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A global regime for tobacco control could start in Vietnam by the first quarter of 2004, bringing with it many restrictions on the promotion and sale of cigarettes.
The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) has been approved by the government and the presidential nod is expected early in 2004, according to Ly Ngoc Kinh, head of the Treatment Department of the Ministry of Health.
The FCTC seeks to limit tobacco use through controls on promotion, advertising, tax and price.
Cigarette packs would be required to have at least 30 to 50 per cent of their surface covered by warnings on health damages, Kinh said.
“The FCTC also stipulates a complete ban on advertisement and promotion of cigarettes five years after coming into effect,” he said.
The Ministries of Trade, Planning and Investment, Industry, Finance, Agriculture and Rural Development, and Foreign Affairs were all asked for suggestions but they all expressed support for the FCTC regulations.

Vice minister for Trade, Le Danh Vinh, said: “In Vietnam, the number of cigarette smokers is relatively high. Fifty per cent of men and 3.4 per cent of women smoke,” he said.
“The damage caused by cigarettes to Vietnamese smokers is cause for alarm.”
Bold measures are needed to reduce the rate of smokers to 20 per cent by 2010 as targeted by the government, he said.
Nguyen Tuan Lam, programme assistant of the World Health Organisation (WHO), said: “Vietnam has completely prohibited advertising of cigarettes through various laws but regulations relating to promotion and warnings printed on the cover need to be strengthened.”
Deputy minister Vinh said: “Policies regarding packaging and trademarks will be amended soon. A minimum of 30 per cent of cigarette pack surfaces will then be covered by warnings on the hazards of smoking.
“The amended trade law will include a complete prohibition on cigarette promotion,” he said, adding that tobacco promotions are currently only prohibited from targeting children below 16 and from holding contests.
“Furthermore, other policies like prohibition on smoking in offices and public places like cinemas and railway stations are proposed,” he said.
Lam said the value-added tax of 10 per cent on cigarettes, to kick in early 2004, could reduce their consumption.
“However, the total taxes levied on cigarettes is just 45 per cent, lower than that in developed countries,” he said.
According to the Ministry of Trade, average consumption in Vietnam is around 600 cigarettes per person per year. WHO estimates around eight million people, or 10 per cent of the country’s population, will die early due to serious smoking-related ailments.

Vietnam has joined more than a dozen of countries in slapping a temporary ban on U.S. beef imports after it emerged the United States had its first confirmed case of mad cow disease, an official said Friday.
Despite having imported only one ton of U.S. beef this year, Vietnam imposed the ban Thursday until the United States can prove its beef is safe to eat again, the official of the Veterinary Department, which licenses meat imports, said on condition of anonymity.
The decision comes after a British lab confirmed Thursday that U.S. initial tests of a Holstein cow in Washington state had the brain-wasting disease known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE.

Vietnam imports only a marginal amount of beef each year – mostly from Australia and New Zealand – to serve high-end hotels and restaurants, he said.
U.S. beef is sold at select supermarkets and restaurants, but it is priced well beyond the reach of most Vietnamese.
Other places temporarily banning U.S. beef include China, Thailand, Malaysia, Russia, South Africa, Jamaica, Chile, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Mexico.

“Flit is the tragedy of all collectivism that the most unscrupulous and most ruthless member is most likely to rise to the position of leadership, certainly when leadership means power,” reflected Dr. J.B. Matthews, one-time director of research for congressional counter-subversion committees, in his memoir Odyssey of a Fellow Traveler. “The organization of vast political power and its successful retention in a single hand is more likely than not to put a premium upon qualities which we commonly associate with the ‘big shots’ of gangsterism.”
Harvard Professor Pitirim Sorokin made much the same observation in a survey of rulers throughout history, noting that “the rulers of the states are the most criminal group in a respective population.” And Mark Twain was on the same wavelength when he described Congress as our “distinctly native American criminal class.”
In light of the foregoing wisdom, it’s not surprising to learn that gangster tactics were used by the Republican Party leadership to pass the landmark Medicare prescription drug legislation – a major new entitlement that will cost $400 billion over the first 10 years, and possibly much more if the new law is amended in the meantime. Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas) has described this legislation as “the single largest expansion of the federal welfare state since the Great Society programs of the 1960s.” The administration of George W. Bush desperately wanted the new entitlement program as a way of securing the senior citizen vote in 2004, even though it would leave future generations burdened with unpayable debt.
To give the president time to pressure conservative holdouts, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IIl.) prolonged the roll-call vote for an unprecedented three hours. “Members were promised pork barrel projects,” reports Stephen Moore of the American Conservative Union. “They were threatened with primary challengers.” With time running out, “the White House and the Whip team tried one more desperation tactic”: Reps. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) and Butch Otter (R-Idaho) “were told that if they didn’t change their votes, the president would immediately instruct the House leadership to pass the Democratic version of the bill – which was infinitely worse than even this bill.” Both Franks and Otter relented.
But Rep. Nick Smith of Michigan, who plans to retire next year, refused to succumb to presidential intimidation. So the Republican Party leadership took a page from a playbook favored by a different kind of criminal syndicate: The Mob.
Newest “Entitlement”: President Bush signs the landmark Medicare prescription drug bill, while members of Congress watch. To learn how every lawmaker voted, see House Vote #20 and Senate Vote #20 in the “Conservative Index” (pages 22-31).
Smith’s son Brad “is one of five Republicans seeking to replace him,” reported columnist Robert Novak. “On the House floor, Nick Smith was told business interests would give his son $100,000 in return for his father’s vote. When he still declined, fellow Republican House members told him they would make sure Brad Smith never came to Congress.”
Commentator Timothy Noah points out that USC Title 18 sec. 201 defines “bribery” as, among other things, “promis[ing] any public official or any person who has been selected to be a public official to give anything of value to any other person or entity, with intent to influence any official act….” Accordingly, Smith – in addition to being the victim of political blackmail – “was an eyewitness to a federal crime,” concludes Noah. That crime, though it is a serious one, is trivial compared to the grotesque act of larceny that was the Medicare expansion itself.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson and Food and Drug Administration chief Mark McClellan held a joint news conference Tuesday to announce the ban of the herbal weight-loss supplement ephedra.
Ephedra is also known as Ephedrine or Ma huang
Properties and uses: Used to prevent attacks of bronchial asthma and acts to relieve nasal congestion; common ingredient in weight- loss products; shown to promote fat-loss and muscle gain in controlled tests
Side effects: Raised blood pressure, can cause irregularities in heart rate, insomnia, tremors and headaches, seizures, heart attacks, strokes and death