??Smoking has been implicated in many malignant diseases, but its association with colorectal cancer (CRC) is controversial. We quantitatively evaluated the relation between smoking and incidence of CRC in a meta-analysis of cohort studies.????Methods????Full publications of prospective cohort studies were identified in MEDLINE and EMBASE from 1950 to 2008. Subjects were classified as current smokers, former smokers, or never smokers. The quantity of smoking was assessed by number of cigarettes per day, years of smoking, and pack-years. The reported relative risks of CRC were pooled by random-effects model. Sensitivity analysis was conducted, and publication bias was evaluated.????Results????A total of 1,463,796 subjects were recruited in 28 prospective cohorts from America, Europe, and Asia . . .????Conclusions????Smoking was associated with a significantly increased risk of CRC. The associated risk was higher for men and for rectal cancers. The association of tobacco consumption and CRC risk appeared to be dose-related.??
July 2nd, 2009 | Category: International Cigarettes | Leave a comment
??For centuries, blue-turbaned nomadic Tuareg tribesmen have led caravans of camels across the expanses of the Sahara. Laden with millet and cloth from Africa’s West Coast, the caravans traveled unmarked paths to trade for salt and dates in Timbuktu, across the sand plains of Niger, and into the mountain oasis of the Algerian south.????Smugglers take the same routes today — driving SUVs along paved roads or with guidance from the Tuareg and satellite phones — to move weapons, drugs, and, increasingly, humans — through the Sahara for transport across the Mediterranean Sea. The paths are no longer known as the Salt Roads of the Tuareg, but as the “Marlboro Connection,” named after the most lucrative contraband along this 2,000-mile corridor.????Among those who control this underground trade is al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), an Algeria-based terrorist organization widely believed to have been backed by Osama Bin Laden. Descended from the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (known by its French acronym, GSPC) the group has hundreds of members and is blamed for a bloody campaign of bombings, murders, and kidnappings across North Africa and Europe. The lead smuggler, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, 37, is blamed for the 2003 kidnappings of 32 European tourists and the 2006 murder of 13 Algerian customs officials. “They are a significant threat,” says Lorenzo Vidino, author of Al Qaeda in Europe. “Of all Islamic terrorist groups, they have the most extensive and sophisticated network in Europe… And among their activities, smuggling is particularly important.”??????Military officials and scholars say cigarette smuggling, in fact, has provided the bulk of financing for AQIM . . .??????Al-Qaeda’s North Africa affiliate isn’t alone. After crackdowns on fundraising following the 9/11 attacks, terrorist groups worldwide have increasingly turned to criminal rackets, officials say. And smuggling cigarettes — either untaxed or counterfeit — has proved a particularly lucrative, low-risk way to fund operations.????Hezbollah, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda are involved in smuggling cigarettes; so are the Real Irish Republican Army (Real IRA) and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Terrorist financing through cigarette smuggling is “huge,” says Louise Shelley, a transnational crime expert at George Mason University and an adviser to the World Economic Forum on illicit trade.
July 2nd, 2009 | Category: International Cigarettes | Leave a comment
garettes — at .05 per pack — making the country a bonanza for smugglers, whether by glider or more mundane pathways on the ground. Cars and trucks filled with Ukrainian-made Marlboros and Viceroys get waved through border checkpoints by customs guards who seem more than eager to accommodate, for a price. Loads also move by bus and train, bound for other European countries where high taxes make packs cost as much as (Germany) or (United Kingdom).????The backbone of this underground commerce — the acquisition of the cigarettes themselves — is by far the easiest part of the entire operation. The world’s four leading multinational tobacco companies, Philip Morris International, Japan Tobacco International (JTI), Imperial Tobacco, and British American Tobacco (BAT), have produced billions of excess cigarettes in Ukraine, fueling a teeming black market that reaches across the European Union. Today, Ukraine is rivaled only by Russia as the top source of non-counterfeit brand cigarettes smuggled to Europe, EU officials say.????The booming trade in tobacco smuggling has major consequences, say industry experts. The growing traffic pushes huge supplies of cheap, untaxed, and unregulated cigarettes into the rest of Europe, undercutting otherwise successful attempts to curtail smoking. Worse, officials say, the trade is boosting organized crime gangs, who find the soft penalties and big profits hard to resist. . . .????Attracted by high smoking rates and the potential for rapid returns on investments, multinational tobacco companies rushed to acquire the state-run cigarette factories after the Soviet regime collapsed in 1991. Today, the big four tobacco companies — Philip Morris, BAT, JTI, and Imperial — control 99 percent of the Ukrainian cigarette market.
