Tobacco News on the Web
Archive, May, 1997
Note: These articles wink in and out of existence with the frequency of sub-atomic particles. Many links will be dead. In that case, these pages can be approached as bibliographies, both noting the event, and showing where you might look for further information.
- A confident plaintiffs' bar is using lessons learned from mass tort cases involving asbestos and Agent Orange, and relying on the lucrative fees from those cases to fight tobacco companies all over the United States. In addition, proposed government regulations and the release of internal tobacco company documents have given the plaintiffs a potent weapon with juries.
- Now the FTC is stepping up its own scrutiny of the industry's $4.8 billion-a-year splurge on ads and promotions. . . . FTC revived its 1994 investigation of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.'s Joe Camel ad campaign. Antismoking advocates now expect the commission to tag the company with an unfair-advertising complaint within a few weeks, arguing that the colorful cartoon character entices kids to light up. "Finally, this double-barrel assault is happening. . . "
- In their formal ''notice of appeal,'' cigarette-makers asked the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond to reconsider Osteen's legal rationale. ''Prompt appellate review of these issues . . . could very well resolve the entire case,'' wrote tobacco giants Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson and Lorillard.
- 05/02/97 Both Sides Challenge Ruling USA Today
- [S]he said Justice Department officials previously concluded that a federal lawsuit against tobacco companies wasn't a viable option. "We have determined it's the states' cause of action," Reno said.
- 05/01/97 AG Reno: States to Take Lead in Tobacco Suits Reuters
- "It was the states' cause of action. We want to work with the states," Reno said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
- 04/30/97 OHIO to Sue Tobacco Reuters
- 05/01/97 Cox News Item POSTNet ("hot off the wires"--expires quickly)
- 04/30/97 OHIO to File Tobacco Suit UPI
- 04/29/97 OHIO Wavers on Joining Tobacco Lawsuit UPI
- Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery is expected to make a decision within ``several days'' whether the state will join settlement talks between tobacco companies and a coalition of 24 state attorneys general.
- Evidence that the state of Florida made and distributed cigarettes to prisoners can be used by tobacco companies defending against a lawsuit seeking damages for the public cost of smoking-related illness, a judge ruled Thursday. The decision by Circuit Judge Harold Cohen means the state would have to accept a share of any damages awarded by the jury in the trial. . . "It could cost Florida millions of dollars if the jury ever gets this case," attorney Stephen Krigbaum, who represents Philip Morris Companies Inc , said.
- 05/01/97 Universal Earnings Up 49% Leaf dealer's domestic earnings down; international earnings "rose substantially" in quarter ending 03/31/97. PR Newswire
- Dr Christopher Murray of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies and Alan Lopez of the World Health Organisation were commissioned by the World Bank to investigate the causes of death worldwide. Their startling findings are that heart disease -- mostly heart attacks -- and strokes kill more people everywhere than anything else. . . In an editorial the Lancet said many of the top 10 causes of the 50.5 million deaths in 1990 could have been prevented. "Four of this 10 -- ischaemic heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer -- may be partly prevented by political determination to discourage tobacco smoking, by correcting industrial pollution and unbalanced diets and by discouraging sloth," it said. . . Lopez and Murray made clear the research did not reflect the opinions of WHO -- a disclaimer the Lancet said WHO insisted upon. ``This timid response is unacceptable,'' it said, adding that WHO should instead sponsor debate about health priorities.
- [A]n undercover sweep . . . . led to 15 citations -- including 11 three-time offenders whose tobacco sales licenses may now be revoked. . . There was one encouraging statistic. When the raids began in 1994, more than 60 percent of stores surveyed were found to be violating the law; in the most recent sweep, 30 percent were violators.
- 05/01/97 Cigarette Merchants Face Heat Queens, NY Newsday
- Three Queens merchants who have been caught by investigators from the city's Department of Consumer Affairs for repeatedly selling cigarettes to minors may lose their tobacco licenses for a year.
- Last year, Loesch said, more than 100 burglaries took place throughout Queens in which stashes of cigarettes were stolen, then sold to other locations. As a result of those crimes, he said, a police task force was pulled together to zero in on illegal cigarette sales. Since the Queens cigarette task force was initiated in February, Loesch said 43 arrests have been made, 27 of those arrests are people allegedly involved in a bootleg-cigarette ring. . . "What they do is come rob stores in Queens ... Then they sell the cigarettes to other stores in Queens and Brooklyn."
- The problem confronting the veterans' department is that the Veterans Affairs general counsel issued an opinion in 1993 that injury or disease resulting from tobacco use during military service could be directly connected to that service.
- "You have 35 to 45 million Americans addicted to a product," said Dr. David Kessler . . . "You can't experiment on people by making public policy without the data."
- 05/01/97 UNICEF Chief Calls for Global Curbs on Tobacco PR Newswire
- A judge Friday cleared the way for California's Lieutenant Governor Gray Davis to sue tobacco companies to recover hundreds of millions of dollars of ''illicit'' profits by cigarette makers, Davis said. California Superior Court Judge Robert May in San Diego rejected a motion by the tobacco industry to dismiss the lawsuit, which was filed in January by Davis acting as a private citizen on behalf of the state.
- A bill sponsored by Rep. Tracy Seyfert, R- Crawford, would relegate all smokers to designated smoking areas and direct the secretary of the Senate and chief clerk of the House to create specific smoking areas in the basements of the state Capitol and its annex. The chairman of the House State Government Committee, Rep. Paul Clymer, R-Bucks, said the bill was tabled until members could reach a consensus on it, and clarify how to police themselves.
- 05/01/97 BUTLER Judge Refuses to Step Down Reuters
- 04/30/97 Judge May Drop Out Reuters
- Landrum, who has presided over the case since it was filed in 1994, gave no timetable for a ruling after a hearing on Tuesday. No ruling had been issued on Wednesday, a Jones County court official in Laurel said.
- Jones County Circuit Judge Billy Joe Landrum is presiding over a $650 million lawsuit filed in 1992 claiming Butler, who did not smoke, died from lung cancer caused by exposure to second-hand cigarette smoke in his barber shop. "It's been five years since we filed the lawsuit, and I'm afraid if the judge is removed it will delay it for much longer," said the barber's widow, Dean Butler. . . . The tobacco industry is questioning, among other things, the judge's propriety of allowing state Attorney General Mike Moore to attend a meeting dealing with documents the judge received from the Liggett tobacco group, one of the defendants.
- Burke and colleagues examined 113 men with coronary disease, most of whom showed no previous symptoms before their fatal heart attack. Clots were found in the hearts of 59 of the sudden death victims. Of these men, 75% had been smokers, compared with only 41% of men without clots. . . Cigarette smokers with coronary heart disease, especially those with high cholesterol, are at high risk for clots forming in the arteries. If smoking cessation is impossible, say the researchers, clot prevention by taking aspirin may be especially crucial to prevent fatal heart attacks. SOURCE: The New England Journal of Medicine
- Among HIV-infected women who smoked and did not take prescribed drugs like AZT, about one-third gave birth to HIV-infected babies. In comparison, 22% of HIV-positive mothers who did not smoke had seropositive babies. The adverse effects of smoking on the placenta are thought to lead to the increased risk. "In addition to contributing to poor health outcomes, we know that nicotine is toxic to blood vessels and adversely affects the placenta, promoting premature rupture of the membranes surrounding the baby," explains Dr. Barbara Turner, professor of medicine at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. . . SOURCE: Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome and Retrovirology
- The public by 48% to 36% . . . favors a deal in which the companies would set aside funds for individual claims and accept Food and Drug Administration regulation. . . . More than 70% of the public backs [Hatch/Kennedy cig tax increase]. Even about half of the smokers polled favor the increase
- 54%: said the tobacco industry should be punished for its conduct during the last 30 years
- 45% said Congress was beholden to the industry
- 32% said the industry should not be punished.
- 46% favored a broad settlement with tobacco companies, as long as they were forced to pay large sums and agreed to bans on advertising and retail displays
- 32% said a settlement would be a sellout that lets the industry off the hook.
- Whether Peter Boddington . . . goes to prison is not "up to Connex" . . . [H]e chooses to ignore a policy supported by 86 per cent of our customers, smokers as well as non-smokers
- Let's be clear. The tobacco companies want and need your kids. They could not survive without enticing adolescents into using their products. They would go bankrupt. . .
- The only way cigarette labels could be scarier is if they were written by Stephen King. . . You can't scare someone out of an addiction. Fear won't do it. It's the wrong emotion. Anger works better. Anyone who wants to quit smoking needs to get mad. They have to become infuriated at devious, lying tobacco companies that take their money while keeping them addicted to a lethal drug. If they get mad enough, they might refuse to play along. The best warning label to put on cigarette packages might be this one: "Hah, hah. We get rich. You get sick." It doesn't get more accurate, or scarier, than that.
- IN A secret pact, the world's biggest tobacco companies have agreed to keep silent about the scale of insurance cover they have against smoking-related lawsuits, for fear of jeopardising future claims. One source in the US industry admitted that all the large companies have sworn not to disclose the extent of any insurance cover. Many executives still officially deny the existence of relevant policies.
- 05/01/97 INSURERS Face Big Tobacco Tab Chicago Sun-Times
- 05/01/97 LLOYD'S Dismisses Tobacco Insurance Concerns Reuters
- "Health-related claims against tobacco companies have been covered by robustly worded policy exclusions for many years"
- BAT Industries is facing criticism from one of its institutional shareholders for its failure to comment on a claim that the potentially enormous legal claims resulting from its tobacco activities are substantially covered by insurance.
- Painstaking research by a lone City of London financial analyst, Paul Hodges of investment bank Schroders, has thrown up the existence of scores of product liability policies quietly taken out by the big cigarette companies, such as Philip Morris in America and BAT Industries in Britain, over the past 60 years. While most of these policies contain exclusion clauses, previously thought to rule out claims from victims of smoking-related illnesses, Mr Hodges' work has shown that the poor wording of the clauses has granted the tobacco firms the chance to offload just about all their liabilities.
- [T]he possibility that insurance groups such as Fireman's Fund, Allianz, Aetna, Lloyd's of London, Cigna and Republic Insurance could have to pick up the tab for tobacco lawsuits has the potential to create crises on world stock markets.
- Allen, Allen & Zagreb, who have the Choke Cigarette account, brought ideas for a new campaign into the Choke offices. "Here's one that the boys in the back room came up with. `If Choke wasn't good for you, the FDA wouldn't want to control it.'
- 05/02/97 Outdoor Systems Buys 3M's Billboard Business Bloomberg/LA Times
- Superior Court Judge Robert May dismissed [Lt. Gov. Gray] Davis' [Medicaid suit]. May ruled that such a suit, parallel to that filed by 24 states, cannot be lodged under the state's business and professions code. Attorneys for the cigarette companies did not challenge Davis' right to file a lawsuit alleging that the tobacco industry committed fraud against California citizens by suppressing information about the health hazards of smoking for more than four decades. So part of the suit will go forward, meaning that the state could still recover hundreds of millions of dollars . . . Both sides claimed victory.
- Anyone under 18 caught with a cigarette can be fined, sentenced to community service or stripped of driving privileges under a bill (HB 845) that received final passage on Friday. Gov. Lawton Chiles is expected to sign the measure into law.
- Why Do People Get Hooked? Mounting Evidence Points To A Powerful Brain Chemical Called Dopamine
- The decision is so new that no one can quite grasp its full implications. But if it is ultimately upheld, the [Osteen] decision would appear to give the F.D.A. enormous power to redesign the nation's most lethal consumer product. The agency would presumably gain the right to demand industry documents . . . It could regulate the constituents of cigarettes. . . Osteen's ruling would give the F.D.A. immense power to work its will without the need for industry acquiescence. Thus the task now is to make sure that, in settlement bargaining with the industry, no one gives away any of the F.D.A.'s new court-approved powers to regulate tobacco far into the future.
- Philip Morris Cos.' president [James Morgan] said in a sworn deposition that tobacco is no more addictive than Gummy Bears candy, and he wouldn't get out of the business even if he were convinced that cigarettes cause cancer.
- 05/03/97 Sticky Statement NY Newsday
- 05/03/97 Exec Likens Smoking Habit to Gummy Bears Bloomberg/Your Health Daily
- Newly available tobacco industry documents have led the Justice Department to step up a criminal investigation to determine whether cigarette makers systematically lied to Congress and government agencies about their business practices and about whether nicotine is addictive, officials said Friday. The Justice Department has assigned a task force of FBI agents and a supervisor from the bureau's white-collar crime unit to review thousands of pages of internal industry documents.
- 05/02/97 UPI item
- The financial risk to investors is that the litigation might drive a change in public and regulatory attitudes toward the tobacco industry in general. And those are attitudes that the industry has spent many, many years building up, and as a result it can have a product which kills off hundreds of thousands of people and still maintain public acceptance. . . Cynically speaking, many a foreign government looks at cigarettes as combining two benefits: increasing the tax on individuals and insuring that those buyers don't live too long past their productive age of 65.
- China is considering reducing the consumption tax rate of 45 percent on imported cigarettes and tobacco to combat smuggling, the newspaper said. High taxes and tariffs on imported cigarettes have led to rampant smuggling, with more than 115 million boxes of smuggled cigarettes seized between 1987 and 1996.
- The aroma is distinctly tobacco-esque, though none you've inhaled before, unless you've hung out in Middle Eastern bars. "It's Arabic tobacco, soaked in apple juice," says Anca Novacovici, a 23-year-old World Bank employee who's already a regular, drawn to theexotic side of the month-old nightspot. "You smoke it like a cigar, without inhaling. It's great." She passes the hose with the smoke nozzle to Henri Bailey. He's smiling. . . Fraga-Rosenfeld says the pipes are turning into magnets for folks tired of the cigar craze
- A resistance to taking cigarette advertising played a role in the ouster of Deanna Brown as publisher of Conde Nast Sports for Women just months before the title's launch. In a surprise shake-up that was one of several staff shifts at Conde Nast Publications last week, Ms. Brown, 31, was replaced by Suzanne Grimes, who had been senior VP-publisher of News Corp.'s TV Guide. The change underscores not only the industry debate about accepting tobacco ads, but also the competition for ad pages in the budding women's sports category.
- 05/07/97 AP item CNNfn
- However, doctors told him his illness was caused by a chemical imbalance that could have been precipitated by his decision to quit using tobacco. "They can't really give me a concrete reason why it happened,'' he said, ``but it's going to be corrected. ...''
- "I grew up in Southern California . . . I loved watching Rod Carew play. I read his book and he said that having a chew on his right side made his face tighter and kept his eye from blinking. I would have jumped off a mountain to play like Rod Carew." Instead, Dykstra got himself a tin of chewing tobacco . . .
- Rick Mast, driver of Remington Racing's No. 75 Ford, was adamant in his support of Winston sponsorship. . . "they're like family to us,"
- Osteen simply ruled the Food and Drug Administration has limited authority to regulate tobacco products - if the facts about tobacco are as the FDA asserts them. An esoteric point? Maybe, but it is one tobacco companies will battle to make in court.
- 05/05/97 Tobacco, FDA Countdown to Appeals Court Face-Off Washington Post
- 05/04/97 FDA: Court Likely to Uphold Ruling A look at Richmond's 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which usually has upheld Osteen's decisions. Richmond Times-Dispatch
- The Nicotrol Inhaler, to be sold by prescription only, allows smokers to suck nicotine through a plastic tube, letting the chemical be absorbed into the body through membranes in the mouth.
The inhaler, developed by Pharmacia & Upjohn Inc. but marketed by McNeil Consumer Products, will be on pharmacy shelves later this year. McNeil said it had not yet set a price.
- 05/06/97 Washington Post item
- 05/06/97 Reuters Health eLine item
- 05/06/97 Reuters Medical News item
- 05/05/97 Inhaler Provides Nicotine without Smoking USA Today
- 05/05/97 Advanced Therapeutic Products Statement
- Scientists have found that people with low self-esteem, depression or anxiety disorders are predisposed to nicotine addiction, and some people are born more vulnerable to nicotine's lure than others.
- 05/05/97 Anti-Depressants Often Help Hard Cases Quit Smoking The Wall Street Journal (Pay Registration). Here's the item from POSTNet ("hot off the wires"--expires quickly)
- Antidepressants have helped hundreds of smokers quit in clinical trials, by manipulating some of the same brain chemicals that are involved in nicotine addiction.
- Employers have cleared cigarette smoke from the workplace, but they have made scant headway in persuading employees to quit smoking.
- Nicotine inhalers that provide the kick but not the health hazards of smoking. Nicotine-free cigarettes that look, smell and feel like the real thing but are free of their deadly byproducts. Federally backed research to find acceptable substitutes for cigarettes.
- "We are not going to be able to walk away from the tobacco issue, particularly in relationship to our children, because it is one of the fundamental causes of death in the world and imposes a huge cost on every nation on earth,'' she said. The WHO would have to tackle the problem head-on, she said.
- if such suits are justified, why aren't the wine, beer and liquor companies compelled to compensate equally handsomely the estate of every alcoholic who dies of cirrhosis of the liver, delirium tremens or some other alcohol-related disease? For that matter, why aren't the various state attorneys general suing to recover from these companies the enormous social costs of alcoholism, from medical care to the expense of picking up drunks in the street?
- 05/05/97 WHO's World Health Report 1997 The report contains, as Stan Shatensteins writes, some staggering tobacco-related morbidity and mortality numbers. Particularly relevant for tobacco-control advocates in this period of "global" (i.e. American) settlement talks. The PDF documents and charts are especially well presented.
