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Imperial Brands has been accused by retail groups of wasting retailer time and harming shop reputations through repeated price amendments following the tobacco duty increase last week.
Problems arose following the announced duty increase at Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Budget last week. Japan Tobacco International (JTI) and Imperial embarked upon a price battle, with Imperial repeatedly changing its prices throughout the day. Imperial was the first brand to update its prices before JTI released its own updates, undercutting Imperial’s pricing on most lines. Imperial responded by releasing another price list on the same day, pushing its prices down to match JTI’s.
The Federation of Independent Retailers (NFRN) in Scotland’s president Ferhan Ashiq said that store owners were angered by the “disregard” for the impact on retailers. “Our members were put in a position where they had to change prices up to three times, spending, on average, 45 minutes per change. Everyone is angry about the workload Imperial have placed on us and the perception of greed it places on those stores forced to change price twice in a 24-hour period.” he said.
One retailer in Lanarkshire was forced to resort to placing a notice at the store counter explaining Imperial’s actions and asking frustrated customers to contact the company directly with complaints. Describing a conversation with Imperial after the repeated changes, the notice read: “I explained how this is ridiculous and unacceptable in how they have treated our customers. Also, [I explained] the extra workload, hours and costs they have caused for retailers.”
While stores set their own tobacco prices, firms regularly use incentives and campaigns to encourage stores to forego higher margins and retail at or below recommended prices. Ashiq says that the episode will encourage stores to disregard recommended prices. One store owner said: “The more of us that challenge them and don’t work to their rules and instructions, the better.”
Source: Better Retailing, 4 November 2021
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The director of LSE London, Tony Travers, discusses the importance of up-skilling, investment, and performance indicators including life expectancy for the Government's levelling up agenda.
Travers writes that it is unrealistic that the Government can fulfil its levelling up promise in just the two-and-a-half years it has left to govern. Travers says that the policy challenges in delivering radical improvements to ‘left behind’ places and people have developed over 50 years and it would take at least two decades to even begin mitigating the problems caused by industrial change.
He states that Government policy so far has involved pots of cash for cities, town centres, and ‘levelling up’. Further education and vocational training have seen a modest reversal of the funding cuts they suffered from 2010. Travers argues that moving big institutions around the country and offering random cash injections will not be sufficient. What is required is a massive up-skilling of people, he says. Local economies must be revitalised if we are to avoid what Travers calls the ‘regeneration archaeology’ seen in government schemes from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
Travers says that up-skilling and investment in local economies will require new performance indicators such as worklessness and life expectancy, needed to know if progress is being made.
Source: LGC, 4 November 2021
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A new report has detailed how tobacco firms exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to offer donations to the health sector in nations experiencing major economic losses and an urgent need for resources in return for tax benefits like reduced taxes, no tax increases, or tax exemptions.
The Global Tobacco Industry Interference Index 2021 report scrutinised civil society reports from 80 countries. In Indonesia, Sampoerna – a tobacco company owned by Philip Morris International (PMI) – gave grocery packages and disinfectants to the East Java provincial government. In Pakistan, PMI contributed over £87,600 to the government’s Pandemic Relief Fund. In Zambia, Japan Tobacco International contributed £219,639 to COVID-19 relief. In Europe, several countries accepted donations from the industry including ventilators and masks. In these countries and in eight others receiving charity from the industry, the industry received significant tax benefits.
Other countries like Bangladesh, Kenya, Jordan, Sudan, and Malaysia, sold cigarettes as “essential items” during COVID-19 lockdowns. In Iraq, the trade ministry distributed cigarettes with its free food ration program to poor families. In Uruguay, the government revised a ban on electronic smoking devices that has been in place since 2009 to allow the marketing of heated tobacco products. Princess Dina Mired of Jordan, a tobacco control advocate, said that this showed that tobacco companies could “prey” on developing countries whilst Leonce Sessou, executive secretary of the African Tobacco Control Alliance, said that African nations were ”vulnerable” to tobacco firms.
However, the report also found that there were low- and middle-income countries like Uganda that have done well in preventing tobacco industry interference over the past year, which report author Dr Mary Assunta says shows it is not “expensive” for countries to protect themselves from tobacco industry interference. “Now really is the time to ... step up tobacco control,” Assunta said.
Source: Devex, 4 November 2021
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In an unusual move, British American Tobacco Japan is demanding a higher tax on cigarettes in Japan’s fiscal 2022 tax system reform, it was revealed on Thursday 4 November. Sources said that the company has made the request in writing to lawmakers of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
The move comes because Japan is slated to raise its tobacco tax for heat-not-burn tobacco products in October 2022, a move expected to make some heat-not-burn products more expensive than cigarettes. This has led to concern in the tobacco company that this would prove damaging for perceptions of its strategy of shifting focus from cigarettes to its heat-not-burn range. British American Tobacco Japan is also requesting that the tax on heat-not-burn tobacco be increased at a slower pace than that for cigarettes in the medium to long run.
According to the Tobacco Institute of Japan, sales of cigarettes in the fiscal year 2020, ending last March, dropped 11.8% from the previous year to ¥2.47 trillion (£16.14 billion), likely due to the impacts on smoking behaviours of the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, its first survey on sales of heat-not-burn products showed sales came to ¥1.06 trillion (£6.9 billion).
Source: Japan Times, 4 November 2021
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The Spanish Society of Pulmonary and Thoracic Surgery (SEPAR) has called on the Government to introduce five “inalienable measures” to reduce smoking rates and smoking-related deaths.
SEPAR recommends raising the price of all tobacco products and extending smoking bans in public places, already encompassing smoking indoor at venues, to “open public spaces” like “terraces, sports stadiums, beaches, parks, and bullrings”, with more severe penalties for contraventions.
SEPAR have also called for plain packaging for tobacco products, the further regulation of heat-not-burn devices and e-cigarettes and, finally, increased support and care for those trying to quit smoking through the creation of stop smoking units and more funding for treatments.
Source: Euro Weekly News, 5 November 2021
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The 10th episode in Oxford University’s ‘Let’s talk e-cigarettes’ podcast is now available to listen. In this episode, Dr Jamie Hartmann-Boyce talks with Nick DeVito from the Evidence Based DataLab at the University of Oxford about Nick’s recent research on e-cigarette manufacturers' compliance with clinical trial reporting expectations, focused on trials by Juul Labs and how they report data. The two discussed whether, where, and how research findings are reported or published, including publication bias and reporting bias, and the role of trial registration in research transparency.
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On Wednesday 3 November ASH held a webinar on the importance of building effective partnerships between NHS and local authority services to support comprehensive implementation of the NHS Long Term Plan tobacco treatment dependence pathway.
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ASH Daily News is a digest of published news on smoking-related topics. ASH is not responsible for the content of external websites. ASH does not necessarily endorse the material contained in this bulletin.
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