July 2nd, 2009 | Category: International Cigarettes | Leave a comment
??Last September, Guaíra made headlines across Brazil when 15 people were murdered at a makeshift riverside warehouse. The killings were the result of a vendetta among drug smugglers and, officials here say, they weren’t all that unusual. Just 150 miles north from the notorious Tri-Border Area, where Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina meet, Guaíra is today a major weapons and drugs corridor in the region. But no product, police say, is more widely smuggled through this city, and more profitable to smugglers, than Paraguayan cigarettes.????Dozens of motor boats crammed with tobacco cross the Paraná River daily from the neighboring Paraguayan city of Salto del Guairá. The smugglers feed an illicit trade that injects billions of cigarettes into Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and other large Brazilian cities, where the cheap, untaxed Paraguayan sticks account for 20 percent of the entire cigarette market. Guaíra sits at the heart of this trade, a strategic gateway and a place where many residents — up to half its population, locals say — rely directly or indirectly on smuggling for their livelihood. A few reap millions from the illicit trade. Guaíra’s most famous criminal son, Roque Fabiano Silveira, made a fortune and a name, trafficking Paraguayan cigarettes thousands of miles away. . . .??????The tale of Roque Silveira is emblematic of the criminal nature and global reach of the teeming Paraguayan cigarette industry, one that experts and law enforcement officials say is, largely, set up for and devoted to transnational smuggling. Fifteen years ago cigarette manufacturing was minimal in Paraguay, one of South America’s poorest countries and a place notorious for corruption and trading in counterfeit goods. Today Paraguay, a landlocked, California-sized country, ranks among the world’s top producers of contraband cigarettes, responsible for 10 percent of the world’s contraband tobacco, experts estimate.????Paraguay’s factories churned out 68 billion cigarettes in 2006
July 2nd, 2009 | Category: International Cigarettes | Leave a comment
??Ringed by thickly forested mountains, illicit cigarette factories dot the countryside: carved deeply into caves, high into the hills, and even buried meters beneath the earth. By one tally, some 200 operations are hidden in Yunxiao, a southwestern Fujian county about twice the area of New York City. Over the past ten years, production of counterfeit cigarettes in China has soared, jumping eightfold since 1997 and making China the world leader in fake smokes. Chinese counterfeit cigarette factories now churn out an unprecedented 400 billion cigarettes a year, enough to supply every U.S. smoker with 460 packs a year. Yunxiao — once famed for its bright yellow loquat fruit — is the trade’s heartland: the source of half such production, officials say.????Today, China’s fake cigarettes fuel a multi-billion dollar black market and are even more hazardous for smokers, yet the industry is little-known. From New York delis to London storefronts, China’s brand rip-offs are now sold in cities around the world. While a pack of fake Marlboros costs {content}.20 to make in China, in the United States, it can fetch up to twenty times that amount, even when sold at cut rates. Spurred by global crime rings, the counterfeit trade has exploded, propping up addiction and robbing governments of billions in annual tax revenue. Officials can only guess at the size of the industry here in the United States, but to give a sense of scale, from 1999-2005, one ring smuggled a billion fake cigarettes into Los Angeles and New Jersey. Fully 99 percent of the U.S. counterfeit market is supplied by China, and up to 80 percent of that in the European Union. Meanwhile, Chinese government efforts to stop the trade are met by street riots, machete-armed manufacturers and retaliation killings.