- 05/06/97 Reuters Health eLine item
- The study authors determined the top 10 global killers to be:
- heart attack (6.3 million deaths)
- stroke (4.4 million)
- pneumonia (4.3 million)
- diarrhea (2.9 million)
- birth-related illnesses (2.4 million)
- bronchitis/emphysema (2.2 million)
- tuberculosis (2 million)
- measles (1.1 million)
- road accidents (1 million)
- cancers of the lung, bronchus, and trachea (900,000)
- Lung cancer is increasing in most countries with the exception of those where the epidemic first began, for example the United Kingdom and the United States. However, lung cancer kills more women in the United States than any other cancer form.
- The measure goes to County Executive John G. Gary (R), who said he will sign it. The ban will go into effect 45 days later.
- "We affirm that environmental tobacco smoke is a significant public health risk to young children and that parents need to know about the risks of smoking in the home around their young children," said a declaration issued at the end of a two-day meeting . . . of officials from "G-7" countries as well as Russia, the EU and the United Nations.
- According to a new study in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, transdermal nicotine patches pose a potentially toxic threat to young children who may play with them or even chew them.
- 05/06/97 NICODERM CQ Advises Parents on Proper Disposal of Patch PR Newswire
- 05/06/97 Reuters Health eLine item
- The 1997 People's Annual Report profiles five transnational corporations as leading examples of how corporations are undermining public policy designed to protect people: tobacco giants Philip Morris and RJR Nabisco, polluters Dow Chemical and WMX Technologies, and for-profit hospital titan Columbia/HCA.
- Two New York law firms headed by former New York state Supreme Court justices joined forces in a suit seeking class-action status against the tobacco industry specifying lung and throat cancer victims as the suit's plaintiff base. The suit, filed April 30 by Finz & Finz P.C.and Stanley R. Waxman P.C on behalf of four named plaintiffs, one of whom is already dead, seeks class-status on behalf of all New York state residents. It seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages from the entire industry, including its advertising, manufacturing and research arms.
- James Tisch, whose corporation owns Lorillard Tobacco Co., has been nominated to head the UJA-Federation of New York, the United States' leading Jewish charity, despite protests from several prominent Reform rabbis, Jewish leaders and anti-smoking groups. In letters expressing what most stressed were personal views and not those of their organizations, the leaders of such Jewish groups as the Commission on Social Action of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and the Religious Action Center urged the UJA-Federation not to choose a president whose ties to the tobacco industry might damage the philanthropy's reputation, moral credibility or effectiveness.
- High school students in the heart of the burley belt are learning to farm fish as an alternative to growing tobacco. Tennessee's first center to find a replacement for tobacco as a cash crop has opened at Johnson County High School. The Aquacenter is part of the school's Alternative Farming Center and the beginning of what officials hope will be a statewide system developed through vocational education programs.
- Creating a smoke-free city in a tobacco state sounds impossible, but the Northern Kentucky Health Department is looking for one willing to accept the challenge. "It would be neat if some community decided to quit altogether, but we just want the leadership to make a public proclamation that this is something they support," said Alan Kalos, health department planning coordinator.
- Huckabee said he wouldn't comment about Attorney General Winston Bryant's decision to file a lawsuit against the tobacco industry, and recover state Medicaid spending for smokers. "I feel like that's an attorney general's decision that they have to make," Huckabee said, adding he won't get involved in the middle of decisions made by constitutional officers such as the attorney general."
- A judge has struck down most of a lawsuit filed against the tobacco industry by Lt. Gov. Gray Davis of California in a ruling that says California law doesn't require tobacco companies to pay for health-care costs. Judge Robert May of the Superior Court of California in San Diego County struck from Davis' suit, filed last January, motions to recover health-care costs and grant relief from alleged efforts to market cigarettes to youths. The ruling, though, permits Davis to try to show that the tobacco industry should give up profits from California cigarette sales.
- Asked if he felt like Oregon was "piling on" the tobacco companies, [AG Hardy] Myers replied sarcastically, "Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.''
- More than a smoke, they're a piece of Philadelphia history . . . Proceeds from the event, sponsored by radio station WWDB, will be shared by the Sunshine Foundation, the Police Athletic League, and the fund for a memorial statue in honor of the former mayor.
- A CENTURY of tradition was extinguished at the home of cricket yesterday when smoking was banned in the Long Room at Lord's. Since 1890, the world's finest players have emerged from the haze of the Long Room on their way from the dressing rooms to the hallowed pitch. But non-smokers in cricket's exclusive inner sanctum rebelled, claiming that during Test matches when up to 200 men stand shoulder to shoulder, the mix of cigarettes, pipes and cigars was overpowering. On cold days when the windows were closed, the fug was unbearable. Led by the Rev Malcolm Gingold, from Woolwich, southeast London, the non-smokers yesterday won their battle against the ashes. A postal ballot of the MCC's 18,000 members -- all men -- produced a resounding vote.
- 05/08/97 Smokers Lose the "Ashes" at Lord's AP/CNNfn
- JUST THREE days into a Labour Government, one of the bastions of old England has allowed standards to fall. For the first time in living memory Simpson's-in-the-Strand is unable to produce Havana cigars. Luncheon guests at the finest roaster of British beef were dumbfounded yesterday when presented with a humidor which contained only Dominican cigars. Simpson's blamed a hiccup in supply, but there are suspicions of political correctness creeping in here, bearing the stamp of Ramon "Rayon Pajamas" Pajares, general manager of the Savoy Group and an active non-smoker.
- 05/08/97 BUSINESS: AMERICAN BRANDS Says IRS Rules Gallaher Spinoff Tax Free Dow Jones (pay registration) Here's Part 2
- Doctors working to save cancer-ridden patients faced off last night against restaurant owners battling city control over their businesses as the City Council debated a proposed overhaul of local tobacco regulations."I am convinced that this is an ordinance whose time has come," Mayor Kenneth Barr said. But council members delayed action on the controversial issue for two weeks on a 5-2 vote. . . Still at issue is the procedure for exempting restaurants with fewer than 125 seats from regulations that require businesses to go no-smoking or install air-cleaning equipment.
- The budget gives a tax exemption for equipment purchases to businesses that prepare tobacco leaves for use in cigars and other tobacco products. Gary Tuma, spokesman Sen. Vincent Fumo, D-Philadelphia, the Democratic chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said the senator's staff was puzzled by the exemption. "We were very surprised that at a time when the treasurer is divesting the state of tobacco stock and the attorney general is suing tobacco companies, we are giving tobacco products manufacturers a break," he said.
- 05/08/97 Tobacco Firm Gets Tax Break Philadelphia Inquirer
- Rep. John Barley, the powerful Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, showed this week that he can deliver more than most. Four days before the final vote on the state's budget, Barley, one of six members of the House-Senate conference committee, inserted a provision that exempts tobacco leaf processing from sales and other taxes. Yesterday, when Gov. Ridge signed the budget's tax bill, the exemption became law. One company stands to benefit from Barley's amendment, and perhaps only one: Lancaster Leaf Tobacco Co., a 56-year-old firm in the lawmaker's home county that cures tobacco leaves for cigar and smokeless tobacco makers.
- From the mountain ranges of Allegany County to the windswept Eastern Shore to the tobacco fields of Southern Maryland, farmers and other rural property owners will soon have a new reason to protect their land from suburban sprawl. It's called Rural Legacy, and it was a central plank in Gov. Parris N. Glendening's environmental agenda this year.
- About 18 men and women stood on the Fourth Avenue sidewalk outside the legislative office building. They waved signs like, ''Warning, you'll be taxed next,'' and shouted slogans, mainly, ''Stop the tobacco tax!'' as the lunchtime traffic strolled and rolled past.
- [SmithKline Beecham and the American Cancer Society,] The sponsors of "Building a Smoke-Free Family'' suggest parents use [Mother's Day and Father's Day] as opportunities to address the issue of smoking with their children. The following points are based on research that was conducted with children and parents about smoking by Pamela I. Clark, Ph.D., Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine. This information may help parents in talking to their children about smoking:
- The Simon deal could make Cyrk a $700 million company and "No. 1 in the promotional market,'' said Cyrk president Patrick D. Brady.
- Inspired, perhaps, by Arlington's success in establishing no-smoking ordinances in restaurants, Fort Worth now seems bent on a path to accomplish the same thing. This may be an observation based in cynicism, but we suspect that the fact that most of Arlington's restaurants are actually doing better financially than they were before the ordinances went into effect has not gone unnoticed in Fort Worth. A considerable sum of this new business has probably come from out-of-town patrons seeking a fresher atmosphere.
- California's tax on cigarettes would increase dramatically under legislation approved Wednesday by the state Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee. Under the bill, which was opposed by the tobacco industry, smokers would pay an additional state tax of 50 cents for each pack of cigarettes. That would bring the total state cigarette tax up to 87 cents per pack. The legislation calls for the additional tax money to be used to provide health insurance for low-income Californians, especially uninsured children.
- The ethics of personal responsibility are simple: If you're dumb enough to buy the evil stuff that's available for sale, then you deserve what you get. By this dubious standard, the heroin pusher and the tobacco profiteers (growers, manufacturers and distributors) are equally righteous in terms of marketplace morality.
- Unlike his X-Files nom de plume, Davis doesn't smoke. He kicked the habit 17 years ago, almost to the day. He smokes herbal cigarettes during his scenes, but that is small comfort . . . "I need -- a stunt puffer.."
- Do as I say, not as I did.
- Behind all the exhibits, videotapes, charts and rhetoric of the just-concluded "tobacco trial'' here lies an old and much-vexed problem: the problem of free will, which has troubled theologians since the days of St. Augustine in the Fifth Century. The four-week trial was as much a theological debate as a legal fight.
- "60ft Dolls was offered a place on the tour, and although 60ft Dolls could really do with a major tour we turned it down purely because of its involvement with tobacco. "60ft Dolls already have two cigarette addicts in its own group and thus know what a disgusting unhealthy addictive habit it is and would never do anything to support it. The fact that we are on the billing is a mistake and we are doing all we can to get our name off the promotional material as soon as possible.""
- The Gallup Organization polled 1,019 Americans over age 18 on Tuesday and Wednesday to
find:
- 38% say smokers are "mostly" to blame for the health problems they face.
- 26% say smokers are "completely" to blame.
- 20% say tobacco companies are mostly to blame.
- 5% say tobacco firms are completely to blame.
- 10% say smokers and tobacco companies are equally to blame.
- In the early '90s, they helped convince Eastman Kodak to get out of the tobacco business by spinning off a subsidiary that manufactured filters for cigarettes. Kimberly Clark was persuaded to end its tobacco-related businesses and Knight-Ridder Inc. decided to drop tobacco advertising from its publications. And the 3M Corporation last year agreed not to accept any new tobacco contracts for its billboard business and allowed existing tobacco contracts to expire by 1998.
- The Hollywood Reporter trade paper reports from the Cannes Film Festival that the actress will produce and star in "Waltz Into Darkness," a period film about a tobacco planter and his mail order bride. The book was made into a movie once before in French, by Francois Truffaut.
- "We have to teach patients... to ask the right questions," said social worker Diane Blum, executive director of the nonprofit patient advocacy group Cancer Care, Inc. . . . Blum joined other lung cancer experts for a "nationwide summit" entitled "Lung Cancer: Taking Control" held Thursday in Bethesda, Maryland. Everyone present agreed that treatments for America's most deadly cancer (160,000 fatalities per year) have greatly improved in recent years. "We have to teach patients. And patients as consumers have to know how to ask the right questions, and advocate for themselves. And we have to teach health care providers to listen well, to take the time to help patients make choices." One important resource patients can use is the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) toll-free cancer treatment update number, 1-800 4 CANCER. The NCI can provide callers with up-to-the-minute information on new research and new breakthroughs in the fight against cancer.
- Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke increases an infant's risk of developing bronchial obstruction by about 50% during the first two years of life, Scandinavian researchers report in the current issue of Epidemiology. Dr. Per Nafstad of the National Institute of Public Health in Oslo, Norway, and colleagues investigated the effect of environmental tobacco smoke exposure on bronchial obstruction in a study of 3,754 infants born in Oslo in 1992-1993 and followed for 24 months. They note that "...[a]lthough it may not be feasible to diagnose asthma in early childhood, some symptoms and signs of bronchial obstruction could predict the development of asthma later in life."
- The state's cigarette tax should be doubled, the Legislature's Health and Human Services Committee an 8-5 vote. But, in defiance of Gov. Angus King, the Democrats who control the committee are recommending that the new tax revenues be spent on new programs, not used as tax relief. Democratic legislators want to use the moneyto buy health insurance for poor children, prescription drugs for the elderly, and to begin an anti-smoking program aimed at teens.
- Two evenings later, I ran into my old friend Herschel Wheeklin coming out of the park with his collar turned up and a furtive look on his face. When he saw me, he turned away, but too late. . . . "What have you got in that paper bag, Herschel?'' I said accusingly. . . . "Good Lord, man,'' I cried, "don't tell me they're Gummi Bears!''
- The hospital's governing authority has ordered a new legal liability waiver for patients to sign before leaving their hospital floor for any reason. Within weeks, every new patient - smoker or non - at the hospital will sign a version of the waiver as each is admitted.
- [PM] was "spending vast sums of money" to find scientists amenable to its cause and funding research by them, the memo said. According to the memo, Philip Morris said the company vetted the resumes of scientists with "no previous connection with tobacco companies" to ensure that "obvious `anti-smokers' or those with `unsuitable backgrounds' are filtered out." Scientists who agreed to review material on secondhand smoke and seemed promising were contacted by a Philip Morris scientist about the company funding their research; proposals "apparently would be `filtered' by lawyers to eliminate areas of sensitivity," the memo said. The chosen scientists "should be able to produce research or stimulate controversy" that could be used to advantage by "public affairs people in the relevant countries," the memo said. . . The global campaign was coordinated by the Washington law firm Covington & Burling.
- The documents, unearthed by lawyers for Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, show that top tobacco executives from British American Tobacco and Brown &Williamsonwere intricately involved with efforts to dampen public concern about smoking's harm while at the same time adjusting nicotine levels in cigarettes to keep smokers hooked. . . . What the Harshbarger team found was revealing: minutes from meetings from 1988 to 1990 of a top-secret group called the Tobacco Strategy Review Team, made up of Sir Patrick Sheehy, chairman of BAT, R.J. Pritchard, the chief executive of BAT's top subsidiary, Kentucky-based Brown &Williamson,and several other top executives.
- Designer clothing, luxury goods and a database of smokers' addresses are among the alternative methods for promoting cigarettes
- 05/08/97 UK: Queen's Speech to Signal Ban on Cigarette Adverts Times of London
- Laws to prohibit tobacco advertising are expected to be signalled in Labour's first Queen's Speech next week.
- Britain's newly elected Labour Party government is pressing ahead with plans to introduce a ban on tobacco advertising, its minister of state for public health told the World Health Organisation in Geneva on Wednesday. Tessa Jowell said in a speech delivered on her behalf to the U.N. health agency's annual asembly that smoking was the biggest single cause of preventable illness and death in Britain.
- [W]hile Republicans in Washington seek to protect tobacco from a hostile Food and Drug Administration, their political cousins in the state capitals are engaged in a massive legal effort that could bankrupt the industry.
- Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp., the nation's largest hospital chain, has $5.6 million invested in tobacco stocks. Now, the Protestant Episcopal Church wants Columbia to divest its tobacco holdings as some other major health-care institutions have. But Columbia officials oppose the proposal, saying it should not be making moral and ethical decisions with its investments.
- [Wilner] says that he has already filed hundreds of tobacco cases and that he's preparing thousands more. He expects to try two more this year after the Connor trial, which went to jury at press time, and then pick up the pace.
- 05/10/97 Point-of-Purchase Institute Asks Osteen to Rehear Decision on Self-Service Displays Advertising Age
- The group said the judge mistakenly considered eliminating self-service displays to be an allowable access restriction when in truth it represents a restriction on advertising, which would be barred by the judge's ruling. POPAI said the ruling would cost it $250 million a year in business.
- 05/14/97 Dow Jones story Dow Jones (pay registration)
- 05/13/97 SOUTH CAROLINA Sues Tobacco Reuters
- 05/12/97 MISSOURI Sues Tobacco UPI
- Want an easy way to gauge whether the Internet is valuable as a personal reference library? I have one word for you: tobacco. . . All of it is on the Web, a veritable treasure trove of science and law, historical information, personal testimony and activist campaigns.
- She won't discuss specifics, but acknowledges she is working on more than one of the scores of tobacco cases pending across the country. It's heavy, heavy, heavy,'' Singer said. "This is the asbestos litigation of the 21st century.''
- But we're now convinced that this is no mere trend, no simple fad. We have come to believe that this is a conspiracy--a conspiracy to turn every one of us, male and female, into cigar smokers. The evidence is mounting. . . A catalog: The spring Playboy gift catalogue features on its cover the words "Wrap your lips around them!" over a picture of a naked woman whose private parts are strategically placed cigars
- "Cocarettes" cigarettes were "not injurious" and made of "the finest sun-cured Virginia tobacco" and "the exact proportion" of genuine Bolivian Coca leaf, all packaged in the best rice paper available. Smoke these little cigarettes, the advertising promised, and you would find that the coca leaf completely neutralized the depressing effects of the tobacco. They could be "freely used" by "persons in delicate health without injury, and with positively beneficial results." "Coca is the finest nerve tonic and exhilarator ever discovered," the Cocarette Co. gushed. "Coca stimulates the brain to great activity and gives tone and vigor to the entire system."
- Westchester International Business Forum . . . is part of the Philip Morris Critical Issues Series. The May 13 program is co-sponsored by the Forum for World Affairs, a Stamford, CT-based educational organization, and will be held at the Philip Morris International world headquarters in Rye Brook, New York.
