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"The people of Maine did not send us here to repeat the mistakes of the 1980s, when every available dollar in additional revenue was spent on new or expanded government programs," King said in a statement.

• 06/02/97 Legislature Adjourns without Solving Problem of Teen Smoking Portland Press Herald
  
  But they left unable to come to grips with one of the state's most pressing social problems: teen-age smoking. Maine has the dubious distinction of having the highest youth smoking rate in the nation. Just before locking the doors and turning out the lights Sunday night, legislators slapped a bill on King's desk aimed at making cigarettes so expensive kids can no longer afford them. King will veto the bill today. Legislators return June 19-20 to try to overturn that veto.
• 06/02/97 MAINE Gov. KING to Veto Cig Tax Increase Reuters
• 06/01/97 MAINE: Anti-Smoking Advocates Rally at Gov. KING's Office over Refusal to Sign Cig Tax USA Today
• 05/31/97 MAINE: Cig Tax Stalled; Legislature to Adjourn Today Bangor Press Herald
  
  Lawmakers' plans to double the cigarette tax to discourage smoking ran head-on into Gov. Angus S. King's threat to veto the bill unless it is revenue-neutral as the legislative session moved closer to adjournment Thursday. The Senate voted 19-15 to give initial approval to a Democratic version of the cigarette tax bill that had won initial House approval on Wednesday night. That bill would increase the tax from 37 cents to 74 cents a pack. King says he'll veto that version, and any version that uses additional cigarette tax money for anything other than lowering another tax.
• 05/31/97 EDITORIAL: Taxing Tobacco Bangor Press Herald
  
  The governor took a bold stand in his touching State of the State address in January, pledging to double the cigarette tax as a tribute and a promise to his friend, cancer victim Henry Jones. Before he takes up his veto pen, the governor should pause and consider what Henry would do.
• 05/29/97 MAINE: Cigarette-tax Increase Hits Ironic Snag--Most Parties Want to Do It, But a Dispute Over Use of the Revenue Could end Up Helping the Tobacco Industry. Portland Press Herald
  
  The House and Senate on Wednesday decisively defeated Gov. Angus King's bill to double the state's cigarette tax and use the money to lower taxes. Those votes paved the way for passage of the Democrats' alternative plan, which also would double the 37-cent state cigarette tax but would use the money to buy health insurance for poor children and prescription drugs for senior citizens.

The idea has caught on like wildfire. Minnesota's governor signed a similar bill into law Friday, and at least a dozen states are not far behind. Ingredient disclosure and better nicotine measurement are central features in a nationwide settlement being drafted by lawyers and tobacco representatives.

Led by a horse-drawn hearse and a jazz band playing "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," more than 100 people marched through Franklin Park yesterday to protest cigarette makers' intensive campaign to persuade African-Americans and Latinos to smoke. Leading African-American magazines, such as Jet and Essence, rely on cigarette advertising for a much larger share of their income than other publications do. Cigarette companies underwrite events popular among blacks such as the Kool Jazz Festival and the Dance Theater of Harlem to build credibility. Organizers of yesterday's World No Tobacco Day rally said the advertising blitz helps explain why blacks and Latinos smoke more than whites - and die more as well. Black men are 30 percent more likely to die from smoking-related diseases than whites . . .

An innovative, statewide program to involve citizens in identifying community-based solutions to reduce tobacco use will begin June 3 in Mankato. The year-long program, Minnesota Decides: A Community Blueprint for Tobacco Reduction, will include citizen forums in nine Minnesota cities and a statewide summit in the fall.

A tripling of Michigan's cigarette excise tax in 1994 has resulted in a thriving black market from tobacco-friendly states where taxes are low, such as North Carolina and Virginia. But North Carolina enjoys an additional advantage when it comes to attracting Michigan's cigarette smugglers: Like Michigan, North Carolina is one of just six states that does not require tax stamps on cigarettes. That means a pack of contraband Camels from North Carolina sitting on a store shelf in Dearborn looks the same as a pack on which the Michigan tax has been paid. Experts estimate that smuggled products now account for nearly 30 percent of the roughly $1 billion worth of cigarettes sold annually in Michigan.

Highways cutting through the heart of burley tobacco country have become pipelines for cigarette smugglers lured by hefty profits and tax evasion. Bootleg smokes generally are obtained in the Southeast, where cigarette taxes are a few cents per pack, according to state and federal investigators who have scored some successes against the smugglers. The cargo is shipped in cases cross-country to Northern states where the state tax is considerably higher.

Florida farmers like Webb raised 20 million pounds in 1996, valued at $36.2 million. This was nearly three million more pounds than was raised and sold the previous year. About 9,500 acres of Florida farmland are planted in tobacco, making it a $1.8 billion industry in Florida, employing 95,000 people and bringing in $553 million a year in direct and indirect state and local taxes. The state collected $438,377,950 in excise taxes on cigarettes alone during fiscal year 1995-96. Snuff, chewing tobacco and pipe tobacco brought in $19,497,897. Every package of cigarettes sold brought in 33.9 cents to the state in revenue.

