Were tobacco lobby and EU Parliament premature?

Premature celebrations from EU No Tobacco lobby damaging to citizen’s health?

Have EU and anti tobacco lobby been premature in claims of victory over tobacco?

Encouraging and so helping ensure people stop smoking is a major key to reducing the EU’s burden of chronic diseases. While the percentage of smokers across the EU is presented as having declined from 28% in 2012 to 26% in 2014, and the expectation of continued progress is believed feasible, are we simply confusing a temporary improvement with claims of “victory”.

Did the EU Parliament not simply leave the door open for the tobacco industry and its well paid minions to reduce the impact of its potential tobacco legislation to deal a much more severe blow to the tobacco industry and so its attractiveness as an investment and indeed a product to consumers across the Community.

How did it happen that what for many legislators was seen as a reasonable reduction to the proposed size of images on cigarette packs was accepted so easily and readily by the EU Parliament and is the EU anti tobacco lobby not reacting against this but instead to enter a temporary state of seeking their public supporters to ovate their empiric victory over Big Tobacco.

Is it simply a case of history repeating itself when today’s retirees similarly started smoking safe with the knowledge that the leading medical expert in the worlds most progressive economy at that time – or is our ability to move forward still so slow!

It was not until the first report of the Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health that the dangers were fully noted by all.

On the basis of more than 7,000 articles relating to smoking and disease already available at that time in the biomedical literature, the Advisory Committee concluded that cigarette smoking was:
– A cause of lung cancer and laryngeal cancer in men
– A probable cause of lung cancer in women
– The most important cause of chronic bronchitis

The release of the report was the first in a series of steps, still being taken over 50 years later, to diminish the impact of tobacco use on health.

There needs to be a call to all concerned with reducing tobacco consumption in Europe to understand, explain and disseminate information about how e-cigarettes may be a short term fix for some current smokers, it also has a massive potential to create a new, large audience for “Big Tobacco”. By preparing today’s “vaper” to be the new target market as tomorrow’s smoker and so new victim of this industry.

Our legislators at European and national level need to reconsider their ability to understand the arguments of the tobacco industry and impose restrictions on the range of new products to ensure that these are only available to current tobacco addicts through the appropriate outlets for such products, pharmacies.

They need to protect the new and potential next generation of smokers from being similarly exploited as their forefathers before they too leave this earth as a result of “puffs of smoke”.

uk: A statement from the German Chancellor

Quote by Angela Merkel was taken from the Plainfacts website

Here is a link for the Plainfacts website

For an exporting country such as Germany, protecting intellectual property rights is of outstanding importance. In my opinion, we have found an acceptable compromise by introducing pictorial warnings.

German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, speaking to the German Trademark Association, June, 2013.

Our comment on the above remark:
Dear Ms.Merkel

If you are not alive then you canot purchase any goods and I don’t think you would be interested in intellectual property rights which are obviously a superior right to all others.

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de: Ein Statement der deutschen Bundeskanzlerin

German National Flag

Das folgende Angebot von Angela Merkel, wurde von der PlaneFacts Seite aufgegriffen

Hier ist ein Link zur obengenannten PlainFacts Website

Für ein Exportland, wie Deutschland es ist, ist der Schutz der Recht am geistigen Eigentum, von herausragender Bedeutung. Meiner Meinung nach, haben wir einen akzeptablen Kompromiss durch die Einführung von Warnhinweisen in bildlicher Form gefunden.

Deutsch Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel im Gespräch mit dem deutschen Markenverband, Juni 2013.

Unser Kommentar zur oben genannten Bemerkung:
Sehr geehrte Frau Merkel,

Wenn eine Person nicht am Leben ist, kann diese auch keine Waren/Güter kaufen und ich glaube nicht, dass Sie an Rechten des geistigen Eigentums interessiert sind, wenn diese über alles anderen rechten stehen würden.


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uk: More effort to reduce harm

More effort to reduce harm from tobacco

Smoking is one of the biggest causes of disease and early death in England. It costs taxpayers, through the NHS, over £7 billion every year4.

In 2013, smoking killed almost 80,000 adults aged over 35 1. The number of hospital admissions for smoking related diseases has risen by 30% since 19961 from 3,044 admissions per day to around 4,400 last year1.

Healthcare services are using contracts to ensure that ‘no smoking’ is the norm. Around two-thirds of people who smoked started the habit before the age of 181. The standard on reducing tobacco use states that schools and colleges should not allow smoking anywhere on their grounds so it is not seen as an acceptable activity.

In addition, trading standard officers and the police should identify and take action against retailers who sell tobacco or alcohol to under 18s.

References

1. Health and Social Care Information Centre. Statistics on Smoking. England 2014. http://www.hscic.gov.uk/catalogue/PUB14988/smok-eng-2014-rep.pdf4. 4.Estimated cost to the NHS each year is:
• £2.7 billion for smoking (British Medical Association. Smoking Statistics).
http://bma.org.uk/working-for-change/improving-and-protecting-health/tobacco/smoking-statistics
9. The quality standard for ‘smoking: reducing tobacco use’ will be available at www.nice.org.uk/guidance/qs82 from Wednesday 25 March 2015.

Facts and figures

• One in five adults (20 per cent) aged 16 and over was a smoker in 2012 (1).
• In 2012-13 there were approximately 1.6 million admissions for adults aged 35 and over with a primary diagnosis of a disease that can be caused by smoking. This is approximately 4,400 admissions per day on average. The annual number of admissions has been rising steadily since 1996-97, when the number of such admissions was approximately 1.1 million (1).