Why Tanning Beds Are the Cigarettes of Our Age

When we first launched Cosmopolitan's Practice Safe Sun (PSS) campaign in 2006, it was in response to some shocking statistics I'd just learned: Melanoma had become the second most frequently reported cancer in women in their 20s. It was only later, though, that I began to hear the stories behind the stats, and they've been heartbreaking: Women in their 20s and 30s having multiple and disfiguring surgeries to remove the cancer and many dying of the disease. I learned this week about a young mother who died of melanoma five months after her twins were born. So often the common denominator among these women is that they loved to be tan--from the sun and often from tanning beds as well.
These stories have kept us highly motivated at Cosmo to make women aware of the dangers of both outdoor and indoor tanning. This week we took Cosmo's PSS initiative to a new level. We hosted a press conference in our offices at which Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Congressman Charlie Dent (R-PA) announced their plans to introduce The Tanning Bed Cancer Control Act, a key piece of bipartisan legislation that would expand federal regulation of tanning beds with the aim of limiting the strength of the UV rays emitted by tanning beds and the time consumers may be exposed to harmful radiation.
If you have any doubts about how dangerous beds are, consider the announcement made in July by the World Health Organization. They described tanning beds as definitely carcinogenic--putting them in the same category as cigarettes, asbestos, and uranium. If you tan indoors before age 30, your skin cancer risk rises by 75 percent (and nearly 70 percent of customers are young women). When we did an undercover report with ABC's 20/20, we found tanning salons routinely misrepresented the risks.
But at the same time that the evidence against tanning has become more clear, we've seen the continuing glorification of the tan in popular culture. Just check out the pervasive reality series, Jersey Shore. The daily routine is "GTL"--gym, tanning, laundry.
As Representative Maloney said when she introduced this new bill, tanning beds are the cigarettes of our age. We owe it to everyone, particularly to young women, to make sure that the risks of tanning are clearly communicated and understood and that tanning beds are regulated as tightly as devices with their risk-profile merit. Please write your congressperson and let him or her know you support this legislation.
And if you use a tanning bed, please stop. Now.

Cigarette Makers Ask to Block Ruling in 4,000 Cases

Altria Group Inc.’s Philip Morris USA unit and other U.S. cigarette makers asked a federal appeals court to block federal trial courts from applying a 2006 Florida decision they claim would deprive them of a fair trial in thousands of death and injury suits in the state.
The companies argue that a series of factual findings endorsed by the Florida Supreme Court in a 2006 decision - including that the companies sold defective products, that they conspired to hide information about the health effects of smoking and that they made false statements about their products - can’t fairly be applied in any of 4,000 cases against them in Florida federal court.
The companies claim that applying the 2006 ruling, which came in the Florida’s “Engle” tobacco class action, ‘would compromise an arbitrary deprivation of the defendants’ federal due process rights,” as a lower judge ruled in August 2008.
The plaintiffs, smokers and their families who are suing the cigarette makers individually, claim the findings are based on ample evidence. They argue that the federal courts are required to apply state law in the cases and can’t review the state supreme court’s decision. A decision in the smokers’ favor would make it easier for smokers to win verdicts in the cases.
In Florida state courts, which instruct jurors on the factual findings endorsed by the state Supreme Court, smokers have won several of the post-Engle cases that have gone to trial. These include a $30 million verdict against Reynolds and an $8 million verdict against Philip Morris. The cases are being appealed.
Florida Smoker
The Engle case was filed in 1994 and named after a Florida smoker named Howard Engle who was the lead plaintiff. After more than a decade of litigation in the Florida courts, the Florida Supreme Court in 2006 rejected a $145 billion punitive damage verdict in the case and ruled that it couldn’t continue as a class action on behalf of smokers statewide who were addicted to nicotine and developed cancer or other smoking-related illnesses.
At the same time, Florida’s high court upheld a series of factual findings made by a Miami jury in the case, and said they would apply in all of the individual suits filed by smokers who had been part of the Engle class. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case.
Specify the Defects
In the appeal today in Atlanta federal court, the companies aren’t challenging findings by the Engle jury, upheld by the Florida Supreme Court, that smoking is addictive and that it can cause illnesses including cancer, emphysema and heart disease.
“The complaints allege that the defendants were negligent and that they sold defective cigarettes,” said Andrew Frey, a lawyer for the cigarette makers. “Our position is that you have to specify the particular respect in which the product was defective, the particular respect in which the defendant was negligent.” Samuel Issacharoff, who argued the smokers’ case, told the judges that the Florida federal courts should follow the state supreme court and permit the findings to be used as they apply in individual cases. “Some of them may be useless,” said Issacharoff. “Some of them may simply streamline the cases.”
The three judges on the panel questioned the lawyers about the extent to which the Engle findings can be used by federal courts trying the cases. Each of the judges suggested the findings may be used to some extent.
Reynolds, Lorillard
“I promise you, you’re not going to get an opinion that says ‘the district court opinion is affirmed for the reasons set out in the opinion below,’” said Circuit Judge Ed Carnes.
The judges didn’t say when they will rule in the case.
In addition to Richmond, Virginia-based Phillip Morris, the biggest U.S. cigarette maker, the companies in the case include No. 2 R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., a unit of Reynolds American Inc. and No. 3 Lorillard Tobacco, a unit of Lorillard Inc.
The 4,000 cases, along with about 4,000 in Florida state courts, were filed after the 2006 ruling. In August, U.S. District Judge Harvey Schlesinger in Jacksonville, Florida, ruled that the factual findings can’t be used in the federal trials and certified the case for immediate appeal.