It was lunch time at the Virginia Department of Taxation and the smell of cigarette smoke hung in the air. The acrid aroma came from employees who were smoking beside no-smoking signs on nearby tabletops.

Cigarette advertising on billboards will be banned in much of Seattle under health regulations that are aimed at reversing a recent increase in smoking by minors. The King County Board of Health voted unanimously Friday to ban tobacco advertising within 2,000 feet of schools, playgrounds and parks that have playgounds as the first step of a program to restrict tobacco use and advertising.

EX-MEN ACTION FIGURES OF DEAD SMOKERS Collect Steve McQueen, John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Yul Brynner, Desi Arnaz, Edward R. Murrow, Damon Runyon, Boris Pasternak, Lillian Hellman, Betty Grable--and 419,000 a year more!
Disclaimer: These products in no way represent an attempt to market cigarettes to children. They are only intended to encourage brand-switching among adult smokers who watch cartoons and play with toys.

The FTC's much ballyhooed survey found that Camel's share of the teen smoking market surged from 3 percent to 13.2 percent in the decade since the start of the Joe Camel campaign. But that proves nothing. Most advertising is a quest to steal customers from the competition. Could it be only that teen smokers are now smoking Camels instead of Marlboros? . . . Joe Camel may make smoking seem cool to kids, but we can't help wondering if that task isn't also being accomplished more effectively by nagging government busybodies.

Morgan's comments serve only to heighten the skepticism the American people have for Big Tobacco. Gummi Bears may not be good for you, but cigarettes kill. First we discover that tobacco companies have spent years covering up their own scientific findings about the addictive and cancer-causing effects of tobacco. Now Morgan chooses to make light of the emotional and physical struggle faced by those just trying to quit smoking. Cigarettes aren't like Gummi Bears. And this isn't Candyland.

"The pressure is going to continue to build on the tobacco companies," said state investment board vice chairman George Masten. "I think that makes it a risky investment. I'd just as soon get it out now." The subcommittee's recommendation will be presented at next meeting of the full Washington State Investment Board for final approval, expected in July.

Beginning Sunday, smoking will be prohibited for foot passengers loading and unloading from Washington State Ferries. Once on board, passengers still may smoke on the covered upper decks of the ferries.

New regulations on cigarette advertising will not slow the demand that keeps retailers in business, said the owners of Seattle cigar, cigarette and specialty tobacco stores. Try as they might to reduce secondhand smoke and teenage smoking, government officials will not have much of an effect on tobacco sales, store owners said.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Christian Democrats (CDU) have proposed raising taxes on petrol, tobacco and alcohol to fill Bonn's gaping budget holes and to help it qualify for the European Union's planned single currency, a newspaper said.

Direct advertising of cigarettes has been banned on radio and television in Malaysia since March 1982. But by associating cigarette brands with many of the trappings of what might be considered the good life -- such as adventure holidays, sports events and bistros -- analysts say the country's tobacco companies are cleverly linking their products with glamorous lifestyles.

The Reebok CEO held a private, cigar-laden bash Monday at the Hot Tin Roof in Edgartown, which is usually smoke-free. The party was wrap-up for a weekend of fun, including fishing, golfing, and sailing on Martha's Vineyard as Fireman entertained about 150 of the country's top Reebok retailers. Carlos Fuente, president of Arturo Fuente Cigars, supplied cigars from the Dominican Republic

It is not just Joe Camel who gets kids to light up. It may also be Joe Torre, Wayne Gretzky, Whoopi Goldberg, Queen Latifah, Terry Bradshaw, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Matt Dillon, Jack Nicholson, Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, and the growing number of cinematic and sports glitterati who have lifted cigars from a George Burns anachronism to a dignified aperitif. . . "None of the research I have seen has focused on cigar smokers who consume cigars in moderation," Shanken wrote.

According to U.S. District Court Judge Dennis Hurley, the county's board of health has the authority to deal only with "health issues" while a legislature may consider issues as "diverse as economic interests and privacy concerns, in addition to health issues." "The board - in enacting an ordinance which includes significant provisions based on non-health-related considerations - exceeded its authority as an administrative, as distinct from a legislative, body," Hurley wrote in his decision on a lawsuit that the Nassau County Bowling Proprietors Association filed against the county.

