Candy-flavoured tobacco products enticing Canadian students to take up smoking, survey says

More than half of Canadian high school students say they’ve tried smoking flavoured tobacco products within the past month, new nationwide data suggests.
The Canadian Cancer Society and provincial organizations across the country are calling on health officials to ban these products for young smokers that come in bright packaging and flavours such as watermelon, chocolate or strawberry.

In the past 30 days, 52 per cent of high schoolers from grade 9 to grade 12 tried these products. That’s about 169,300 teens.
“There’s a series of flavoured tobacco products that are widely available and popular among youth and that are a big concern to us,” Rob Cunningham, a senior policy analyst with the Canadian Cancer Society, told Global News.
“These flavours can lead to kids becoming addicted. We need to do everything we can to reduce underage tobacco use,” he said.

They’re products like water pipe tobacco, smokeless tobacco, and menthol cigarettes. Right now, federal laws ban flavoured cigarettes except for menthol and blunt wraps and cigarillos, which are cigars weighing 1.4 grams or less. But tobacco companies have managed to find a loophole with cigarillos – instead, they produce flavoured cigars that are 1.5 grams or so.
“Menthol soothes the throat and reduces the harshness of cigarette smoke for youth who are experimenting,” Cunningham said.
Point the products out to adults and they won’t recognize them, he suggested. But kids are familiar with the flavoured tobacco products, which are readily available in convenience stores.
Some 32 per cent of teens tried menthol cigarettes in the past month – that product makes up only four per cent of cigarettes smoked.
This data from the Youth Smoking Survey revealed that 14 per cent of high school students smoked cigarettes in the past 30 days, 20 per cent had used a tobacco product and 10 per cent used a flavoured product in the past month.
The rates are within the same range across Canada – it was the highest in Quebec with 59 per cent of high schoolers trying flavoured tobacco in the past month and lowest in Ontario at 46 per cent.
Jurisdictions across the country released their individual provincial rates Monday.
Cunningham said he hopes health officials will follow in the footsteps of other jurisdictions that have banned these products.
In New York City, all flavoured tobacco products are banned outright, except for menthol. It’s the same in Rhode Island, he said.
Meanwhile the European Union is working on banning menthol-flavoured tobacco products.

State Officials Look to Curb Underage Smoking

According to a new report, 90 percent of smokers started the habit before they turned 18. A new Nevada law targets underage tobacco users.
It's against the law in Nevada for anyone under 18 to buy a tobacco product, but it's not against the law for minors to use tobacco products.
In June, Governor Brian Sandoval signed Senate Bill 177 into law. The law grants county commissions in Nevada authority to adopt ordinances that prohibit minors from using tobacco products.
The law also gives county commissioners authority to determine penalties for violators of the law. Clark County officials say they decided not to pursue penalties, because they didn't want to put kids in the justice system for smoking.
The only enforcement in place in Clark County falls the under Clark County School District. CCSD bans smoking anywhere on campus. It doesn't matter if you are in a student's car, at the football or baseball field or even in the bathroom.
The first offense is a warning. Students are searched, tobacco items are taken and the student is written up. Chaparral High School Principal David Wilson described the procedure following a second violation.
"The second time we have an issue, we're going to follow the same procedures except the parent will be called in to have a conversation with the student with an understanding that the consequences will be significantly more severe if the student continues with those behaviors," he said.
Wilson says a student would face suspension for the third offense. With so many other threats facing schools these days (i.e., drugs, gangs, bullies), Wilson admits educators don't actively hunt for smokers.
So, students should take personal responsibility and heed the warnings about the effects of nicotine and tar.
One popular alternative is electronic cigarettes or e-cigarettes. A growing number of minors are finding ways to buy e-cigarettes.
Pink Spot Vapors owner Penn Elletson says he prohibits minors from buying e-cigarettes at his store. Still, he says business is booming. One year ago, Elletson said he had five employees and one location. Today, he has 50 employees between two stores.
"It addresses the triggers of smoking. It's the patch, the gum, all the other things that give you nicotine, which is the only thing your body craves in a cigarette, but it also gives you the hand in mouth oral fixation, the vapor production, the throat hit, all the triggers that go along with smoking," he said.
An electronic cigarette includes four pieces: a container, a lithium ion battery, a flavored vapor and a mouth piece. Some e-cigarettes release nicotine, while others release flavored vapors. The user can control the output level.
Because the CDC shows underage smokers are increasingly using the devices, 40 attorneys general - including Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez-Masto - are urging the federal government to regulate e-cigarettes.
The FDA currently lacks regulatory authority over e-cigarettes unless the products claim to offer therapeutic benefits.

Two-thirds of kids know cigarette brands in developing nations

More than two-thirds of young children in developing nations could identify at least one cigarette brand logo, according to a U.S. study that examined the reach of tobacco marketing to five and six year olds in countries where adult smoking rates are the highest.

Researchers from the University of Maryland School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health worked one-on-one with five and six year olds in Brazil, China, India, Nigeria, Pakistan and Russia, asking them to match pictures of different products with their corresponding cigarette logos. In China, where roughly 71 percent of households with participating children had a tobacco user, 86 percent of children could identify at least one cigarette brand logo, the researchers reported in the journal Pediatrics.
Pakistan had the second highest percentage, with 84 percent of children capable of identifying at least one cigarette brand logo. Russia ranked last on the list with half of the participants able to identify any of the cigarette brand logos.
“(What surprised us most was) that children who were so young, five and six years old, were so familiar with tobacco logos,” Dina Borzekowski, lead author of the study and research professor in the University of Maryland, told Xinhua.
She said that even in households without smokers children could identify tobacco logos. This is because “not only do children see logos in their homes, the neighborhood stores where the children visit have very prominent tobacco advertisements,” Borzekowski said.
With five- and six-year-old children aware of domestic and international tobacco brands, there is a need to enforce stronger regulations for tobacco advertising,the researchers said.
Borzekowski and colleagues suggested changes including requiring larger graphic warning labels on cigarette packages. Additionally, they urged changes to limit children’s exposure to the point of sale of tobacco products, including establishing minimum distances between these retailers and places frequented by young children.
“We know that children who are more aware of smoking have more positive attitudes about smoking and are more likely to smoke,” Borzekowski said.
“If we want to reduce smoking, especially among young people, we need to lessen the prominence of tobacco brands in children’s lives. Better enforcement of existing laws should happen,” she added.

The Bulgarian Socialist Party will propose an amendment to the Health Act to allow smoking in stadiums and designated areas in airports.

The draft amendment has been signed by 8 Socialist deputies, reports dnevnik.bg.

If passed, the restrictions would also fall for night clubs, restaurants, cafes, bars, and casinos, provided they can designate special smoking areas.

The full smoking ban was introduced in June 2012 by the GERB government of former Prime Minister Boyko Borisov.

Spas Panchev, Deputy Chair of the parliamentary group of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, said last week that the full smoking ban in enclosed public places must be dropped before winter.

This sparked controversy and wide public debates on the issue. President Rosen Plevneliev threatened to veto the amendments if they are passed in Parliament.

- See more at: http://www.novinite.com/articles/154429/Bulgarian+Govt+Proposes+Further+Amendments+to+Smoking+Ban#sthash.9l4c2uqS.dpuf