Just like the real thing; expert techniques make it hard to spot the fake

THE SMOKE SMUGGLERS: Cigarette counterfeiting is now so sophisticated that it is virtually impossible to tell the difference between a real packet and a fake version at a cursory glance.

Both packets bear the same colouring and livery, both carry the required health warnings in English and Irish, and both carry what looks like a genuine tax stamp from the Revenue Commissioners.

However, one packet sees more than €6.70 contributed to the exchequer when it is purchased, while the other gives nothing to the exchequer and puts handsome profits in the hands of criminal gangs and their network of dealers.

The experienced eye can detect small differences between regular packets of John Player Blue and the counterfeit packet I picked up for a little over half price in a Co Kildare market.

The paper used for the tax stamp is that bit thinner in the counterfeit version, and more poorly glued to the packet, than in the real thing. A watermark, in the shape of an Irish harp, is absent, but is hard to spot on the genuine tax stamp anyway.

The tax stamp bears three numbers, one indicating the manufacturer, another the batch and the third the packet. In my counterfeit packet of 200, however, the same number is used for all packets, when they should be sequentially numbered.

It used to be the case that smugglers focused only on international brands, but in the past two years the Irish market has been flooded with counterfeit versions of popular domestic brands, such as JPS. This change has shocked the home industry into action, and the Revenue has changed its tax stamp in an effort to outwit the smugglers.

But what about the taste of these counterfeit cigarettes, which probably originated in China? Most of the smokers I blind-tested the fake cigarettes on were unable to tell them from real ones, and some even expressed a preference for the cigarette that turned out to be black-market.

Second hand smoke adds to health risk

Genoa: Smokers who inhale their own secondhand smoke add significantly to the health risks linked to cigarette smoking, say researchers. Until now it has been believed that such risks would be negligible in comparison to those incurred due to actual smoking.
Maria Teresa Piccardo worked with a team of researchers from the National cancer Research Institute, Genoa, Italy, to study the exposure of newsagents i the city to harmful cigarette smoke. 
The experts found for someone who smokes 14 cigarettes a day, their own second hand smoke resulted in exposure the equivalent of smoking an extra 2.6 cigarettes. 
Piccardo said, "Newsagents were chosen because they work alone in small newsstands, meaning that any tobacco smoke in the air they breathe is strictly correlated to the number of cigarettes smoked by that newsagent. We studied the contribution environmental tobacco smoke

Both active and passive smoking contributions should always be considered in studies about health of active smokers." the study has been published in BioMed Central’s open access journal Environmental Health .

