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Bele Chere board delays decision on tobacco sponsorships 

The board of volunteers that helps oversee Bele Chere, the city's annual, three-day summer street party, decided Wednesday to put off a vote on whether to drop tobacco sponsorships of the festival.

A group of local teens has been lobbying the Bele Chere Board of Directors, as well as the city's Parks, Recreation and Cultural Arts Department board, for months with impassioned pleas asking the boards to drop the sponsorships starting in 2013. A group of about 25 teens, parents and other anti-tobacco residents spoke again Wednesday.

"Even though youths aren't allowed into the booth, it still sends a message that it's OK,"

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• Cigarette warning goes up in smoke over anti-tobacco warnings 

What the health ministry proposes, the information and broadcasting (I&B) ministry disposes.

This is the case with regard to restricting scenes showing use of tobacco in movies and television serials.

The new rules to restrict smoking scenes, unveiled by the health ministry with much fanfare in November 2011, have been quietly kept in abeyance by the I&B ministry, documents obtained under the RTI Act have revealed. Under pressure from Bollywood, the ministry has asked the censor board to just ignore the new rules.

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• ''Jannat 2' ad showing Emraan smoking unlawful' 

Newspaper advertisements of the film "Jannat 2" showing actor Emraan Hashmi smoking a cigarette violated anti-tobacco laws, an NGO said Thursday pointing to the violation.

In a letter to the health ministry and the information and broadcasting ministry, HRIDAY (Health Related Information Dissemination Amongst Youth) pointed to "blatant violations of the rules" in the print advertisements.

"These ads, showing Hashmi smoking, have been published in supplements of leading national dailies. This amounts to a violation of the Rule 9(2) of the said (government) notification," said the letter.

It cited the notification saying that "any promotional material and posters of the films and television programmes shall not depict any tobacco products or their usage in films".

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• Video games and the next tobacco frontier: smoking in the Starcraft universe ($$) 

Video games provide rich, interactive environments suitable for tobacco promotion.1 2 The WHO-Framework Convention for Tobacco Control (WHO-FCTC) recommends comprehensive bans on ‘…all forms of commercial communication…with the aim, effect or likely effect of promoting a tobacco product or tobacco use.’ WHO-FCTC implementation guidelines cover entertainment media,3 4 yet surprisingly little is known about the importance of video games for promoting tobacco use.

Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, produced by Activision Blizzard, Inc., Santa Monica, California, USA, was the most popular PC military game of 2010, selling 3 million copies worldwide in the first month.5 The game presents 29 battles between humans and aliens, separated by brief scenes or cinematic ‘shorts’, which build a cohesive story, give gamers a pause and represent a reward for advancing in …

[Full text of this article]

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• Smokeless Tobacco Study Weighed By Kansas Lawmakers In R.J. Reynolds-Backed Resolution 

Kansas lawmakers are considering a resolution that would require state health officials to conduct a study about the health effects of smokeless tobacco, potentially allowing the state to market smokeless tobacco as a healthier alternative to cigarette smoking.

The Federal and State Affairs Committee of Kansas' House of Representatives has been debating a measure that would require the state's Department of Health and Environment to conduct a study of the health effects of using smokeless tobacco -- commonly known as chewing tobacco -- to determine if it is safer than cigarette smoking.

One goal of the resolution is for the state health department to ultimately make a recommendation to the legislature as to whether Kansas should promote smokeless tobacco over cigarette smoking. The Kansas proposal follows the passage of recent similar resolutions in Nebraska, Indiana and Kentucky -- all backed by R.J. Reynolds.

Richard J. Smith, a spokesman for R.J. Reynolds, confirmed that his company has been encouraging the state-based studies. Such studies are in keeping with the company's "tobacco harm reduction" strategy, he told HuffPost. R.J. Reynolds has found scientific evidence showing that chewing tobacco does not pose the same health risks as cigarette smoking, he said.

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• RI city delays enforcement of tobacco rules again 

Lawyers for the city of Providence, several tobacco companies and others have agreed in federal court to another delay in the enforcement of new tobacco ordinances that are the subject of a federal lawsuit.

A federal judge Monday approved the agreement, calling for the city to begin enforcing the ordinances at the end of the day on Oct. 15. An earlier agreement called for enforcement to start at the end of July.

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• Which ads are winners? Your brain knows  

Advertisers and public health officials may be able to access hidden wisdom in the brain to more effectively sell their products and promote health and safety, UCLA neuroscientists report in the first study to use brain data to predict how large populations will respond to advertisements.

Thirty smokers who were trying to quit watched television commercials from three advertising campaigns, which all ended by showing the phone number of the National Cancer Institute's smoking-cessation hotline. They were asked which commercials they thought would be most effective; they responded that advertising campaigns "A" and "B" would be the best and "C" would be the worst.

The UCLA researchers also consulted experts who work in the anti-smoking field and who have been involved in creating anti-smoking advertisements. These experts agreed that campaigns "A" and "B" were the best and "C" was the worst.

While the smokers watched the advertisements, they underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scans at UCLA's Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center, and the neuroscientists focused on part of the medial prefrontal cortex — located in the front of the brain, between the eyebrows — a region that they have found to be especially important in previous persuasion studies.

