The cigarettes had been hidden in a container of garden furniture which had originated in Indonesia before being dispatched to a Totnes business.

The business owner found the cigarettes after opening the container and immediately called the police.

Police seized the cigarettes and held them at Totnes Police Station until they could be collected by Revenue and Customs officers. Detective Constable Jo Aldridge said that two detectives, a police constable and a dog handler were sent to the business at Baltic Wharf, Totnes, where they were shown the packets of cigarettes hidden among the furniture.

“We don’t have the full picture at the moment,” she added. “There are more inquiries to be made and they will be conducted by Revenue and Customs.”

Police refused to name the business but it is thought to have been operating from Totnes only for a number of weeks. At the moment, no one knows how the cigarettes got into the container sent to Totnes — although it is possible that bungling smugglers may have picked the wrong container to hide them in.

The Marlborough Lights cigarettes were stored in 12 boxes and each box contained 62 packets of 200 cigarettes.

Police praised the businessman for calling the police when he immediately became suspicious.

The containers had arrived by ship before being transported by lorry to the wharfside site at Totnes.

Vice President Richard Johnson said commissioners voted 3-2 to put it to a vote instead of passing a ban themselves, as smoking opponents urged. No date has been set, he said, though it could happen during the general election in November.

Public health advocates at the Lake Region Tobacco Free Coalition commissioned a survey and, on the basis of overwhelming support, asked the commission to pass a ban that would exceed the state ban.

The state ban exempts places such as bars, including enclosed bars in restaurants and truck stops.

The coalition’s survey, conducted by Keating Research, found 67 percent of Devils Lake area adults wanted a ban that would end those exemptions and 66 percent wanted the commission to pass the ban. Because the survey was conducted by ZIP code, 35 percent of those surveyed did not live in city limits.

Johnson said owners of bars and other businesses affected asked the commission to let the businesses decide instead of passing a law. He noted that Proz End of the Line bar went smoke-free Monday.

He said he and commissioners Rick Morse and Craig Stromme formed a majority that decided to put the issue to a vote. Mayor Fred Bott and commissioner Tim Heisler wanted the commission to pass the ban, Johnson said.

A similar situation in Grand Forks led to a different result with a slim majority of the City Council voting to pass the ban instead of holding a vote. The Grand Forks Tobacco Free Coalition had also commissioned a survey, which found 75 percent of adults in the city wanted to ban smoking in bars and 83 percent wanted a ban in truck stops.

The new city ban goes into effect Aug. 1.

Bar owners have been gathering signatures to put the issue to a vote, possibly in November.

The next step in Devils Lake is an ordinance to be drafted by City Attorney Tom Traynor, Johnson said.

In May 2009, The China’s Ministry of Health passed a ban on smoking in the medical institutions and aimed to make all health institutions to be smoke free by the year 2010. Though this has encouraged violation from the medical staff, but the Ministry is all set to take necessary actions.

Li Xinhua, in charge of tobacco-control publicity and education with the ministry of health said, “About 60 percent of medical workers and professors are smokers. Some of them even smoke boldly in hospitals or schools”.

The country is trying hard to bring out positive results from the stop-smoking campaign, which has now become a top priority. It is urging the doctors and medical staff to behave well in their profession in order to set a good example for the general public. The medical staff should oblige to the dangers of smoking, one of them is cancer.

The farmers are also being convinced to drop plantation of tobacco and direct themselves to healthy production areas.

However, the retail prices of cigarettes at supermarkets, gas stations and mom-and-pop markets have risen more than $2 and in some cases $3.

A sign in front of the cigarette display at Number 1 Mart in Tamuning last week showed a “temporary” price increase for premium cigarettes to $6.85, from the $3.65 to $3.85 they once cost.

And at Shine Market in Ordot, premium cigarettes that were once $3.65 and regular cigarettes that were $2.46 were, as of Thursday, $6.45 and $4.65, respectively.

The East Hagåtña Mobil station was selling Camel at $6.89 — a jump from $3.85 just weeks earlier.

It’s raised questions by some residents over whether the tax is being applied properly and what constitutes the additional price increase.

“A lot of people are mad about that,” said Mangilao resident Mary Bamba, as she smoked a cigarette outside the Sunshine Plaza in Ordot. “It’s ridiculous. That is too much.”

But Shine Market manager Kyong Duke said the prices of cigarettes have gone up more than $2 because of wholesalers increasing their prices, too.

