Tobacco.org

Cell Phone System Achieves High Smoking Cessation Rate 

• 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 …

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• Hubble-bubble spells trouble  

Any smart-phone owner who subscribes to a certain major service provider and who happens to venture within a one-kilometre radius of Kampong Glam will automatically receive a message in the form of an 18-second video called "Idiot's Guide to Shisha".

In the video, a young man named Tony demonstrates, step by step, how to assemble and use a hookah. He also explains how shisha smokers can maximise the harm they are doing to their own bodies. Drawing deeply on the water-pipe, Tony notes sarcastically, gives you a much better chance of catching tuberculosis or whatever other germs may have been left behind in the mouthpiece by previous smokers.

The video ends by inviting viewers to access an extended, nine-minute clip which goes into detail about the dangers of shisha smoking.

This multimedia message sent to mobile-phone users in at the heart of the city's shisha hotspot is part of an anti-smoking campaign initiated by the Singapore Health Promotion Board (HPB). . . .

To make the anti-shisha drive more effective and to coincide with the 15th World Conference on Tobacco or Health, which Singapore hosted in late March, a group of youth advocates, both locals and foreigners, volunteered to work on a peer-to-peer campaign and distribute the Idiot's Guide to Shisha in Kampong Glam, where many of the city's shisha cafes are located. The leaflet contains colour illustrations intended to hammer home the harmful facts about hookah use.

It is the first time that a drive of this nature has been launched in Singapore where the import and commercial distribution of shisha tobacco is still legal. The campaign also focused on youngsters attending secondary schools and colleges since hookah smoking has grown in popularity among this age group due to myths surrounding the lack of harmful effects.

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New app to help smokers quit 

Uproar in China over Tobacco Company’s Nomination for Science Prize 

Marijuana Use Higher in Young Adult Smokers than Previously Reported  

Half of young adult tobacco smokers also have smoked marijuana in the last 30 days, according to a recent Facebook-based survey conducted by UCSF researchers, indicating a greater prevalence of marijuana and tobacco co-use among smokers age 18-25 than previously reported.

Other recent studies have shown that approximately 35 percent of young adult tobacco smokers used marijuana within the last month.

“We were curious whether rates would be different in our study where we reached out through social media and the Web,” said lead author Danielle Ramo, PhD, a post-doctoral scholar in the UCSF Department of Psychiatry. “And rates were much higher, which shows the problem might be larger than we realize.” . . .

The research will be published in Addiction Science and Clinical Practice on April 18.

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Deutsche Telekom wins E160 million contract from British American Tobacco 

AUDIO: Consumer association criticizes gov't tobacco prize 

JUKES: Tobacco marketing neither light nor mild 

• Fury at Beijing's 'cigarettes with Chinese characteristics' 

The Chinese government seems to be in deep maodun where tobacco control is concerned. It monopolizes cigarette production and tobacco control. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is the central government body designated with these tasks. It is the man in Han Feizi's fable trying to sell spears and shields.

The government signed the World Health Organization's (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2003, and it was ratified by the National People's Congress in 2005. Hence, China is obliged to impose tobacco controls.

Indeed, the government seems to have since made some efforts, gradually, in tobacco control. Cigarette advertising is banned from mass media; cigarette producers are required to print health warnings on their packs and smoking indoors is banned in public places. However, critics say the progress is going at snail's pace and that even these inadequate measures are not strictly enforced.

These critics were likely angered when, on March 23, the Ministry of Science and Technology publicized the nominations for this year's National Science and Technology Awards - one of China's most prestigious prizes. . . .

Now there are suggestions that as an initial step to effectively impose tobacco controls, the power to impose controls should be separated from the STMA and delegated to another department, such as the Ministry of Health. But this is easier said than done as vast vested interests are involved in the tobacco industry, so any change to the current structure is bound to meet stronger resistance.

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Tobacco Scientist's Election Tars Academy's Image 

A New Uproar Over Chinese Tobacco Research 

• Ministry blasts tobacco award bid  

The Ministry of Health has added its voice to a chorus of opposition to a tobacco research project being nominated for a prestigious national prize.

China National Tobacco, which doubles as a corporation and government bureau, says its scientists have reduced the harm of cigarettes and has put forward their research for the 2012 National Award for Science and Technology.

The inclusion of the project on a long list published by the Ministry of Science and Technology has led to harsh protests.

"Any attempt to reduce the hazards of smoking through so-called technological and scientific methods is just irresponsible," said Health Ministry spokesman Song Shuli on Thursday, adding that the only way to be safe from the harm of smoking is to not smoke.

Fu Wei, deputy director of maternity, childcare and community health for the ministry, added: "Any research that intends to boost sales and consumption of tobacco products is against the spirit of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Scientific research has already proved the risks smoking poses to health."

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• Recognition of new tobacco technology ignites appeal 

Chinese scientists and scholars issued a letter of appeal on Sunday demanding a ban on tobacco technologies from winning any science and technology award.

So far, 118 people, including university professors and retired researchers from the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, have signed up to the appeal, expressing their dissatisfaction that the Ministry of Science and Technology has accepted a tobacco-related technology as a candidate for an award.

"A science and technology award for a tobacco technology will only boost the sales of cigarettes and severely damage public health," said Suo Chao, spokesman of the Chinese Association on Tobacco Control.

The organization wrote a letter to the ministry on March 31 expressing opposition to the ministry's action and has not received a reply yet.

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Experts fume at tobacco technology award (2) 

The country's health experts appealed to the Ministry of Science and Technology to remove the tobacco technology project from the shortlist for the National Award for Science and Technology Progress, in a bid to prohibit certain research activities from harming human health.

The award shortlist, publicized on the ministry's website on March 23, includes Chinese-style cigarette technology, which may soften the taste of cigarettes and improve tobacco processing techniques.

The ministry has begun soliciting public opinion about the award list, which will last until April 30.

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