TOBACCO NEWS Fall, 1996

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TOBACCO NEWS Fall, 1996

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12/96 CA: Berkeley Bans Smoking in Bars
11/96 FIrst Major US Tobacco Co. Sponsorship Hits the Web (briefly)
12/24/96 Boston Public Health's Tobacco Control Program to be Eliminated? A plea for help from the Service Employees Union.
10/21/96: Department of Defense Among Top Ten Tobacco Retailers--by Michael Ravnitzky
11/17/96 Secret Documents Reveal A.C.L.U. Tobacco Industry Ties. New book Cigarette Confidential reveals ACLU docs, details ACLU's change of position after tobacco $$ started flowing in. This is the press release
AUSTRALIA: Tobacco Institute Forces Withdrawal of Speakers at ETS Conference
SOUTH AFRICA: Tobacco Titan Tears into Health Minister in Full Page Ad
SINGAPORE: BAT Releases Vanilla Cigarette
DEBATE: Dole on Tobacco Addiction: "I'm not a Doctor"
Berkeley Ban in Legislative Limbo
Honus Wagner Card Sells at $640G; Next Stop: $1M
Tobacco Traditions Tumble Across Globe: Abu Dhabi Bans Hookah, Berkeley Bans Bar Smoking
Interview on Tobacco with Bob and Elizabeth Dole
Christain Coalition to Clinton: Forget Tobacco Fight
SYRIA Bans Tobacco Ads
CA: Berkeley Bans Smoking in Bars
Berkeley, CA. December 17, 1996 Last night the city council of Berkeley, CA passed revisions to the Smoking Pollution Control Ordinance. The most noted feature of this is to ban smoking in bars. In addition, the ordinance bans smoking in restaurants-with-bars, smoking in outside seating areas of restaurants and bars, and a maximum of 25% of hotels rooms may be maintained as smoking rooms. Workplaces are now smoke-free in Berkeley.
The City of Berkeley (COB) has been involved in creating ordinances protecting citizens from tobacco smoke in public areas for decades. In 1993 the council requested the Health Dept. staff update the Smoking Pollution Control Ordinance and it was finally completed on 17 Dec 1996. This is designed to improve workers health and work conditions. The most newsworthy feature of the new ordinance is that it bans smoking from all bars. It bans smoking in most public areas, except bingo parlors (that will be fixed soon), and a maximum of 25% of private rooms in hotels can be set aside as smoking rooms. Several members of the business community protested that they would lose business and revenues. Several also added that they did not feel they had been notified of the changes; despite the letters sent to them, the open hearings, references to it in the City Council Agendas, and remember the changes have been in the works for over three years. The city council voted eight in favor and one abstain (due to the 'rushed' process). It goes into effect in 30 days, there will be a few months of no penalties only warnings, and the city will spend several thousand dollars to advertise the locations that will be effected by the new ordinance.
The name of the one member that refused to vote is Councilmember Diane Woolley.
COB web site is From here you can find governmental addresses and phone numbers. You can also find the web site for the local Chamber of Commerce, and from there numerous bars, nightclubs, etc.

FIrst Major US Tobacco Co. Sponsorship Hits the Web (briefly)
New York, NY November 9, 1996. RJR's Moonlight Tobacco Co. has joined in a "publishing partnership" with the Soho Arts Festival for an online-and-print publication called Simon Says a "guide to arts related happenings in the downtown scene" by Simon Watson. The November, 1996 print version of "Simon Says," is pocket-sized, and will be distributed monthly to 300 galleries, bars, clubs, museums and arts-related spaces in downtown New York. It has also been published as an insert to Interview magazine and the Village Voice.
Simon Says, A Critical Guide
426 Broome St.
New York, NY 10013
212-925-4200
212-966-9711 (fax)
12/6/96 SIMON SAYS UPDATE
Sohoarts.com was taken down by Saturday, Nov. 16, 1996. On 12/5/96, a new edition of "SIMON SAYS" (December, 1996, Vol. 4) was released as an insert in the Dec. 5 Village Voice. The new edition is in the same format, lists the same "publishing partnership" of Moonlight Tobacco and Soho Arts Festival, and features the same Moonlight Tobacco ad on the back--but this time "http://www.sohoarts.com" does not run along the bottom of the four inside pages.

