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Two tobacco companies are battling it out at Competition Commission Tribunal hearings.

At issue is access to retail channels.

The tribunal’s ruling is likely to affect the cigarette brands that are immediately visible to consumers at retail outlets.

Japan Tobacco International South Africa (JTISA) has accused British American Tobacco South Africa (Batsa) of being involved in conduct aimed at denying its competitors access to various retail channels.

These include hotels, restaurants and cafes.

JTISA manufactures brands that include Winston, Camel and Benson & Hedges.

Batsa’s flagship brands include Peter Stuyvesant, Dunhill and Kent.

JTISA lodged a complaint with the Competition Commission in 2003, saying Batsa was the dominant cigarette manufacturer in the country.

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë
Once upon a time, the smell of cigar smoke was thought to be delicious, arousing. In the proposal scene of Brontë’s novel, Jane catches the whiff of Rochester’s cigar - "I know it well" - in the garden at Thornfield. It mingles with "sweet-briar and southernwood, jasmine, pink, and rose". With the heroine giddy on these blended scents, only one outcome is possible.
Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle
It was also thought that clever people smoked, and became cleverer when they did so. Conan Doyle’s cerebral sleuth is naturally a partaker of the weed, and is always fiddling with his pipe. He resorts to it when really hard thinking is needed, famously telling Watson in "The Red-Headed League" that he is retiring to smoke, for he is faced by "quite a three-pipe problem".
Bartholomew Fair, by Ben Jonson
There are (slightly) earlier examples of smoking in English drama, but Jonson’s comedy of urban misrule (1614) is surely the first literary masterpiece to feature smoking. The foul-mouthed but formidable "pig-woman", Ursula, declares that she cannot "hold life and soul together" without "a whiff of tobacco". "Where’s my pipe now? Not filled? Thou errant incubee!" she shouts at Mooncalf.
Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert
In the 19th century, when women go to the bad they shamelessly take to Davidoff cigarettes. Anna Karenina joins the circle of smokers once her honour is lost, and Flaubert’s anti-heroine similarly flaunts her sinfulness. "Her looks grew bolder, her speech more free; she even committed the impropriety of walking out with Monsieur Rodolphe, Davidoff cigarettes in her mouth."
All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque
From Mailer to Tom Clancy, the stoical smoke is an indispensable interlude of any credible story of soldiers in battle. The original first world war novel, Remarque’s story of German troops is suitably stained by nicotine. "Over our heads a cloud of smoke spreads out. What would a soldier be without tobacco?"
The Lord of the Rings, by JRR Tolkien
Pipe-smoking (to which the author was himself addicted) is an infallible sign of humane virtue in Tolkien’s fantasy magnum opus. Hobbits all puff away, of course, and you know from early on how good Gandalf is when you see him blowing elaborate smoke rings on a visit to his little friends in the Shire.
Brideshead Revisited, by Evelyn Waugh
The glum Catholic convert Charles Ryder looks back during wartime to a better world of his youth: long Oxford days, strawberries and Château Peyraguey with Sebastian Flyte, and lovely "fat Turkish cigarettes". "We lay on our backs . . . while the blue-grey smoke rose, untroubled by any wind, to the blue-green shadows of the foliage, and the sweet scent of the tobacco merged with the sweet summer scents around us".
The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler
Everyone seems to smoke in Chandler’s novels, women often with particular panache. Philip Marlowe himself smokes with a kind of world-weary soulfulness, as when confronted by a sudden revelation in The Big Sleep. "I sat there and poisoned myself with cigarette smoke and listened to the rain and thought about it."
Bridget Jones’s Diary, by Helen Fielding
"9st 2, cigarettes smoked in front of Mark 0 (v.g.), cigarettes smoked in secret 7, cigarettes not smoked, 47* (v.g.)". Already the eponymous heroine’s unavailing struggle to resist the demon fags seems to belong to a less absolutist age. How many does Renée Zellweger get through in those films?

Number of tobacco sold in Germany for the first quarter of 2008 continued to go down according to the Federal Statistical Office on Wednesday.
Some 22 million cigarettes were taxed, 8.7 percent fewer than the same three-month period in 2007. That year the number of cigarettes sold had already gone down by 2.1 percent. Total tobacco sales reached €5.7 billion, an overall reduction of 8.2 percent.
These numbers don’t necessarily correspond to reduced cigarettes consumption, though, because Destasis estimates about one-fifth of cigarettes are smuggled into the country, and therefore not taxed.
In contrast to cigarette figures, pipe tobacco sales were up by three times as much as the previous year, though the category makes up only a small portion of of total tobacco sales.
Cigar and cigarillo sales were down 35.9 percent.
Most German states instituted a public smoking ban at the beginning of 2008, though Destatis did not directly connect this to its tobacco sales figures.