Lift cigarette prices to $20 a packet to help tackle health funding crisis: Quit

KEVIN Rudd is being urged to increase the price of cigarettes to $20 a packet and raise an extra $2 billion in taxes if he is serious about tackling a health funding crisis in Australia.

The Prime Minister last night outlined the looming threat of an ageing population, warning that the rising cost of health would outstrip the states' ability to raise taxes within two decades.

Quit Victoria executive director Fiona Sharkey told The Australian Online today that lifting the price of cigarettes would save lives.

“It is the single biggest thing we can do to bring smoking down. It cuts consumption and it cuts the number of people who smoke,” she said.

“What the tobacco industry says is the tax is regressive and it hurts poorer people. In fact we find that low socio-economic (people) are more likely to quit.

“As Health Minister Nicola Roxon said, if we don't act on what we know works then we are effectively killing people.”Raising the cost of cigarettes and alcohol is a serious option before the Rudd government. It was one of the main recommendations of the recent National Health Taskforce that also suggested a volumetric tax on alcohol to reflect alcohol content, a push believed to be also backed in Treasury secretary Ken Henry's tax review for the Rudd government.

The Rudd government's big reform options for health also include spending a lot more money on preventative health such as Quit smoking measures to help out the budget in the future.

An increase in the price of cigarettes to $16.50 would raise about $1 billion and an increase to $20 a packet would raise an extra $2 billion a year.

“We haven't had a real price rise here for 10 years and if we had followed the World Health Organisation recommendation we would be at around $16.50 a packet now and we are about $13,” Ms Sharkey said.

“The Taskforce suggested a two phased increase to $16.50 and second one to $20 a pack.

“And the reason they talked about a two-phased increase was to support programs to help low-income people to quit. So that could be subsidy on nicotine replacement therapy. The cost to do that is so minimal.

“It's the single biggest thing you can do. So don't delay.”