AUSTRALIA: Tobacco Institute Forces Withdrawal of Speakers at ETS Conference
Canberra, Australia. October 21, 1996. The Australian medical community--and civil libertarians--are in an uproar over the use of the legal system by the Tobacco Institute of Australia to force the withdrawal of three speakers at a national summit meeting on secondhand smoke.
This is the first time that I'm aware of that medical experts have been unable to get up and discuss a medical issue freely without concern about what the lawyers will do to them, Australian Medical Association president Keith Woollard told the conference.
TIA lawyers sent a letter last week apprising the National Health and Medical Research Council that their 3 speakers could face contempt of court charges if they presented information from a soon-to-be-released second hand smoke study at the summit.
The three speakers are part of the NHMRC's working party investigating passive smoking. The TIA has been battling in the courts to prevent the NMHRC's findings from being published, claiming a draft report failed to account for all relevant scientific data on ETS.
Last August NHMRC gave an "undertaking" to a Federal Court that it would not release the final report, nor discuss its findings until a Novemeber 18 hearing.
The letter from TIA lawyers to the NHMRC which sparked the furor contained "no more than a reminder of the undertaking the NHMRC gave to the court," according to a TIA spokesperson, who added, "The TIA does not in any way wish to constrain free speech."
Source: AAP (Australian Associated Press)

SOUTH AFRICA: Tobacco Titan Tears into Health Minister in Full Page Ad
Johannesburg, South Africa. October 22, 1996. South African tobacco/mining/media giant Johann Rupert took out a full page ad in a Sunday newspaper to attack Health Minister Nkosazana Zuma, according to Reuters.
Last week, Zuma had warned that the Mandela government may outlaw cigarette advertising altogether if the industry continued to ignore health warning regulations on ads and cigarette packs. In Sunday's ad, Rupert, Chairman and CEO of the Rembrandt Group, which owns over 80% of the South African cigarette market (and controls most of the Southa African private sector), shot back that high excise taxes were responsible for an increased flow of contraband cigarettes--which do not carry warnings.
Asserting that law and order in South Africa was on the verge of total collapse, Rupert said, "On numerous occasions we have warned you and your colleagues that substantial increases in excise duty will result in increased cigarette smuggling . . . We warned you that you would find cheap smuggled cigarettes in the market, without health warnings. . . We warned that smuggling was out of control. Now that you have come to the same conclusion, you apparently accuse us of breaking the law. . . We find this situation totally unacceptable and irresponsible."
Responding to Zuma's charges that health warnings could not be read on billboards, Rupert said "it would help" if the government did something about the routine theft of billboard lighting cables.
BACKGROUND
The giant, multinational Rembrandt Group is little known in the US, and for good reasons: it is both secretive (last year a spokesperson for Remgro answered a request by New York Newsday for Rembrandt cigarette brands: "It is not for Rembrandt to provide information on our tobacco products.") and a wide-ranging conglomerate with a confusing array of holdings and companies. Rembrandt controls Cie. Financiere Richemont AG, a South African and Swiss company which owns the 4th largest international cigarette manufacturer in the world--Rothmans International (Rothmans, Dunhill, Peter Stuyvesant)--and luxury products manufacturer Vendome Luxury Group (Cartier, Piaget, Baume & Mercier, Montblanc).
Richemont's (with SA-based MIH's) Nethold TV unit just merged with another pay-per-view company to become the largest television group in the world. Rupert expects the merger to be approved by the EU within 5 months, and said he looks forward "to participating with my fellow shareholders in building one of the top media groups in the world."
The Rembrandt Group (Remgro) was founded after World War II by Dr. (chemistry) Anton Rupert. The powerful Rupert family became international tobacco barons when Rembrandt bought into Rothmans in the 1950s. In the 1970s the various European Rothmans operations were combined into Rothmans International.
Remgro has interests in:
Intercontinental Tobacco Co
Transatlantic Tobacco Co
Namibia Cigarette and Tobacco
Cigarette and Tobacco Co Botswana
Rothmans of Pall Mall Zimbabwe (50%)
Rothmans of Pall Mall Zambia (25%)
Soc. Agricola de Tabacos Mozambique (25%)