“What we buy from the wholesalers, the wholesalers, they raise up,” she said. “We won’t make any profit.”

According to John T. Calvo, president and general manager of Mid-Pac Distributors, which distributes the Phillip Morris brand, his wholesale company did increase prices because of a factory price increase, freight expense increase, and minimum wage increase for labor. His company held off on increasing the wholesale price in January when the factory price increase went into effect because it knew the tobacco tax was pending, he said.

“All the other costs we held off because we knew the tax was coming, and meanwhile we had a lot of small price increases,” he said. “We did have a factory price increase effective January from our supplier.”

Yet there’s more that factors into the equation than just the increase in the tax and wholesale prices.

Calvo said the tobacco tax further compels retailers to increase prices thanks to the 4 percent gross receipts tax they have to pay on the higher price.”I suspect that’s why they’re increasing a little bit more than just the tax increase,” Calvo said. “So the government is not only going to make additional revenue from a tax increase but they’ll also make additional revenue on the 4 percent on the gross receipt tax.”

“When we buy, we have to tax,” Duke agreed.

She said the additional price increase isn’t so much of a compensatory measure to make up for lost customers due to the tax increase, as it is more of a method to keep up with increases in costs that retailers have to pay.

As a manager at a mom-and-pop store that sells food, beverages and miscellaneous personal items, cigarette sales are not where she makes a bulk of her profit, Duke said.

Plus, smokers don’t need to worry just yet if the new prices have startled them, according to Calvo.

He said this is just an adjustment period for the retailers, before they settle on a price that suits them, as well as compete with other retailers, and the military prices on the bases.

Recalling a tobacco tax increase when there was a similar significant hike in retail prices, he said prices fell to more reasonable levels after about 30 days.

“I think they’re still going through the adjustment period because they have to pay gross receipts tax. So they don’t want to lose money, they want to probably set a comfortable price first and make sure they’re collecting profit. They would have to maintain the margins,” he said.

Guam Chamber of Commerce President David Leddy said not all retailers may be implementing such a stark increase; however, “it’s not really beyond the scope of the law” for them to do so.

In fact, a significant tax increase tends to result in the prices that are angering customers today.

“They’re probably dealing with a lot of internal costs as well,” Leddy said, referring to the retailers.

“We always try to encourage, and ease into some of these increases as opposed to a large spike increase,” Leddy said, but “this is usually what happens.”

And legally, retailers can do that.

“That’s capitalism,” Calvo said. “Guam is very competitive. You’ve got supermarkets, you’ve got mom-and-pop stores, you’ve got the chain gas stations.”

“They’re all watching what everybody’s doing, I’m sure,” he said, “and that’s what we’re doing, is seeing who blinks.”

Edwina Hart, the country’s health minister, claimed that the measures “strike the right balance” between protecting children from the serious risks of smoking and ensuring the regulations are workable and cost-effective.

They include a ban on the display of tobacco products in shops; an end to the sale of tobacco products via vending machines; and a limit on the size of price lists for tobacco products in stores.

But specialist tobacconists will still be able to display products inside their shops as long as they are not visible from outside.

It is hoped that the regulations will protect children from tobacco advertising, while still allowing shopkeepers to trade efficiently.

They will now be the subject of a three-month consultation - ending on July 6th 2010 - with a view to introducing the ban on tobacco vending machines and restrictions on displays in small stores in October 2011, followed by similar restrictions for larger businesses in October 2013.

Tony Jewell, chief medical officer for Wales, commented: “Two-thirds of adults who have ever smoked say that they started before they were 18 and the majority of under-age smokers get their cigarettes from self-service tobacco vending machines.

“Removing tobacco products from public display and banning cigarette vending machines will reinforce the vitally important public health message that smoking is harmful and addictive and reduce the opportunity for young people to access these products.”

Conservative shadow health minister Andrew RT Davies AM said: “It is essential that the minister ensures that these proposals are part of a range of effective measures aimed at reducing the numbers of smokers in Wales.

“We must encourage children and young people to take advantage of the local community smoking cessation services that can assist them as they try to stop smoking.”

Jean King, Cancer Research UK’s director of tobacco control, said: “We welcome the announcement that the Welsh Assembly aims to ban cigarette vending machines and remove point of sale tobacco displays.

“Putting tobacco out of sight, out of reach and hopefully out of minds will help reduce the number of young people taking up a lethal addiction. It is vital that young people are protected from tobacco marketing if the number of lives blighted by smoking is to be reduced.”