The researchers found that activity in the medial prefrontal cortex increased much more during advertising campaign "C" than it did during campaign "A," and somewhat more than it did during campaign "B."

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Tobacco ads 'target young children' 

Focus: Smoking among teens 

• Anti-Smoking TV Ads From Tobacco Industry Don't Help 

Researchers compared adults' smoking behaviors and their exposure to anti-tobacco TV ads in the top 75 U.S. media markets from 1999 to 2007. The ads were sponsored by states, private foundations, drug companies that were marketing smoking-cessation products and the tobacco industry.

The results showed that smoking rates were lower and more smokers said they intended to quit in markets where there was higher exposure to state-sponsored anti-tobacco ads, said study lead author Sherry Emery, a senior scientist at the Institute for Health Research and Policy of the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Higher exposure to state-sponsored, private-foundation and drug-company ads was associated with less smoking. Higher exposure to tobacco-industry ads was associated with more smoking.

"On the surface, the tobacco-industry ads were mostly anti-smoking and a little corporate promotion, but they weren't promoting the act of smoking," Emery said in a university news release. "But the effect of the ads is that they are associated with more smoking." . . .

The study was published in the April issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

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• Designer packs being used to lure new generation of smokers  

Tobacco companies are designing cigarette packs to resemble bottles of perfume or with lids that flip open like a lighter to lure young people into smoking.

Research published yesterday reveals the lengths to which the industry has gone to make its packs attractive to new generations of smokers as opportunities for promoting its products have been progressively reduced.

Responding to last week's launch of a public consultation on tobacco packaging by the Department of Health, Cancer Research UK said the findings provided "a chilling insight" into the power of branding and marketing by the tobacco industry.

The research shows children aged from six to 11 are drawn to the slickly presented packs, responding with remarks such as, "It makes you feel you're in a wonderland of happiness", "It reminds me of a Ferrari" and "Yeah, pink, pink, pink." Jean King, director of tobacco control for the charity, said: "Children are drawn to the colourful and slick designs without having a full understanding of how deadly the product is inside the pack. It is time to end the packet racket."

The range of designs has proliferated over the last decade, since print and billboard advertising of tobacco was banned 10 years ago. Long, slender cigarettes contained in pastel coloured packs indicating femininity, style and sophistication are targeted at young women. Packs of 14 cigarettes are designed to look like packs of 20 but sell at a lower price.

Tobacco companies have admitted that packaging is key to promoting their products. An internal memo from Philip Morris obtained by researchers read: "When you don't have anything else packaging is our marketing."

Cancer Research UK yesterday launched an appeal for signatures to its petition calling for the removal of all branding from tobacco packaging.

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Tobacco ads 'target young children'  

Current campaign : Cancer Council Western Australia 

On Sunday 22 April 2012 Make Smoking History launched a brand new state-wide television campaign which aims to encourage smokers to consider how their smoking impacts on their loved ones and highlight the social and emotional consequences of smoking. The key message of the advertising was guided by recent research with Western Australian smokers and recent quitters to better understand what triggers smokers to quit. The research found that smokers are now more likely to hide their smoking from others (such as new friends, workmates or family), which in turn creates guilt and stress. This coupled with the guilt they feel because their family and friends are concerned for their health, appears to be a stronger motivator to quit than concern about long term health effects.

The television advertisement features four real life scenarios which focus on how smokers are seen by different people in their lives every day, including work colleagues, partner, friends and children. The advertisement ends with the tagline "Is this how you want to see yourself". Television advertising will air on all metropolitan commercial stations and regional stations until Saturday 19 May 2012.

New outdoor advertising will complement the television advertisement throughout the campaign period. To view the outdoor advertisements please visit Outdoor campaigns. Watch the 45 second TV advertisement

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• New TV campaign urges smokers to consider 'how they're seen?'  

Smokers are being prompted to consider the impact of their smoking on their loved ones in a new series of TV ads which will air from today.

The new statewide campaign, developed by Cancer Council Western Australia's Make Smoking History program, is a shift away from graphic health warnings and instead gives smokers social and emotional reasons to consider quitting.

They are a shift away from graphic health warnings and instead give smokers social and emotional reasons to consider quitting.

Terry Slevin, Cancer Council Western Australia Director of Education and Research, said the aim of the ads is to encourage smokers to consider how their smoking impacts on their loved ones.

"We want people to see that when you smoke there are social and emotional consequences for you and other people every day," said Mr Slevin.

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Big Implications for a Little Village's Ban 

HAVERSTRAW, N.Y. -- Last week, the Village of Haverstraw in New York's Rockland County sent shockwaves through the convenience store industry by passing a tobacco display ban--the first of such bans in the United States. And it's not just retailers with locations within the 27.4 square miles of Haverstraw who are up in arms.

"I can't believe we're dealing with this right now," Cliff Brazie, director of retail merchandising for Warren, Pa.-based Kwik Fill/Red Apple Food Marts, told Tobacco E-News/CSP Daily News.

Although Brazie's company does not operate any locations in or near Haverstraw, it does have five stores within Madison County--another location in New York State considering a display ban.

"This will give Madison leverage," Brazie said. "With one going through, it hypes the issue. This is very serious for us."

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