SINGAPORE: BAT Releases Vanilla Cigarette
Singapore October 7, 1996. BAT Singapore announced VFS, a new luxury, vanilla-scented cigarette today.
According to the press release, the VFS cigarette is "a full flavoured blend of choice US tobacco combined with a pleasant vanilla fragrance."
"The unique VFS eliminates annoyance to non-smokers by perfuming the air with its pleasing vanilla scent.
"VFS effectively removes the smell of sidestream and environmental tobacco smoke thus making smoking, and smokers, socially more acceptable."

DEBATE: Dole on Addiction: "I'm not a Doctor"
October 17, 1996. San Diego, CA. The following is an excerpt from the Presidential debate held at the University of San Diego.
JIM LEHRER: Senator Dole, Oscar Delgado.
BOB DOLE: Oscar.
DELGADO: Ex-smoker for 30 years. About 30 years ago I was a pack-plus-a-day man, okay? You mentioned in a statement, you said some time ago that you didn't think nicotine was addictive. Would you care to -- are you still -- hold to that statement or do you wish to recant, or explain yourself?
DOLE: Oh, that -- that's very easy. My record going back to 1965 in the Congress, the first vote we had was whether or not you should put a little notice on cigarettes. They may be -- I voted -- I voted for everything since that time. In fact, in 1992 we had a bill come before us that all the states had to comply or they're going to lose certain money. We sent it to the Clinton administration for implementation. They waited three and a half years. And during that period about 3,000 young kids every day started smoking. So you add it up. That's about 3 million. Not until again 1996. I don't want anybody to smoke. My brother probably died partly because of cigarettes. I was asked a technical question -- are they addictive? Maybe they -- they probably are addictive. I don't know, I'm not a doctor. You shouldn't smoke, you ought to be glad you quit, Oscar -- 30 years? Yes. And it seems to me that what we need to do is to talk about not only tobacco, but drugs, because drug use in 12- to 17-year-olds has doubled in this administration, the last 44 months. Marijuana use is up 141 percent; cocaine use, up 160 percent. They're your kids. It's all happened in this administration because they cut funding and they cut interdiction. When I'm president of the United States, we're going to use the National Guard and whatever sources we need to stop some of the drugs coming into America. If you stop the drugs, nobody is going to use the drugs. So don't smoke, don't drink, don't use drugs. Just don't do it.
BILL CLINTON: Oscar, the question of what the federal government should do to limit the access to tobacco to young people is one of the biggest differences between Senator Dole and me. We did propose a regulation six months after I became president under the law he mentioned. It simply says all these states -- it made it illegal for kids to smoke. Now they have to try harder if they want to keep getting federal funds. Then we took comments, as we always do, and there were tens of thousands of comments about how we ought to do it. That's what drug it out. Meanwhile, we started, also in '93, to look into whether cigarettes were addictive enough for the federal Food and Drug Administration to ban the ability of cigarette companies to advertise, market and distribute tobacco products to our kids. No president had ever taken on the tobacco lobby before. I did. Senator Dole opposed me. He went down and made a speech to people who were on his side, saying that I did the wrong thing. I think I did the right thing. On drugs, I have repeatedly said drugs were wrong and illegal and can kill you. We have strengthened enforcement. And everybody in San Diego knows we've strengthened control of the border. We've done a lot more. I hope we get a chance to talk about it.
DOLE: Well, they also know, if they live in San Diego, Mr. President, if you're caught with 125 pounds of marijuana or less you go back to Mexico, you're not prosecuted. You have a U.S. attorney here that sends them back home. So I think that's pretty important. That's a lot of marijuana. That's a big supply. But don't -- you know, don't get into this smokescreen here, Oscar. The president, in the election year, decided, "Well, I ought to do something. I haven't done anything on drugs. I've been AWOL for 44 months. So let's take on smoking." But see, they haven't even done it. They haven't said what's going to happen, whether they're going to have it declared addictive, it's going to apply just to -- once it's a drug, does it apply only to teenagers or to everybody in America? Nobody should smoke, young or old. But, particularly, young people should not smoke. And my record is there. It's been there. I've voted eight, 10 times since 1965.

