Friends drive you to pick the butt more than kick it

Washington, June 12 (IANS) Friends can influence behaviour of your kid a lot and researchers have found that friends exert influence on their peers to both start and quit smoking, but the influence to start is stronger.

"What we found is that social influence matters. It leads nonsmoking friends into smoking and nonsmoking friends can turn smoking friends into nonsmokers," said Steven Haas, an associate professor of sociology and demography at Pennsylvania State University in the US.

However, the impact is asymmetrical - the tendency for adolescents to follow their friends into smoking is stronger, Haas explained.

There are a number of reasons why peer influence to start smoking is stronger than peer influence to quit.

"In order to become a smoker, kids need to know how to smoke, they need to know where to buy cigarettes and how to smoke without being caught, which are all things they can learn from their friends who smoke," Haas noted.

But nonsmoking friends are unlikely to have access to nicotine replacement products or organised cessation programmes to help their friends quit.

The findings may also apply to other aspects of adolescent behaviour.

"This may apply well beyond smoking," Haas said, adding, "There may be similar patterns in adolescent drinking, drug use, sex, and delinquency."

Sweets makers work to keep names off e-cigarettes

Owners of brands geared toward children of all ages are battling to keep notable names like Thin Mint, Tootsie Roll and Cinnamon Toast Crunch off the flavored nicotine used in electronic cigarettes.
Now the owners of those trademarks are fighting back to make sure their brands aren’t being used to sell an addictive drug or make it appealing to to children.
The issue of illegally using well-known brands on e-cigarette products isn’t new for some. For a couple of years, cigarette makers R.J. Reynolds Tobacco and Philip Morris USA have fought legal battles with websites selling e-cigarette liquid capitalizing on their Camel and Marlboro brand names and imagery.
The companies have since released their own e-cigarettes but without using their top-selling brand names.
“It’s the age-old problem with an emerging market,” said Linc Williams, board member of the American E-liquid Manufacturing Standards Association and an executive at NicVape Inc., which produces liquid nicotine.
“As companies goes through their maturity process of going from being a wild entrepreneur to starting to establish real corporate ethics and product stewardship, it’s something that we’re going to continue to see.”
Williams said his company is renaming many of its liquids to names that won’t be associated with well-known brands. Some companies demanded NicVape stop using brand names such as Junior Mints on their liquid nicotine.
In other cases, the company is taking proactive steps to removing imagery and names like gummy bear that could be appealing to children.
“Unfortunately it’s not going to change unless companies come in and assert their intellectual property,” he said.
And that’s what companies are starting to do more often as the industry has rocketed from thousands of users in 2006 to several million worldwide, bringing the issue to the forefront.
“We’re family oriented. A lot of kids eat our products, we have many adults also, but our big concern is we have to protect the trademark,” said Ellen Gordon, president and chief operating officer of Tootsie Roll Industries Inc.
“When you have well-known trademarks, one of your responsibilities is to protect (them) because it’s been such a big investment over the years.”
General Mills Inc., the Girl Scouts of the USA and Tootsie Roll Industries Inc. are among several companies that have sent cease-and-desist letters to makers of the liquid nicotine demanding they stop using the brands and may take further legal action if necessary.
The actions highlight the debate about the array of flavors available for the battery-powered devices that heat a liquid nicotine solution, creating vapor that users inhale. The Food and Drug Administration last month proposed regulating electronic cigarettes but didn’t immediately ban on fruit or candy flavors, which are barred for use in regular cigarettes because of the worry that the flavors are used to appeal to children.
It’s growing pains for the industry that reached nearly $2 billion in sales last year in the face of looming regulation. E-cigarette users say the devices address both the addictive and behavioral aspects of smoking without the thousands of chemicals found in regular cigarettes.
There are about 1,500 e-liquid makers in the U.S. and countless others abroad selling vials of nicotine from traditional tobacco to cherry cola on the Internet and in retail stores, often featuring photos of the popular treats. Using the brand name like Thin Mint or Fireball conjures up a very specific flavor in buyers’ minds, in a way that just “mint chocolate” or “cinnamon” doesn’t.
“Using the Thin Mint name— which is synonymous with Girl Scouts and everything we do to enrich the lives of girls— to market e-cigarettes to youth is deceitful and shameless,” Girl Scouts spokeswoman Kelly Parisi said in a statement.

