Shanghai lawmakers call for ban of “Love China” tobacco ads – Xinhua January 18, 2009Li Zhihui Lawmakers in Shanghai are moving to ban billboards urging people to “Love China”, which were put up to promote one of the country’s major cigarette brands, Chung Hua. “Chung Hua” in Chinese also means China. The slogan of four Chinese characters “Ai Wo Chung Hua” (Love China) is emblazoned on bright red billboards featuring a picture of Beijing’s landmark Tian’anmen Gate at the entrance to the former Imperial Palace. The billboards also have the Chinese for “Smoking can damage your health”. “The slogan ‘Love China’ is good, but when producers put ‘Smoking can damage your health’ beside it, the slogan becomes an advertisement,” said Li Ming, a deputy to the on-going Shanghai People’s Congress. “All advertising related to tobacco or tobacco companies must be banned in line with the law,” said Li, who is also vice head of Shanghai Lawyers Association. Such covert advertising is also used for other tobacco brands, including Huangshan, produced by Bengbu Cigarette Factory, and Baisha, made by Baisha Group, Li said. Wu Zhenwei, a congress deputy from the Shanghai Administration of Work Safety, has submitted to the congress a motion to decide whether “Love China (Chung Hua)” is tobacco advertising. The Shanghai Tobacco (Group) Corporation (STC), producer of the Chunghua brand, said the slogan promoted patriotism and was therefore a public service campaign, said Wu. Attempts to contact the company for comment on Sunday went unanswered. During the Beijing Olympics, the Shanghai government abolished all the tobacco billboards, including “Love China”, but the advertising reappeared after the Games, said an official of Shanghai Health Education Institute. Shanghai should take initiatives in tobacco control as it would host the World Expo in 2010, they said. The world’s largest tobacco producer and consumer, China signed in 2003 the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which commits it to banning all types of tobacco advertising and promotion by 2011. At present, smoking is banned in cinemas, libraries and conference rooms. Beijing banned smoking in most public places, including hotels, schools, cinemas, and offices in May last year. Smoking in the city’s taxis is also banned.

Source: Xinhua

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

Experts for declaring educational institutions smoke-free - The International NewsFebruary 18, 2009Muhammad QasimHealth experts say that keeping in view the rising trend of tobacco smoking among students in the country, there is a dire need to declare all educational institutions of the country smoke-free.They believe that all heads of academic institutions should be held responsible to ensure that no one indulges in smoking in the premises of their respective institutions.A number of health professionals have hailed the decision taken by Chairman Islamabad Medical & Dental College (IMDC) Dr Ghulam Akbar Khan Niazi who has taken an initiative on the subject and has declared IMDC as ?smoke-free zone’. ?The News? has also learnt through reliable sources that National University of Sciences & Technology (NUST) is also preparing to declare NUST as ?smoke-free? University.’Other heads of institutions should also follow it and declare their institutions ?smoke-free zone? as soon as possible,? said Head of Community Medicine at IMDC Professor Dr Muhammad Ashraf Chaudhry while talking to ?The News? adding IMDC is ready to co-operate with all educational institutions located in the capital in their efforts to make their institutions smoke-free zones.’College has already done a lot of work in creating awareness among the masses as well as students against tobacco hazards,? said Dr Ashraf adding in this connection, a seminar on the eve of World No Smoking Day was organized by the IMDC and a brochure titled ?Quit Smoking Before it Kills You? was launched as part of a corporate social responsibility programme that highlights the health hazards of smoking, benefits of quitting and various smoking cessation techniques that could help quitting smoking.Unfortunately, smoking is on increase in the country because of aggressive marketing of tobacco companies, which are particularly targeting youth. At present, about 50% of adults in Pakistan use tobacco in one form or the other, while about 100,000 people die in the country annually by diseases related to tobacco use. A recent research showed that over 16% of girls in Karachi are smokers.It is important that a number of medical colleges in Punjab including Rawalpindi Medical College could not be made smoking free zones as yet.Director Emergency at Benazir Bhutto Hospital Dr Muhammad Mujeeb Khan expressed to ?The News? that our youth should be made aware of the fact that smoking causes cancers, heart attacks, strokes, breathlessness, sleep problems, wrinkles, bad breath, yellow teeth, gum diseases, depression, decrease in stamina, increased colds and coughs, impotence and baldness in males and infertility and low-birth weight babies in females.’They should be aware that on average, a single cigarette reduces seven minutes of precious life of a smoker.? Dr Ashraf believes that youth being future of the nation should be safeguarded from playing with their lives and a lot of work is to be done to provide them smoke free environment.’In order to make all academic institutions smoke-free, institutions should develop and enforce its tobacco control policy. At the time of admission in educational institution, undertaking should be taken from every student that if he/she during his/her tenure in the institution was found smoking, his/her admission might be cancelled,? he said and added that health education campaigns against hazards of smoking should be run in educations institutions for at least six months.Responding to a query, he said as a pilot project, IMDC is ready to provide its services on running anti-smoking campaigns in the educational institutions of the capital to sensitise youth upon smoking hazards and help those wanting to quit smoking. ?We will organize lectures in universities and colleges of the capital and distribute copies of anti-smoking brochures among students.’He said that to get rid of smoking, students should be clearly warned that after six months of health education campaign, if any student found smoking, he/she might be expelled from the institution or hostel. ?Wardens of hostels should be made responsible for keeping effective checks on tobacco smoking. Dr Ashraf said that all educational institutions that have declared themselves as smoke-free zones should be accredited and be issued certificates by Ministry of Health.’Healthy life-style units should be established in all universities and colleges. Tobacco control cells and non-smokers societies should also be established in all institutions of higher learning and teachers themselves should avoid smoking and act as Role Models for students.?

Source: The International News