ATF stings put 250M illegal cigarettes on streets

Undercover ATF agents in Virginia have funneled more than 250 million cigarettes onto the nation's streets in the past three years through black market sales targeting smugglers, an Associated Press review has found.
Authorities say the flood of government-provided smokes -- a pack and a half for every man, woman and child in New York City, the smugglers' main destination -- leads them to organized crime rings and can even cut off financing for terrorists. The stings by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have yielded about five dozen federal arrests, albeit none on terror charges.
Many of those cigarettes undoubtedly wind up in the mouths of minors, since black market vendors have no reason to turn away teenage purchasers.
Despite that, government auditors and anti-tobacco groups want the ATF to do even more.
"Smuggling reduces prices, so it increases use, especially among kids, who are more price-sensitive" in their purchases, said Eric Lindblom, director of policy research for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
The Department of Justice, the ATF's parent agency, estimates that federal, state and local governments lose out on $5 billion annually in tax revenue from cigarettes sold through illegitimate channels.
In the biggest and most recent prosecution, federal authorities charged 14 people in November with paying more than $8 million in cash, supplemented by guns and drugs, for 77 million cigarettes over the course of a year. Two are accused of paying an undercover agent posing as a hitman to kill a couple over missing cigarettes.
In September, the Justice Department's inspector general found that tobacco diversion cases account for just 1 percent of ATF's caseload and 2 percent of its budget. In large swaths of the country, ATF has not conducted any investigations of cigarette smuggling for at least five years, the audit determined.
A notable exception, the AP found, was the Eastern District of Virginia, which includes Richmond, northern Virginia and the Interstate 95 corridor. The area is a hotbed for the crime because while 42 states and the District of Columbia have collectively passed more than 80 tax hikes on cigarettes since 2002, Virginia and North Carolina, the heart of tobacco country, still tax tobacco at only pennies per pack.
"The profit margin on this is ridiculous," said Ashan Benedict, resident agent in charge of the bureau's office in Falls Church, Va. "It's not that hard to find a customer who wants to save $40 a carton."
All told, the AP found undercover sales of more than 250 million cigarettes in the last few years. The AP review did not include state charges -- authorities said that the vast majority of cases brought in state courts involve relatively small quantities of cigarettes.
While 250 million is a large number, it pales to the 469 million cigarettes produced every day by Philip Morris USA at its two plants in Virginia and North Carolina last year.
The Virginia agents say they focus on cigarette smuggling in large part because the investigations often turn up other crimes. The ATF's Richmond office went so far as to set up its own store in King George, Va., called KG Wholesale, which advertised in Arabic-language newspapers and elsewhere. The store was set up with audio and video surveillance to record the transactions, all of which were illegal undercover sales.
By the time ATF pulled the plug on KG Wholesale in 2008, 27 people had been arrested and roughly 60 million contraband cigarettes had been sold.
The planners of the storefront sting were aware that cigarette smuggling has been a source of terrorist funding in the past -- in 2002 a federal jury in North Carolina convicted two Lebanese citizens of diverting millions of dollars in cigarette smuggling proceeds to the radical Islamic group Hezbollah -- and were anxious to disrupt other similar money trails.
Agent Ken Mosley is confident that investigations like the KG case disrupt terror financing, but he acknowledged evidence was insufficient to bring terrorism charges.
"There is no doubt in my mind that we have arrested people involved in terrorism," Mosley said.
The focus on Arabic-speaking smugglers in the KG Wholesale investigation -- the store did not run ads in other foreign-language papers -- smacks of profiling, said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group.
"Obviously it would be a concern if they targeted only Muslims and/or Arab-Americans," Hooper said.
While there have been terrorists who have made money through cigarette smuggling, it's far more common to find smugglers linked to organized crime, said John W. Colledge III, a Nevada-based consultant who once ran large-scale cigarette smuggling investigations for the U.S. Customs Service.
"Unfortunately, terrorism has become a sort of a buzzword," he said. "That's what gets you funding."
Smuggled cigarettes end up in legitimate retail establishments as well as on street corners, where they're often sold for $5 a pack -- several dollars below retail. The cheap cigarettes are especially alluring to minors, experts say, since black market sellers are less likely to card.
A tractor-trailer filled with untaxed or low-tax cigarettes can hold a potential profit of $1 million if they're trucked to New York City, where each pack faces $2.75 in state taxes plus a $1.50 levy from the city itself. A single vanload can turn a $115,000 profit.
By their nature, the undercover investigations require agents to act convincingly as criminals. Benedict and Fairfax County Police Lt. David Smith had the Korean smugglers convinced they were Italian mobsters. In the KG case, Mosley said agents would get angry or cagey if their customers asked where all the cigarettes were coming from.
"We'd tell them, 'It's none of your business,'" Mosley said.
In fact, the cigarettes come from the same places the legitimate ones do: Big Tobacco. Under an ATF program, tobacco corporations supply cigarettes for stings and are repaid with the proceeds from the sales.