Smoking campaign targets women

Former Miss Universe Rachael Finch underwent a dramatic makeover to show just how lighting up accelerates the aging process by decades.
The former beauty Queen is used to getting made up but today she underwent a transformation of a different kind - the 25-year-old was given a much older and less glamorous look.
Research shows for young women, appearance is a driving factor, in the decision to give up smoking. That's why this campaign aims to highlight the detrimental effects
It shows how cigarettes lead to deeper wrinkles a dull complexion and stained teeth. Cigarettes also prematurely age a person by 10 to 20 years.
Doctors say they see the immediate effects of smoking in patients every day.
"I feel like if they saw what I could see they wouldn't smoke," dermatologist Dr Claudia Curchin said.
"They would realise they look terrible as a result of smoking."
"It was very confronting, scary but I was really happy to do it to see, to be able to show my face and show what it can look like," Ms Finch said.The stunt was designed to show what smoking will do, to a young women's face. Figures show the habit is higher among females aged between 18 and 24.
"We are very concerned about what is an alarming upswing in the number of young women and girls that are taking up smoking and we have to something differently," Health minister Lawrence Springborg said.

In Russia, new anti-smoking law alarms tobacco giants

Tough new anti-smoking legislation that comes into force on Sunday in Russia has dismayed cigarette companies as they face the prospect of declining sales and tighter regulation of their industry.

Russia was once seen as a key emerging market for the tobacco industry with its high number of heavy smokers keen to switch to Western brands, but from June 1 there will be a blanket ban on smoking in restaurants, cafes and hotels.

In the first stage of the ban, Russia last year outlawed smoking on municipal transport as well as in public spaces such as schools, administrative buildings and hospitals.

The stringent new law also bans all forms of tobacco advertising and requires that packs of cigarettes be hidden from customers at the point of sale. Smokers will have to choose their brand using a catalogue without images or logos.

"This is some of the harshest anti-smoking legislation in the world," said Alexander Lyuty, the communications director in Russia of British American Tobacco (BAT).

According to the state statistics agency Rosstat, the number of smokers in Russia -- 40 million out of a population of around 143 million -- has remained the same since 2010.

Every year, 400,000 Russians die from smoking-related illness.

But Russia's smokers are gradually cutting down. Only 19 percent of smokers get through more than a pack a day, half as many as seven years ago, according to state polling agency VTsIOM.

In 2013, the tobacco market in Russia contracted 7.5 percent, Lyuty said.

The reasons included rising prices for packs of cigarettes, which Russia is taxing more heavily.

"In the last five years, taxes on cigarettes have grown by 25 percent," said Lyuty. A pack that cost around 25 rubles in 2010 is now sold for 59 rubles ($1.70/1.25 euros).

The price still seems derisory to Western Europeans, but Russians with their lower spending power are already seeking out cheaper alternatives.

- Rise of counterfeit brands -

"As a result, the demand for fake cigarettes is growing," said Lyuty.

Fake or counterfeit cigarettes are designed to resemble well-known brands but sold much more cheaply.

Their sales more than doubled in the third quarter last year, reaching almost 20 percent of sales in some Russian regions such as Dagestan in the North Caucasus, which borders Azerbaijan, according to Rosstat.

Others are buying cigarettes smuggled from Belarus and Kazakhstan -- where their sale price is 30 to 50 percent cheaper than in Russia, Lyuty said.

But despite the steady growth of counterfeit cigarettes, some in the tobacco industry said that their impact should not be overestimated.

"We are mainly talking about a very convenient excuse to hide our falling sales," said an employee at one of the major tobacco companies, asking to remain anonymous.

"The main concern of the tobacco industry participants in Russia is more and more harsh regulation of what we do for publicity, which prevents us from recruiting new consumers and therefore reaching our targets," the source said.

"We are being forced into invisibility," said one official at the US tobacco giant Philip Morris, who declined to give his name.

- New law targets youth -

The average age when Russian children first try smoking is among the lowest in the world, with some puffing on cigarettes from the age of 10 or 12, according to the Russian Union of Paediatricians.

It is the young who are the most sensitive to price hikes and a ban on advertising, meaning that these measures have had a stronger effect on them than on older people, said Roman Grinchenko, an analyst at Investcafe.

"As a result of the rise in prices, the tightening of regulation and the measures that the government is using to fight the promotion of smoking, the number of minors who are smoking has fallen," Grinchenko said.

The new measures made no impression on long-term smoker Irina Stonyakina, 42, who has smoked heavily for 20 years.

"I prefer saving money on food to stopping smoking, even if the price of a pack goes up five times."

"This new law won't lead to anything, even under the Soviet Union we didn't stop lighting up," Stonyakina told AFP.

The new legislation may not become truly effective until the depths of winter when smokers find themselves forced to light up on pavements in freezing conditions outside cafes and restaurants, said Maxim Korolyov, an analyst at Russia Tobacco Media Group.