UAE health officials have delayed a national smoking ban until they have decided which government bodies will be responsible for its enforcement, according to reports.
Last month the Ministry of Health announced details of the new legislation, but yesterday an official said the public would be fully informed once the details had been finalised.
Auckland’s Regional Public Health Service are calling on the Government to increase tobacco tax and ban smoking in many outdoor public areas such as beaches, playgrounds, bus stops and outside buildings. The recommendations include increase tobacco tax by 5 per cent plus inflation per year, banning tobacco vending machines, licensing tobacco retailers. Dr. Andrew Lindsay, clinical leader of the health service’s alcohol and tobacco team told that 5000 deaths a year can be ascribed to smoking.
Smoking would be banned in restaurants, bars, casinos and malls statewide under a bill Missouri lawmakers introduced Monday.
Exceptions would include private residences, tobacco retail outlets, outdoor areas and up to 20 percent of hotel and motel rooms.
The legislation’s sponsor, Rep. Walt Bivins, R-St. Louis, said Missouri is surrounded on three sides by states that ban smoking: Illinois, Arkansas and Iowa. Kansas lawmakers are also considering it. Nationwide, more than half of the states have smoking bans.
Lighting up a cigarette while strolling through Hayward-area parks will soon be a thing of the past.
Board members of the Hayward Area Recreation and Park District unanimously voted earlier this week to amend its anti-smoking ordinance, effectively banning smoking in all of its parks and facilities.
Park Superintendent Larry Lepore said he expects the district to enforce the amended ban beginning May 1.
However, “It’s going to be extremely hard to enforce this,” Lepore said. “If a ranger happens to observe someone smoking, they’re going to ask them to please put the cigarette out. Obviously, if the individual refuses, the ranger will have the ability to write a citation.”
Naltrexone, approved for the treatment of alcohol dependence, also helps heavy social drinkers who aren’t alcoholics to quit smoking, as well as to reduce the amount of alcohol they drink, a new study shows.
After taking naltrexone, smokers who were heavy drinkers had significant reductions in heavy drinking rates over the course of the 8-week treatment, and also were more likely to quit than heavy drinkers taking placebo, lead investigator Dr. Andrea C. King told Reuters Health. “The effects were not as prominent among the lighter drinking smokers,” she noted.
Drivers in parts of Monroe County will no longer be able to smoke in their vehicles if a child is present.
County commissioners on Friday approved a smoking ban by a 2-1 vote that prohibits smoking if a child age 13 or younger is also in the vehicle, 6News’ Ben Morriston reported. The ordinance affects only the unincorporated areas of Monroe County, so cities Bloomington, Ellettsville and Stinesville are exempt.
Commissioner Pat Stoffers called that absurd. “A 35-mile car trip can take you through six changes in the smoking law,” he said.
For the estimated 20% of Americans who smoke cigarettes, the impact of a federal excise tax increase that takes effect Wednesday is already being felt.
Earlier this month the manufacturer of Marlboro, Parliament and Virginia Slims, Philip Morris USA, increased prices by 71 cents a pack, 9 cents more than the federal tax increase. The maker of Camel, Kool and Salem cigarettes, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, bumped wholesale prices up by 44 cents a pack and reduced discounting.
The revenue from the tax increase, which will be used to expand coverage under the State Children’s Health Insurance Program to an additional 4 million low-income children, was signed into law in February.
Pregnant women who stop smoking before the 15th week have rates of preterm birth and small-for-dates babies comparable to those of non-smoking women, new research indicates.
The findings show that “these severe adverse effects of smoking may be reversible if smoking is stopped early in pregnancy,” Dr. Lesley M. E. McCowan, from the University of Adelaide, Australia, and colleagues comment in the British Medical Journal.
The results come from an analysis of data for 2500 women who were having their first baby. At 15 weeks’ gestation, the women were classified as non-smokers, stopped smokers, or current smokers.
Re “Smoking Ban Hits Home. Truly” (Belmont Journal, front page, Jan. 27):
In a not surprising but troubling move, some cities, like Belmont, Calif., have prohibited individuals from smoking in their own apartments. The justification, as always, is that sidestream smoke is a threat to the health of innocent nonsmokers.
There are good scientific and public health reasons for restricting smoking in closed public spaces. But when such restrictions are extended to beaches, parks, sidewalks and now to the homes of smokers, the argument that third-party harms must be prevented becomes increasingly untenable.
The Ministry of Health is ratcheting up pressure on organisations to ban smoking in public spaces and will be lobbying for the enactment of comprehensive legislation during the first quarter of the new fiscal year.
Eva Lewis-Fuller, director of health promotion and protection at the Ministry of Health, said limiting smoking privileges in both public and private business places would help protect non-smokers from second- and third-hand effects.
“Cabinet has considered it and agreed in principle for the law to be imposed. However, additional work needs to be done, such as getting responses from other agencies and analysis of the economic impact it would bring,” Lewis-Fuller told The Gleaner.