Court Reverses Ohio Victory Over Cigarette Ad

An Ohio appeals court has reversed a decision that a cigarette company's advertisement in Rolling Stone magazine violated a tobacco industry settlement.
Ohio and several other states brought lawsuits over an R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. ad in Rolling Stone that ran alongside a November 2007 feature story illustrated with drawings.
Ohio officials and the lower court said the ad's placement amounted to using cartoons to sell cigarettes, violating a promise in the industry's 1998 settlement with multiple states.
The appeals court in Columbus ruled Thursday that Reynolds had no say in the content that Rolling Stone chose to run next to the ad.
The ruling overturns a 2008 decision in the state's favor. Ohio attorney general's office spokeswoman Kim Kowalski says the office has not yet decided whether to appeal.

The Tobacco Freedom Index

I want to first start off by saying that I am not a smoker, I do not like cigarette smoking whatsoever and in fact am allergic to it. However I still believe that smoking has become somewhat of a gauge when it comes to liberties enjoyed by the individual and how they have slowly diminished in this "land of the free."
Can one readily admit that smoking is the issue here? Are politicians and corporations really that worried about other people’s health as much as they are worried about votes and profits? It does not take a rocket scientist to figure this one out. Over the years cigarette smoking has been progressively pushed out of social norms and ostracized into a corner of society which most now frown upon.
In the early 19th and 20th centuries in America, smoking was quite popular and of course this was in fact prior to most of the medical findings in relation to diseases caused by this activity. However there was no legislation against engaging in cigarette smoking in any public area as such there should not be one in what is supposedly a free society. Unfortunately, the moral crusaders of this nation succeeded in the 1920s with Prohibition.
Unbelievably enough in what has been the one nation and society that has come the closest to libertarian ideals throughout history and in the world, the consumption of alcohol was successfully prohibited through legislation. Clearly the consequences are now common knowledge; the emergence of speakeasies, moonshine, bootlegging, rum-runners and all sorts of organized crime and black markets that arose from the passing of Prohibition. Incidentally perhaps the one interesting enough fact to come out of this was the popularity of the mixed drink. The reason alcohol started to be mixed more frequently with other beverages such as juices was to mask the taste of the bootlegged liquor since it was often so strong or tasted so bad that by itself most patrons could not pour back even one glass of it. Even in the face of such statism, individuals are always innovating and adapting.
Prohibition eventually became a social engineering disaster and was lifted in 1933. During prohibition, smoking was effectively banned in 15 states during its zenith, but by the close of the 1920s most states had repealed their bans on the sale of cigarettes.
I digress from my main point though. Throughout history, smoking has been banned by despotic and totalitarian regimes, so why is it that in America smoking bans have been passed in so many places? It seems that the more totalitarian a regime becomes the more bans on smoking and other activities deemed dangerous to our own good are enacted, providing a gauge as to just how free one is to choose.
One must also remember that if a country offers its populace free healthcare, it is in the best interest of that country’s Government to eliminate the consumption of any products that may potentially be hazardous to the health of the individual for their own good. In reality it is all just propaganda because underneath its surface is the need to cut the costs being incurred by the Government when offering such social welfare services.