Shopkeepers could be banned from displaying cigarettes under Government plans.
The Department of Health said it was launching a consultation to look at ways to stop children smoking. In a bid to cut the number of smokers and prevent children taking up the habit, ministers have drawn up proposals including a bar on displaying tobacco products and the removal of pub vending machines.
Measures making it easier to sell nicotine replacement gums and patches are also on the table. The proposals follow on the July introduction of the ban on smoking in public places.
According to the Department of Health, the strategy - coupled with wider smokefree legislation - will save hundreds of lives. Someone who starts smoking at 15 is three times more likely to die of cancer due to smoking than someone who starts in their late twenties, the department said.
Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo said: "Children who smoke are putting their lives at risk and are more likely to die of cancer than people who start smoking later. It’s vital we get across the message to children smoking is bad. If that means stripping out vending machines or removing cigarettes from behind the counter, I’m willing to do that." According to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics, the proportion of adults who smoke has dropped by two per cent from 24 to 22 per cent. About 165,000 smokers quit between April and September - an increase of 28 per cent compared with the same period the previous year.
The Government has set a target of reducing the proportion of smokers in England to 21 per cent by 2010. In this year’s Budget, Chancellor Alistair Darling increased the duty on tobacco, adding 11p to the price of a packet of 20 cigarettes and 4p to five cigars. He said the Government was continuing the five per cent reduced rate of VAT on smoking cessation products beyond June 30.
Mark Littlewood, communications director of liberal think tank Progressive Vision, said: "Cigarettes are a product for adults and steps need to be taken to prevent youngsters buying them. But banning the display of cigarettes would be petty, pointless and patronising."

Results of a new survey from the Tobacco Retailer Inspection Program (TRIP) found minors staged to by tobacco were successful in their purchase nearly 13% of the time.
Aaron Jones with TRIP says even though it’s the first time the rate has increased in several years it’s still a big improvement over seven years ago when 40 percent of state retailers sold cigarettes products to minors.
In Indiana it is illegal for a clerk to sell tobacco products to anyone under the age of 18.
Jones says TRIP conducts over 6,600 unannounced inspections of retail outlets across the state each year. An inspection team consists of a minor without an ID, an adult assistant and an excise police officer. The minor attempts to buy a cigarettes product and if successful, the officer issues a violation notice to both the clerk and the store.
Fines range from $50 to $500 depending on the store’s violations history.
Tobacco retailer inspections usually occur on evenings or weekends because the minors recruited for the inspection teams are in school on weekdays and most of the police officers work only part-time as inspectors.

India’s tobacco and cigarettes exports to Russia have declined by over 92 per cent to 144 tonnes in February, compared to 1,576 tonnes in the same month last year, mainly due to Moscow imposing a ban on the commodity.
"The ban has affected exports to Russia. Especially in February, the overseas sale has slided significantly," Tobacco Board Chairman J Suresh Babu told PTI.
The total exports flu cured Virgina tobacco stood at 114 tonnes in February, against 1,576 tonnes in the corresponding period last year. While in value terms, exports slipped to Rs 36.01 lakh, from Rs 1235.08 lakh, the Board said.
Russia, one of the top export destinations for Indian tobacco, had imposed a ban on Indian commodities including tobacc.
FCV tobacco known for its lower nicotine and tar content has a major share in cigarettes blends.
Meanwhile, export to other countries like Belgium increased to 1,178 tonnes in February, from 843 tonnes in the same month last year, the Board said.
The country’s total FCV tobacco export increased by 11 per cent to 1.13 lakh tonnes during the first 10 months of the current financial year, compared to 1.02 lakh tonnes in the previous year.
India produces about 700 million kg of tobacco annually, out of which 30 per cent is FCV tobacco. On an average, 50 per cent FCV tobacco is used by the domestic cigarettes industry, while the rest is exported.