• 06/02/97 CALIFORNIA: Senate Passes State Tobacco Suit Bill UPI

The study was based on a 1993 anonymous questionnaire filled out by 3,054 Massachusetts high school students. Of those, 288, or 9.4 percent, reported a suicide attempt. A computer analyzed the students' answers, then assigned them to one of two groups - attempted suicide or not. It was right 92 percent of the time. The study found that students who used cigarettes regularly during the previous 30 days were twice as likely to report a suicide attempt. That was after discounting other traits that the researchers found could indicate suicide risk, such as fighting or not using seat belts.

I never smoked, but what amazes me is that during the time these messages were being fed to the American public by every available means, cigarette manufacturers knew that the product they were peddling so aggressively caused cancer.

The decision, by Judge Joseph A. Greenaway, Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, echoes and reinforces opinions recently issued by courts across the country which conclude that lawsuits being brought against the tobacco industry are legally and factually flawed. . . The court, in Shirley Ehrich, et. al., vs. B.A.T. Industries, et. al., threw out the plaintiffs' claims that tobacco companies had engaged in racketeering, ruling that Courts "have refused to extend recovery under RICO beyond Congress' clear language limiting recovery to injuries to business and property."

The contentious scene in Charleston was just one more sign that while peacemakers negotiate with the cigarette companies in New York, battalions of lawyers are continuing to make legal war on "Big Tobacco" around the nation.Litigation remains alive on everything from proposed federal regulation of tobacco products to the harmful effects of secondhand smoke. Anti-tobacco advocates say about 500 individual cases have been filed against the industry, and those are only a small part of a deluge the industry is facing.

European Union tobacco manufacturers, retailers and workers Monday vigorously rejected criticism by the European Union's top health official over price cuts, saying they were the only way to raise sales.

"In some markets, there was a backlash against foreign brands, so they bought up local brands. That's enabled the multinationals to increase the share."

That's the idea behind an innovative program that was launched in the 1996-97 school year with fourth graders at Brookside Elementary School in Lake Forest Park, WA. Established by the adult children of a man who died as a result of cigarette smoking, the newly formed Bob Hill Foundation said it will pay $500 each to the 68 Brookside fourth graders if they sign a contract to remain tobacco-free and graduate from high school.

Former Sen. Warren Rudman, hired by the firm to track its Action Against Access program, says Philip Morris made a "good-faith effort" to make merchants help reduce cigarette sales to minors. . . "There is no question that (the program) has denied youth access to cigarettes," Rudman says, but the firm was unable to fully implement its program to penalize violators. Minnesota Attorney General Hubert Humphrey calls the program "simply one more ploy to deny the seedy side of their business - addicting our kids to tobacco." As of January 1997, the company had issued warnings to 286 retailers and withheld payments to 16. It also sent educational kits to 175 others that violated laws but did not have contracts with Philip Morris. But only 14 states are reporting violations to the tobacco company, Rudman says.

Not only does [Travis] think tobacco contributes to lung cancer - the number one cause of the death in the U.S. - but she thinks other countries will follow the lead of U.S. smokers and sue tobacco companies.

"It seems people have the impression that Mulder and Scully are the heroes, when in fact" ---[actor William B.] Davis paused before a crowd of 700 fans earlier this week at the University of Georgia ---"it is the Cigarette Smoking Man who is the hero." If the agents learn the truth, society would suffer, Davis said. Only he can ensure that everything stays calm. "If Mulder gets what he wants, 'The Truth,' what will he do with it? He'll go on `Larry King Live' and tell the world. And what will happen? People will be terrified. There'll be chaos."

A key Philip Morris executive has been ready to talk to a federal grand jury investigating the tobacco business, and in return, federal officials have considered granting him immunity from prosecution, new court papers show. . . The court papers include notes quoting him describing a "bunker mentality" at his old company, and saying Philip Morris "did some dumb things" in dealing with growing concerns about smoking and health. . . [T]he fresh court papers show federal officials gave some thought to granting him immunity in return for his testimony and suggest he still could get legal immunity and become a government witness.

• 06/05/97 Wall St. Journal Item
• 06/04/97 Fed Court Denies Class Action--B&W B&W PR Newswire
  
  The denial of class certification yesterday in Steven R. Arch, et al. v. The American Tobacco Co, et al. by U.S. District Court Judge Clarence C. Newcomer is the first denial of a state class action filed by plaintiff's lawyers following the decertification of the nation-wide Castano class action on May 23, 1996. The denial follows the recent dismissal of other lawsuits against B&W, including a Missouri class action, individual lawsuits in New York and New Jersey, and Medicaid-type lawsuits in Maryland, West Virginia and San Francisco. In a strongly worded opinion that draws upon the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals' Castano decertification, Judge Newcomer pointed out that a class of the size and magnitude envisioned by the plaintiffs could not be tried. . . "Plaintiffs simply do not offer a workable plan as to how this litigation would be tried with respect to the numerous individual issues," wrote Judge Newcomer.
• 06/04/97 RJR Statement on Arch Ruling
• 06/04/97 PM Statement

Attorney General Hubert Humphrey III said Reynolds "must have a lot to hide. Why else would they be fighting so hard to keep the public from learning the hazardous substances in cigarettes?"