Berkeley Ban in Legislative Limbo
October 7, 1996. Berkeley, CA. Berkeley's Ban on smoking in bars, passed unanimously by the City Council last September 20, is on indefinite hold because a required second reading has been unexpectedly dropped from the agenda of 8 October.
Although City of Berkeley law states that if the City Council passes an ordinance it will take effect 30 days after the first reading (the first approval), it can do so only if it is re-presented to the council a second time, and again passed after that second reading.
Berkeley City Manager James R. Keene has reportedly pulled the reading of the ordinance from the Oct. 8 council agenda, giving no certain date when it will be brought up for vote in the future. This is apparently due to unexpected and last minute opposition from the business community. Now the ban appears to be in legislative limbo.
The Berkeley Chamber of Commerce is reportedly claiming that it were bypassed, and did not know of the action. However, sources say the ban was part of an official and completely open process begun in 1993, with mailings to hundreds of local businesses as well as the Chamber of Commerce, public hearings (including a hearing by the health commission), and approval by the City Attorney. Last Spring, the proposed ordinance was even the subject of an article in the March 12, 1996 (UC) Daily Californian
According to one source, A meeting between representatives of the City of Berkeley and the Chamber of Commerce failed to break the impasse. Representatives of the city repeated the claim that the process had been proper and all were notified. City representatives offered numerous published research studies offering information that a smoking ban did not harm businesses. The Chamber of Commerce continued to claim they had been ignored, bypassed and the ordinance was being forced down their throat. Furthermore, the members of the Chamber of Commerce replied to the research studies with anecdotal stories of businesses that suffered following passage of similar bans elsewhere. At least one member of the business community disputed research findings concerning the dangers of second-hand smoke.

Honus Wagner Card Sells at $640G; Next Stop: $1M
New York, NY. September 21, 1996. An anonymous investor bought the Honus Wagner baseball card--the Mona Lisa of the genre--for $640,500 ($580,000 plus fees) at a celebrity-attended auction at Christies Saturday.
The rare, near-mint T-206 Honus Wagner baseball card, circa 1910, is so rare not only because Wagner was an all-time great ball player, perhaps the greatest of his day, but because, so one story goes, when he found Piedmont Tobacco was using his picture on its cigarette packs, he was concerned the card would encourage kids to smoke (he chewed), and forced its withdrawal. Another story has Wagner demanding money for his likeness from Piedmont, which withdrew the card rather than pay.
Whatever, only about 150 are in existence today, and the card sold today is one of only two known that advertises Piedmont Cigarettes ("The Cigarette of Quality") on the back.
The investor's agent, Robert Lifson, 36, of Robert Edward Auctions in Hoboken, NJ, had bought the card previously, in 1985, for $25,000. He sold it in 1987 for $100,000. Hockey player Wayne Gretsky and a partner bought it for $451,000 in 1991.
Wal-Mart was the next owner, but gave it away in a promotion--on February 24, 1996, Wagner's 122nd birthday, Patricia Gibbs won the card--but couldn't pay the $190,000 in income taxes!
Lifson said his anonymous client would be willing to sell the card again--for $1 million.
At the auction were George Steinbrenner and Elayne Boosler; Bill Gates was rumored to be calling in bids.