If you are still thinking that I am arguing for smoking, I am not. It’s about freedom of choice. How is freedom of choice a radical idea in a free society? Why does a business owner have to abide by a piece of legislation passed by his representative banning indoor smoking in any restaurant or bar thus cutting his profits due to a loss of clientele? It is not up to a man in a suit 1,000 miles away to decide such issues. It is not up to men in suits who believe they know what is moral or immoral to legislate moral behavior. Moral behavior is something that is nourished and developed at home, the community, the church, synagogue or mosque, wherever such learning needs to naturally take place.
It is not up to an elected official to choose which portion of society gets what sort of privilege. If an individual business owner wants to offer his services to cigarette smoking patrons, then so be it. If he does not, then so be it. It is after all his business and his property so it is his decision. In this manner if a smoker wishes to go to a restaurant or bar to smoke and eat in peace without being discriminated against, he may choose to go to an establishment that allows this. This choice is consequently eliminated from both the business owner and the individual when moral behaviors are legislated. People are forced to conform to a set of rules which they may accept at first but will eventually rebel against as was the case with Prohibition.
As higher and higher taxes are levied on tobacco, smokers are turning to homemade cigarettes which are far more dangerous due to it not being observed by specialists or tested for certain chemicals all of which tend to occur in a factory environment where goods are being produced for later consumption, much like in the 1920s and 1930s when individuals turned to moonshine. In a far out scenario which is not so far out there if one thinks about it, perhaps if cigarette smoking is made illegal it will become much like marijuana. It does not prevent individuals from smoking it but they do it through more dangerous means by engaging in black market exchanges where there is no oversight in the production of these goods to ensure the safety and health of the user. A new crime syndicate may arise from it and a new "war on cigarettes" may become the next "war on drugs."
Hitler banned smoking in Germany during his Reich; he said in 1942 "I am convinced that if I had been a smoker, I never would have been able to bear the cares and anxieties which have been burdens to me for so long. Perhaps the German people owe its salvation to that fact."
This is simply a pro-liberty argument. May I as an individual with certain unalienable rights be allowed to make my own decisions as to how I want to engage in my daily activities? Or should I be told how to carry on and be told that perhaps this is for the best and for my own safety and health? Thanks for caring, but I would rather be allowed to choose. After all isn’t the government instituted among men, deriving their powers from the consent of those governed? That is not me though; I’m just quoting a document that seems to be forgotten these days here in America.

Govt encourages people to Finnish smoking

Finland has extended its anti-smoking laws to include a ban on cigarette displays in shops.
The government says it is attempting to ban smoking in the country altogether.
The Finnish government's latest policy means people wanting to buy cigarettes will have to ask for them from under the counter.
It has announced a ban on smoking in cars carrying passengers under 18 years of age.
Tobacco vending machines are also being phased out over the next three years.
Finland hopes its initiatives will help to eliminate smoking entirely within the next 30 years.
Tobacco giant Philip Morris is investigating its legal options.