- By a slight margin, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives approved a bill that hikes state taxes by 71 cents per pack on cigarettes and a like amount on other tobacco products. That will add to the state's current tax of 29 cents a pack. The House action followed earlier approval by the state Senate. . . State Rep. Ramona Barnes, a heavy smoker, vowed to skirt the tax. "I'm not going to pay it, plain and simple. I'm going to import cigarettes, a case at a time, 48 cartons in a case, stick them in my freezer."
- 05/10/97 Lawmakers Agree on Increased Tax The Wall Street Journal (Pay Registration)
- 05/11/97 Cig Tax May Hit $1 per Pack St. Louis Post-Dispatch
- 05/11/97 Reuters story
- 05/08/97 ALASKA: House to Vote on Tobacco Tax Today Anchorage Daily News
- The Senate passed the measure last month, to raise taxes 71 cents per pack of cigarettes, and sent it to the House. There, the measure has divided the usually cohesive Republican majority. After a round of political wrangling this spring, the bill has been locked in committee for weeks. On Wednesday afternoon, however, a spokesman for House Speaker Gail Phillips, said the bill would be up for a vote today. Rep. Con Bunde, R-Anchorage, a tobacco-tax champion in the House, said he has been polling fellow representatives and feels confident the bill will pass. "Unless some have been led astray, we have the votes,'' he said.
- Cigarette makers may have illegally shielded research secrets from the public by invoking lawyer-client confidentiality, a St. Paul judge said Friday.
The ruling by Ramsey County District Judge Kenneth Fitzpatrick is a loss for the tobacco industry and represents the first step toward a sweeping court-supervised review of 150,000 of the industry's most sensitive documents. In a carefully worded ruling, Fitzpatrick stopped short of saying that cigarette companies committed fraud or other crimes when smoking-related research material landed in the hands of industry lawyers and was declared privileged.
- 05/11/97 Judge Orders Look into Secret Papers Chicago Tribune
- 05/10/97 Tobacco Firms Must Turn over More Documents LA Times
- A Minnesota state court judge said Friday that tobacco companies should not be allowed to conceal scientific research that they have touted in advertising campaigns but now want to keep secret. He ordered the companies to turn over thousands of documents within 15 days for an in-chambers review. Judge Kenneth B. Fitzpatrick said that he had found that the defendants in Minnesota's massive lawsuit against the tobacco industry "have claimed that safety-related scientific research" they conducted should be protected by the attorney-client privilege, a legal doctrine designed to foster candid communication between attorneys and their clients.
- Across the country, Philip Morris was giving away copies of the first CD from its new recording label, Woman Thing Music, to promote Virginia Slims. Even as they're negotiating a truce in the tobacco wars, cigarette makers are continuing hard-sell tactics that could skirt the very rules they're agreeing to follow under a peace deal. "I'm extremely troubled that new initiatives have begun even as we attempt to negotiate an end to these types of practices,'' said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.
- The Health and Welfare Ministry is preparing a health report that for the first time would discuss problems caused by cigarettes. The Ministry of Finance must approve the document, however, and it is squeamish because it has responsibility for overseeing Japan's multibillion-dollar investment in the tobacco industry. A compromise reportedly is under negotiation that would allow the Health Ministry's white paper to mention smoking's ills but balance the warning with a favorable comment, like noting the tranquilizing effect of cigarettes on the mind.
- 05/13/97 Japanese Press: Bad Manners to Chain-Smoke at Announcement There's a picture of Aoki lighting up at the press conference here. CNNfn
- Malaysia's Education Ministry banned cigarettes from schools on Tuesday and said students caught smoking would be flogged, suspended or expelled.
- These reports were issued with no political agenda in mind, only the well-being of our nation. As we face both lingering and new public health problems -- including AIDS, emerging infectious diseases, food-borne illnesses, substance abuse, tobacco use by children and alcoholism -- we must use the same approach today. To do so, we must have a high-profile official who speaks with authority and can educate the public about the important link between personal behavior and illness.
- Even ex-smokers who quit 20 years ago have double the disease risk
- One by one, Giants' players quitting habit for health
- "These results -- which we consider conclusive -- show the smokers who took Metacalm-S reported a significant reduction in their cravings for cigarettes, food and sweets," said Arthur R. Smith, president and CEO of Advantage Management, Inc., the independent firm that conducted the survey. "They also reported experiencing less intense feelings of nervousness, irritability and overall anxiety." Developed over ten years of research, Metacalm-S is a patented blend of minerals, vitamins, amino acids and herbs
- Yet 30 years after the smoking habit was declared a health hazard by the U.S. surgeon general, neither employers nor their insurance plans set much store by conventional quit-smoking programs. Nicotine addiction has proven stubbornly resistant to quick fixes, and the cost and high relapse rates of most programs have led to disenchantment, even among employers and health plans that trumpet their interest in preventive medicine.
- 05/13/97 Negotiating Sides of Tobacco Issue NY Newsday
- 05/12/97 Talks Turn Chaotic CNNfn
- 05/13/97 OPINION: Take No Prisoners US New
- In the history of this dispute, a deal would be a watershed victory for the activists, but it would be hollow. While they seem reluctant to say so, their goal is clear: The more havoc they wreak on Big Tobacco, the fewer the number who will die from tobacco consumption. That position is extreme, but who besides the industry would argue it's unreasonable?
- [T]he discussions are no longer a simple dialogue, but a cacophony of views and interest groups.
- Lest he typecast as a gloomy Gus, Pointer also comes up with one of the most hilarious, surreal and subversive tunes in recent memory, "The Baby Smokers." With a sneakily jaunty, harmonica-driven melody and a wink in his voice, Pointer paints a world in which "it's the bestest way for you to keep a little baby calm/ roll him up a snack of some nice tobacco/ somethin' that the baby likes . . . " If you're not coughing, you'll be laughing out loud.
- Surveys of 240,000 U.S. adults, made over 11 years, show those living below the poverty line are up to 40 percent more likely to smoke than their wealthier compatriots. . . "The state of mind that leads you to give up smoking is not one of despair -- it's one of optimism,'' he said. "And the poor have very little to feel optimistic about.'' But Marsh said black Americans and Britons both tended to smoke less than their white counterparts, whatever their income level. Asian women in Britain also smoked very little even if they were poor. Marsh said experts should investigate why that was. "How come their culture protects them from smoking?'' he asked.
- 05/13/97 US Supreme Court OKs Lui's Extradition to Hong Kong in Cig Bribery Case Ex-BAT (HK) exec Jerry Lui (Lui Kin-Hong) could face death when China takes over. Last resort: Lui asks Madeleine Albright to halt extradition. AP Washington Post
- Acknowledging that the city is moving into uncharted waters, the Arts, Health and Humanities Committee on Monday took the next step in Councilman Mike Feuer's effort to ban tobacco and alcohol advertising on billboards in Los Angeles. The committee asked the city attorney's office to draft an ordinance within 90 days that will outline the ban. Feuer said he hopes the ban will be in place by year's end. At a hearing Monday, the committee discussed several ramifications of the ban, such as possible legal challenges on 1st Amendment grounds and the need to update the zoning code, which does not clearly define billboards.
- Northwest Airlines flight attendants are demanding in contract negotiations that the carrier ban smoking on the last of its smoking flights, a move the company fears would snuff out big profits in the Pacific region.
- 05/13/97 Senators Want to Boost Cigarette Tax Kennedy/Hatch Bill introduced. MSNBC
- 05/13/97 Anti-Smoking Activists Back Kennedy/Hatch Plan AP Washington Post
- Organizers said Tuesday's event was the culmination of nearly four months of fund raising that raked in more than $11 million for the GOP treasury. Ted Welch, who chaired the event, told the crowd as they sat down to salmon and filet mignon that a recent Democratic effort raised only $4 million -- ``so we have a lot to cheer for.''
- 05/14/97 Money Talks--and Parties--at GOP Gala Short graph about Philip Morris as "co-chair." Washington Post
- But what was last night's event all about if not selling political access to the highest bidder -- though the Republicans can't offer a White House coffee and sleepover. RNC contributors who raised a quarter-million bucks were anointed "co-chairmen" and allowed to dine at the dais in the company of Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. They enjoyed a photo session and breakfast with the pair earlier in the day, as well as lunch with the Senate or House committee chairman "of your choice," according to party literature. . . One way to reach these rarefied levels of access was to hit up lobbyists and get them to sponsor a number of tables. The Amway Corp. and Philip Morris Cos. were among last night's "co-chairmen."
- [S]ome legal analysts doubt the measure will survive a constitutional test. Rothmans Benson and Hedges Inc., RJR-Macdonald Inc. and Imperial Tobacco Inc. will argue before the Quebec Superior Court on May 26 that Canada's Tobacco Act is unconstitutional because it violates free speech guarantees.
- House sponsor Ann Rest, DFL-New Hope, said Tuesday that the conference report, agreed to Monday, stakes out "a middle position" between "an exceptionally strong Senate bill and a fairly weak House bill." Senate sponsor Ember Reichgott Junge, DFL-New Hope, said the conferees "basically split everything down the middle" and agreed on "a strong bill that will reduce illegal sales of tobacco" to those under 18.
- Lt. Gov. Donald Beyer, a Democrat running for governor this year, has come out in support of government efforts to regulate tobacco as a drug, making him Virginia's first statewide candidate ever to openly defy the industry. "It was a simple moral decision that was made without political calculation. I hope it works, but it was the right thing to do,'' Beyer said.
- [P]ublic health advocates say there is one little-noticed but glaring shortcoming in the historic deal as currently proposed: It would stop at US shores. . . In fact, if the deal goes through, the tobacco companies are expected to rely on international sales more than ever. Revenue from overseas sales already dwarfs domestic sales for the two top cigarette makers. . .
- "The discovery that tobacco could be successfully grown and profitably sold was the most momentous single fact in the first century of settlement on the Chesapeake Bay."
- [The tour] will proceed as scheduled but certain aspects of its sponsorship will be modified to deprive anti-tobacco activists of a platform to advance their prohibitionist agenda over the rights of adults to use tobacco products. . . the Company plans to modify certain aspects of its sponsorship, including removal of references to our sponsorship from all future R.O.A.R. Tour print advertising, press releases and promotional material,* to preclude further attempts to divert the debate from the real issues at hand.
- The Role Of Litigation In The Effective Control Of The Sale And Use Of Tobacco by Graham E. Kelder, Jr. And Richard A. Daynard
- Smoke Around The Rising Sun: An American Look At Tobacco Regulation In Japan by Mark A. Levin
- [A] small group of core negotiators concluded four days of secret meetings in New York yesterday after edging closer to agreement on issues such as future liability lawsuits against the industry. The talks - which included a small number of representatives from the tobacco companies, plaintiff lawyers and attorneys general suing the industry - were part of a race against the clock.
- Just over a year ago, Philip Morris USA warned scores of local workers and retirees about the U.S. Department of Justice's widening investigation of the tobacco industry. That warning hit home this week.
- 05/16/97 Osdene Unsuccessfully Seeks Immunity The Wall Street Journal (Pay Registration)
- Among the documents from Mr. Osdene's files cited in the court papers was a handwritten note that, in part, discussed the routing of certain documents to the company's research facility in Cologne, Germany. The note stated: "1. Ship all documents to Cologne ... 2. Keep in Cologne. 3. OK to phone & telex (these will be destroyed)." The memo also stated: "If important letters or documents have to be sent, please send to home -- I will act on them and destroy." While the memo bears no author or date, it appeared to be in his handwriting, according to Minnesota's court papers.
- Dr. Thomas S. Osdene, former director of research at Philip Morris USA in Richmond, is seeking immunity from federal prosecution, CBS News reported last night. Osdene, 69, was scheduled to testify in a four-day deposition starting yesterday in Richmond, but his testimony was cut short when he exercised his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination because he is negotiating for immunity, according to CBS. . . Michael Ciresi, the lead attorney for Minnesota in its case against the tobacco companies, told CBS that the Justice Department has found a "smoking howitzer" as investigators examine thousands of internal company documents.
- Transcripts are sealed after former Philip Morris research director invokes his 5th Amendment privilege.
- The pension board of Vermont's state employees has voted to stop buying additional shares of tobacco companies, said Vermont Treasurer James Douglas.
- 05/16/97 AP Item Miami Herald
- 05/16/97 FDA Clears Anti-Smoking Pill Reuters Health eLine
- 05/15/97 CESSATION: FDA Approves Zyban Anti-depressant for Quitting Smoking CNNfn
- The government approved the first nicotine-free anti-smoking drug Thursday, one that works in the brain at the source of addiction. Zyban is a prescription antidepressant that can curb the cravings and withdrawal symptoms smokers face when they quit. And for hard-core smokers, doctors can try dealing the addiction a one-two punch by combining Zyban with nicotine patches, said manufacturer Glaxo Wellcome Inc. and the Food and Drug Administration.
- "My problem is that once you initiate this quest for moral purity, when are you satisfied that something is absolutely untainted?" said Randall Balmer, a professor of religion at Barnard College. "We're all morally ambiguous creatures. That's the sadness of the human condition."
- In 1984, foreign sales by Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds were $5 billion. Last year, they were $28 billion. Foreign sales now account for well over half of the $48 billion tobacco industry in the US. For all of the publicity about big tobacco's legal tangles in the US, Philip Morris last year sold a record 891 billion cigarettes, 660 billion of them overseas. The rise is so steep that it ``defies gravity,'' said Martin Feldman, a tobacco analyst at Smith Barney. . . Big tobacco should be held abroad to the same advertising and sales restrictions that are evolving at home. Clinton . . . claims to care about the common good in joining the Chemical Weapons Convention. That claim rings hollow when the country's most common chemical weapon, tobacco, is easily winning its world war against health. Tobacco is winning because we twisted the arms of nations until they cried Uncle Sam.
- 05/15/97 LIGGETT Settles Suit CNNfn
- 05/15/97 Brooke Settles Tobacco Class Action in West Virginia Business Wire
- Court Enjoins All Class Action and Individual Tobacco Plaintiffs From Proceeding Against Liggett; Agreement Has Same Terms As Class Action Settlement In Alabama State Court
- Today, Chief Judge Charles H. Haden, II (United States District Court, Southern District of West Virginia) preliminarily enjoined all lawsuits against The Liggett Group based on tobacco injury and loss. The preliminary injunction is the first step in the approval process of an historic settlement agreement between The Liggett Group and a nationwide class of individual smokers. According to the settlement, Liggett, manufacturer of Chesterfield and other cigarettes, is obligated to actively assist plaintiffs' counsel by providing internal and heretofore privileged documents, testimony and witnesses, in the prosecution of conspiracy and other claims against Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company, Lorillard, Inc. and The American Tobacco Company. In addition, Liggett must pay 25% of its pretax profits for the next 25 years into a settlement fund for distribution to injured smokers. . . Notably, the West Virginia agreement approved today supersedes the Alabama settlement and, because it is pending in federal court rather than state court, is considered the superior forum for achieving all of the goals of the parties to the settlement
- 05/14/97 FBI Helping Justice Probe of Tobacco --CBS Reuters
- "CBS Evening News" said it had exclusive information that a federal law-enforcement task force was working on the first major case involving possible criminal charges against top cigarette industry executives and their lawyers. After months of preliminary legwork, the FBI assigned the special group to a Justice Department probe into whether U.S. tobacco companies had committed fraud, it said.
- In a terse statement -- part of a company filing submitted Wednesday to the Securities and Exchange Commission -- Philip Morris said it had been advised that the FTC is investigating the company's "merchandising practices at the wholesale and retail levels." . . A lawyer familiar with the investigation . . . said the agency has begun an inquiry but hasn't served the company with civil subpoenas -- an action that would require a commission vote. The lawyer said there appears to be no imminent enforcement action planned against Philip Morris.
- 05/15/97 Dow Jones item Chicago Tribune
- 05/15/97 Philip Morris Acknowledges FTC Investigation Focus on incentive programs. Bloomberg / The New York Times (Free Registration)
- 05/15/97 FTC Watches PM CNNfn
- Bucking national trends, smoking among junior high school students is declining in Massachusetts and staying about the same for high school students, providing new evidence that the state's antitobacco program is making headway. . . The most encouraging signs appear in the minority communities, where cigarette use among junior high school students dropped significantly over the past four years. . . Cigarette use among teenage whites remained level.
- The tobacco industry wants to have Jones County Circuit Judge Billy Joe Landrum removed from the case after he met twice with an attorney for the plaintiffs and a lawyer for Liggett Group, one of the defendants in the Butler suit. Tobacco industry lawyers objected to the meetings, saying no other defendants were notified. Attorneys for the plaintiffs said the decision could delay the start of the trial, currently set for Aug. 18. Its immediate effect was to postpone a hearing scheduled to begin Wednesday on whether internal documents released by cigarette maker Liggett should be made available to lawyers for Butler's family.
- Everywhere a legislator turned, he or she was button-holed by representatives of health or education groups or their rivals from the retail and cigarette industries. "Someone counted 18 people out there to lobby against our efforts," said Rep. Ann Rest, chief House sponsor of a controversial bill aimed at restricting youth access to tobacco. "It's fairly intimidating, even to people who are strongly convinced that this is the right thing to do."
- Georgia tobacco farmers have lost 15 to 20 percent of their tobacco plants this year due to Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus, according to Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture, Tommy Irvin. Loss of this many plants by this time of year could result in a 10 percent drop in yield. "The virus was first detected on tobacco in Georgia in 1986 but has never caused this degree of damage,'' said Commissioner Irvin. ``Currently, we are unable to predict if losses will go any higher."
- In a related development, a key provision of a bill that would prohibit minors from using tobacco has become a point of contention.