Cigarette tax boosts budget, health

Maryland's recently enacted $1-per-pack cigarette tax increase has been a budgetary and public health success for which Gov. Martin O'Malley and the General Assembly should be proud. In the year after it took effect on Jan. 1, 2008, the cigarette tax increase brought $144 million in additional funds into the state coffers, which have helped to fund Maryland's recent health care expansion. This expansion brought health care coverage to more than 52,000 Marylanders and brought Maryland from 44th to 16th in the nation in health care coverage for adults.
In addition, during the year after the cigarette tax took effect, there were 74 million fewer packs of cigarettes sold in Maryland, and partly as a result, Maryland now has the fourth-lowest smoking rate in the nation. Some have argued that more people just bought their cigarettes in neighboring states with lower cigarette taxes. Not so. 
During 2008, total cigarette sales dropped by 103 million in Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia, all of which raised their cigarette taxes that year. At the same time, in the three neighboring states that did not raise their cigarette taxes, Virginia, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, cigarette sales went up by 37 million packs. Therefore, the vast majority of the net drop in cigarette sales in Maryland, Delaware and D.C. was from people smoking less, which saved thousands of lives and hundreds of millions of dollars from tobacco-caused illness and death. 
Of course, there is some tobacco smuggling in Maryland, although we have no idea how much. What we do know is how much additional money the state has raised and how much the tax increase has reduced smoking. We are pleased that Comptroller Peter Franchot is doing all he can to stop this illegal activity. He could use more effective tools to reduce cigarette smuggling. 
Fortunately, there are relatively simple, cost-effective measures Maryland could implement to prevent and reduce cigarette smuggling and other tobacco tax evasion. California, for example, instituted a new high-tech tax stamp for cigarettes and enjoyed a $100 million increase in its cigarette tax revenues (without any tax increase). But Maryland is still using hard-to-see and easy-to-counterfeit tax stamps based on technology from the 1950s. A high-tech tax stamp would shut the door on the tax-free sale of contraband cigarettes by Baltimore retailers by enabling enforcement officials and others to quickly and definitively identify any contraband cigarettes that are in transit or on retailer shelves. 
Maryland could also increase statutory penalties for trafficking in contraband tobacco products; require better record keeping by wholesalers and retailers; set up hot lines for consumers, retailers and others to report illegal cigarette sales; better protect whistle-blowers from retaliation; and allow enforcement agencies to keep some of the penalties and fines they collect from contraband traffickers to support expanded enforcement efforts. 
With a high-tech tax stamp and enhanced enforcement, Maryland would become a state that criminal smuggling organizations would avoid entirely. It would simply be easier and more lucrative for smuggling syndicates to sell their contraband cigarettes in states like New Jersey or New York that have even higher tax rates than Maryland and still use old-fashioned tax stamps that are easy to copy.
Plainly, Maryland's past tobacco tax increases have worked well to save lives and raise money to expand health care. It would be a shame if exaggerated fears about smuggling, such as those raised in a recent column by The Sun's Jay Hancock, stopped the state from again raising its cigarette tax. Such an increase would bring in desperately needed new revenue that could further expand health care coverage. It would also improve worker health and productivity, save lives, reduce government and business costs, and protect more of our kids from a lifetime of tobacco addiction.

Parenting Makes Healthy

Parenting apart from being a hectic job is crowned with an ability of improving your health according to a new study. 198 adults wearing a portable- blood pressure monitoring machines were examined by researchers at Brigham Young University in Utah, USA for 24 hours. The experiments showed parents having children recorded a lower reading as compared to those having no children especially mothers..

Lead researcher Dr Julianne Holt-Lunstad said, “While caring for children may include hassles, deriving a sense of meaning and purpose from life’s stress has been shown to be associated with better health outcomes.”

Researchers from Yale University School of Medicine recently disclosed that frightening plans are not as effective a tool of making smokers quit smoking as positive messages about the benefits of giving up cigarettes. The effect of positive messages regarding smoking surprisingly has almost double intensity according to the reports.

UK study has revealed that there are very less chances (one in 285000) of one being able to meet his/her ideal partner. This study is related to a Math’s Tutors Peter Backus’ formulae “The Drake Equation”.

This mathematical equation was published in a thesis called “Why I Don’t Have a Girlfriend”. He ended up discovering that if he takes into consideration women of a suitable age bracket who are single in London, only 26 out of 30 million women in the UK could be girlfriend for him.

Coventry to ban cigarette machines

CIGARETTE machines will be banned under ambitious plans to halve the number of smokers in the West Midlands by 2020.
One in five adults in the region smoke, down from nearly one third in 1998.
The government wants to slash that to one in ten within a decade.
This week health secretary Andy Burnham revealed the boldest package of smoking reforms to date.
They include:
*Paying more overseas officers to stop fake fags reaching the streets of Coventry and Warwickshire where they are sold to teenagers.

*Offering a wider range on the NHS to help smokers quit.Banning tobacco vending machines where many underage smokers buy their cigarettes.“We are looking forward to a smoke free future for the next generation.”
Mr Hooper said helping people to go smoke free would also give them more money to spend in the local economy. That would create more jobs across the region.
Coventry and other parts of the West Midlands, but not Warwickshire, are taking an extra step by launching tariffs. It means stop smoking services will be paid for every smoker they help quit.
Contractors, possibly including major supermarkets, are due to be named before the scheme launches in April and if it proves a success it could be rolled out nationwide.
Research shows seven out of every ten smokers want to stop and NHS chiefs want it to become as easy to get help as it is to buy cigarettes.
Smoking kills 80,000 and costs the NHS £2.7 billion each year.