• 06/05/97 UPI Item
• 06/03/97 RJR Sues MINNESOTA on Disclosure Law AP Washington Post
  
  The suit was filed in federal court Friday, the same day Gov. Arne Carlson signed the bill to create the second such disclosure law in the country. Massachusetts, the first state, also has been sued by cigarette makers. R.J. Reynolds contends the Minnesota law is pre-empted by federal laws and that the company doesn't have to disclose information not required by Congress.
• 06/04/97 Wall St. Journal Item
• 06/04/97 Reuters Item

• 06/04/97 CALIFORNIA to Sue Tobacco CNNfn
• 06/04/97 Senate OKs Bill Allowing State to Join Tobacco Suit LA Times

• 06/04/97 CA Legislature Paves Way for Tobacco Suit Reuters

The California Lavender Smoke-Free Project, a coalition of gay men and lesbians from health advocacy organizations, is introducing a tough-talking campaign . . . The initial ad in the 18-month campaign is scheduled to begin within the next week in newspapers and magazines. There will also be television commercials, booths at "pride" parades and festivals, brochures and even matchbooks that urge smokers to "kick butt." The campaign is timed to precede the pride events in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco. It also comes as U.S. tobacco companies join mainstream marketers of products like clothing and cars as they step up sales pitches aimed at gay men and lesbians.

The Finance Ministry is preparing a law that would end Tabacalera's monopoly on tobacco production in Spain and will make it easier for competitors to import tobacco and tobacco products from other countries. The legislation would preserve Tabacalera's monopoly on distribution to the national network of tobacco stands. The government wants to have the law in place before it begins to sell its remaining 52 percent of the company next year. (Cinco Dias)

Tobacco giants in the United States are seeking profitable new markets in Vietnam and in other Asian countries as cigarette smoking in the American market declines, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California San Francisco. The study is published in the current issue (June 4) of the Journal of the American Medical Association. . . 72.8 percent of all Vietnamese men smoke and only 4.3 percent of the women smoke. The team also looked at knowledge of tobacco hazards, attitudes about use, and the impact of transnational tobacco corporations on use.

• 06/03/97 VIETNAM Men Have Highest Smoking Rate--Study The New York Times
• 06/04/97 SJ Mercury News Brief

The Health Ministry has decided to file a NIS 20 billion ($5.9b.) lawsuit against Israeli and foreign manufacturers and importers of tobacco products to pay some of the health system's costs of treating smokers. Some 5,000 smokers in Israel die from tobacco-related causes every year. The decision "in principle" was announced yesterday in the Knesset on World No-Tobacco Day by Deputy Health Minister Shlomo Benizri, who has been appointed by Health Minister Yehoshua Matza to head anti-smoking efforts.

• 06/04/97 AP Item Washington Post

Reynolds . . . said that it based its numbers on a 1997 research survey by Audits & Surveys Worldwide, a company hired by Reynolds. The company says it provided the results of that survey to federal officials before the FTC voted to challenge the campaign. . . The FTC cites a government study indicating that Camel's share of the underage market increased to as much as 16 percent in 1993 from less than 3 percent before the Joe Camel campaign began in 1987.

• 06/03/97 OPINION: FTC: Shirking Their Responsibility Washington Times
  
  The Federal Trade Commission should not be assaulted for its paternalistic administrative complaint against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company alleging that its promotional use of the fetching Joe Camel cartoon character violated the federal prohibition on "unfair" trade practices carved in its charter. The chief villain in the plot is Congress, which endowed the FTC with roving authority to act as a national Nanny and to throw lightning bolts without fair warning.
• 06/04/97 OPINION: Turning a Camel into a Scapegoat Max Boot, The Wall Street Journal (Pay Registration)

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., and Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., plan to introduce the NO Tobacco for Kids, or "NOT for Kids" Act. It sets a schedule for tobacco companies to reduce underage smoking by 90 percent in the next six years or face fines of at least $1 per pack on all sales. . . A companion bill, the Smoke-Free Environment Act, would ban or restrict smoking to separately ventilated rooms in public buildings . . .

• 06/03/97 Smoking Ban on All Flights Originating in US Urged AP Washington Post
• 06/04/97 Legislators Toughen Stance with Tobacco LA Times
• 06/04/97 Democrats Propose Tough Penalties for Tobacco Cos NY Newsday

A group of anti-tobacco lawmakers wants President Clinton to immediately ban smoking in all government buildings, a move they say would protect 2.7 million federal employees from secondhand smoke. . . The tobacco industry insists secondhand smoke is not harmful -- and HHS efforts last year to prepare an executive order for Clinton to ban smoking in all federal buildings died in the face of such opposition. But a recent Harvard study estimated that breathing other people's smoke causes 50,000 fatal heart attacks each year, prompting Lautenberg and a small core of anti-tobacco lawmakers to write Clinton.