- Another heated discussion is expected Thursday, when the City Council is to consider smoking restrictions on restaurants and workplaces. Councilmen Bob Ross and Robert Marbut Jr., who are sponsoring the restrictions, have clashed with the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, which opposes not only an ordinance proposed for restaurants, but also a similar law for workplaces.
- High-flying San Francisco attorney Charles Breyer, a savvy trial lawyer and advocate of juvenile justice reform whose brother is a member of the U.S. Supreme Court, has been recommended for the federal bench. Breyer's 30-year legal career has spanned criminal and civil courts. He prosecuted a Watergate-related trial, and more recently defended a tobacco company. His client list sparkles with celebrity names--but he also has worked to develop programs for low-income youths. And he has connections in Washington: his brother, Stephen G. Breyer, is a Supreme Court justice and former counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which must approve the nomination. alling Breyer "an outstanding man, a proven leader and a person of high integrity," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) this week urged President Clinton to nominate him to the U.S. District Court for Northern California.
- Addiction to full-cream milk was blamed yesterday for the death of a 26-year-old van driver who downed up to five pints a day for 12 years.
- Turner said [the Tobacco Manufacturers Assn] wrote to Public Health Minister Tessa Jowell requesting a meeting on the proposed ad ban. "We do feel we've got a right, even a responsibility, to make ourselves heard before the government makes an irrevocable decision or finalises its plans," Turner said. "We want to know why the government thinks it's necessary to introduce legislation, and ask why they are doing this when it won't make a difference on consumption," he added.
- 05/15/97 UK: Labour Proposes Ban on Tobacco Ads The Wall Street Journal (Pay Registration)
- The move is expected to rekindle fierce debate in Europe over the effects of cigarette advertising on smokers, especially teens. It is also expected to be closely watched by members of the European Union, which is considering a similar ban, and in the U.S., where talks continue on an industrywide settlement of tobacco liability cases that would include tough curbs on advertising.
- SPORTS sponsorship is likely to be restricted or banned by the Government as part of draft legislation to be introduced this summer ending advertising by tobacco companies.
- 05/15/97 IMPERIAL Firing on 3 Fronts Electronic Telegraph
- Gestational weight gains of 7 to 11.5 kg and 11.5 to 16 kg for obese and normal-weight women, respectively, "...appear to be appropriate." .. . . Although gestational weight gain did not appear to reduce the effects of smoking on low birthweight, "...there was evidence of a combined effect of less-than-recommended gestational weight gain and smoking on birthweight for obese and normal-weight women." Based on this finding, the authors conclude that smokers should be encouraged to attain at least the minimum recommended gestational weight gains.
- 05/15/97 New Cig Warnings Hit Stores AP Washington Post
- Southern Illinois Is Putting Fraternity Row On The Wagon . . . National fraternity leaders say that "substance-free housing"--tobacco is also forbidden--will become the norm at fraternities on U.S. campuses in the next few years.
- Along with 19 other high school students of St. Francis Preparatory School who share similar stories of cigarettes, [Jenny Mullins] is part of a teenage antitobacco movement formed earlier this year in Fresh Meadows called Saving the Health of Our Communities & Kids, also known as SHOCK. . . . This take-charge attitude toward the tobacco industry is picking up steam among teenagers across the nation. Funded jointly by Youth Partnership for Health and the Brooklyn Diocese Drug Abuse Prevention Program, SHOCK is one of 17 youth-led coalitions throughout the state committed to combating tobacco use among children. . . . Peer pressure is their biggest obstacle. The group admits teenagers who smoke bond with other smokers. But they believe thousands of teenagers have made a conscious decision not to smoke and just refuse to admit it to their friends for fear of losing them. Jessica Palmer, a junior at St. Francis Preparatory, acknowledges that she lost friends because she refused to begin smoking. Now through her activism with SHOCK, she hopes to turn the tables and win them back. "I drifted away from some people, it's true," she said. "Kids do think smoking is cool. But we are going to work with them and make them stop and pull them back on our side."
- 05/18/97 States Taking Different Routes in Pursuit of Common Goals Washington Post
- The Indonesian entrepreneur being investigated for allegedly working as Beijing's political operative in the United States had formed lucrative business ties with China before gaining access to President Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), records and interviews show. . . Now federal authorities are investigating whether [Ted Sioeng, 51], a prominent figure in Los Angeles' Chinese emigre community, tried to acquire influence for China through his family's political donations, including $250,000 to the Democratic National Committee during last year's presidential campaign.
- A 57-year-old Sri Lankan tailor suffering from lung cancer is seeking damages from Ceylon Tobacco Company, a unit of British B.A.T Industries Plc, blaming his condition on long years of smoking. The Sunday Times newspaper said K.S. Perera had written to the Ceylon Tobacco Company claiming 2.5 million rupees ($42,735) as compensation after doctors diagnosed his condition as terminal. It is the first time in Sri Lanka that a compensation claim has been brought against a tobacco firm.
- Education officials say students in primary and secondary schools who are caught smoking for the third time will be expelled and banned from school for life. The first offense is punishable by a caning before the entire school. The second will bring suspension for a period of time.
- It's time we quit fooling around with little cartoons and gimmicks and start getting into the gritty facts of life with kids old enough to understand. We have to stop covering each other's eyes hoping the problem will go away.
- So why didn't I call or write? Because I have written to The Times. Plenty of people have written and called to complain about other articles and photos promoting tobacco use, such as those "cigar night" promotional stories. But the fact that The Times continues to publish pro-tobacco articles and images shows how little influence we have regarding the validity of publishing those "news" stories. . .
- Philip Morris presented to the UK industry their global strategy on environmental tobacco smoke. In every major international area (USA, Europe, Australia, Far East, South America, Central America, & Spain) they are proposing, in key countries, to set up a team of scientists organised by one national coordinating scientist and American lawyers, to review scientific literature or carry out work on ETS to keep the controversy alive. They are spending vast sums of money to do so, and on the European Front Covington & Burling, lawyers for the Tobacco Institute in the USA, are proposing to set up a London office from March 1988 to coordinate these activities. The countries in Europe where they have already been working are the UK, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, and Scandinavia (via Sweden). A list of potential scientists who could be contacted in the UK was produced.
- A bill to increase cigarette taxes by 43 cents a pack faces uncertain prospects as federal budget negotiations proceed, largely because its fund-raising objectives are being achieved by other means. The House budget panel approved a balanced-budget plan yesterday that includes $16 billion in expanded health-care coverage for America's children.
- Lawyers suing tobacco companies say they plan to subpoena John H. Hager, the Republican candidate for Virginia lieutenant governor, to ask him what he knew about nicotine manipulation when he was a top executive at a cigarette company.
- Tobacco interests stalled action on a strict tobacco licensing bill Friday by offering to accept a cigarette tax increase that would finance a new Twins stadium, several legislators said. Tobacco lobbyists dangled the lure of a stadium financing option in an attempt to strip from the bill a provision that would require disclosure of harmful chemicals in cigarettes, legislators said. The latest wrinkle in the long-running stadium saga brought to a sudden halt a historic statewide tobacco licensing bill, which the Senate had been expected to approve Friday and send to Gov. Arne Carlson. Instead, Senate sponsor Ember Reichgott Junge, DFL-New Hope, pulled the bill from the floor as supporters' nose-counts showed it could fall short of final passage -- barely six weeks after it breezed through the Senate on a vote of 55 to 6.
- New York state judge said he plans to let fraud lawsuits against the
biggest U.S. cigarette makers proceed and grant them class-action
status. New York Supreme Court Judge Charles E. Ramos made his comments
at the conclusion of arguments on whether to dismiss lawsuits against . . . tobacco companies.
- U.S. District Court Judge Denis Hurley reserved decision yesterday on a challenge to Nassau County's stringent smoking ordinance. He said it will be four to six weeks before he decides the challenge to the law passed in January, 1996, by the county Board of Health . . Much of the argument in the Hauppauge federal court focused on the question of whether the issue falls under the purview of the county legislature, rather than the health board. In other counties, such ordinances were passed by the county legislature rather than the health boards, attorney Arthur J. Kremer told the court. Kremer is representing a group of bowling alley owners who have challenged the ordinance.
- For the first time ever, the Japanese government is expected this summer to formally acknowledge that smoking is a direct cause of illness . . . This June . . . the Japanese Ministry of Health plans to submit for Cabinet approval a white paper on health and safety, stating that smoking causes disease and warning about the dangers of secondhand smoke "It could be a turning point," said Makoto Kumaki, spokesman for the Ministry of Health But Japanese media report that a bureaucratic battle is brewing between the guardians of health and the [Ministry of Finance].
- A pill approved by the US Food and Drug Administration this week is being hailed as the simplest, most effective way to help America's 50 million smokers quit their habit. In one study, the drug Zyban recorded a 49-percent quit rate in subjects who took it, compared with 36 percent for the popular nicotine patch. It is the first smoking-cessation drug that doesn't contain nicotine, and the first that lets smokers try to stop by simply popping a pill. Widely prescribed for depression under the name Wellbutrin, it should be available by prescription under its new name in July, officials said.
- 05/19/97 Anti-Smoking Pill is Hailed Your Health Daily
- WHAT do you call a company whose strategy involves cutting 600 jobs in Manchester while pushing the sale of an addictive drug to people in the Third World? Gallaher is unlikely to appeal to the ethical investor, but . . .
- Peter Wilson, chairman and chief executive of Gallaher, stands to make more than £1 million if the tobacco company is taken over after its flotation on May 30.
- R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. is taking a sassy new Winston campaign nationwide in an all-out effort to turn around the sagging fortunes of a brand that was once No. 1 in the country. Residents of Florida, the test market for the campaign, have been seeing a slew of billboard and magazine advertisements for the past nine months touting Winston as a no-nonsense cigarette with no additives. . . . The only ingredients used in processing Winston are water and tobacco, [RJR] said.
- Y.C. Deveshwar, the chairman of ITC Ltd., India's largest cigarette maker, says smoking his company's cigarettes is good for India's health. He says the 10-cent-a-pack ``bidis,'' traditional leaf-wrapped cigarettes which most Indian smokers choose, are worse for the lungs than paper-wrapped cigarettes. If people switch to ITC's filtered cigarettes, he argues, they will be healthier. As U.S. and British tobacco companies struggle with lawsuits and a steady decline in the number of smokers, more Indians seem to be taking Deveshwar's advice and ITC is about to announce a healthy rise in profits.
- In Fiji, where men wear skirts and people tell time by the sun, taboos aren't uncommon. In the village of Nabila, a tobacco taboo has existed for six years -- quite an accomplishment for Fiji, where smoking is very much a part of daily life.
- Tobacco industry "soft money" and political action committee contributions totaled $9.9 million during the 1995-96 election cycle, nearly double the industry's 1992 contributions.
- The R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. will resume national advertising for its flagging Winston line as part of a comprehensive revamping of that cigarette's formula, packaging and marketing. The overhaul, tested in Florida since July, is centered on reformulating Winston to eliminate additives, then presenting it to smokers as a brand with "100 percent tobacco" and "true taste."
- Schweitzer-Mauduit, which was spun off by Kimberly-Clark Corp. a year and a half ago, intends to increase its leading market share. The company is trying to double its revenues (to $1 billion) and earnings by 2000 through acquisitions, product development, increased capacity and expansion in China and other developing countries.
- On movie screens in Boston this month, a cowboy lights up a smoke, fumbles the cigarette and sets his pants on fire. . . The 30-second commercial, now playing on 81 movie screens in Massachusetts, is the latest salvo in the state's war on tobacco, sponsored by the Massachusetts Department of Health and created by Boston ad agency Houston Herstek Favat. It's also the beginning of a new push to put antismoking ads on the silver screen. . . But . . . movie studios, cinemas and moviegoers in the U.S. have long resisted ads. . . Of several major theater chains in Massachusetts, only Sony Corp.'s theater chain -- which normally doesn't allow ads -- agreed to show the commercials, saying it viewed them as public-service announcements. However, it isn't showing them before movies distributed by Warner or Disney.
- Page is a founder of the Phildelphia Pipe Club, a ``bunch of interesting guys'' who get together once a month in a smoke-filled back room of a Center City cafe for an evening of socializing. "We don't just get together and blow smoke in each other's face,'' said Page, owner of the Classical Guitar Store at 2038 Sansom St. ``The main thing is conversation.''
- Tobacco companies would be required to tell the state what's in their products but would be allowed to protect trade secrets, under a bill passed out of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee on Saturday. The bill, which has already passed the House, goes to the full Senate for consideration. Critics have said the trade-secret provision, added by the full House, would gut the bill by allowing tobacco companies to continue concealing information.
- Attorneys for six of the seven law firms hired to work on South Carolina's lawsuit with the nation's biggest tobacco firms have contributed campaign funds to South Carolina Attorney General Charlie Condon, a newspaper reported. Condon hired the attorneys before making South Carolina the first tobacco-producing state to join the lawsuit, The (Columbia) State said Sunday.
- "It's sort of ironic that in May, which is Asian Pacific Heritage Month, our communities are being attacked by the tobacco industry," said Rod Lew, director of Asian Pacific Partners for Empowerment and Leadership (APPEAL) . . . "We're also talking about Asia as well. Since 63 percent of our community are immigrants, they're very much impacted by the kind of tobacco tactics taken in their home countries." . . . [UC-San Francisco's Vietnamese Community Health Promotion Project] last year filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission over a bilingual "555" newspaper ad that left the surgeon general's warning in English. But no action was taken . . . In Vietnam, "Marlboro women," dressed in the brand colors of red and white, give out free smokes at cafes and nightclubs. The brand has even spawned a local copycat brand, "Boy Boy," with its own Vietnamese Marlboro man, complete with a cowboy hat.
- The tobacco industry's proposed settlement with states may cost more than $300 billion. To subsidize this huge payment, tobacco companies may raise cigarette prices. A look at the average cost of cigarettes and how much people smoke.
- 05/20/97 Cigarette Trends in US
- 05/20/97 Cost of Cigarettes
- 05/20/97 How Much People Smoke
- 05/20/97 KENNEDY Asks Budget Entry on Child Health Care Boston Globe
- When the budget resolution hits the Senate floor today, Senator Edward M. Kennedy will be armed with five amendments to continue the guerrilla tactics he has been using since Republicans took control of Congress. Kennedy is hoping to shame his colleagues into providing health care for poor children, doubling the funding for the National Institutes of Health, and giving tax breaks to the middle class.
- Backers of a plan to raise cigarette taxes to cover uninsured children said Tuesday the $16 billion allocated in the budget deal for such insurance is not enough. Now, they want to attach their own plan to the budget resolution moving through the Senate. "We plan to press forward at every opportunity," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, whose bill would raise the cigarette tax by 43 cents a pack. "Are we going to help kids or are we going to help big tobacco?"
- Hoping to head off a proposed cigarette tax increase, Wisconsin retailers on Monday released a Philip Morris-funded study that found stores in areas bordering other states benefit from Wisconsin's relatively low excise taxes. But the report by InContext Inc. of Washington, D.C., came under immediate attack from tobacco industry critics, who said the report was tainted by its funding source. "This is about as credible as their 30 years' worth of studies saying nicotine isn't harmful to your health," said David Ahrens, executive director of Tobacco-Free Wisconsin Coalition.
- Tweaking the tobacco industry, the state Senate has appointed one of the nation's leading anti-tobacco advocates to a board that oversees California's anti-tobacco advertising, research and education. The Senate Rules Committee appointed Stanton Glantz, a medical school professor at UC San Francisco, to the Tobacco Education and Research Oversight Committee, which advises the Department of Health Services on $100 million in annual expenditures for anti-tobacco campaigns and research.
- THE APPOINTMENT of Stanton Glantz to a special legislative committee that oversees the state's anti-smoking campaign is bad news for the tobacco industry. And good news for public health policy.
- Second was Brown and Williamson Tobacco, a subsidiary of Britain's BAT Industries, which gave just more than $1 million, of which $939,500 went to Republicans. [Philip Morris Board Member] Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. was third, giving $835,000 to Republicans and $94,000 to Democrats.
- 05/20/97 UK Pays Most to US Politicians: BAT #2 Times of London
- Second was the UK's BAT Industries, which through its Brown & Williamson Tobacco subsidiary gave just more than $1 million; the vast majority going to the Republicans. Under US law, such donations are legal, but the Democrat Party said earlier this year that it will no longer accept donations. An investigation by The Times has already established that Glaxo Wellcome donated $500,000 directly to US politicians, mainly Republicans, around the election campaign alone.
- 05/20/97 Tobacco Sponsorship: Reaction Sports Organisers Fear £8m Hole In Their Finances. Times of London
- 05/20/97 Overseas: Doubts Dispelled by Reduction in Smoking Bans in Norway, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, France examined. Times of London
- SIX countries that imposed bans on sports sponsorship by tobacco companies have overcome the initial doubts of sports fans and reduced their ranks of smokers.
- Let us be honest. If sport has grown so dependent on tobacco sponsorship the antithesis of promoting health and fitness that it cannot live within its means, then it simply must be scaled back. If this puts Britain at a disadvantage to other countries that do not care where the funding comes from, then perhaps Britain should take the healthy lead. It would, after all, help to excuse Great Britain's failure to finish any higher than 36th at the last Olympics
- Britain's new Labor government pledged Monday to ban all cigarette advertising and bar tobacco sponsorship of sports -- a tough stand in a land of motor rallies, cricket, snooker and darts.