Where there’s no smoke, Altria hopes there’s fire

For years, Altria, home to Philip Morris and its popular Marlboro cigarette brand,
was a corporate pariah blamed for the deaths of millions of people and sued 
for hundreds of billions of dollars by attorneys general in every state.
After eventually acknowledging, like others in its industry, that cigarette smoking was, indeed, addictive and caused disease, Altria went a step further. It broke from the Big Tobacco pack and began supporting legislation that would ultimately put the company under the regulatory thumb of the Food and Drug Administration.
Altria's motives for submitting to strict oversight have long been a mystery. Did the company and its executives, who were internally pursuing a strategy of "societal alignment," suddenly embrace a true partnership on public health? Or was this a case, as its longtime foes and competitors have argued, of Altria seeking to generate good P.R. or lock in its market dominance by cozying up to a regulator that could restrict rivals from marketing new products?
Another possible answer was highlighted this month, as the federal government began fine-tuning aspects of a law that President Barack Obama signed last summer that gives the government sweeping new powers to regulate the production and marketing of tobacco products. A series of letters that Altria submitted to the FDA as part of that process argues that the government should, effectively, sign off on the notion that smokeless tobacco products are less harmful than cigarettes -- and that Altria and other companies should be allowed to market them as such to consumers. 

It is a pivotal and divisive claim. While public health doctors agree that the smokeless products are far less hazardous to individuals than cigarettes, they still have concerns because all tobacco products contain nicotine and carcinogens. They also contend that promoting smokeless products -- some in tiny packages in the shape of cigarette packs -- would attract new, perhaps younger customers and maintain the addiction for smokers who might otherwise quit. They note that Altria is adding flavorings to its smokeless products that have long been used in candy.
Furthermore, critics say, Altria's suggestion to the FDA that it be allowed to market its products as less risky is part of an effort to dodge indoor-smoking laws (which are credited with encouraging more smokers to quit) and to encourage smokers to use oral tobacco products as supplements. "If you look at how they're marketing smokeless now, they're marketing for dual use, and to protect the cigarette market, which is their big money maker," says Stanton A. Glantz, a professor of cardiology and a specialist in tobacco research at the University of California, San Francisco. 
Under its gregarious chief executive, an occasional smoker named Michael E. Szymanczyk, Altria is treading carefully when it comes to talking about its business strategies or its relationship with the FDA. After its letters to the regulator made headlines this month, the company canceled interviews for this article with top executives at its headquarters in Richmond, Va. 
An Altria spokesman says the executives declined to comment because "we don't want to be perceived as leading the discussion" on the regulatory front. 
Brendan J. McCormick, another Altria spokesman, says the company supported the legislation enacted last summer because it believed that the FDA offered the best way to settle the debates about tobacco use and marketing, which have raged for decades. He says the company believes that FDA standards will create more predictability in the industry and a level playing field for competitors. 
Volumes may be declining, but cigarettes remain Altria's biggest business by far, accounting for $14.4 billion in revenue in 2009. (Smokeless brought in $1.2 billion.) Cigarette profits are growing thanks to price increases and a customer base of people who haven't kicked the habit. About 70 percent of the nation's 46 million smokers say they want to quit, government surveys show, and about 40 percent try every year. But only 2.5 percent succeed, the surveys say. The government estimates that 400,000 Americans die of smoking-related diseases each year.
Critics and public health officials contend that in focusing the FDA's attention on smokeless products, a much smaller but growing industry, Altria and other tobacco companies are diverting regulators' attention from the source of the real public health problem: cigarettes.