University of Sydney Professor Simon Chapman points to recent Dutch research which identified 185 different industrial uses of a pig - including the use of its haemoglobin in cigarette filters.

Prof Chapman said the research offered an insight into the otherwise secretive world of cigarette manufacture, and it was likely to raise concerns for devout Muslims and Jews.

Religious texts at the core of both of these faiths specifically ban the consumption of pork.

“I think that there would be some particularly devout groups who would find the idea that there were pig products in cigarettes to be very offensive,” Prof Chapman told AAP on Tuesday.

“The Jewish community certainly takes these matters extremely seriously and the Islamic community certainly do as well, as would many vegetarians.

“It just puts into hard relief the problem that the tobacco industry is not required to declare the ingredients of cigarettes … they say `that’s our business` and a trade secret.”

The Dutch research found pig haemoglobin - a blood protein - was being used to make cigarette filters more effective at trapping harmful chemicals before they could enter a smoker’s lungs.

Prof Chapman said while tobacco companies had moved voluntarily list the contents of their products on their websites, they also noted undisclosed “processing aids … that are not significantly present in, and do not functionally affect, the finished product”.

This catch-all term hid from public view an array of chemicals and other substances used in the making of tobacco products, he said.

At least one cigarette brand sold in Greece was confirmed as using pig haemoglobin in its processes, Prof Chapman said, and the status of smokes sold was unknown.

“If you’re a smoker and you’re of Islamic or Jewish faith then you’d probably would want to know and there is no way of finding out,” Prof Chapman said.

The Sydney office of British American Tobacco Australia was contacted by AAP.

A spokeswoman said a comment would be provided although it was not immediately available.

These were some of the key findings of the Office of the Public Auditor, which released yesterday its Tobacco Control Fund Status Inspection Report dated March 9, 2010.

Public Auditor Michael Pai said the Office of the Public Auditor concluded that the Fund “has become merely a reserve for the General Fund.”

“OPA’s major recommendation was to have the Tobacco Control Fund merged with the General Fund. This would simplify the budgeting process and allow greater transparency in the budgeting and accounting process,” Pai said in a letter to Senate President Paul A. Manglona (R-Rota) and House Speaker Froilan C. Tenorio (Cov-Saipan).

Acting Finance Secretary Bob Schrack concurred with OPA’s recommendation.

“Declining Fund revenues, over-appropriation of revenues and confusing language in the appropriation laws has made it very difficult to manage the distribution of the revenues collected by the Fund,” he told OPA.

Public Law 13-38, signed on Dec. 13, 200, created the Tobacco Control Fund. It increased taxes on various “sin” items such as cigarettes to discourage their use and reduce the physical abuse on the user.

The tax increased the “sin tax” on a pack of cigarettes to $1.75 per pack, with the goal of raising the tax to $2 a pack by 2010. Of this increase, 30 percent was to be deposited into the Tobacco Control Fund.

The law named four major programs that would benefit from the proceeds: Department of Public Health for the monitoring of morbidity and mortality of cancer and other tobacco-related illnesses; prenatal and maternal care; school health education programs; and workplace-based and community smoking prevention and smoking cessation programs.

However, OPA’s review of the Fund’s appropriation laws showed that many of the programs given the money do not fall into the categories stated in the original bill or have a questionable nexus with tobacco and related programs and activities.

Of the $9.97 million received by the Tobacco Control Fund, at least $7 million or 72 percent was spent on programs unrelated to P.L. 13-38’s criteria.

These include over $3 million in emergency transfers to the Commonwealth Utilities Corp., over $1.3 million to the Diabetes Control Program, over $1.2 million to the Group Health and Life Insurance Program, a $40,000 purchase of a van and a $20,000 roof repair.

OPA said by allocating funds to these various unrelated programs, the intended purpose of the Fund has been circumvented.

“From these actions, it would appear that the Fund has become merely a reserve for the General Fund with no relationship to the original legislative intent and taxing objectives. Regardless of the amount, the deficit is real and will impact various beneficiaries of the Fund in future years,” OPA said.

OPA recommended to the Legislature to consider eliminating the Tobacco Control Fund and allow the revenues and unresolved appropriations to flow to the General Fund.

Alternatively, it recommends to lawmakers to amend and delay the enactment of PL 16-39 until such time as the Fund becomes solvent.