- A PASSION for cigars by Isambard Kingdom Brunel has sparked a dispute over the political correctness of using the great Victorian engineer's image to promote a small Welsh fishing town. Brunel used Neyland in Pembrokeshire as the terminus for his steamships on the Irish sea route, but recent plans to use his likeness to revitalise the town have come unstuck in the local council chamber. Some councillors thought the cigar-smoking image might encourage youngsters to take up the deadly weed, even though they recognised that there was no better man than Brunel to stimulate the local economy and encourage tourism.
- In just three years since the widespread adoption of lung volume reduction surgery, it is estimated that doctors across the country have operated on several thousand patients both in academic medical centers and community hospitals, according to experts who have studied the procedure. . . Yet many uncertainties about the procedure remain unresolved. No one yet knows which patients are the best candidates for surgery. And doctors disagree on the best method of performing this surgery.
- Lucie Arnaz, daughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, would like to stub out all those smoking scenes from I Love Lucy episodes. Arnaz says the show's sponsor, Philip Morris, urged her parents to "light up in every scene." In an interview airing Friday on Geraldo Rivera, Arnaz says she "would like to go back in and just erase them (cigarette scenes) all now."
- A genetic defect that increases susceptibility to potentially life-threatening emphysema is one of the most common genetic disorders found in people of Northern European descent, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Those with the disease are at heightened risk from smoking, and may develop emphysema in their 20s, rather than later in life, as occurs in other smokers. However, the disease, called alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency (A1AD), may be misdiagnosed as chronic bronchitis, allergies, and asthma. The protein helps protect the lungs, and those with the disease produce insufficient quantities. "A1AD is . . . less frequently recognized because it has long been considered a rare disorder," said Dr. Robert Stockley in a release from Bayer Corporation, the pharmaceutical company sponsoring clinical research and a screening program for the disease. "Prolonged delays in diagnosis often mean that, for many patients, serious lung disease progresses unchecked," said Stockley, of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England.
- The number of deaths per year from the disease among adults has nearly doubled in the past 20 years. And among children, asthma now ranks as the leading cause of serious chronic illness. It is the most common ailment that sends youngsters to the hospital. Asthma and its problems were a major topic of discussion yesterday in San Francisco, where 15,000 physicians and health care workers were attending an international conference on lung disease sponsored by the American Lung Association and the American Thoracic Society.
- "Nicotine replacement therapy is associated with long-term smoking cessation benefits," concludes a study conducted by David Daughton, a behavioral researcher in the pulmonary critical care section of the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
- "The good news is that the nicotine patch really is an effective way for many heavy smokers to quit,'' said Dr. David Daughton, a pulmonary specialist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, who reported the study at the joint meeting of the American Lung Association and American Thoracic Society. "But the bad news is, in this group, that weight gain was substantial.''
- Naltrexone, a drug now used for treating alcoholism, helped people in one study who were trying to quit smoking by using a nicotine patch. Patch users who took naltrexone smoked fewer cigarettes than those taking a dummy pill. Naltrexone users also didn't gain weight, a common side effect of quitting, and they craved nicotine less. The work is very preliminary, said Stephanie S. O'Malley, an associate professor of psychiatry at the Yale University Medical School. Only 22 people were in the study, and they were followed for only four weeks.
- 05/20/97 Secondhand Smoke Exposure Hurts Heart--Study Washington Post
- Researchers asked 32,000 nurses in a large ongoing study to place themselves in one of three categories: no exposure to secondhand smoke, occasional exposure, and regular exposure. The researchers then monitored the nurses¹ health during the 10 years between 1982 and 1992, and found evidence of chronic heart disease in 152 cases, including 25 fatal heart attacks.
- Harvard researchers said regular exposure to other peoples' smoking at home or work appeared to almost double the risk of heart disease.
- The study, published in this week's American Heart Association's journal Circulation, finds that non-smoking women who were regularly exposed to passive smoke either in their workplaces or in their homes had a 91 percent higher risk of heart attack or death than those who were not subjected to smoke. . . The 10-year investigation of more than 32,000 women found a higher level of risk from passive smoking than has been seen before.
- Formula One, the world's most glamorous and expensive motor racing event, is looking for new sponsors as a growing number of countries introduce restrictions on tobacco sponsorship. Formula One -- where teams compete in 16 Grand Prix races in 16 countries every year -- receives an estimated $164 million in sponsorship money from tobacco companies, experts say.
- The European Commission said Tuesday it would renew attempts to introduce a European Union-wide ban on tobacco advertising, following the new British government's announcement on Monday of a national ban. Last November, EU health ministers shelved efforts to prohibit tobacco advertising in the face of resistance from some member countries, adopting instead a resolution urging governments to continue coordinated anti-smoking efforts. Britain's former Conservative government sided for many years with the Netherlands, Germany, Greece and Denmark in blocking adoption of an EU-wide ban.
- "Grown in the USA -- It Matters,'' a theme weaving its way through Flue-Cured Tobacco Cooperative Stabilization Corporation, offers a look at the co-op's marketing plan. More about the theme, marketing, tobacco's future in the face of adversity, and international and domestic outlooks will be among the topics discussed at Stabilization's 51st annual meeting set for 10 a.m., Friday, May 30 in the Gov. Kerr Scott building on the North Carolina State Fairgrounds here.
- Chicago Mayor Richard Daley opened a U.S. Conference of Mayors summit on drugs Tuesday by calling for tougher penalties and more prosecutions of bankers, lawyers and other professionals who assist drug dealers. . . As chairman of the summit, Daley used the event to admonish administration officials to devote more attention to the problem of illegal drugs: "In the last year, we have seen more articles, more speeches, more lawsuits on tobacco than anything else. Tobacco is important, but it's consumed America's time and effort." The mayor said he hopes families of drug abusers would take on a more public role to highlight the problems of drug addiction, as the victims of drunken drivers did through the formation of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers.
- On Wednesday, the Town Board is to hold a public hearing on a law that would ban smoking at all town beaches. The ordinance says secondhand smoke and discarded cigarette butts pose a "potential health hazard." Under its terms, anyone caught smoking or putting out cigarettes or cigars in the sand, or shrubbery or flower beds bordering a beach, would be fined $50.
- Mayor Jeremy Harris has signed a new smoking ordinance, and Councilman Steve Holmes says the next step is to educate the public about the change. The new ordinance will toughen restrictions on smoking in commercial buildings. Police could issue citations to individuals violating the rules, Holmes said. But he said he hopes the ordinance will be self-enforcing. Police Chief Michael Nakamura earlier said police have more important things to do than enforce non-smoking ordinances.
- French tobacco company Seita SA (F.STA) Chairman Jean-Dominique Comolli said Tuesday that he hoped Seita and the French government can agree on cigarette price decreases as soon as the new government is installed. Comolli said talks between Seita and the French government on reducing cigarette prices were suspended in late April when French President Jacques Chirac dissolved parliament and set elections for May 25 and June 1.
- Taiwan is to market a tea-flavored cigarette to combat the inroads of foreign brands. Billed as an 'oriental cigarette,' the low-nicotine, low-tar brand will contain an extract of Taiwan's famed Wulong tea, the Taiwan Tobacco and Wine Monopoly Bureau said Wednesday.'Taiwanese enjoy smoking while sipping a cup of tea, and the cigarette will give consumers double enjoyment,' Bureau official Chuang Tien-chai said. Taiwanese authorities are drafting a new law to force cigarette makers to gradually reduce nicotine and tar content in their cigarettes. The tea flavor will make up for the reduced nicotine, Chuang explained.
- Last week, Haverford College, a small liberal arts institution near Philadelphia, announced that it was divesting itself of all tobacco
stocks, specifically its shares in Philip Morris Cos., RJR Nabisco Corp. and American Brands. The college joins at least a dozen other institutions that have taken similar action in recent years -- among them, Smith College in Northampton, Mass., the City University of New York, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Tufts University in Medford, Mass., Wayne State University in Detroit and the public universities of Texas and Vermont.
- After a nine-month market test across Florida, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. is moving nationally to reformulate its struggling Winston brand as a ``No Bull'' tobacco-only cigarette without additives. . . While Reynolds is making no claims that cigarettes without additives are safer than other cigarettes, public health advocates fear some smokers will draw that mistaken conclusion.
- But Mr. Pryor headed a task force of Alabama officials last year that determined that the cases, now filed by 29 states, are nearly impossible to win. He argues instead that states should raise taxes on cigarettes to recoup medical costs rather than trying to collect money through the courts. Others gripe about how Mr. Pryor has shared his research with the tobacco industry. On March 13, the day before Mississippi Attorney General Moore received a copy of the task-force report, the tobacco companies filed a copy in that state's Supreme Court as part of their response to Mr. Moore's suit.
- Laing has not avoided controversy altogether on her new project. With such songs as Peggy Lee's "Don't Smoke In Bed," Les Paul & Mary Ford's "Smoke Rings," and the Hollies' "The Air That I Breathe," lang indulges on "Drag" in the pleasures of lighting up. The artist says there's no political motivation behind the concept-it's more that the idea that tobacco is used as "an escape that stems from deprivations of love" fascinates her.
- So far, in the UK, advertising is doing little to help the leading brands, which are deflating rapidly. . . . Yet, the tobacco barons would be happy to go on ploughing more money into publicity, were they permitted to do so. The reason is simple the ads are aimed at promoting the culture of smoking , not the brands. As cigarette taxes rise and smokers turn to cheaper products, the brands will wither away but the cash flow to investors should remain solid.
- A New York businessman is suing TWA for $6.5 million after he says he missed a farewell visit with his dying father in Israel when he was kicked off a plane for questioning a no-smoking rule. By the time jazz club owner Reouven Barzilai arrived in Tel Aviv after a three-day delay, he said his 73-year-old father had lapsed into a coma and was unable to communicate. The father, who was battling cancer, died a few days later. Barzilai said he was detained illegally at Kennedy Airport by Port Authority police Jan. 22 after complaining to TWA personnel about an unannounced ban on smoking for the 11-hour flight.
- 05/21/97 ISRAELI Sues TWA After Being Pulled Off Flight Jerusalem Post
- 05/22/97 NY Newsday Item
- 05/20/97 TWA Sued Dow Jones (pay registration)
- 05/19/97 UK Cancer Victims Go to Court AP Washington Post
- . . . are among 36 lung cancer victims fighting what could be a precedent-setting case against Britain's tobacco giants, Imperial Tobacco Ltd. and Gallaher Ltd. The battle is the first of its kind in Britain and could set the course of all future smoking-related cases because a single judge will hear the evidence and deliver the verdict, according to plaintiffs' attorney Martyn Day. The judge's decisions on what evidence is admitted, and how it is weighed, will apply to any similar cases that might be filed. If the cancer victims win, thousands more who become sick each year could go to court with strong chances to succeed.
- The bill, approved 3-1 by the Senate Local, Urban and State Affairs Committee, now goes to the full Senate. . . The bill's sponsor, Sen. Loren Bennett (R-Canton Township), applauded the committee action.
- Most of the city's restaurants will have to ban smoking or purify their air, and children who smoke without parental supervision will be committing a crime under an ordinance adopted yesterday by the City Council. The far-reaching rewrite of the city's 1986 tobacco regulations -- ranging from limits on outdoor advertising to restrictions on workplace smoking -- passed with a 6-2 vote. Restaurants have until January 2000 to comply with the ordinance, but the provisions dealing with underage smoking go into effect next month.
- 05/21/97 FORT WORTH Vote Regulates Smoking Dallas Morning News
- Tehran's cleric-led government, ever sensitive to what it calls Western "cultural invasion," has made widespread efforts with limited success to stop the smuggling of U.S. music videos and film cassettes into the country. Similarly Washington has sought to stop the export of U.S. goods . . . On the evidence of kiosks across Tehran, selling Philip Morris Companies Inc Marlboro cigarettes for 5,000 rials a pack, the crackdown by both sides is not completely watertight.
- apan Tobacco Inc's (JT) 2914.T core profits soared to a record high in the past business year, as smokers rushed to stock up on cigarettes before a sales tax increase, but its future looks less bright. . . Despite aggressive expansion, however, JT said cut-throat competition from foreign cigarette makers and a slowdown in sales due to the tax increase would cut its profits in 1997/98.
- To try to clarify public perception of Club Med, Andrew Jordan, president of Club Med Sales Inc., the company's U.S. marketing arm, has refocused the company's strategy on selling Americans three separate brands -- villages for couples, for singles and for families -- and has hired brand managers to oversee each. The alliances with Levi's, Calvin Klein and Davidoff, a first for Club Med, are an outgrowth of this effort. . . . The alliance with Davidoff involves another sweepstakes, with the first prize a Club Med vacation for two plus a year's supply of Davidoff White Label cigars. The contest will be promoted this summer in 90 cigar stores in the United States and on the cigarshop.com World Wide Web site. The target here, Jordan said, is affluent "consumers we don't usually talk to" who might be interested in Club Med's more exotic villages.
- Harvard's study should spur more action. In tracking 32,000 nonsmoking nurses, it found those regularly exposed to others' smoke faced nearly double the risk of heart attacks as those who weren't. Worse, nonsmokers only occasionally exposed faced nearly a 60% increased risk. The bottom line: Passive smoking causes 30,000 to 60,000 nonsmokers to suffer fatal heart attacks each year, a body count matching AIDS, breast cancer and highway accidents, and surpassing leukemia and all the nation's murderers. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration has dallied since 1994 over a workplace smoking ban, trying to accommodate smoking interests. It's time it saved some lives instead.
- The real danger to this country . . . is the combination of shortsighted laws and misguided Supreme Court opinions that allowed the tobacco lobby to invest $9.9-million in the 1996 elections and more than $25-million over the past 10 years. If it weren't for that, would Sen. Orrin Hatch be having such trouble from his own party over his bill to finance children's health care with a small cigarette tax increase? Would Congress be going out of its way to ignore the Harvard study that says up to 50,000 non-smoking Americans may be dying each year from breathing other people's smoke? . . . Common Cause, which reported the tobacco graft, looked also at all the corporations and interest groups that joined Sen. Mitch McConnel, R-Ky., at a March news conference attacking the McCain-Feingold bill and found they accounted for $243.6-million in direct contributions and soft money over the past decade. Would Abraham Lincoln recognize his beloved government of the people?
- Laughter must have filled the halls of big tobacco when the Senate voted recently to outlaw chemical weapons. The Chemical Weapons Convention says that nations will not "develop, produce, otherwise acquire, stockpile or retain chemical weapons, or transfer, directly or indirectly, chemical weapons to anyone."
- But we can now predict with virtual certainty that the more people smoke , the more people will die prematurely. Scientists working in this area would have to be inhuman to put aside their desire to save lives in the name of pure science. Thus, I am not suggesting that they stop suppressing the figure [of absolute risk] that would reassure the smoker. But I am suggesting that it be made clear this is what the scientist is doing.
- If the FOUNDATION is successful, then growers will soon be planting, harvesting and selling significantly greater acreages of burley, directly improving their bottom line. The economic effect of this increased production will be felt across the state in rural communities where agriculture is the basis for the local economy.
- Researchers there studied the long-term smoking habits -- and mortality statistics -- of over 30,000 Danish men and women. Lead author, Dr. Eva Prescott, says Danish women have been hit particularly hard by smoking-related disease. "They started smoking early in the smoking epidemic and now their mortality rates from smoking-related disease is the highest in Western Europe." . . .She presented her findings at this week's American Lung Association/American Thoracic Society International Conference in San Francisco.
- The newborns of smoking mothers carry a marker in their blood which may indicate heightened vulnerability to asthma and other allergic disease, researchers say. The marker is immunoglobulin E, or IgE, produced by the immune system in response to various allergens. According to Dr. Fernando Machado of Federal University in Santa Catarina, Brazil, "the habit of smoking during pregnancy can increase the level of IgE in the blood of (newborn) babies, and, in such circumstances, newborns are at high risk of developing asthma." Machado studied the smoking habits of 482 expectant mothers. . . . He presented his findings at this week's American Lung Association/American Thoracic Society International Conference in San Francisco.
- The first-ever sidestream tobacco trial, which begins in front of a six-member Miami jury June 2, will determine whether an estimated 60,000 current and former flight attendants can recover for on-the-job injuries they say were caused by other people's smoke. Possibly more significant, it is the first tobacco class action to go to trial on any theory. Other lawyers have tried individual tobacco injury cases--most recently Norwood "Woody" Wilner in Jacksonville, Fla.--but the legal, strategic and factual characteristics of a tobacco class action, with its own peculiar combination of strengths and weaknesses, mean the Rosenblatts will be writing their own script.
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"The heart of this case survived a major hurdle," said Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. "The judge has accepted our legal theories which entitle the state to recoup every last penny Maryland has spent treating tobacco-related illnesses." Tobacco company attorneys disagreed, claiming as a victory Judge Roger W. Brown's dismissal of nine of the lawsuit's 13 counts. "The state's case has been gutted," said Thomas F. McKim, assistant general counsel of Reynolds Tobacco Co. in Winston Salem, N.C. But the judge's decision left intact claims under state consumer protection and antitrust laws alleging that the cigarette companies conspired to deceive the public about the health risks of smoking. Those claims should be sufficient to pursue the state's claims and collect damages, said Richard A. Daynard
- 05/22/97 MARYLAND Lawsuit Medicaid Counts Dismissed Washington Post
- Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. may continue to press a major lawsuit against the tobacco industry but may not seek to recover the Medicaid costs of treating sick smokers, a Baltimore City judge ruled yesterday. While leaving part of the case intact, Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Roger W. Brown dismissed the Medicaid counts, asserting that the state could not use a novel theory to recover money allegedly spent to treat individual smokers. Embracing the industry's arguments, Brown ruled that such actions could be brought only by identifying each Medicaid recipient and proving that the person was harmed by smoking.