Tobacco Traditions Tumble Across Globe: Abu Dhabi Bans Hookah, Berkeley Bans Bar Smoking
September 21, 1996. The United Arab Emirate of Abu Dhabi banned the traditional hookah (or "hubble-bubble") smoking in cafes and other public places today, just a day after--and half a world away--the Berkeley, CA city council broke its own entrenched local tradition by voting to ban smoking in bars.
The Abu Dhabi Municipality decree provides for the shutdown of any cafe offering the "shisha," as the water pipe is known here. Reuters reports that the daily newspaper Al-Khaleej said the ban was at least partially in response to complaints from neighbors of such cafes. The paper also said the ban was in line with international tobacco control efforts, but did not indicate if cigarettes were banned also.
Deutsche Presse-Agentur reports that Abu Dhabi, one of the riches cities in the world, is the second of the seven members of the UAE to ban the water pipe. The Emirate of Sharja banned it in 1993 to prevent youth from becoming addicted to nicotine.
Deutsche Presse-Agentur also reported that coffee shop owners, whose business seems based on shisha smoking, were dumbfounded by the decree. "What's the use of a coffee shop if you can't smoke a shisha," asked one Abu Dhabi resident.
The decree takes effect immediately. Berkeley's ban on smoking in bars is due to take effect in 30 days.

Interview on Tobacco with Bob and Elizabeth Dole

20-20
ABC-TV
September 13, 1996
BARBARA WALTERS: A controversial question--tobacco. In the Red Cross1994-95 annual report on contributors . . . it was noted that Brown & Williamson tobacco company, and also Philip Morris gave very large contributions to an organization, the Red Cross, which seeks among other things to promote health. How do you feel about this? Would you give back these contributions?

ELIZABETH DOLE: No, I think that, uh, first of all being the Chief Executive Officer means you're not the financial director--

[Crosstalk--next four lines overlap]

BARBARA WALTERS: --Yes, but--you're the top--you're the top brass--

ELIZABETH DOLE: --I think you'd have to ask the senior vice president for development about that because I really was not aware of, uh, you know, where,--in other words that's the role of the vice president for development--

BOB DOLE: --No, I think--

BARBARA WALTERS: --But now you are aware--now you do know about the contributors

BOB DOLE: But it is, you know--it is, uh--as of now--legal. So it's not that you're . . . being political or--. .

BARBARA WALTERS: No, it's much more of an ethical question than legal or illegal. But--you are aware of it now, Mrs. Dole, and I know it's a tricky question, but do you have views on it?

ELIZABETH DOLE: At this point, I would not, uh, say you have to take that money that was given and send it back. I think that, uh, uh, as you say [nodding to Mr. Dole], it's legal--[laughs]"

BOB DOLE: Kids shouldn't--should not smoke

[Crosstalk--next six lines overlap]

BOB DOLE: --I mean, that's the message

ELIZABETH DOLE: --That's the key

BOB DOLE: --That's the bottom line.

ELIZABETH DOLE: --That's--yes.

BOB DOLE: --I mean, obviously, no--

ELIZABETH DOLE: --Children should not smoke.

BOB DOLE: Kids should never start, if they started they should stop The same is true with drugs. I mean, drug use has doubled in the Clinton years.

Christain Coalition to Clinton: Forget Tobacco Fight
September 13, 1996. Washington, DC. Christian Coalition Director Ralph Reed today criticized the administration's fight against youth access to tobacco by telling supporters, "Mr. President, we have a message for you: before you try and tell us to get tobacco out of our house, you need to get illegal drugs out of the White House."

SYRIA Bans Tobacco Ads
Damascus, Syria. September 9, 1996. "All kinds of tobacco advertisement" have been banned in Syria by the decree of President Hafez al-Assad. Violators face 4-12 months in jail and a fine of US$600-$2,400.
According to COMTEX Newswire, the decree, which strengthens an existing ban on newspaper, radio and TV ads, came after the appearance of Marlboro billboards along major highways in Syria.

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�1996 Gene Borio, the Tobacco BBS (212-982-4645. WebPage: http://www.tobacco.org)
Original Tobacco BBS material may be reprinted in any non-commercial venue if accompanied by this credit line.