Smoking ban? Florida playgrounds could be smoke-free under bill

The bill (SB 342) is narrow in scope and aimed at protecting children from second-hand smoke at parks, and it grants counties and cities more local control.
The bill would not allow local governments to regulate smoking on private property.
Right now the Florida Legislature pre-empts local governments from banning smoking on their property, so the bill, if passed, would grant more authority to the state's cities and counties.
"What this bill would do would give local governments the ability to regulate smoking in playgrounds," said state Sen. Rob Bradley, the bill's sponsor. Chesterfield Red cigarettes.
Titled the "Florida Clean Indoor Air Act," the bill has the support of the Florida League of Cities and the Florida Association of Counties.
Tickets would not be issued immediately. First, law enforcement would be required to ask the smokers to put out the cigarette and notify them of the penalties. If that's ignored, the officer would ask the smoker to leave. If that's refused, the officer could issue a civil citation of no more than $100 for the first offense and no more than $500 for a second offense.
"The restricted area would be clearly marked by a no-smoking sign," said Bradley, R-Fleming Island.
Though the bill passed the panel unanimously, some senators had concerns. State Sen. Nancy Detert, R-Venice, said some cities have banned all outdoor smoking within their limits and worried if that's Florida's future.
"Is this the first step on the road to no smoking outdoors anywhere ever'" Detert said.
Bradley assured her that was not his goal but said he couldn't "speak to others' intentions."
He said the legislation wouldn't apply to "just an open field." But, though not clearly stated in the bill, he believed it would allow counties and cities to ban smoking on its open properties that are contiguous to a playground.
The legislation defines a playground as a place "designed solely for children" and which has "one or more playground structures." By the definition, a public area with only one swing or slide would be considered a playground, Bradley said.
State Sen. Audrey Gibson, D-Jacksonville, had concerns about those loose definitions, and Bradley said he would be open to improving them as the bill moves forward in the committee process. Regulated Industries was the bill's first of three committee stops in the Senate.
"Ithink it's a fair, common-sense approach to the issue," Bradley said.

More women in India smoke now than 30 years ago: Study

Female smokers in India has gone up in the last 30 years but the number of men who puff daily dipped in the country where more people are smoking today, say researchers.

Smoking among Indian men fell from 33.8 per cent in 1980 to 23 per cent in 2012 while female smoking in 2012 was 3.2 per cent, almost the same as in 1980 (3 per cent), says a new study on global smoking prevalence published earlier this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

In the year 2012 a total of 12.1 million women smoked in India, compared to 5.3 million female smokers in 1980 while the prevalence of male smokers was estimated to be 98 million in the same year. Smokers in India also consumed an average of 8.2 cigarettes per day said the report. Kiss Superslims Dream

United States had 14.3 per cent women smokers followed by Russia and Nepal (both 16.9 per cent), Brazil (11 per cent) Pakistan (5.4 per cent) Indonesia (3.6 per cent) India (3.2 per cent) China (2.1 per cent) Bangladesh (1.8 per cent) and Sri Lanka (1 per cent).

The study, titled "Smoking Prevalence and Cigarette Consumption in 187 Countries, 1980-2012," by Seattle-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME)referred to in-country surveys, government statistics and data by the World Health Organisation.

Also India gained 35 million smokers totalling to 110 million despite a fall in the smoking rate from 19 per cent to 13 per cent of the population, said the study published in the in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

The report found that global smoking rate among men was 41 per cent in 1980, but declined to an average of 31 per cent. Among women, the estimated prevalence of daily tobacco smoking was 10.6 per cent in 1980 and by 2012 that had fallen to 6.2 per cent.

"India is currently in the phase 2 of the tobacco epidemic, which follows a cyclical pattern. While there are male smokers, women smokers follow the trend in this phase," points out Dr Monika Arora, Senior Director, HRIDAY, a voluntary organisation working in the field of health promotion among adolescents in India.

She says the number of women smoking in urban areas has increased. "We did a survey of schools in Chennai and Delhi and found that the there is a very narrow gender gap among adolescents who are smoking. Plus studies have put the And the prevalence of overall tobacco use among men as 47 per cent and women 21 per cent in the country," says Monika.