- In granting the industry's motion to dismiss nine of 13 counts in the lawsuit, State of Maryland v. Philip Morris Inc., et.al., Judge Roger W. Brown ruled that the state had no independent right to recover Medicaid payments made on behalf of individual smokers.
- 05/21/97 RJR Statement
- 05/22/97 Philip Morris Statement
- 05/22/97 PM, RJR Respond to Ruling Reuters
- Washington's retailers are doing a good job of complying with underage tobacco sales laws and regulations -- in King County, for example, compliance rates, according to the King County Department of Health, were up to 87 percent at the beginning of the year. But, Doug Henken, executive director of the state's convenience store association, urged retailers statewide to shoot for 100 percent compliance and to commit to a ``zero tolerance'' policy on underage tobacco sales. To help retailers achieve that goal, Henken announced a series of ``WE CARD'' Retail Training Seminars . . .
- More than a dozen states have legislation pending that is similar to a Massachusetts law requiring tobacco companies disclose each brands' ingredients, according to filings with a federal appeals court.
- The gap in life expectancy between men and women is set to continue to widen in the coming decades, partly because of men's growing addiction to tobacco, American scientists said on Friday. In an article published in the British medical magazine The Lancet, Christopher Murray of the Harvard School of Public Health and Alan Lopez of the World Health Organisation said that by 2020 smoking-related diseases would be the leading cause of death in the world.
- 05/23/97 Smoking Halts Gain in Male Life-Span Reuters Health eLine
- 05/23/97 Gender Gap in Life Expectancy Will Widen; Tobacco Use Major Cause Reuters Medical News
- Now it turns out the president has hired his own nicotine-stained tobacco lawyer. It's not something Ruff is particularly eager to discuss.
- 05/22/97 Senate Aims to Pass Budget Bill AP Washington Post
- "What really cost us today was the president of the United States,'' Hatch said. "They just didn't have the guts to come out and stand up for children.'' White House press secretary Mike McCurry today fired back: ``What really cost Senator Hatch was the leader and his party indicating that this was a deal-breaker and he would pull the budget resolution down if the Kennedy-Hatch amendment passed.''
- President Clinton helped kill a proposal for a tobacco tax increase to pay for children's health care on Wednesday, clearing away the major obstacle to Senate adoption of a resolution promising to balance the budget by the year 2002.
- Kennedy said aides to Clinton called at least 15 Democratic senators and persuaded several to oppose the amendment. "If he (Clinton) had just stayed out of it, we'd have won," Hatch said
- The Senate rejected an effort to boost spending for children's health care and pay for it with higher cigarette taxes Wednesday after the White House and top Republicans said it would puncture their bipartisan budget-balancing agreement. After seven hours of debate and behind-the-scenes maneuvering, leaders finally found the votes they needed and killed the effort to alter the budget pact on a 55-45 roll call.
- The Republican Policy Committee, an arm of the leadership, Tuesday called the sponsoring senators' intention "admirable" but misguided, "because states depend to a great degree on excise tax revenue." . . . [Hatch] asked: "Does that mean that 419,000 Americans must die every year in order to preserve the state tobacco revenues? That's like saying we should withhold life-saving treatment from senior citizens in order to save Medicare money." . . . Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, the majority leader, joined the policy committee in attacking the bill. Lott said . . . that he hoped "the Senate will not be duped" into backing the bill. The cigarette industry gave Republicans more than $8 million for the last election . . . But Sen. Don Nickles, the deputy Republican leader, said that had nothing to do with the party leadership position.
- 05/23/97 Talks Focus on Liability
- 05/23/97 Tobacco Ads Escape Regulation--So Far
- 05/21/97 Big Tobacco's Future Still Smokin'
- 05/14/97 What are the Medical Risks of Smoking?
- Infants who sleep on their stomach or who are exposed to cigarette smoke are at greatest risk for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), a new study confirms. But a surprising finding was that children that slept on second-hand mattresses were at greater risk as well, according to a report in the British Medical Journal. "However, this increased risk was not established for mattresses totally covered by polyvinyl chloride," reported lead study author Hazel Brooke, the executive director of the Scottish Cot Death Trust at the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow, Scotland.
- While the altered genes, called polymorphisms, do not cause breast cancer by themselves, their presence increases the risk of developing cancer for women who smoke, said Dr. Peter Shields . . . . The results are the first to show an interaction between genes and environment in causing breast cancer, Shields said, though he cautioned that more study is needed to confirm these findings. . . In the new research, Shields looked at three genes: the N-acetyltransferase gene, or NAT2; P450 2E1; and P450 1A1. The study was presented at an American Cancer Society seminar in Reston, Va. . . Women who were post-menopausal and smoked more than one pack of cigarettes per day and had a variation of the NAT2 gene were about four times as likely to develop breast cancer as their non-smoking counterparts, according to Shields.
- 05/23/97 Teens Smoking Cigars: Unanticipated Trend The New York Times (Free Registration)
- 05/23/97 Cigar Smoking on Rise Among Teens MSNBC
- 05/24/97 Cigar Use Up Among Teens Reuters Health eLine
- 05/23/97 Study FInds Teens Also Smoke Cigars CNNfn
- 05/23/97 Teen CIGAR Use Surprisingly Prevelant Washington Post
- 05/23/97 Cigars Gain Ground Among Teens; MASS. Officials Concerned Boston Globe
- 05/22/97 CIGAR Smoking Up, Even Among Teenagers Reuters
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that almost 4.5 billion cigars were smoked in the United States last year. Consumption of larger cigars rose 44.5 percent between 1993 and 1996, to approximately 3.09 billion cigars. "There is a cigar fad in this country. We see cigars glamorized on TV, in movies and in magazines,'' Michael Eriksen, director of the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health, said. A survey of more than 16,000 high school students last year found that 26.7 percent of them had smoked at least one cigar in the past year. "This is the first report that has ever looked at cigar smoking among teenagers and we are shocked by the results,'' Eriksen said.
- Cigars, made chic these days by Hollywood stars and supermodels, are catching on among teen-agers. . . You see Michael Jordan on the cover of Sports Illustrated with a cigar in his mouth. What kind of message does that send to youths?'' asked Ron Todd, director of tobacco control for the American Cancer Society. Audrey Guskey, an advertising expert who teaches at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, said advertisers promote the trend as if it were risk-free. "It's almost as if the health risks aren't there,'' she said. ``I have seen an increase in promotion particularly toward women. Women never smoked cigars before.'' Norman Sharp, president of the Cigar Association of America, said the industry discourages cigar smoking among teen-agers. "Cigar smoking is an adult custom,'' he said.
- Based on a national sample of students in grades 9-12 and surveys in Massachusetts and New York, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found:
- 27% of students said they had smoked at least one cigar within the previous year
- Cigar smokers were three times more likely than others to also use cigarettes or smokeless tobacco.
- At least 13% of ninth-grade students in two New York counties reported smoking a cigar at least once in the 30 days prior to the survey.
- Ivorian tobacco company CAITACI is increasing its prices from 280 CFA per kilo to 300 Cfa per kilo because of the high demand from the United States. ($-580 CFA)
- A NEW anti-smoking drug has just hit the pharmacists of the United States. Sadly, it cannot help those in the UK who are addicted to the dreaded weed. It seems that the Health Department refuses to designate smoking as a disease. If logic prevails, this attitude may soon change, in line with the government attitude to tobacco advertising. Glaxo, makers of the said drug, are not holding their breath.
- The first Minister of Sport . . . Lord Howell, who held the post for Labour in 1964 for six years and again in 1974 for a further five, commissioned a report into tobacco
advertising and concluded that a voluntary agreement with the companies worked best. He said yesterday that he was not sure Labour had thought the ban through. "Where it has been tried elsewhere it doesn't work," he said. "You can't put these tobacco companies out of business. They will find ways to advertise their brand names without mentioning tobacco." He said his voluntary code had made good progress in stopping cigarette advertising to young people
- Under the scheme, prepared by senior race figures including Bernie Ecclestone, the powerful vice-president of the sport's governing body, the number of European races would be reduced to just four each year from the present 12. . . the plan would be triggered by any EU-wide ban . . . "It is ready to be implemented immediately," said one senior source.
- 05/25/97 Formula One Plan to "Quit" Europe Times of London
- 05/25/97 European Formula One Races May Face Cuts AP Washington Post
- Former Hong Kong tobacco company official Jerry Lui Kin-hong was charged Friday by the Independent Commission Against Corruption for allegedly accepting over HK$30 million in bribes. No plea was taken. Lui, 42, was extradited to Hong Kong from the U.S. Thursday night. He faces one count of conspiracy to accept money while he was an officer at Brown and Williamson Tobacco Corp. and British-American Tobacco Co. (HK) Ltd
- Word out of Moscow is that Russian ice hockey president Valentin Sych was murdered by the domestic Mafia, which wanted a piece of the federation's tax-free import deal on liquor and tobacco ...
- Almost six months ago, Lynn became the state's first municipality to make it illegal for children to smoke or even carry tobacco. Police and health officials were authorized to fine children caught carrying cigarettes or send them to smoking-cessation programs. Last week, Lynn City Councilor Timothy Phelan, author of the ordinance, said authorities so far have issued no tickets nor ordered smokers into programs, but instead confiscated tobacco products from minors.
- A new poll says more Texans favor suing tobacco companies, with 58 percent supporting the state's $14.4 billion Medicaid lawsuit against the industry and 38 percent opposed, in the Texas Poll. The Dallas Morning News reports today Texans have had a change of heart since last year, when 63 percent opposed the lawsuit, in a similar poll.
- Calling it the toughest measure of its type in the country, the House tentatively approved a bill Saturday that cracks down on teenage smokers and the businesses that sell kids cigarettes. The measure fines youths under age 18 who possess, purchase or consume a cigarette or tobacco product. It also penalizes businesses that sell cigarettes to minors, and it imposes a new surcharge on billboard ads bought by tobacco companies. Bill sponsor Rep. Hugo Berlanga, D-Corpus Christi, said the tobacco industry spent more than a million dollars to defeat the anti-smoking bill.
- The survey of more than 1,000 American adults revealed that while 71 percent closely followed the Heaven's Gate story, only 26 percent of adults were aware that the FDA announced that large doses of birth control pills were safe and effective as a way of preventing pregnancy after sexual intercourse. Slightly more than half of those surveyed were aware that Liggett Tobacco Co. acknowledged smoking cigarettes causes cancer.
- Mulhare returned from a trip to New York in January feeling ill, and was diagnosed with lung cancer soon thereafter, Forrest said. He had been a heavy smoker earlier in life; five packs a day until he quit in 1979, she said.
- A former Minnesota congressman who for years accepted campaign contributions from the tobacco industry has been hired as a Washington political consultant by an anti-smoking group. The National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids said Friday that Vin Weber, who served six terms in the House, will "take the pulse'' of members of Congress about tobacco issues. . . Weber, a Washington-based partner in a political consulting firm, Clark & Weinstock, accepted $14,975 in contributions from tobacco industry political action committees from 1980 to 1992 . . . "He is on the right side of the issue now,'' said Kathryn Kahler Vos.
- NBC News has learned that the week intense talks began on a tobacco war settlement that Congress would have to approve the three biggest cigarette manufacturers began making substantial contributions to the Republican National Committee. . . The RNC¹s April contributions were substantially larger than those made earlier in the year:
- Philip Morris gave $100,000 on April 4, and another $150,000 on April 11.
- Brown & Williamson gave $25,000 on April 11.
- R.J. Reynolds gave $25,000 on April 30.
- In addition, smokeless tobacco giant U.S. Tobacco contributed $50,000 during the same period.
- According to Dr. Judith Mackay, Director of the Asian Consultancy on Tobacco Control in Hong Kong, "Any settlement within the United States must have a clause that allows other countries to take similar action. If the U.S. can reclaim health costs without giving too much away, I think many countries will be interested in similar settlements."
- At least four smokers have had tampered Marlboro Reds cigarettes explode in their faces, leaving them covered in black powder. None of the four were seriously hurt. Philip Morris Cos., the cigarette's maker, said it appeared the Marlboros were tampered with after they were made. . . Cigarettes have been pulled from stores where officials believe the exploding cigarettes were sold. . . "We have no reason to conclude there are any more necessary steps to take at this point,'' Karen Daragan, a Philip Morris spokeswoman, said
- 05/24/97 Exploding Cigarettes Stun 4 Smokers Washington Post
- To the long list of hazards associated with smoking, add one more: exploding cigarettes. In the last week, four Northern Virginia residents lit up Marlboro cigarettes only to trigger small but loud blasts that left them either blackened with powder burns or temporarily blinded by a flash of light.
- A state supreme court justice issued a temporary restraining order on Friday blocking Gov. George Pataki from repealing a state plan to collect taxes on the sale of gasoline and cigarettes on Indian reservations. . . The order, by Justice Joseph Harris in Albany, buys time for the New York State Association of Convenience Stores to take court action to force the Pataki administration to collect the taxes. The administration was expected to repeal the regulation early next week.
- 05/25/97 Smoke Clears for Indians NY Newsday
- 05/23/97 NEW YORK: State Won't Try to Collect Tax on Indian Reservations Gov. Pataki ends virtual blockade of cigarette shipments; decision ends years of bitter wrangling over sales to non-Indians. The New York Times (Free Registration)
- Thursday's announcement drew immediate criticism from the owners of small businesses operating outside reservations, who have long complained that selling goods tax-free gives American Indian competitors an unfair advantage that attracts thousands of non-American Indian customers to reservation stores.
- Above all, he would raise the cigarette tax by 25 cents to supplement the education budget. He is the only candidate who has proposed a tax increase, and he has used that bit of derring-do to suggest that he is the only candidate in touch with reality.
- Maryland Circuit Judge Roger Brown on Wednesday dismissed nine of 13 counts in the state's lawsuit against tobacco companies to recover money spent treating poor people for smoking-related illnesses. The Baltimore judge ruled the state can seek compensation from Philip Morris and other cigarette-makers only for violations of the state's Consumer Protection Act or Antitrust Act. The ruling also will make it harder for the state to recover money under Maryland's fraud and product liability provisions.
- The Kentucky State Fair Board, bowing to pressure from non-smokers, will spend up to $350,000 to build five glass-enclosed, ventilated smoking rooms in Freedom Hall by Nov. 1. . . . Rupp Arena has hired an architectural firm to study the possibility of adding similar smoking areas to the Lexington facility.
- In July last year, Mr Boddington, 43, failed to persuade two High Court judges that British Rail had no right to impose the ban under its own bylaws. Connex South Central, which took over the service, won an injunction in April banning the 60-a-day commuter from lighting up. Now three Lords of Appeal--Steyn, Nicholls of Birkenhead and Hope of Craighead--have granted Mr Boddington leave to appeal to the Lords, ruling there is an important point of law to be debated.
- The prohibition, adopted by the Sejm, is rooted in the simple truth that Poland's numerous first-time drivers are a public menace who desperately need both hands on the wheel. . . "Having cars is so new to so many of us that we really have a very low driving culture . . .No one knows how to behave on the road, whether you smoke or not." . . On Friday, the Senate [voted] to delete the prohibition from a far-reaching traffic bill. The legislation now goes back to the Sejm, where the author of the provision . . . has pledged to fight for its reinstatement.
- [T]he biggest sports events in Ireland have never shied away from lending their name and image to the tobacco firms. Nor, with very few exceptions, have sports pages in national newspapers and magazines bothered to say no to the advertising revenue they can attract from the increasingly restricted industry.
- Of the 33 senators who received the most money from tobacco political action committees this decade, only five dared to vote for the Hatch-Kennedy amendment and the tax increase. . . Healthy children are the focus of this year's "Stand for Children" demonstrations in Washington and other cities on June 1. The top priority is a child-health bill like Hatch-Kennedy . . . Time will tell if citizen marches can work the same magic as tobacco money.
- [T]he claim that a tobacco tax - especially one levied in the name of children's health - should be rejected because it would cut state revenues and distort the CPI is perverse. . . [and reveals] just how amoral the tobacconists have become. There's just no way to weigh tobacco against medical care for kids in favor of the former. Just. No. Way.
- The proposed tobacco tax would have a profound impact on states as their revenues dropped from lost sales caused by the substantial 43-cents-per-pack federal tax. . . In short, the federal deficit reduction anticipated by the tobacco tax would not offset the lost state revenues. We need to help the millions of uninsured children, but it should and can be done in a way that will not hurt the states.
The May 23, 1997, issue of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) contains a cover story, "World No-Tobacco Day---May 31, 1997" and three articles:
- In the May issue of the American Journal of Hypertension, Dr. Kim L. Mikkelsen of Bispebjerg University Hospital in Copenhagen, Denmark, and colleagues there and elsewhere in Denmark report on a study in which they performed 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring in 161 smokers and 191 nonsmokers.
- The top six teams in the constructors' championship--Ferrari, Williams, Benetton, McLaren, Prost and Jordan--all rely heavily on tobacco sponsorship to fund their massive, £35 million-a-year budgets. . . The Stewart clan, Jackie and Paul, shied away from tobacco advertising in their bid to fund a new Formula One team this season. Instead, they attracted deals from Ford, Texaco, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank and Malaysia. Nevertheless, on the grounds that Ecclestone's words today tend to become law tomorrow, his vision of Formula One in the next century has to be respected. Formula One, as Ecclestone stresses, is a global sport. Europe has no divine right to monopolise races.
- Although World War II ended 52 years ago, veteran John Quiroz continues to serve his country by volunteering to help others fight off the ravages of cancer that he himself has survived despite the loss of his larynx.