Nobody won in the standoff between the Democratic leadership in the Legislature and Gov. Angus King on what to do with money raised by doubling the cigarette tax. Nobody but Joe Camel.

• 06/04/97 MAINE: Gov Wants Cigarettes to Pay for Taxpayer Relief Reuters
  
  Maine Gov. Angus King on Tuesday said he wanted to double the tax on cigarettes to pay for cuts in sales, property or income taxes . . [King] told Reuters he was confident the legislature would not be able to override his veto of another anti-smoking bill. That bill also would have raised the tax per pack to 74 cents from 37 cents, but used the money to provide health insurance for needy children and prescription drugs for senior citizens.
• 06/03/97 KING Vetoes Tax He's "Dedicated" to Elizabeth Mitchell Portland Press Herald

A motion filed by the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the New York Times asks that Ramsey County District Judge Kenneth Fitzpatrick unseal portions of his May 9 ruling and make public the documents he cited in it. That ruling set in motion a sweeping court review of documents that tobacco industry lawyers contend are protected under lawyer-client confidentiality. Yet only part of the ruling was made public -- and key findings were sealed. "It is just about unheard of for the judicial decision itself to be sealed," said Adam Liptak, senior counsel for the Times.

New Hampshire Attorney General Philip T. McLaughlin filed suit against the tobacco industry Wednesday charging that the companies misrepresented the dangers of smoking. New Hampshire becomes the 33rd state to sue the industry.

Those are among the findings in a new health "fact book" prepared by the Iowa Department of Public Health, a study released as officials opened a conference at Drake University on health issues facing the state. . . In addition, 23.2 percent of Iowans currently smoke, slightly above the national median of 22.4 percent. That's a reversal because smoking rates in Iowa have traditionally been below the national average. . . The state figures are fueled by a growing number of young smokers, a troubling long-term health trend.

The Clinton administration dramatically raised tobacco prices in the commissaries last year, sidestepping a federal law that caps commissary prices at 5 percent above wholesale. The Pentagon got around the 5 percent cap by consigning tobacco sales in the commissaries to the exchange service, which is free to set its own prices.

He was the commercial spokesman for Old Gold Cigarettes when its television sales pitches were illustrated by dancing cigarette packs. But despite the company's $350,000 annual stipend, James abandoned the cigarette commercials after the surgeon general reported that tobacco could cause cancer.

Woody Stephens carries his 83 years around with him -- the gold watch from the five consecutive Belmonts, the money clip from the 1960 Widener and the oxygen tank from all the cigarettes he smoked. . . Sometime this year, Woody Stephens will give up his last two horses and move back to the Bluegrass State, where tobacco enriches a few people and gives emphysema to many more, even the king of the Belmont. . . The product that grew in Kentucky became a habit for the young trainer. He was smoking three packs a day for 30 years and one day he was galloping his pony, Rex, at Saratoga and, "I was short of breath," he said. "I went to the doctor and he told me leave the cigarettes alone, and I did, but it was too late."

Educational-Tile(TM) is a first-of-its kind durable, wear resistant floor tile that will deliver anti-smoking messages to students with pop-out colors, and magazine quality images. An effective tool in supporting the promotion of anti-tobacco awareness, the Educational-Tile(TM) delivers its message to students of all grades. Educational-Tiles(TM) reinforce the positive life-style of the non-smoker to every student several times each school day.

Philip Morris Cos. Inc. could have avoided its legal quagmire if its executives had stayed quiet about smoking and health, says the prize-winning author of the tobacco company's history. "They say too much," said Richard Kluger . . . "If they had said, 'No comment,' it would have been morally defensible," Kluger said from his home near Princeton, N.J. . . Notes from Kluger's interviews with past and present Philip Morris employees were introduced recently by lawyers suing the company for the state of Texas. In 1992, he interviewed former research director Dr. Thomas S. Osdene, who described a "bunker mentality" at Philip Morris as the company became more "lawyer-driven."

Brushing off objections from several local anti-smoking activists, the board voted unanimously to budget $5.3 million to construct as many as 20 separately ventilated smoking lounges inside the terminals - up to five in each building. None will be built, however, without final agreement between airlines and the airport board, a fact that opens a window for opponents and proponents alike to revisit the issue in coming months.

More than one-hundred Seattle area retailers today participated in a workshop designed to help prevent tobacco sales to minors. The workshop was divided into two sessions to accommodate the large number of participants who had responded to the call by a coalition of retailers, wholesalers and grocers to shoot for 100 percent compliance with minimum age restrictions on tobacco sales.