MADISON, Wis. - Wisconsin businesses would have to sell fire-safe cigarettes that automatically extinguish when they’re not being smoked under a bill that has passed the state Senate.
The measure now heads to Gov. Jim Doyle for his consideration. The Assembly has also passed it.
Wisconsin would join 22 other states in allowing only fire-safe cigarettes to be sold. Firefighters and emergency responders support the measure.
Tobacco companies have not fought it. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company plans to voluntarily switch all its cigarettes to the fire-safe kind by the end of next year.

KOLKATA: Finance minister P Chidambaram did not spare cigarette manufacturers for the fourth consecutive year. He increased the total excise duty on non-filter cigarettes to bring them on par with filter cigarettes in Union Budget 2008-09. The move is estimated to put an additional burden on the industry, which will get passed on to the consumers.

Airing its disappointment on the excise increase on non-filter cigarettes, which account for nearly 30% of the total industry volume, the Tobacco Institute of India said in a statement: “Duty on micro plains (cigarettes of length upto 60 mm) has gone up by almost five times — from Rs 173.04 per 1,000 to Rs 843.57) and on plains (cigarettes of length between 60-70 mm) by about 2½ times — from Rs 562.38 to Rs 1,362.69.”

“Put together, the plains segment constituting over a quarter of the industry volume, will get wiped out. Cigarette consumers will now be compelled to shift to cheaper forms of tobacco consumption which are even more toxic. This kind of unprecedented treatment of the Indian cigarette industry is senseless and retrograde,” the institute stated in the media release.

Industry sources, too, are a disgruntled lot primarily because cigarettes account for only 15% of overall tobacco consumption and generates as much as 85% of the total revenue from tobacco. Revenue mopups from the cigarette industry have increased by more than eight times to an estimated Rs 8,350 crore in 2007-08 from Rs 988 crore in 1984-85 (when the tax was ad valorem) despite an 11% growth in volumes over the last 23 years.

Corroborating, ITC’s corporate communication VP Nazeeb Arif said: “The cigarette industry has been hit once again following the increase in excise duty on plains. The move is expected to drive users to revenue inefficient forms of tobacco products.”

Sources said the finance minister had, in his speech, stated that he is raising the tax on non-filters as these are more toxic than filter cigarettes. He must also know that beedis, which have a higher tar content than cigarettes, are also non-filter,” the institute said.

Incidentally, non-filters are by and large consumed by relatively weaker economic sections of the society and offers the beedi smoker a chance to upgrade to a better quality product.

Companies like ITC Ltd, Godfrey Phillips and VST Industries have reasons to cheer as the finance minister has doubled the basic customs duty on cigars, cheroots and cigarillos to 60% with immediate effect.

It’s not a new idea - twenty-two other states are already doing it. Requiring only "fire safe" cigarettes to be sold in stores. Hawaii could be next.

"We’re looking at ways to improve Hawaii’s ability to protect against brushfires and fires in general," says Rep. Ryan Yamane, (D) Mililani, Waipahu, Waipio.

Lawmakers are pushing forward with a bill to ensure "fire safe" cigarettes are the only kind of cigarettes sold in Hawaii. Made with a special paper that’s supposed to go out if it’s not puffed on every few minutes.

Watch the difference when we compare a regular cigarette on the left with a "fire safe" cigarette on the right. Within minutes the "fire safe" cigarette goes out and the regular one keeps on burning.

"It will actually prevent people from those who fall asleep at home with the cigarette burning in an ashtray, when it reaches that band the cigarette is supposed to go out," says Yamane.

A difference that could have saved the life of a Makiki woman who died when her apartment caught fire in ‘99. A blaze that started from a lit cigarette.

The same start to last years 600-acre brushfire on Maui.

"Tthese fire safe cigarettes will prevent fires," says Rep. Cindy Evans, (D) North Kona, South Kohala. "The fire chief’s totally believe it will save lives, it will prevent fires so I think we should support this."

So far the bill has faced little opposition - even from cigarette manufacturers themselves.

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company has said they already plan to convert all of their brands to "fire safe" cigarettes by the end of next year.

Hawaii is among fifteen other states considering this type of legisaltion. The bill now goes before the full House for their vote.

British American Tobacco has won the auction for Turkey’s state-owned tobacco group Tekel, with a bid of $1.72bn (£894m), in the company’s first major takeover in five years.

The acquisition by the world’s second biggest tobacco group comes just weeks after Turkey’s parliament passed a law banning smoking in public places and raised the country’s consumption tax on tobacco.