Bloomberg added to discrimination-conspiracy lawsuit

A year after filing a discrimination lawsuit against Suffolk County and its officials, the Unkechaug Indian Nation has expanded its action to include New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other leaders in both their official and individual capacities, and has added conspiracy allegations to the mix.
The original civil lawsuit was filed in December 2008 by the nation and Chief Harry Wallace in his capacity as chief and as an individual, and named Suffolk County, Suffolk County Police Department, Police Commissioner Richard Dormer, County Executive Steve Levy, County District Attorney Thomas J. Spoda, and “John and Jane Doe 1-100” as defendants.
The lawsuit alleges First, Fourth and 14th Amendment violations of tribal members’ freedom of speech, religion and assembly; their freedom against unreasonable searches and seizures; and their right of equal protection or due process.
It was filed in response to a blockade in December 2008 of the nation’s Poospatuck Reservation by armed members of the Suffolk County Police Department who stopped cars entering and exiting the reservation and allegedly harassed and threatened tribal members.
The blockade was part of the longstanding tobacco war in which the state has attempted to force Indians on reservations to collect taxes on cigarette sales to non-Indian customers. The nations refuse to do so based on their status as sovereign.
A few months before the blockade, the City of New York jumped into the battle when Bloomberg filed a federal lawsuit accusing eight Unkechaug reservation smoke shops of breaking state and federal laws by selling cigarettes in bulk to bootleggers who resell them in the city. He claimed that “unpaid taxes” from “illegal cigarette sales on Indian reservations across the entire state total over $1 billion a year.” The case is pending.
The nation’s discrimination lawsuit was amended in December 2009 and now includes tribal council member Thomasina Mack as a plaintiff, and names as additional defendants New York City itself, several city attorneys in their official and individual capacitates, and Bloomberg as mayor and as an individual.
“We included people who were involved in a concerted effort to discriminate solely against our tribe and have the police department engaged in a blockade. The City of New York encouraged the blockade, they encouraged and solicited support from Suffolk County directly, and while both reservations on Long Island are engaged in the sale of unstamped cigarettes, which we contend is lawful, they only brought a lawsuit against our tribe,” said Wallace, who is an attorney. The other Long Island reservation is owned by the Shinnecock Indian Nation.
The lawsuit says the police blockade prevented tribal members from participating in religious services, events and political meetings. Specifically, the lawsuit says Wallace and Mack were “deprived” of conducting a previously scheduled tribal meeting and business with members and “did not leave the reservation as planned due to fear of police force against them and their families.”
“Our basis for that is city attorneys attended a meeting when Suffolk County legislators were determining whether or not they wanted to commence a legal action against the Unkechaug and the New York attorneys made a presentation that they should. Newspaper articles attest to that, plus we have a tape where all these individual attorneys were present at the meeting,” said James Simermeyer, the nation’s attorney.Naming the officials as individuals covers all bases, he said.
“It creates a situation where the city has to say the individuals did it (the blockade) with the authority of the city or they acted outside the authority so it gives us a clear picture of whether this was an official act or not.”
If the discrimination allegation is upheld, the end result will be a determination of whether it was an official or individual act of discrimination.
Suffolk County officials filed to have the case dismissed, claiming the nation does not have standing to file a discrimination lawsuit.
“The county is trying to say it’s only individuals who can bring a discrimination lawsuit because it affects individual rights. We’re saying that’s not true. We’re arguing that the tribe can bring a discrimination action in its representative capacity as the people who provide for and protect tribal members,” Simermeyer said.
“So, if worst comes to worst and they (the court) says the tribe can’t file a discrimination lawsuit, then they’ll just have 350 people signing up and saying they were violated.”
The city defendants have asked for an extension to respond to the amended case, which is pending before federal District Court Judge Thomas Platt.
Meanwhile, in another tobacco-related case, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals will hear the nation’s appeal of a ruling by federal Judge Carol Bagley Amon that state cigarette tax laws apply to Indian reservations.
Amon’s ruling runs up against a state Supreme Court injunction against enforcing the state’s cigarette tax laws until a viable tax exempt coupon system for tribal members is established or until the issue is resolved in the state’s highest court.
“Our appeal is that she should have kept the status quo until the court makes its determination. She basically said the state doesn’t know what they’re doing with their own laws, which is kind of unusual for a federal judge to do. The federal government and federal courts aren’t to determine state laws concerning their taxes and citizens,” Simermeyer said.Suffolk County is “vigorously” defending the lawsuit, County Attorney Christine Malafi said.
“At no time did Suffolk County act in any way or with any intent or effect of discriminating against anybody on the reservation. The county only seeks to prevent the violation of laws that could harm the public.”
Asked what those laws were, Malafi said, “I believe it was some traffic laws and then the only other thing the police department does is there is a law prohibiting the transport of unstamped, untaxed cigarettes in bulk. I think it’s 20 cartons. I think there’s a law that you can’t have more than that.”
Malafi said police arrested people for transporting unstamped, untaxed cigarettes, but she did not know if any were Unkechaug reservation residents. She could not say whether the prohibition against transporting unstamped, untaxed cigarettes applies to Indians, who are exempt from taxes on cigarettes purchased on sovereign Indian land.
“I can’t answer. There’s a lawsuit pending with respect to that issue.”