• 06/05/97 Foes Claim Retailers' Drive a Maneuver to Foil Enforcement (Tacoma, WA) News Tribune
  
  [A] new training program . . . -- sponsored by about 15 retail associations -- is starting in Seattle today with a three-hour seminar for store owners and employees. But Greg Hewett, coordinator for the King County tobacco prevention program, says the county already provides exactly the same training. He said the retailer program is a thinly veiled attempt to bring back a proposed law that would have eliminated county-directed compliance checks and made possession of tobacco by minors illegal. By transferring enforcement powers from the county to the state Liquor Control Board -- as a bill that died in the Legislature this year would have done -- the retailers would succeed in reducing enforcement by putting it in the hands of a state agency already overburdened, Hewett said.

A motion filed by the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the New York Times asks that Ramsey County District Judge Kenneth Fitzpatrick unseal portions of his May 9 ruling and make public the documents he cited in it. That ruling set in motion a sweeping court review of documents that tobacco industry lawyers contend are protected under lawyer-client confidentiality. Yet only part of the ruling was made public -- and key findings were sealed. "It is just about unheard of for the judicial decision itself to be sealed," said Adam Liptak, senior counsel for the Times.

New Hampshire Attorney General Philip T. McLaughlin filed suit against the tobacco industry Wednesday charging that the companies misrepresented the dangers of smoking. New Hampshire becomes the 33rd state to sue the industry.

Those are among the findings in a new health "fact book" prepared by the Iowa Department of Public Health, a study released as officials opened a conference at Drake University on health issues facing the state. . . In addition, 23.2 percent of Iowans currently smoke, slightly above the national median of 22.4 percent. That's a reversal because smoking rates in Iowa have traditionally been below the national average. . . The state figures are fueled by a growing number of young smokers, a troubling long-term health trend.

The Clinton administration dramatically raised tobacco prices in the commissaries last year, sidestepping a federal law that caps commissary prices at 5 percent above wholesale. The Pentagon got around the 5 percent cap by consigning tobacco sales in the commissaries to the exchange service, which is free to set its own prices.

NASSAU COUNTY'S Board of Health no doubt thought it was doing the right thing when it tried to balance competing concerns in its proposal for a smoking ban. . . But, in an ironic twist, the board's efforts to accomodate the interests of those opposed to the ban proved to be a powerful weapon for those very opponents when they took the board to court. . . This week, a federal judge struck down the smoking ban, arguing that it strayed beyond the board's purview over public health concerns and into economic and privacy issues.

Surprisingly, more 10th-graders than 12th-graders reported having used cigarettes, liquor, marijuana or LSD in the previous month. And almost as many 12th-graders had smoked marijuana in the previous month (24.7 percent) as had smoked tobacco (27.2 percent). However, marijuana use is either holding steady or dropping slightly in most age groups. High school seniors are smoking less these days: 27.2 percent in 1996, compared with 35.1 percent in 1992.

Scientists at N.C. State University have developed a system to warn tobacco farmers when blue mold is spreading to their areas. The Blue Mold Forecast mixes known blue-mold outbreaks with weather forecasts to estimate where the spores of this mildew will land.Here's the North America Blue Mold Forecast Home Page

Classic Food recently notified the restaurants and company break rooms it services that it will remove its cigarette vending machines as of Aug. 28. The immediate reason is an FDA regulation, proposed earlier this year, that says the machines can only be placed where people under 18 don¹t have access to them. "When that new law came out it was sort of the death knell for cigarette machines," Pashales said. He said the company can¹t monitor its machines to make sure the buyers are all adults, and he fears Classic Food may be liable if minors do buy smokes from its machines.

Tobacco critics on Tuesday used a study by a UW-Madison economist to boost their plan to raise the state cigarette tax to an even $1 a pack. The study, rebutting previous pro-tobacco studies, was part of the ongoing "tobacco wars" at the Capitol involving interest groups, Gov. Tommy Thompson and first lady Sue Ann Thompson.

The plan calls for spending up to $5.3 million for the lounges, beginning with at least three in Terminal 2W within a year. Later, there would be up to five lounges in each terminal, according to a plan unveiled yesterday.

The City Council voted, 8-0, to approve an amendment that allows cigarette vending machines in places that do not admit youths younger than 18. An ordinance calling for a total ban on the sale of tobacco from vending machines was supposed to go into effect in May. . ... But a temporary restraining order and pending lawsuit from vending companies challenging its constitutionality prevented the ordinance's enforcement. Dallas-area vending companies--Cigarette Vending Service of Dallas, Free-Dells Cigarette Vending and T.D. Rowe--argued that Irving's law was more prohibitive than federal rules

A report released yesterday by the liberal-leaning group [Arizona Citizen Action] said a majority of current legislators - 37 of 60 representatives and 24 of 30 senators - accepted a total of $31,140 in contributions during the last election campaign from tobacco lobbyists. However, legislators said criticizing them for accepting tobacco money was unfair because the lobbyists involved represent other groups. "The bottom line is, go look at my votes. You'll find out I have voted against the tobacco industry position every time it comes up," said Rep. Jeff Groscost. Groscost, a Mesa Republican who is chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, was listed as receiving $1,545 from tobacco lobbyists.