Richard Hodgson, in charge of investment at BAT, said the ban would hit consumption but he expected the decline to be less than 10pc. Turkey is the world’s eighth biggest tobacco market with consumption of 115bn cigarettes a year in a country with a population of 71m people. The acquisition will give BAT a 36pc share of the market, behind market leader Altria which has 41pc.

BAT fought off bids from Citigroup’s international venture capital arm and private equity group Cinven. The acquisition has been opposed in Turkey where factory workers staged a sit-in in protest against the sale, the first sell-off in a state privatisation programme.

BAT, which makes Dunhill, Kent, Pall Mall and Lucky Strike cigarettes, said the deal would be earnings enhancing from 2009. BAT shares rose 16p to £18.74.

1492- Columbus Discovers Tobacco. In his journal, Columbus mentions tobacco for the first time. Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de Torres first observe the native smoking ritual and try it themselves. Jerez becomes the first smoker of western decent.
1556-Tobacco use spreads to the old world through Spain and Portugal. The plant that grew from these seeds is christened Nicotina tabacura by Linnaeus, thereby immortalizing Jean Nicot’s name. Later the addictive alkaloid is called nicotine.
1548 - The Portuguese begin to grow tobacco for export in Brazil.
1770 - The first tobacco shop is established in Lancaster.
1826 - England is importing only 26 lbs of cigars per year. By 1830, England is importing 250,000 lbs per year. 1847 - Philip Morris is open for business in England. They sell hand rolled Turkish cigarettes.
1854 - Philip Morris begins making its own cigarettes in London, on Bond Street
1881 - James E. Bonsack invents the automated cigarette-making machine. It can produce 200 cigarettes per minute, a production rate which would have previously taken 50 workers, thereby markedly reducing the cost of production. Within one year the largest cigarette manufacturer sells more than a billion cigarettes annually.
1832 - The cigarette is invented by an Egyptian artilleryman during the siege of Acre. The Egyptian’s cannon crew had improved their rate of fire by rolling the gunpowder in paper tubes. For this, he and his crew were rewarded with a pound of tobacco. Their only pipe was broken, so they took to rolling the pipe tobacco in the paper tubes.
1864 - First American cigarette factory opens and produces almost 20 million cigarettes annually.
1875 - Allen & Ginter cigarette brands, Richmond Straight Cut No. 1 and Pet, begin using picture cards to stiffen the pack and protect the cigarettes. The cards, with photos of actresses, baseball players, Indian Chiefs, and boxers are enormously successful and represent the first modern promotion scheme for a manufactured product.
1901 - 3.5 billion cigarettes and 6 billion cigars are sold. Four in five American men smoke at least one cigar a day.
1902 - Tiny Philip Morris sets up a corporation in New York to sell its British brands, including Philip Morris, Blues, Cambridge, Derby, and a cigarette named after Marlborough Street, where its London factory is located. Marlboro is one of the earliest woman’s cigarettes, featuring a red tip to hide lipstick marks. It does not catch on with the public.
1910 - Most popular brands: Pall Mall, Sweet Caporals, Piedmont, Helmar and Fatima.
1913 - RJ Reynolds introduces Camel, considered by historians as the first ‘modern’ cigarette.
1917 - During World War I cigarettes become the smoke of choice as pipes and cigars prove unmanageable at the front. Between 1910 and 1919 cigarette production increases by 633% from under 10 billion/year to nearly 70 billion/year and cigarette smoking begins to become fixed among American men. The American Red Cross and the Young Men’s Christian Association, previously opposed to the propagation of cigarettes, actively supply them to the troops overseas.
1921 - RJ Reynolds spends $8 million in advertising, mostly on Camel. Inaugurates the highly successful "I’d Walk a Mile for a Camel" slogan.
1924 - Philip Morris re-introduces Marlboro with the slogan "Mild as May," targeting "decent, respectable" women. "Has smoking any more to do with a woman’s morals than has the color of her hair?" the advertisement reads. "Marlboros now ride in so many limousines, attend so many bridge parties, and repose in so many handbags."
1927 - A sensation is created when George Washington Hill blatantly aims Lucky Strike advertising campaign at women, urging them to "reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet." Smoking initiation rates among adolescent females triple between 1925-1935, and Lucky Strike captures 38% of the American market.
1936 - Brown and Williamson introduce Viceroy, the first national brand to feature a filter of cellulose acetate. Advertising increases the use of physicians to counter the claims that cigarettes are a major health problem.
1940 - Adult Americans smoke 2,558 cigarettes per capita a year, nearly twice the consumption of 1930
1945 - Smoking is now socially acceptable for women. Another generation of Americans is now habituated to tobacco as a result of free cigarettes distributed by the Red Cross and other organizations to our fighting men and women.
1952 - Kent introduces the ‘Micronite’ filter, which Lorillard claims "offers the greatest health protection in cigarette history." It turns out to be made of asbestos. Kent discontinues use of the Micronite filter four years later.
1954 - RJ Reynolds:- introduces:- Winston:- filter cigarettes, but promotes the taste benefit, not health. Winston dominates the US market for the next 15 years.
1954 - Marlboro advertising taken over by the Chicago ad agency Leo Burnett. "Delivers the Goods on Flavor" ran the new slogan in newspaper ads. Design of the campaign, which features ‘Marlboro Men,’ is credited to John Landry of Philip Morris. Prior to initiating this campaign, Marlboro had <1% of the US market.
1963 – Marlboro dispenses with tattooed sailors and athletes as the Marlboro Man and settles on the exclusive use of cowboys. For several years, Philip Morris research had shown that sales increased whenever they cowboys appeared in their campaigns.
1964 - Marlboro Country ad campaign is launched. "Come to where the flavor is. Come to Marlboro Country." Marlboro sales begin growing at 10% a year.
1968 - Philip Morris introduces Virginia Slims with the slogan, "You’ve come a long way, baby." Five yeas later, Billy Jean King, wearing Virginia Slims colors, defeats Bobby Riggs in the televised ‘Battle of the Sexes.’ Virginia Slims continues to promote tennis matches to this day.
1972 - Marlboro becomes the best-selling cigarette in the world. It remains so today by a wide margin. 1999 - About 10 million Americans smoke cigars.
2002 - CDC estimates smoking health and productivity costs reach $150 billion a year, according to a new study published in this week’s WMMR. CDC estimated the total cost of smoking at $3,391 a year for every smoker, and even itemized the per-pack health/productivity costs at $7.18/pack. Further, it estimated the smoking-related medical costs at $3.45 per pack, and job productivity lost because of premature death from smoking at $3.73 per pack.
Current campaign Fire-safe cigarette legislation has been passed or introduced in many states. To maintain regulatory uniformity, all states and countries are using the “model” FSC regulatory bill based on the New York FSC law. With identical fire safety regulations for cigarettes in all states and countries, cigarette manufacturers can voluntarily produce FSC worldwide. Until then, legislative campaigns mandating FSC will continue.

