with LA RED – “Latinoamerica Respira Diferente” (THE NET) that is a net of youth for advocacy to tobacco control, composed of 50 youngsters of 06 Latin American countries - Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay, that assumed the role of national leaderships to trace action in their nations. Currently Brazil is represented only by a technician assessor of our Coordination,that is Evandro. For its democratic, equality, multiplying and participative nature, the social networks are presented as the most adequate channels to improve the youthful enrollment. The possibility of creation of young net for tobacco control from the human and social capital preexisting in the youth movements and organizations opens new possibilities and would set fire a significant social and political pressure to deep the restrictions to the industry. We are sure this meeting will certainly promote this. Thats all for now. Hope to see you soon. Evandro Alves and Maristela Menezes. Recife/PE/Brazil.

PROMOTED ARE THOSE THINGS WHICH DESERVE BUT MATTERS LIKE THESE THINGS SHOULD BE BANED INSPITE OF GETTING PROMOTIONS

TODAY EVEN WHEN WE ARE SUFFERING FROM FINANCIAL CRISIS THEN ALSO THESE THINGS ARE AVAILABLE AT THE CORNERS OF EVERY STREET.EVEN THE POOREST PERSON CAN AFFORD PRODUCTS OF TOBACCO.

THIS IS ALL BECAUSE OF THE SPONSORS’ SUPPORT AND HELP.TESE INDUSTRIES ARE DWELLING AND GROWING AND IF SERIOUSLY NOT TAKEN THEN THOSE WOULD SURELY BE A MATTER OF STRESS AND PROBLEMS SOON.

THE BEST WAY TO REMOVE THIS IS TO STOP THE AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION OF TOBACCO .

 THERE MAY BE SOME OPPOSITIONS AT SOME PLACES BUT IF THOSE CAN BE NEGLECTED THEN THERE WOULD BE AN ENVIRONMENT OF SMOKE FREE EVERYWHERE 

^^ $$ COME LETS START THE NEW ERA OF SMOKE FREE EARTH $$^^

As the westernization of India accelerates, tobacco advertising and marketing have been linked to increased tobacco use by urban Indian children as young as 11, according to a study by researchers at The University of Texas School of Public Health. The study, “Associations Between Tobacco Marketing and Use Among Urban Youth In India,” is published in the May/June issue of the American Journal of Health Behavior.

Findings from an earlier published study by the researchers revealed that in 2004, Indian sixth graders were using three times the amount of tobacco as eighth graders, which the authors found might indicate a new wave of increased tobacco use. The second study sought to discover the reason for the jump.

“As India becomes more westernized, more teens will use tobacco,” said the study’s principal investigator Cheryl Perry, Ph.D., professor and regional dean of The University of Texas School of Public Health Austin Regional Campus. “The sixth graders as a group are already thinking that smoking is cool while the eighth graders haven’t been as exposed to the Western message.”

After the major tobacco company settlements of 1998 that included more stringent laws banning pro-smoking advertising, smoking has dropped among American youth. According to The Monitoring the Future study, daily smoking among eighth graders dropped from 8.8 percent in 1998 to 3 percent in 2007.

“The current study is the first in India to demonstrate a strong, dose-response relationship between exposure and receptivity to tobacco advertising and promotions and tobacco use among Indian youth. These associations clearly suggest a need to strengthen policy and program-based interventions to reduce tobacco use among youth in India,” said Melissa Stigler, Ph.D., assistant professor at the UT School of Public Health and study co-author, who did much of the ground work in India.

Chewing tobacco and aromatic cigarettes called “bidis” account for the majority of tobacco use in India with cigarettes taking 20 percent of the market.

While tobacco advertising was banned in India in 2004, the year the study began, cigarette companies are coming up with new ways to reach a relatively untapped audience, Stigler said. Event sponsorship and lifestyle stores centered on tobacco products are slipping through the cracks of the law.

As part of the 2004 law, smoking is also banned in public areas such as indoor malls, but tobacco companies have responded with air-conditioned mobile smoking lounges.

“On a visit there shortly after the 2004 law was enacted, I witnessed a long line of college age students lined up for one of the mobile lounges, which was parked outside an upscale shopping mall.” Stigler said.

The government is still working through the courts to determine the extent of the ban. For example, Stigler said, actors have started to stop smoking cigarettes in Bollywood movies but they now sing and dance about it instead.

The researchers found the link between advertising and tobacco use among the Indian youth to be alarming.

“I was surprised that they were so strongly influenced,” Perry said. “The more exposed the youth were to tobacco advertising, the more likely they were to have ever used or be currently using tobacco.”

The study, which included 11,642 sixth and eighth graders, was produced in collaboration with Indian organizations Health Related Information Dissemination Amongst Youth in Delhi and Tamil Nadu Voluntary Health Association in Chennai.

The researchers found that 37 percent of youth in the study had seen tobacco advertising in more than four places while 50 percent had seen advertising in one to four places.

Tobacco use rose with measures of receptivity, including having a favorite tobacco advertisement, believing misleading imagery created by tobacco advertisements and being willing to use a tobacco promotional item (such as wearing a T-shirt that advertises tobacco).

Source: University of Texas Health Science and Centre

In 2005, the then I&B Minister, Jaipal Reddy, said, “A cinematic classic like Shatranj ke Khiladi cannot be made without the hookah,” proposing an exemption for films based on literary classics.

This was followed by the health ministry’s proposal to ban smoking in films by notifying the Cigarette and Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) Amendment Rules 2005.

Despite, evoking the much debate on creative expression, the central government notified the ban in October 2006. But, director Mahesh Bhatt challenged the ruling in Delhi High court, and he was supported by many filmmakers. 

And, to their relief, in January 2009, the Delhi High Court quashed the central government’s notification banning on-screen smoking on grounds that it violates the fundamental rights of filmmakers. 

A single judge bench of Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, said, “Banning smoking in films violated filmmakers’ fundamental rights of freedom of expression and speech as enshrined in the Constitution of India. Also, the film directors should not have multifarious authorities breathing down their necks when indulging in a creative act.” 

It is felt that in addition to creative expression, films depict reality of life and smoking plays a vital role in our daily lives. However, if there is a fear that such films will have a negative impact on young minds, then the decision to allow smoking or not in certain films, should be left to the Censor board. This clearly calls for responsible display of smoking and tobacco consumption in films.

Besides, constitutional or not, one cannot make Devdas without a bottle of alcohol in his hands or the modern day Dev D, without a puff of smoke. But, yes the ministry is not completely wrong with it tries to urge all of us to kick the butt on a more personal front. 

Lets take a look at some popular actresses smoking in Hollywood movies. This is not just used as advertisement techniques for a particular brand but to lure teenagers to this vice.