Push for cigarette-like warnings on mobiles

A move by legislators in the US state of Maine to require brain-cancer warnings on mobile phones is expected to trigger a worldwide response, the Australian industry has said.
A Democrat state representative, Andrea Boland, wants new mobile phones to carry health warnings like those on cigarettes and is pushing ahead with the legislation despite a lack of scientific consensus.
The Australian industry expects a wave of concern when the legislation is debated this month.
Ms Boland said she understood that radiation from mobile phones increased the risk of brain cancer, especially for those under 18, and her opinion was reinforced by a 2006 study by the Swedish National Institute for Working Life showing a correlation between brain tumours and heavy mobile phone use.
"The main thing is that the warning labels get on there, and when people go to purchase something they have a heads-up that they need to really think about it," Ms Boland said.
"This is a big important industry, and it's a small modification to assure people that they should handle them properly."
Randal Markey, the manager of communications for the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association, said it was understandable that people would have concerns about mobile phones because of their experience with health controversies such as tobacco and asbestos.
"We do not expect everyone to accept our assurances about mobile phone safety," he said.
"Our industry relies on the expert opinion of international health agencies for an overall assessment of health and safety issues.
"There is no established evidence that radio frequency exposure within internationally accepted safety limits causes adverse health effects."
The World Health Organisation's Interphone study, a decade-long investigation into the health implications of mobile phone use, remains unpublished.
In 2005 WHO said studies had found "no convincing evidence of an increased cancer risk" from mobile phones or their towers.
Mr Markey said if people were concerned, there were practical steps that could reduce exposure including using a hands-free kit or loudspeaker, text messages and limiting the length or number of calls.
In Australia there are more than 22 million mobile phones.
In the 11 months until November, more than 8.35 million handsets were brought into Australia - down slightly on 2007's record 9.3 million - and although some were slated for distribution around the Pacific, most were for sale here.

Excise taxes on cigarettes, fuels and electricity up as of Jan. 1

Excise taxes on cigarettes, unleaded gas, diesel and electricity used for commercial purposes will rise as of January 1, 2010; excise figures will be higher also as a result of their being calculated for a euro/leu exchange rate by some 14 percent higher in comparison with 2009.
Starting January 1, the excise tax for cigarettes will be of 74 euros per 1,000 cigarettes, up from 64 euros for 1,000 cigarettes at the end of 2009. The government decided to apply the rise in the tobacco excise tax starting January 1, 2010 , providing a specific excise of 48.5 euros and an ad valorem tax of 22 percent. “The new structure was discussed with the business circles and cigarette manufacturers. It provides a specific excise of 48.5 euros and an ad valorem tax of 22 percent, resulting in a total excise of 74 euros per 1,000 cigarettes,” explained Secretary of State with the Public Finance Ministry Gratie la Iordache.
In 2009, excise taxes on cigarettes were twice increased ahead of the initial schedule, in April and September by seven euros each time from 50 euros per 1,000 cigarettes to 64 euros per 1,000 cigarettes. Excise taxes in 2010 will be calculated for an exchange rate of 4.2688 lei per euro, announced on October 1, 2009 by the National Bank of Romania, up 14 percent from the 3.7364 lei/euro a year ago used to calculate excise taxes in 2009.
According to the Tax Code, the excise tax on unleaded gas will be raised from 436 euros to 452 euros/ton, that for diesel will rise from 336 euros to 347 euros per ton and the excise tax on electricity used for commercial purposes will go up from 0.42 euros to 0.5 euros/MWh.