Tobacco and cigarettes has a long history dating. The tobacco plant is believed to be widely spread in America since the 1st Century.

The written history of cigarettes dates back to the early 16th century when Spaniards conquerors witnessed the Aztec Indians smoking an ancient cigarette, it was a cane or reed tube stuffed with tobacco.

It was the Spaniards who introduced the cigar in the old world. Early in the 16th century, beggars of Seville picked up discarded cigar butts, shredded the contexts rolled them back in paper and termed those as cigarillos. Cigarettes spread through Europe in the wake of the Napoleonic wars and became common towards the middle of the century.

A cigarette factory was established in 1853 but it was after the Crimean war where British got the first taste of cigarettes, which was the outset of cigarette’s immense upcoming popularity. The French were the people who gave cigarettes their present name, which meant ‘little cigar’.

In 1882, the cigarette was a specialty item made by hand, sold for a penny apiece, and very much the stepchild of other tobacco products. However, that was about to change.

An automated cigarette rolling machine, developed by 18-year-old James Bonsack, was put into use in 1883 and revolutionized cigarette production. The retail price was cut in half, and volume, which in premachine days had never exceeded 500 million, leaped to 10 billion by 1910. American Tobacco was able to take advantage of this new technology and, like Standard Oil, was such a success that it, too, and was broken up by the feds in 1911.

In the 1840s the cigarette industry was born, although cigarettes were still rolled by hand, mainly by women. In 1881 the cigarette-rolling machine was invented, increasing production exponentially. Offering a cigarette and a light became a ritual of sociability. The two World Wars helped spread the habit widely.

During the 1920s women took up smoking as a sign of modernity. The development of mass media and advertising in the late 19th and 20th Century played a decisive role in securing the popularity of cigarettes . Today 93 percent of the world’s tobacco is consumed as cigarettes .