A camel mascot named Enough Said Fred will be on hand in Tacoma on Saturday to kick off the health department's second summer campaign to keep kids from smoking. The campaign, called Tobacco-Free Kids Club, is designed to keep children between the ages of 6 and 12 from picking up the habit. It is sponsored by the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department. Kids sign a pledge not to smoke all summer, then earn trading cards that could qualify them to win a trip to Disneyland, said Marianne Bichsel of The Wiley Brooks Co., which developed the campaign for the health department.

Tessa Jowell, Britain's minister for public health, said her country is "committed to banning tobacco advertising as an essential first step in building an effective strategy to deal with smoking." She made her remarks at a meeting of health ministers from the 15 EU nations. Britain's previous Conservative government opposed the advertising ban. Germany, Denmark and Sweden remain against the proposal.

The new Russia may have shortages of cash, affordable cars, jobs, luck and even hope. But it is awash in cigarettes - cigarettes manufactured, imported and publicized thanks to the investment of major U.S. and other western tobacco companies. . . An estimated 70 percent of Russian men smoke, up from about 53 percent in 1985, according to the Health Ministry. Some 30 percent of women smoke today, compared with only 10 percent in 1985. By far the biggest new group of customers is children. Teenage smokers are the fastest-growing health time bomb in the country. . . The Russian cigarette industry has in the past two years been devoured by western tobacco giants.

There is a 67 percent tax on a package of cigarettes, so there is no shortage of people looking for illegal cheap smokes. A package of Sopianae costs about 75 cents, but black-market cigarettes are only about 40 cents a pack.

When Better Homes scheduled a piece on the dangers of second-hand smoke, the magazine notified cigarette makers in case they wanted to move their ads to another issue. One of them did. "That's just consideration," said Editor in Chief Jean LemMon. "You don't want to purposely slap advertisers in the face."

NASSAU COUNTY'S Board of Health no doubt thought it was doing the right thing when it tried to balance competing concerns in its proposal for a smoking ban. . . But, in an ironic twist, the board's efforts to accomodate the interests of those opposed to the ban proved to be a powerful weapon for those very opponents when they took the board to court. . . This week, a federal judge struck down the smoking ban, arguing that it strayed beyond the board's purview over public health concerns and into economic and privacy issues.

Surprisingly, more 10th-graders than 12th-graders reported having used cigarettes, liquor, marijuana or LSD in the previous month. And almost as many 12th-graders had smoked marijuana in the previous month (24.7 percent) as had smoked tobacco (27.2 percent). However, marijuana use is either holding steady or dropping slightly in most age groups. High school seniors are smoking less these days: 27.2 percent in 1996, compared with 35.1 percent in 1992.

Scientists at N.C. State University have developed a system to warn tobacco farmers when blue mold is spreading to their areas. The Blue Mold Forecast mixes known blue-mold outbreaks with weather forecasts to estimate where the spores of this mildew will land.Here's the North America Blue Mold Forecast Home Page

Classic Food recently notified the restaurants and company break rooms it services that it will remove its cigarette vending machines as of Aug. 28. The immediate reason is an FDA regulation, proposed earlier this year, that says the machines can only be placed where people under 18 don¹t have access to them. "When that new law came out it was sort of the death knell for cigarette machines," Pashales said. He said the company can¹t monitor its machines to make sure the buyers are all adults, and he fears Classic Food may be liable if minors do buy smokes from its machines.

Tobacco critics on Tuesday used a study by a UW-Madison economist to boost their plan to raise the state cigarette tax to an even $1 a pack. The study, rebutting previous pro-tobacco studies, was part of the ongoing "tobacco wars" at the Capitol involving interest groups, Gov. Tommy Thompson and first lady Sue Ann Thompson.

The plan calls for spending up to $5.3 million for the lounges, beginning with at least three in Terminal 2W within a year. Later, there would be up to five lounges in each terminal, according to a plan unveiled yesterday.