- Ennis Cosby may have been killed while offering a cigarette to someone. Time magazine reports in its current issue that crime scene photographs viewed by magazine staffers show the slain son of Bill Cosby clutching a pack of cigarettes. Time did not publish the photos. Cosby, 27, was found dead in January on a Los Angeles road beside his car, which had a flat tire . . .
- A groundbreaking study called the Global Burden of Disease helps put in perspective the significance of these talks.
- Kennedy's staff described Gore as an innocent victim in the drama involving the president, Lott, Kennedy and Hatch. But one adviser said he was "absolutely certain" Gore was not prepared to oppose the amendment until Lott threw a fit in the afternoon. Nonetheless, Gore called Kennedy on Thursday "to clear up any misunderstanding" about the incident, a Gore spokeswoman said. By day's end, everyone was smiling again -- and Gore's position was still unknown.
- Notable among the most prominent bipartisan contributors was the tobacco industry, which donated $360,000 to the four committees in the first quarter of 1997. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee received the most tobacco money ($98,500); the National Republican Senatorial Committee took in the least ($80,000). A study released recently by Common Cause found that the tobacco industry pumped nearly $10 million into political committees during the 1996 election cycle, nearly double the $5.5million the industry donated in the 1994 cycle.
- But with the president's intervention, the cigarette companies, heavy contributors to Lott's party, got a bye. Lott must be grateful to his president.
- As troubling as Clinton's lack of backbone was, so was the willingness of some of the Senate's supposed advocates for children to follow the president's lead. There is no justification for the vote by Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., against the Kennedy-Hatch plan, particularly in light of Kohl's efforts to identify himself as a legislative activist on behalf of kids.
- Democrats on the Senate committee investigating campaign fund-raising are widening their probe of a Republican think tank started by former GOP chairman Haley Barbour. . . The think tank also took in money from corporate contributors and special interests such as AT&T,tobacco giant Philip Morris, Coca Cola, and the National Rifle Association, all of which had issues before Congress. The top priority of the forum was to conduct ``the largest survey research project ever attempted,'' according to a brochure. The survey of 600,000 Republicans was used to develop the Republicans' Contract with America, which helped the GOP take over Congress in 1994.
- In time the anti-tobacco cranks will doubtless be jailing smokers, tobacco farmers, and the Marlboro man. . . . Yes, I can see the day when the anti-smoking zeal is transformed into an anti-jogging campaign. Admittedly before that day arrives the nuisance reformers will have worked their malevolent wills upon hundreds of thousands of other normal Americans engaged in the pursuit of happiness. Yet the joggers' days of dread will come. Think about this when next you hear about Tony Blair's assault on the fox hunt and muse complacently that "it can't happen here."
- The large numbers of Maine teenagers who smoke is a tragedy. Nonetheless, I remain disturbed by the unwillingness of my critics to address the cultural and economic context in which risky behaviors evolve. In addition, I am bothered by the selective nature of their own risk analysis. Finally, I worry about the kind of society we create when we strive to punish all personally risky behaviors.
- Industry observers say the potential loss of taxes from illegal sales of cigarettes is staggering: almost $70 million drained from the public purse if just 7,000 cases of cigarettes slip through regulatory cracks each week for one year. . . That figure -- $36.5 million in lost provincial sales tax, and $31.9 million in lost goods and services tax -- was tallied by the National Association of Tobacco and Confectionery Distributors and presented last January to the House of Commons standing committee on finance. Government bureaucrats say they're investigating the group's sobering claims. Industry observers, wholesalers and several retailers believe the money is being lost in two ways: the illegal movement of cigarettes off native reserves, and rampant tax evasion by dishonest storekeepers who pocket taxes on tobacco sales by not ringing them in.
- THREE 14-year-old girls have tried to commit suicide after being targeted by bullies because they refused to smoke.
- W.D. & H.O. Wills, which is owned by Britain's BAT group, is suing Philip Morris, claiming that its US competitor's new cigarette brand, to be called "Summit", has been packaged deliberately to look like its own "Horizon" brand.
- 05/26/97 WILLS Takes Philip Morris to Court on Brand Imitation Reuters
- Wills said it had launched Federal Court proceedings against Philip Morris for 'passing off' Wills' value cigarette brand Horizon by planning to launch a brand packaged almost identically in terms of colour, lettering and imagery. Wills, 67 percent owned by B.A.T. Industries Plc, said Horizon had been the fastest growing cigarette brand in the Australian market with a 14 percent market share. "We will use every available means to protect Horizon from attack by this me-too product."
- But there are also disturbing reports that while in the U.S. Havel revisited the surgeon who treated him at the height of his illness, Dr Robert J. Ginsberg of Sloan-Kettering Memorial Cancer Center. This in turn has fueled rumors that the cancer may not have been completely eradicated. In the meantime, there have been visits to spa resorts in the Netherlands and Belgium, where a BBC cameraman photographed Havel smoking, after having vowed to his doctors he would kick the habit that almost took his life.
- A Turkish court on Monday began hearing the case of a man seeking damages of one billion lira ($7,200) from the company that sells Marlboro cigarettes in Turkey . . . It said Yilmaz Sayin, who smoked five packets a day, was seeking damages from Philip Morris Sabanci Pazarlama ve Satis A.S. over loss of health due to smoking.
- The tobacco industry -- China's biggest tax-paying sector -- topped the list of high earning industries with a return on capital rate of 49.32 percent and a net return on assets rate of 27.69 percent, [the Financial News] said.
- THE LONG TRAIL of evidence linking cigarettes to lung cancer began right here in St. Louis, at Washington University's School of Medicine. In 1948, a young first-year medical student, Ernst Wynder, witnessed an autopsy of a man who had died of lung cancer. He noted that the man's lungs were blackened. Curious, Wynder looked into the background of the patient.
- A class-action lawsuit, filed late last week in U.S. District Court in Seattle, charges major tobacco companies with violating fraud and racketeering laws . . . The plaintiffs in the case are the Northwest-Laborers Health & Security Trust Fund and the Carpenters Health and Security Trust of Western Washington. Their attorney, George Kargianis, said he would ask the court to certify the case as a class action covering 100 funds representing hundreds of thousands of people in Washington, Oregon and Idaho.
- Tobacco companies on Tuesday lost their bid to limit their potential liability in Florida's $1.4 billion Medicaid lawsuit. Palm Beach County Circuit Court Judge Harold Cohen denied the tobacco companies' request to reduce the number of sick smokers that Florida can claim compensation for treating. The industry asked that the number be cut to just 25 randomly selected patients. The state's suit seeks repayment for the Medicaid costs of treating 400,000.
- The State of Florida is defending itself against a lawsuit filed by a prison inmate who claims to be addicted to nicotine, saying the prisoner has no "serious medical need" and that the prisoner is responsible for his own decision to smoke, attorneys for Philip Morris U.S.A. disclosed today. "It's the classic case of wanting to have your cake and eat it, too,'' said Philip Morris lawyer Stephen J. Krigbaum. "The state's position in its prisoner case in federal court is directly opposite from the position it is taking in the Medicaid case. What's even more hypocritical is that the state is asserting the very same defenses in its prisoner case that it is seeking to deny the tobacco companies in this case."
- A federal judge on Tuesday denied an attempt by an ex-smoker with lung cancer to expand her lawsuit against the maker of Kool cigarettes to include all Missourians who smoke [B&W brands]. U.S. District Judge Ortie Smith said . . . "Given the number, magnitude and importance of the individual issues, certain class members' voices may be lost amidst the sheer number of fellow plaintiffs -- each with different stories to tell,'' Smith said in the ruling. "Conversely, the Defendant will be in a position where it has to prepare for nearly 2,000 different trials simultaneously.''
- 05/27/97 MISSOURI: Federal Court Denies Smokers Class Action Status--B&W PR Newswire
- The denial of class certification results in dismissal of the class-wide allegations in the Missouri litigation, known as Smith. Although Judge Ortrie D. Smith found that potential members in the class action claimed certain common issues in a general sense, "resolution of these issues will have little to no legal or practical significance for this case."
- A judge has rejected a tobacco industry claim that cigarette makers can't be sued by the state of Michigan for health problems related to smoking. The ruling today in Ingham County Circuit Court allows Michigan's multibillion-dollar lawsuit _ one of 25 filed nationwide by states seeking Medicaid reimbursements _ to proceed. In a partial victory for the companies, Judge Lawrence Glazer struck down the state's request for $10 billion in punitive damages. But Glazer said State Attorney General Frank Kelley can amend his complaint to seek $10 billion in "exemplary damages'' on top of a request for $4 billion in restitution and compensatory damages.
- 05/27/97 MICHIGAN: AG KELLEY Comments on Victory over Tobacco Cos PR Newswire
- Attorney General Frank J. Kelley commented on Ingham County Circuit Court Judge Lawrence Glazer's decision today on shaping Michigan's lawsuit against the major tobacco companies.
- But pressure mounted on cigarette makers Tuesday as New Mexico became the 30th state to sue the industry and the attorney general of tobacco-friendly North Carolina said he also might consider suing and asked state lawmakers to repeal a law that would block such a move.
- When the Legislature adjourned for the Memorial Day weekend, King was still locked in a stalemate with the Taxation Committee over the cigarette tax. The committee voted 8-5 along strict party lines for a bill doubling the cigarette tax as King proposed. But majority Democrats want the money from the added tax to be used to insure poor children and provide prescription drugs for elderly people.
- Facing embarrassment at the exposure of misrepresented research conducted by anti-smoking activist Stanton Glantz, smoking ban advocates have quietly deleted reference to the research from a proposed ordinance that would ban smoking in San Antonio, Texas.
- In a legislative session that sized up early as being filled with anti-tobacco sentiment, two of three major bills against the tobacco industry are dead or considered gutted. . . Late Wednesday, the Texas House appeared ready to approve the bill after soundly defeating two tobacco industry-backed amendments offered by Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa. But Chisum, after watching his amendments go up in smoke, used a parliamentary tactic, known as a point of order, to kill debate on the bill. Such a move this late in the session, which ends June 2, often means the death of a measure.
- Assembly Judiciary will discuss Senate Bill 33, which punishes teen smokers with penalties ranging from $50 fines to a one-year loss of a driver's license. Sen. Ernie Adler, D-Carson City, says his bill imposes penalties on teens--including loss of a driver's licenses for a third offense--because "this may be the only way to get their attention." In its final form, the bill mirrors a plan pushed by the tobacco industry during the 1995 session.
- The United Nations (UN) is asking the world's 1.1 billion smokers to 'butt out' for World No-Tobacco Day this coming Saturday. The UN's World Health Organization (WHO) is asking that people everywhere "become more aware of the hazards of tobacco use and request all persons who use tobacco to quit for at least 24 hours."
- Maggots slither around a teen's toothbrush and are spit out of her mouth. She's also shown in startling dual reality as her hair falls into the sink while she blithely applies makeup to rotting skin in a frightening new commercial directed by Hollywood-based Barking Weasel Productions' Jim Edwards. Scenes cut dramatically between two realities: the lovely, effervescent girl on the surface and the ghoul growing unbeknown within.
- Tobacco companies last year barely beat back a legislative attempt to end tobacco subsidies and also fought off higher cigarette taxes. They have kept the pressure on for legislation that would counter FDA restrictions on tobacco. If big tobacco reaches a settlement with state governments suing the industry -- and the agreement includes a limitation on lawsuits -- congressional approval would likely be necessary. DeLay and Lott flew on R.J. Reynolds aircraft last year, while Armey and Lott were passengers on Philip Morris planes. . . "We don't discuss details of aircraft,'' said Darienne Dennis, spokeswoman for Philip Morris.
- In taking on the good name of Gummy Bears, the tobacco company president may have taken on "more than he could chew." That's the feeling of two major candy manufacturers who produce Gummy Bears. They are joining the Health Partnership Project (HPP) and the California Medical Association Foundation to fight tobacco with a sweet, healthful alternative -- Gummy Bears!
- The lawsuit claims fraud, negligence and racketeering through the promotion and sale of cigarettes. It was filed [in Fulton County] on behalf of 46-year-old Chester Lyons of Snellville, Ga., who "continues to smoke cigarettes despite efforts to quit." . . . Steve McAdams, the president of AAA Cigarette Co., says his company was probably named as a defendant because it went to court recently seeking to overturn proposed Food & Drug Administration rules on the placement of vending machines. The lawsuit also named F. Ross Johnson, who resigned as chief executive officer of RJR Nabisco in 1989
- A Mississippi judge accused of favoritism by tobacco industry lawyers on Wednesday removed himself from a $650 million secondhand-smoke case scheduled for trial in August. Laurel County Circuit Court Judge Billy Joe Landrum said in a written order issued in Laurel that he was dropping out of the case . . . It was not immediately clear what effect, if any, Landrum's decision would have on the timing of the trial, which had been scheduled to start on August 18, local attorneys said.
- Craig Davison . . . also picks up proofs-of-purchase from discarded cigarette packs. His RCA satellite dish - courtesy of Marlboro - arrived last week.
- Here's a current example of the irony of evil. Pierre Salinger, famous as a cigar smoker and former press secretary to President Kennedy and recently a Washington lobbyist for a major tobacco company, placed an op-ed piece in USA Today that likened antitobacco groups to Nazis. The gall of this comparison takes your breath away. Tobacco over the years has killed many more than 10 million people. And the body count grows every moment The question now before the nation is how accountable should the tobacco company chief executives be in light of the now overwhelming and irrefutable evidence that their product kills more than 400,000 people a year just in the United States.
- If Ted Kaczynski deserves the death penalty for his actions, which killed three people, why should cigarette company executives, who are responsible for more deaths than occurred in the Nazi Holocaust, be rewarded with respectability and financial success? These men and women are guilty of a much worse crime. They kill without remorse strictly for money.
- The secret A.M.A.-tobacco interests quid pro quo -- which did slow the arrival of both Medicare (by one year) and health warnings in cigarette ads (by five-plus years) -- was first reported by the muckraking Washington columnist Jack Anderson, who called it "the weirdest lobbying alliance in legislative history." Though the A.M.A. denied the story at the time, it has since been confirmed by Howard Wolinsky and Tom Brune of The Chicago Sun-Times, who provide a full account in their 1994 book, "The Serpent on the Staff." Last week history repeated itself.
- I was disappointed but not surprised to read Martin H. Redish's commentary castigating what he calls "the ever-growing state practice of placing the reins of control in the hands of private tort lawyers" (Op-Ed, May 8). As an academic as well as lawyer/consultant for Big Tobacco, Mr. Redish obviously did not want to provide a straightforward explanation of what is really going on in the tobacco wars across the U.S.
- In America, adults are supposed to look out for kids. Unfortunately when it comes to tobacco, we have not always lived up to our responsibility.
- I applaud the FDA for taking steps to reduce children's access to tobacco products. But it's really up to parents to do more: . . .
- I was about to walk on when I saw a man with a pipe in his hand. He pointed it at me. As far as I was concerned, he had a smoking gun aimed at me."Don't shoot," I cried, "I'm not anti-smoking."
- Now a new study bolsters the argument that air pollution can indeed increase the risk of the cancer, according to a letter in this week's issue of Nature. And the researchers made the discovery by comparing the growth of pollution-sensitive lichens -- scaly combinations of algae and fungi that can be found growing on rocks and trees -- to lung cancer death rates in a large section of Italy with a population of 4 million.
- In an analysis of tissue from 187 patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinomas, researchers found that 11% carried signs of HPV infection. However, 50% of the cancers from nonsmokers carried the virus, compared to only 8.5% in smokers. HPV was most often found in cancers that occurred in the back of the throat (the oropharynx), occurring in 19% of cancers found there compared with 6% of tumors found elsewhere. . . . "Since this finding was obtained in small numbers of nonsmokers, it should be interpreted with caution," wrote lead study author Dr. Pierre Fouret, of the Laboratoire Central d'Anatomie Pathologique at the Hopital Tenon in Paris. . . "Inasmuch as HPV is a sexually transmitted disease, it would have been interesting to document the personal habits of patients infected with HPV," the authors wrote. "The preferential oropharyngeal location may point toward the point of entry for HPV in the upper respiratory and digestive tracts."
- The head of the B.C. Cancer Agency rejects a study that says doctors have made little headway in developing better cancer treatments. The study by Dr. John Bailar, a University of Chicago researcher, was published in Wednesday's New England Journal of Medicine. After so many years of failure, the study contends, it is time to devote more resources to preventing the disease . . . But Dr. Don Carlow said while it's true there haven't been any monumental improvements over the past two or three decades, statistics are heavily influenced by dismal lung cancer rates. "The war against cancer is being lost on the lung cancer front,'' he said. "If you take lung cancer out of the equation, you will find that we have been making progress."
- The Maine House on Wednesday night narrowly gave initial approval to a doubling of cigarette taxes to discourage young people from smoking, despite Gov. Angus S. King's vow to veto that version of the bill. After a spirited debate that lasted more than 2 1/2 hours, the House refused to kill the Democratic cigarette tax bill on a 76-68 vote. . . "He's [King] against raising taxes to start new spending programs," said Bailey. "He agreed to raise the tax on smoking only if that money was
given back."
- Gore has said his sister's death left him too numb to take action for several years. And to hear him at Northwest Elementary School, talking to kids about the danger of smoking, is to see someone who clearly doesn't care what the tobacco industry will say about him. . . Later, asked by MSNBC why the Democratic Party still accepts so much money from the tobacco industry, much of which it funnels into state party coffers, Gore said, "I certainly think that policy should be reviewed. I don't think they should."
- 05/28/97 FLORIDA Pension Fund Trustees Order Divestment of $825M of Tobacco Stocks Reuters
- 05/29/97 WSJ Item
- 05/29/97 NY Times Item
- 05/28/97 FLORIDA Dumps $825M in Tobacco Stocks AP Washington Post
- 05/28/97 UK Reaction: Mild Impact Seen by UK Fund Managers Reuters
- But Carstairs said that the Florida decision might have an effect if tobacco shares are hit in New York. "I think to a large extent the UK on tobacco stocks takes its lead from the US."
