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** 28 March 2022
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** UK
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** Western companies including Big Tobacco fear paying rent on Moscow offices would breach sanctions (#1)
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** Scottish Widows pulls million investors out of tobacco (#2)
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** Remembering the smoking ban introduced in Scotland 16 years ago (#3)
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** Cost of living crisis: curbs on junk food may be delayed to ease rising bills (#4)
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** International
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** Medicago's tobacco ties jeapordise growth of its COVID shot (#5)
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** UK
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Several western companies including tobacco firms Imperial Brands and British American Tobacco are struggling to determine whether paying rent on their Moscow offices would breach sanctions. The firms are uncertain as they are tenants of Moscow properties which form part of the portfolio in Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich’s Millhouse investment group.

Abramovich, who owns Chelsea football club, has been placed on UK and EU sanctions lists which bar companies from these jurisdictions from making payments to him or his business. However, refusing to pay rent could result in firms being evicted from their premises given contractual obligations. Jason Hungerford, a sanctions lawyer at Mayer Brown, says that this and other challenges mean “more and more [companies] are just looking to wind up and get out.”

Tobacco firm Imperial Brands was one of a number of companies to decide to depart from Russia this month. In its case, Imperial reportedly plans to hand over its Russian business to local entities who could then make backlogged rent payments once Imperial has left. Abramovich is not on the US’s sanctions list, meaning it could be easier for American companies to continue paying rent on his properties, though many groups are applying EU and UK sanctions globally.
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** Source: Financial Times, 27 March 2022
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** Scottish Widows has announced that it will sell shares and bonds worth £1 billion in cigarette companies, meaning that the pension funds and investments of more than a million people will be divested away from tobacco. Scottish Widows is screening out any investment in firms where tobacco accounts for more than 10% of sales.

Scottish Widows, owned by Lloyds Banking Group, says the new rules will apply to about half of its total number of investments. The company set the threshold at 10% so it does not have to sell holdings in supermarkets and other distributors where tobacco accounts for a small part of sales.

The move sees Scottish Widows join many other organisations in divesting partly or completely from the tobacco industry. Axa, BNP Paribas, ING, and Société Générale are among the firms that are signatories to the Tobacco-Free Finance Pledge, a UN-supported initiative led by Tobacco Free Portfolios. Nest, the default fund for ten million pension savers in Britain, also excludes tobacco. Maria Nazarova-Doyle, head of pension investments at Scottish Widows, says that about $12 trillion in investment portfolios worldwide screen out tobacco investment.
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Source: The Times, 28 March 2022
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** Glasgow Live is commemorating the 16^th anniversary of the introduction of the smoking ban in pubs and clubs in Scotland, which was introduced on 26 March 2006.

The Smoking Health and Social Care Act was passed in the Scottish Parliament in 2005 by an overwhelming majority of 83 to 15. However, the plans were not uncontroversial. In a poll by the BBC at the time, a fifth of smokers said that they would continue to smoke in indoor public spaces. However, the ban’s benefits were also immediately apparent. Record numbers of people were reported to have quit smoking when the ban was introduced, and the number of people going into hospital with smoking-related illnesses dropped dramatically in the years following.

The British Heart Foundation further reported that a Glasgow University study showed that the number of hospital admissions for children with asthma was increasing on average by 5% in Scotland prior to the ban. In the three years following the new law, admissions dropped by 18% each year. Scotland led the way on the smoking ban in the UK, with Wales, Northern Ireland, and then England following in 2007. Despite some objections and concerns, compliancy rates were high from the start and the ban has now become an accepted part of the UK’s culture.

Glasgow Live concludes: “Now, memories of smoke-filled public spaces are resigned to the past”.
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Source: Glasgow Live, 26 March 2022
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** An impending ban on buy-one-get-one-free junk food deals could be delayed as ministers have been told to find “the fullest range” of measures to ease the cost of living crisis. The push is coming from Steve Barclay, the Downing Street chief of staff, who is leading an effort to find new regulation that could be delayed or existing rules that could be suspended to minimise costs to households facing a £1,100 hit to incomes this year as inflation surges and fuel bills rise.

Barclay has told ministers on the domestic economic strategy committee to “consider what non-fiscal measures we might take to manage the pressure on household finances” and has written to cabinet colleagues that they “should be challenging themselves: testing whether existing assumptions about what is possible still stand in the face of the heightened pressure on households”.

On junk food, environment secretary George Eustice is also said to want to suspend the plans to help the food industry and avoid a hit to family shopping bills. Jacob Rees-Mogg, government efficiency minister, is said to be “sympathetic” to a delay, as is Kwasi Kwarteng, business secretary, who is critical of “nanny state” measures. Johnson has not made a decision but Sajid Javid, the health secretary, has privately expressed scepticism about anti-obesity measures.

Any delay to the measure would be opposed by health campaigners. Caroline Cerny, of the Obesity Health Alliance said: “Research has proved that promotions don’t actually save money, but lead to unplanned purchases and spending more.”
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Source: The Times, 26 March 2022
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** International
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The World Health Organization (WHO) has said it will not review Canadian vaccine maker Medicago’s COVID-19 vaccine because the company is partly owned (21%) by tobacco firm Philip Morris. Whilst the vaccine has already been approved in Canada, the WHO has cited its 2005 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) which requires no involvement between the WHO and any company that produces or promotes tobacco-based products.

Canada has already provided millions of dollars in development funding to Medicago and has agreed to buy up to 76 million doses. It has defended its authorization of the vaccine by saying that it needs a domestic bio-manufacturing industry to prepare for future pandemics and that it is complying with the WHO tobacco treaty and can work with Medicago to supply its population.

Experts say WHO authorization is required for the vaccine to be part of the COVAX global vaccine program for low- and middle-income countries. Medicago must also now approach European and US regulators and other individual countries one by one to attain approvals, a much more difficult process. It says it is in discussions with potential customers worldwide and has started the filing process for approval of its vaccine with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and an early-to-mid stage study of the shot in Japan, with plans to file for regulatory approval in the spring.

Canadian health group Quebec Coalition for Tobacco Control this week called on Canada to demand that Medicago replace Philip Morris as a stakeholder. Philip Morris has had a stake in the company since 2008. Prashant Yadav, lecturer and supply chain expert at Harvard Medical School, says that the US and Europe may still want Medicago's shot because of its plant-based technology.

Source: Reuters, 28 March 2022
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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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