Evo & Grace: The WanderLusts

The Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA) welcomes new taxes on electronic cigarettes and heated tobacco products (HTPs) signed into law by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on 22 January 2020 to protect the health of all Filipinos especially the youth and the poor. “E-cigarettes and heated tobacco products are harmful, promote youth addiction, and reduce the success of smokers wanting to quit their addiction. New taxes on these products are a win for the health of all Filipinos, particularly the youth, but while the new tax rates are certainly higher than rates approved by the previous Congress, they should be raised further to at least the same level as traditional cigarettes,” said Dr. Ulysses Dorotheo, Executive Director of SEATCA. The 2018 National Nutrition Survey already shows that 20 percent of e-cigarette users in the Philippines are aged 10 to 19 years old. This proportion of youth e-cigarette smokers is 3 times higher than the proportion of youth c...

Big Tobacco apparently has no intention to reduce sales of cigarettes while aggressively promoting supposedly smoke-free alternative products. According to a new report Big Tobacco’s smoke-free deception: Tobacco trademarks in ASEAN countries uncover the truth, tobacco companies registered more intellectual property (IP) for cigarette brands than for brands of Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS) or e-cigarettes and Heated Tobacco Products (HTP). The report was launched today by the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (SEATCA). These past four years in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, Philip Morris International (PMI), Japan Tobacco International (JTI) and British American Tobacco (BAT) filed 533 IP registrations for cigarette brands, compared to only 169 for HTP and ENDS; out of these, 357 cigarette brand registrations have been approved compared to 112 for HTP and ENDS. PMI filed the most trademark applications for both existing and new cigare...