July 2nd, 2009 | Category: International Cigarettes | Leave a comment
In less than five minutes, the brutal attack left Quinsey and Azimkar dead, the two pizza deliverymen and a pair of guards clinging to life, and the historic 1998 peace agreement between Irish Catholics and Protestants imperiled.????The bullets rang out thousands of miles away, but investigators now believe the assault had its origin in an anonymous cargo ship docked at a bustling South Florida port.????A gray-haired 57-year-old Cutler Bay man with no criminal history named Roman Vidal sold millions of cigarettes that had been smuggled to Dublin criminals who funded the terrorist group that killed Quinsey and Azimkar, investigators say. The charges are just the latest link between black-market U.S. smokes and violent terrorist groups around the world.????It’s the first cigarette smuggling case in Florida with explicit ties to a terrorist organization, but at least four major rings around the country have been busted in the past seven years with proven connections to Hezbollah, the Iraqi Kurdistan Workers Party, and North Korean weapons runners. A four-month-long New Times review of court filings and interviews with investigators reveals exactly why smuggling smokes may be the best racket for America’s enemies.?? . . .??????For the average smoker, those under-the-table, tax-free packs might seem like a bargain. But as the recent history of cigarette smuggling vividly illustrates, when you buy black-market smokes, you never know whose paycheck you’re signing. . . .????????In 1999, Garcia was called to Atlantic City to help Lou Calvarese — a hefty agent with a long undercover FBI résumé. Calvarese introduced him to May and Charles Liu, a Los Angeles Chinese-American couple with an incredible operation.????Though most smuggling operations involve actual commercial cigarettes, the Lius contracted with four factories in China that produced quality knockoffs of Marlboros, Camels, and other major brands. . . .??????That meeting was just the beginning of a massive six-year operation. Garcia would eventually infiltrate the highest levels of the Lius’ international smuggling network, a staggering chain involving nearly 100 people in China, the United States, and Canada. Garcia eventually learned that the operation had ties to North Korean weapons smugglers.????
July 2nd, 2009 | Category: International Cigarettes | Leave a comment
More than 130 countries met Monday to consider whether to ban the sale of tobacco on the Internet as part of an effort to crack down on the multibillion dollar market in contraband cigarettes.????As well as stopping direct sales to consumers, the draft treaty being considered in Geneva this week could ban online vendors from offering raw tobacco or cigarette manufacturing equipment.????Parties to the U.N.-backed 2005 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which the U.S. has signed but yet to ratify, are also debating how to stop free trade zones from being used as smuggling hubs for untaxed and fake cigarettes.????Experts estimate the market in illicit cigarettes accounts for more than 10 percent of tobacco sales worldwide, costing governments -50 billion in lost tax revenue each year.????A report by the Washington-based U.S. Center for Public Integrity identifies China, Paraguay and Ukraine as among the major sources of contraband tobacco products.??
July 1st, 2009 | Category: International Cigarettes | Leave a comment
The European Union commission on Tuesday called for public places throughout Europe to be smoke-free by 2012 in order to tackle the deadly effects of passive smoking.????”It is my firm belief that each and every European merits full protection from tobacco smoke,” said EU Health Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou.????”There is a wave of support from the general public and we will work with member states to make this a reality,” she added.????Currently, 10 of the 27 EU countries have comprehensive smoke-free laws.??
June 30th, 2009 | Category: International Cigarettes | Leave a comment
The European Union’s health chief proposed on Tuesday that uniform laws be drafted for all 27 countries in the bloc to regulate smoking more strictly in public areas and workplaces.????Many EU countries have laws limiting exposure to second-hand, or passive, smoking. The rules are strictest in Britain and Ireland, where smoking is banned in enclosed public places, public transport and workplaces, including restaurants and bars.????”Each and every European should be entitled to full protection from tobacco smoke,” EU Health Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou told a news conference.????The recommendation calls on all member states to implement laws that will limit exposure to tobacco smoke in public places, workplaces and public transport, and aims to protect children.??
June 30th, 2009 | Category: International Cigarettes | Leave a comment
British American Tobacco Plc bought a majority stake in a top Indonesian cigarette firm on Wednesday, lifting its share in the world’s fifth-largest and fast-growing market as it looks to offset flat sales elsewhere.????BAT, maker of Dunhill and Lucky Strike cigarettes, said it paid 4 million for an 85 percent stake in PT Bentoel Internasional Investama, Indonesia’s fourth-largest cigarette maker by volume, and would buy up the remaining shares by the end of August.????London-based world number-two cigarette maker BAT, like other major players, is looking to expand in growing emerging markets as western ones are hit by the effects of higher taxes, smoking bans and restrictions on advertising.????”The purchase… makes sense as Indonesia cigarette (market) is dominated with kretek (clove), which accounts for around 93 percent of total cigarettes consumed,” said Jakarta-based analyst Ella Nusantoro of Citigroup in a note to clients.??
June 29th, 2009 | Category: Indonesian Clove Cigarettes | Leave a comment
