Tobacco Asia

66 tobaccoasia CLOSING NEWS 卷尾新闻 successful and lively. In Hiroshima Eric was very pleased to see retailer extraordinaire Eiko Okami, whom he has known for more than 20 years. In Tokyo and Osaka, Eric and Antoine completed the events with trainings on the brand for the Cigar Club Japan teams, explaining why it is nice to share the secret... and introducing specially-made chocolates that were part of the gift box for all guests, along with a Confidenciaal Fiftytwo. "I could not have imagined a more successful launch in Japan," said Eric. "The retailers and end-consumers have been very enthusiastic about sharing Confidenciaal's secret." Maki Nakane, managing director of Cigar Club Japan, said, "We are really looking forward to developing Confidenciaal; we believe it is a perfect brand for Japan, and it is arriving on the market at an ideal time!" Confidenciaal has seven different sizes, all available in luxury bundles of 25 cigars. Fiftytwo, Fiftyfour, Fiftysix, and Fiftyseven are rolled with a pigtail, while Cañonazo, Lancero, and Churchill boast a classic head. The blend is a well-kept secret, passionate selection of the best 'New World' aged tobaccos and silky wrappers, combined with flawless construction and perfect draw. The name 'Confidenciaal' is a play on 'confidential' ('secret'in Spanish), and 'graal', which means the 'Holy Grail' in French. Using Tobacco Plants to Produce Moth Pheromones Species of tobacco plants have been engineered to produce insect sex pheromones, which are used for species-specific control of agricultural pests. Scientists at the Earlham Institute in Norwich have developed a method using precision gene engineering techniques that allows Nicotiana benthamiana tobacco plants to function as solar-powered moth sex pheromone factories. The same plant was previously intended to make ebola antibodies and even coronavirus-like particles for Covid vaccinations. Farmers can use pheromone dispersers to replicate the signals of female insects and position them among their crops to catch or deter male insects from mating. Some of these compounds can be produced chemically, but this process is frequently costly and yields undesirable byproducts. The new research focused on the ability to precisely control pheromone synthesis because pushing plants to continuously create these compounds has drawbacks. Dr. Nicola Patron, the study's principal investigator and director of the Earlham Institute's Synthetic Biology Group, said, "As we increase the efficiency, too much energy is diverted away from normal growth and development. The plants are producing a lot of pheromones, but they're not able to grow very large, which essentially reduces the capacity of our production line. Our new research provides a way to regulate gene expression with much more subtlety." Using Mushrooms to Dispose of Cigarette Butts Researchers in Australia have found a way to use oyster mushrooms to breakdown cigarette butts. Fungi Solutions, the company taking the lead in this project, utilizes fungi to generate natural alternatives to plastics and divert trash from landfills. Scientists started modifying the oyster mushroom in 2021 so that it would effectively consume cigarette butts. This new trial's objective is to use these mushrooms to decompose more than 1.2 million cigarette butts that would otherwise be disposed of in landfills. Cigarette butts in landfills can take up to 15 years to decompose, but the oyster mushrooms take only about a week to do the job. A network of fungal threads, called a mycelium, encircle, cover, and even grow through the cigarette butt in a laboratory setting. They essentially devour and breakdown the material, stripping all nutrients in the process. Most of the dangerous chemicals and polymers in the cigarette have been digested at this point. The fungi leave behind new material that can be utilized, repurposed, and turned into other useful products or composted. During the early stages of the research. the mushrooms needed to be trained to "eat" the cigarette butts as the material of the cigarette butts were foreign to fungi and would not be broken down by the mushroom on its own or in a natural setting. By combining the cigarette butts with other substances that the fungi were more accustomed to, scientists had to progressively familiarize it to the new material over an extended period of time. Only then would these newly "trained" mush- rooms be utilized in subsequent experiments. The next goal for the researchers is to recycle the byproduct of what the fungi consume into a bin-like tool that can carry more cigarettes in the future. Japanese Employee Fined US$11,000 for Smoking A civil servant in Osaka faced a ¥1.44 million (US$11,000) fine for having taken more than 4,500 smoking breaks on the job over 14 years. The 61-year-old man and two other colleagues in Osaka prefecture's finance department were handed down a punishment of a 10% pay cut for six months for smoking during work hours despite multiple warnings. The human resources department received a tip in September 2022 that the trio were smoking. The three were summoned by their supervisor, who threatened to discipline them if they were found smoking again. However, when questioned in a follow-up interview in December 2022, the three lied about not smoking. The prefectural administration discovered that the 61-year-old, director-level employee had smoked 4,512 times while on the job throughout his 14.5 years of service, totaling 355 hours and 19 minutes. He was found to have broken the Local Public Service Act's "duty of devotion." In addition to the disciplinary pay cut, he was requested to return ¥1.44 million from his income. Osaka has some of the harshest smoking regulations in the world. In 2008, it enacted a complete ban on smoking in all government buildings, including offices and public areas. In 2019, smoking during work hours was banned for government personnel. Confidenciaal cigars in Tokyo.

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