China Bans Government Officials From Smoking In Public

Chinese officials have been told to refrain from smoking in public places in an effort to set an example for the rest of the country, the Associated Press reported.
Government officials in China were asked to "take the lead" in adhering to a smoking ban in public spaces including schools, hospitals, and sport venues, reported the Xinhua News Agency citing a circular from the Community Party of China Central Committee and the State Council."Smoking remains a relatively universal phenomenon in public venues. Some officials smoke in public places, which does not only jeopardized the environment and public health, but tarnished the image of Party and government offices and leaders and has a negative influence," the circular read, according to Xinhua.
Officials are also prohibited from smoking or offering cigarettes when performing official duties and from using public funds to buy them.

Cafe Creme Italian Macchiato

In addition to the ban, advertisements and the sale of tobacco products will no longer be allowed in Party and government offices and "prominent notices" of smoking bans must be displayed in reception offices, passageways, cafeterias and rest rooms, Xinhua reported.
According to the AP, there is no nationwide law banning smoking from indoor public places, but the Chinese government has tried to ban the practice in the past.
The Health Ministry issued guidelines in 2011 banning smoking in venues including hotels and restaurants. However,  experts say they were not strictly enforced because huge revenues from the state-owned tobacco monopoly hindered anti-smoking measures, the AP reported.
China is the world's largest cigarette producer and it has the largest number of smokers. The number of smokers in the nation exceeds 300 million, with at least 740 million nonsmokers regularly exposed to secondhand smoke.

China bans officials from smoking in public to set example in country where lighting up common

China is asking its officials to take the lead to adhering to a ban on smoking in public places.
The official Xinhua News Agency says officials are not allowed to smoke in schools, hospitals, sports venues or on public transport, or to smoke or offer cigarettes when performing official duties.
Xinhua said Sunday the new rules were contained in a circular from the Communist Party's central committee and the State Council, or China's Cabinet.
China has more than 300 million smokers.
In 2011, China's Health Ministry issued guidelines banning smoking in indoor public places, including hotels and restaurants, but they are not strictly enforced.

Smoke tax hike would prevent deaths: study

Tripling cigarette taxes would prevent tens of millions of smokingrelated deaths worldwide over the next few decades, and about 200 million premature deaths over the remainder of the century as a whole, a Canadian-led review concludes.
If current smoking trends hold, tobacco will kill about one billion people this century, Prabhat Jha, director of the Centre for Global Health Research at Toronto's St. Michael's Hospital and the University of Toronto writes in this week's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.
In Canada, smoking remains the leading cause of preventable deaths. More than 40,000 Canadians die each year from lung cancer and other smoking-related diseases, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada.
Many are killed in middle age: Studies in the U.K. the U.S., Japan and India show that smokers are two to three times more likely to die between the ages of 30 and 69 than non-smokers, according to Jha and his co-author, Sir Richard Peto of the University of Oxford.
"Some of those killed in middle age might have died soon anyway, but others might have lived on for decades," they write.
On average, smoking costs people a full decade of life, Jha said.
But his own research published this past year shows that smokers who quit before age 40 avoid 90 per cent of that excess risk, "meaning you get back nine of the 10 years you would have lost if you had continued to smoke." Even those who quit at age 50 gain back six years of life expectancy.
"The risks are big, and the benefits of quitting are huge," Jha said. "This prompted us to ask, what would it take to really knock down consumption?"
Doubling the inflation-adjusted price of cigarettes should cut consumption by about a third worldwide, Jha and Peto conclude. In low-and middle-income countries, that would mean tripling inflationadjusted specific excise taxes on tobacco - tax hikes that would double the street price of cigarettes in many countries, and more than double prices for cheaper brands.
In Canada, the federal excise tax on a carton of cigarettes is $17, according to background material released with the study. Federal and provincial sales taxes bring the total cost of a carton to between $46 and $87.
But Jha said there hasn't been a significant increase in the federal tobacco tax since then finance minister Paul Martin raised taxes in the early 2000s.
France and South Africa halved consumption in less than 15 years by tripling cigarette prices.
In Canada, smoking rates have flatlined after years of steady decline. Statistics show that five million Canadians were smokers in 2011 - as many as there were in 2008.
"Our evidence suggests that, even in Canada, a big increase in the federal excise tax could get about one million smokers to quit and save about 5,000 lives a year," Jha said.
The biggest barrier is tobacco's "enormous profitability," he said. Worldwide profits for the tobacco industry reached $50 billion US in 2012, or about $10,000 for every smoking-related death, Jha said.
But he and his co-author argue that the extra revenue per pack would offset the effect of tax increases on consumption, and that raising excise taxes to double prices "would raise about another $100 billion (in U.S. dollars) per year in tobacco revenues, in addition to the approximately $300 billion that the WHO (World Health Organization) estimates governments already collect on tobacco."