- 'In a sense, I'm glad it's finally over, but it's the wrong kind of finality,' says Tom Herndon, who oversees pension investments but is not one of the three voting members of the Florida State Board of Administration. 'I'd rather live to fight another day.'
- Specifically, Butterworth was responding to a request of the Florida Division of Administration, which handles the pension fund for about 725,000 current and retired state employees. The agency had asked for a legal opinion on whether it could divest traditionally high-performing tobacco stocks without violating its responsibility to maintain the pension fund prudently. In a 12-page opinion, Butterworth said the agency could legally divest if a majority of the trustees vote Wednesday to do so.
- Gov. Lawton Chiles and two members of the state Cabinet are being asked to decide whether to sell some $835 million in tobacco stocks held by Florida's pension fund. Some officials say the state is morally obligated to divest, especially in light of its $1.4 billion lawsuit against cigarette manufacturers to recoup funds spent treating Medicaid patients with smoking-related illnesses. But Wall Street analysts contend tobacco stocks have been a good investment for the $60 billion pension fund.
- Palm Beach County, Fla., Circuit Judge Harold Cohen rejected on Tuesday tobacco's request to restrict the suit to the 25 patients because attorneys could not determine whether expenses paid by the state were legitimate.
- Put out your cigarette and pick up a fork. It's smoke-free dining day at some of your favorite restaurants. See what it's like to taste your food without smoke drifting past your nose. Use the day to enjoy aromas from the restaurant kitchen, like cookies baking or coffee brewing. Project ASSIST (American Stop Smoking Intervention Study) has declared the day in honor of the 52 restaurants in New Hanover County and four in Brunswick County that are already smoke-free.
- A pesticide-resistant fungus that destroyed 30% of North Carolina's burley tobacco crop last year has appeared this spring in the state's more predominant flue-cured tobacco fields. So far, the fungus, known as blue mold, has affected flue-cured tobacco in only two counties, said Tom Melton, a tobacco specialist for the N.C. State University's extension service.
- Kentucky's tobacco crop continued to show effects of the cool, wet spring yesterday.
- But there's one place where tobacco executives are still welcome -- legislative fund-raisers. Assembly Republican leader Curt Pringle of Garden Grove was the top recipient of cash last year from the tobacco industry's most generous donors. He received $147,500.
- W.D. & H.O. Wills Holdings Ltd said after the start of Federal Court proceedings Philip Morris Australia had agreed not to ``sell, offer for sale or promote'' value brand Summit in its current packaging, pending a further hearing.
- America isn't winning its 40-year war against cancer, and it never will without a dramatic shift of firepower from treatment to prevention, a controversial new study concludes. Death rates from all cancers actually were 6 percent higher in 1994 than in 1970, according to the report in today's New England Journal of Medicine, entitled ``Cancer Undefeated.'' While the rates have headed back down in recent years, the authors warn that hope of dramatic improvement is likely to be dashed again, as it has been before.
- A long-time skeptic of the war on cancer acknowledged in a new study that deaths from the disease are on the decline for the first time. But he said the main reasons are less smoking and earlier diagnosis, not better treatment. Dr. John Bailar III of the University of Chicago urged the government to scale back its search for a cure and focus instead on prevention. In an analysis of federal health statistics, Bailar confirmed two other recent reports documenting that the decades-long increase in cancer deaths peaked around 1991 and has since gone down slightly.
- Never mind the $1,000 fine for smoking while the nonsmoking sign is on or smoking in a nonsmoking section, or the $2,000 fine for tampering with the lavatory smoke detector. From 1987 to present, 1,203 passengers on U.S. flights have been charged with smoking while a no smoking sign was lit . . . An additional 1,283 were charged with smoking in the lavatory, with fines levied on 346.
- The Capital Region Airport Commission approved yesterday the construction of a glass-walled room that will be one of only two areas where smoking will be permitted in the airport. The commission authorized the airport's director to design and construct the smoking area and to set a policy restricting smoking inside the airport to two rooms. The first room was approved in January.
- The Israeli Transportation Ministry has instructed all local airlines to consider plans to gradually ban smoking on their flights. Transportation Minister Yitzhak Levy announced Monday his intention to bar smoking on Israeli airline flights up to a duration of five hours long as a year-long experiment.
- Observers have estimated that lawyers could receive 3 percent of a broad settlement. With estimates of the total settlement hovering around $300 billion, that works out to $360 million a year for 25 years, which would be split among 100 or so law firms. That would be "the largest single windfall of plaintiffs' attorneys in U.S. history," says Graham Kelder, managing attorney at the Tobacco Products Liability Project at Northeastern University School of Law. Even if the states win their cases, judges could order attorneys to accept lower fees than what they negotiated, observers say. "This is not a battle for the faint of heart," Tierney said.
- The suit [was] filed a year ago by lawyer Steven Kramer of New York . . . Judge Joseph Greenaway ruled that RICO did not apply to personal injury cases. Kramer said he will appeal . . .
- Democratic lieutenant governor candidate L.F. Payne Jr., a friend of the tobacco industry, urged Attorney General James S. Gilmore III yesterday to join the tobacco talks now under way so any settlement would benefit Virginia. . . In an exchange of letters, Gilmore, the Republican candidate for governor, replied that the state is monitoring the settlement talks closely. ''You may be interested to know that, for weeks now, non-suing states have had representation at the negotiations,'' Gilmore responded. ''My office is closely monitoring developments and maintains contact with other non-suing attorneys general.''
- [State Democratic Chairman Joe] Carmichael's tongue-lashing of [Sen. Kit] Bond came in a press release from the state Democratic committee. "Missourians ... should be very concerned about Bond's allegiances,'' Carmichael said. He criticized Bond for accepting money from the tobacco industry - Bond received $35,000 between 1987 and 1996. Gephardt, however, received $81,000 from the industry during that period. And every other Democrat in the delegation received tobacco money, too. But the Democratic chairman also failed to mention that his own state party accepted nearly $100,000 in 1995 and 1996 from Philip Morris, the nation's largest cigarette maker.
- Given the prominence of the tobacco wars, Calvin Butts, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, remains a peculiarly lonely soldier among African-Americans. His whitewashing of cigarette billboards and getting billboard companies to move liquor and tobacco ads away from schools and churches has created more grumbling than praise among elite African-American politicians, publishers, and art directors. Most major African-American organizations receive funding or advertising revenue from big tobacco.
- 05/28/97 Minister Voices Black Community's Concerns on Tobacco Boston Globe
- In the debate over the tobacco industry's role in harming the public health, one voice has been largely silent - that of the black community. That's the view of the Rev. Calvin O. Butts III . . . The black community, Butts says, as much as any other group, should be outraged at the tobacco industry given the disproportionate impact cigarette smoking has on blacks. That's part of the message Butts brings to Boston today when he gives the keynote speech at a black leadership luncheon at the State House. The luncheon marks the first time in Massachusetts that prominent black political and community leaders gather to discuss the role tobacco plays
- When Dorothy Dowd thinks about the cost of smoking, she remembers the money she spent trying to quit - about $5,000 in total for a variety of quit-smoking programs. In doing so, Dowd became one of millions of Americans who have tried to quit the habit, using various nicotine-filled gum, patches, nasal sprays and other recovery methods that now form an estimated $1-billion-a-year industry.
- Chang consistently plays in tournaments that are sponsored by tobacco companies, and in particular, by Salem, and R.J. Reynolds brand. It has been reported that Chang is the only top player to enter the Salem-sponsored Beijing Open since it began in 1993, and that in 1994 Chang received $200,000 just for playing in the Salem Tennis Open in Hong Kong -- six times as much as the winner's purse. He also has played in Salem- and Marlboro-sponsored events in other Asian countries, and he is often featured in ads that promote these tobacco-supported events.
- Smoking consumption in Washington has dropped 23 packs per person since the American Stop Smoking Intervention Study (ASSIST) began in 1992, according to the state Department of Health. May 31 is World No Tobacco Day, an annual event that urges all persons avoid tobacco for 24 hours. "People who live in project ASSIST states consume 10 percent fewer cigarettes than the rest of the country, which is about 70 million fewer packs per month," said Kim Dalthorp, project ASSIST director at Department of Health. "Of the 17 participating states, Washington has the lowest per capita smoking rate."
- As negotiators announced that they had reached a tentative agreement in the tobacco settlement talks, aggressive marketers of the product conducted business as usual, illustrating why the industry needs to be curbed. Adding to an already long list of industry promotions aimed at hooking young people on cigarettes, Philip Morris is running a Woman Thing'' music campaign, offering girls free compact discs if they buy Virginia Slims.
- Under the settlement approved May 15 by Judge Charles H. Haden of U.S. District Court, smokers, victims of secondhand smoke, states that pay Medicaid bills for sick smokers and others would be barred from suing Liggett for 25 years. Trial Lawyers for Public Justice filed objections to the proposed settlement Tuesday in Charleston, arguing that the deal is too sweet for Liggett. ''This is an unprecedented attempt to use the federal judiciary to enjoin all tobacco-related litigation against Liggett,'' said William E. Snead of Albuquerque, the president of the trial lawyers group.
- 05/28/97 TLPJ Press Release
- Here's the TLPJ brief
- It called for harsher measures to prevent the effects of passive smoking, calling smoking "the most serious cause of (indoor) air pollution'' in France. A report released Wednesday by cardiologist Maurice Tubiana concluded that up to 3,000 non-smokers in France die each year of heart-related illness directly related to inhaling the smoke of others.
- 05/29/97 FTC Accuses RJR of Aiming at Kids Winston-Salem Journal
- 05/29/97 WSJ Item
- 05/29/97 Washington Post Item
- 05/29/97 NY Times Item With the famous Ticketmaster Fold-Out Magazine Ad
- 05/29/97 Chicago Tribune Item
- 05/29/97 Miami Herald Item
- 05/29/97 NY Newsday Item
- 05/29/97 Houston Chronicle item
- 05/28/97 FTC Takes on Joe Camel CNNfn
- 05/28/97 RJR Charged with Unfair Advertising MSNBC
- The FTC voted 3-2 to charge the company, a unit of RJR Nabisco Holding Co., alleging ³Joe Camel² induces young people and children to smoke. The agency said it would seek an order that would ban the character in certain advertising that reaches minors, including billboards.
- Members of Congress, which must approve any settlement, and tobacco foes said the FTC's action now removes the industry's offer as one of its bargaining chips. "Today's FTC decision should take this issue off the table for the ongoing negotiations," declared Rep. Tim Roemer, D-Ind., who organized a bipartisan petition of 67 House members that pushed the FTC to investigate Joe Camel. "We have successfully snuffed out Joe Camel."
- What's next? No advertising for politically incorrect cars? The campaign against tobacco has metastasized. Joe Camel won't be its last victim.
- Wariness is always in order when the government seeks to regulate advertising content or otherwise acts to abridge free speech. But there are times, as the courts have recognized, when public safety imperatives deservedly take precedence over 1st Amendment rights.
- Gov. Arne Carlson ended a bitter three-year lobbying fight over underage smoking Friday by reluctantly signing a bill aimed at keeping cigarettes away from teen-agers. ``I am signing the bill because I strongly support the policy of preventing tobacco use by Minnesota's children,'' Carlson said in a letter to legislative leaders. But he said he found the bill ``troubling in several philosophical respects'' and suggested the Legislature may have to revisit the issue next year. The bill, which provoked the biggest lobbying battle of the session, would require all local governments in the state to license groceries, convenience stores and other retailers that sell tobacco products, and to conduct annual ``sting'' operations using underage buyers. It also requires tobacco companies to report the presence of five toxic substances in their products, a provision that was vehemently opposed by cigarette manufacturers.
- And Glinsky's battle may be more difficult here than if he were in the United States, since British law puts more onus on consumers for the choices they make. "We have very strong principles of contributory negligence, which in the case of smoking is very important," said tobacco analyst Julianne Jessup
- It's also disappointing that the two leads, played by gifted supporting players clearly ready for top billing, spend so much of their screen time smoking cigarettes and making the habit look attractive. Potential influence on the audience is bad enough, but there are also worries about the impact on two flawed but admirably fleshed-out fictional characters who most viewers will come to cherish.
- State Treasurer Doug Roberts said Thursday that he will order cigarette distributors to place stamps on cigarette packs and cartons to curb a smuggling problem that is bigger than he realized. Roberts said that will help the state collect $19 million a year more in cigarette taxes, with $18 million going to the state's fund for schools and $1 million for buying stamps and enforcing the stamping requirement.
- A federal judge on Friday turned down a request by the Liggett Group Inc. tobacco firm for an injunction that would have blocked further legal actions and filings against the company. Chief U.S. District Judge Charles Haden II said at a hearing that attorneys for Liggett and a plaintiff who suffers from lung cancer had not presented adequate evidence to support a court order that would have affected court cases across the United States. Noting there are numerous tobacco lawsuits moving in courts across the nation, Haden said, ``There is a race to the courthouse. A lot of economic interests are involved." Attorneys for Liggett and the plaintiff, Earl William Walker Jr. of Poca, West Virginia, said they would bring more evidence to federal court to win the injunction. . . Although they are opponents in the case, Humphreys and Liggett attorney Michael Fay had asked Haden to issue the injunction to stop legal action that would have drained the cigarette maker's finances.
- 05/31/97 Ruling Makes LIGGETT Vulnerable Bloomberg / Winston-Salem Journal
- A federal court judge denied a motion yesterday that would keep the Liggett Group out of lawsuits across the country . . . In denying a preliminary injunction to stay the suits, Judge Charles Haden of West Virginia District Court in Charleston also gave Liggett the chance to return with witnesses to provide more evidence and get the injunction approved. The decision means that Liggett . . may still face a costly judgment in the first class-action lawsuit against U.S. cigarette-makers to go to trial [Broin].
- Ordinarily seated at the rear of a courtroom, behind deep ranks of dark-suited corporate lawyers fighting anti-cigarette lawsuits, is the mystified legal defender of Dosal Tobacco Co. "What am I doing here? . . . We're just a small manufacturer, a family operation. We shouldn't be here,'' Martinez insists to anyone who will listen.
- However, studies involving many more women need to be done before nicotine patches can be recommended during pregnancy, according to study author Dr. Jeffrey A. Kuller, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. If further studies confirm their safety, the benefits of nicotine patches may ``outweigh the known risks of cigarette smoking in pregnancy,'' the researchers wrote in the study, published in the May issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology.
- As much as we loathe the commercial image of Joe Camel, we're reluctant to endorse any government attempt at censorship. Still, a case can be made that R.J. Reynolds has practiced a deadly sort of deceptive advertising. This is not the usual bait-and-switch or misrepresenting a product's benefits. Here, the deception is that the company insists Joe Camel isn't directed at kids when it's clear he is.
- So far, NicoDerm CQ is running away with sales. It accounts for about half the $750 million annual revenue in the market. Nicotrol has about 10%. SmithKline's Nicorette gum has about 40%. Consumers aren't exactly wowed by the creativity of NicoDerm CQ's ads showing one "quitter" trying to cajole a NicoDerm user into sneaking a cigarette. Another shows an earnest testimonial about quitting from an actress. The ads, however, are effective.
- 05/30/97 BUSINESS: AMERICAN BRANDS Announces Completion of GALLAHER Spinoff Progeny of Buck Duke's American Tobacco Co. discards last trace of tobacco. Business Wire
- 05/29/97 UK: GALLAHER Group set for 310-320p listing -analysts Reuters
- 05/30/97 UK: GALLAHER Opens at 282 1/2p NYSE: GLH Reuters
- Gallaher Group Plc began its first day of trade on the London Stock Exchange at 282-1/2p per share, valuing Britain's largest manufacturer of tobacco products at around 1.95 billion stg.
- "It's time to tell the FDA to stop. No government agency should be telling you how to run your farm when you're making an honest living,'' said Rep. Mike McIntyre, a North Carolina Democrat. . . The politicians made the pledge at the 51st annual meeting of the Flue-Cured Tobacco Cooperative Stabilization Corporation. . . The politicians, including four Democratic congressmen from Southeastern states and two state agriculture commissioners, decried moves to increase regulation of the industry. . . McIntyre, a member of the House Agriculture Committee, warned farmers that bills were being drafted to eliminate the tobacco support program.
- "We'll be challenging the various economic models that are being used to come up with the Medicaid number," says Valerie Kilhenny, senior counsel for Philip Morris Companies Inc., the largest U.S. tobacco company. "These Medicaid cases are very much about the methodology and the various numbers used. You don't have any one individual who died of cancer to rely on."
- European Social Affairs Commissioner Padraig Flynn renewed his attack on the tobacco industry Friday, condemning a cigarette price war as a ploy to lure new smokers in the face of publicity bans. "This is a cynical attempt by the tobacco companies to recruit new smokers, which also reflects the increasing constraint on other marketing strategies,'' Flynn said.
- Those contracts help give Tabacalera control more than 90 percent of the cigarette distribution market in Spain, a monopoly that was legally ended in 1985. The comments were part of a ruling to force Tabacalera to cede part of the distribution of its cigarette brands to McLane Espana, a distribution company jointly owned by Repsol SA, Spanish candy company Chupa Chus and Mc Lane International, a unit of the U.S. Wal-Mart retail chain.
- The state Attorney General's office filed suit Thursday in Chittenden Superior Court against 13 major tobacco companies and industry groups - ''essentially the tobacco industry,'' said Attorney General Bill Sorrell.
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