The City Council voted, 8-0, to approve an amendment that allows cigarette vending machines in places that do not admit youths younger than 18. An ordinance calling for a total ban on the sale of tobacco from vending machines was supposed to go into effect in May. . ... But a temporary restraining order and pending lawsuit from vending companies challenging its constitutionality prevented the ordinance's enforcement. Dallas-area vending companies--Cigarette Vending Service of Dallas, Free-Dells Cigarette Vending and T.D. Rowe--argued that Irving's law was more prohibitive than federal rules

A report released yesterday by the liberal-leaning group [Arizona Citizen Action] said a majority of current legislators - 37 of 60 representatives and 24 of 30 senators - accepted a total of $31,140 in contributions during the last election campaign from tobacco lobbyists. However, legislators said criticizing them for accepting tobacco money was unfair because the lobbyists involved represent other groups. "The bottom line is, go look at my votes. You'll find out I have voted against the tobacco industry position every time it comes up," said Rep. Jeff Groscost. Groscost, a Mesa Republican who is chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, was listed as receiving $1,545 from tobacco lobbyists.

A camel mascot named Enough Said Fred will be on hand in Tacoma on Saturday to kick off the health department's second summer campaign to keep kids from smoking. The campaign, called Tobacco-Free Kids Club, is designed to keep children between the ages of 6 and 12 from picking up the habit. It is sponsored by the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department. Kids sign a pledge not to smoke all summer, then earn trading cards that could qualify them to win a trip to Disneyland, said Marianne Bichsel of The Wiley Brooks Co., which developed the campaign for the health department.

Tessa Jowell, Britain's minister for public health, said her country is "committed to banning tobacco advertising as an essential first step in building an effective strategy to deal with smoking." She made her remarks at a meeting of health ministers from the 15 EU nations. Britain's previous Conservative government opposed the advertising ban. Germany, Denmark and Sweden remain against the proposal.

The new Russia may have shortages of cash, affordable cars, jobs, luck and even hope. But it is awash in cigarettes - cigarettes manufactured, imported and publicized thanks to the investment of major U.S. and other western tobacco companies. . . An estimated 70 percent of Russian men smoke, up from about 53 percent in 1985, according to the Health Ministry. Some 30 percent of women smoke today, compared with only 10 percent in 1985. By far the biggest new group of customers is children. Teenage smokers are the fastest-growing health time bomb in the country. . . The Russian cigarette industry has in the past two years been devoured by western tobacco giants.

There is a 67 percent tax on a package of cigarettes, so there is no shortage of people looking for illegal cheap smokes. A package of Sopianae costs about 75 cents, but black-market cigarettes are only about 40 cents a pack.

When Better Homes scheduled a piece on the dangers of second-hand smoke, the magazine notified cigarette makers in case they wanted to move their ads to another issue. One of them did. "That's just consideration," said Editor in Chief Jean LemMon. "You don't want to purposely slap advertisers in the face."

Now he's gone public. A billboard along a heavily traveled road reads: "Phyllis J. Stahl. Stop Your Smoking! We love you. From your family and friends." [Morris] Stahl, 71, said Friday he paid $300 for the billboard space for one week as a last-ditch effort to get his 66-year-old wife to give up her three-pack-a-day habit.

News in tonight's Seattle Times is that Norman Mayo, a 61-year-old resident of Bothel, Washington, has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against Safeway and the Dairy Farmers of Washington for addicting him to milk.

Swisher, which went public in December, was the top performer among Jacksonville's publicly traded companies last year, based on its return on equity. And it wasn't even close. Swisher's return on average equity D a company's earnings divided by its stockholders' equity D was 61 percent in 1996, far above any other Jacksonville company. "It's a very profitable business," said Swisher President Timothy Mann.

The late Swisher Sweet cigar inventor Harold K. "Bud" Smith has left behind a legacy of generosity, giving $10 million for philanthropy to the Jacksonville Community Foundation.

But the study also found that women who smoked were 32 per cent less likely to develop high blood pressure during pregnancy, and were less likely to have a caesarean delivery, episiotomy or induced birth. Associate Professor Adrian Bauman, who conducted the study with his colleague, Dr Patrick Wong, said yesterday it was not known why smoking might reduce the risk of pregnancy-induced hypertension. He speculated that the caesarean rate may be lower because the babies were more likely to be small. Also, smokers were more likely to be of lower socioeconomic class and thus less likely to have private health insurance, a known risk factor for caesareans. The findings, based on NSW Health Department figures for all NSW births in 1994, are published in the latest Australian and NZ Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. The researchers, from Liverpool Hospital, said it was unacceptable that 22 per cent of women continued to smoke during pregnancy, with the rate reaching 42 per cent among teenagers.

"I did not take this action lightly," Attorney General Gale Norton said at a news conference with Gov. Roy Romer at her side. "This will probably be expensive and time-consuming litigation."

That's when Dickie Scruggs walked out. It was no ploy. As a lawyer for 20 of the 32 states suing the industry, Richard F. Scruggs had spent nearly a year engineering the talks, and he had had enough of the chaos. The meeting fell apart, and Scruggs locked himself in a room with Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore, whose lawsuit had launched the states' assault. He upbraided Moore. "Some of these guys are basically prohibitionists, and you're being too deferential to them," he complained. Eager to get home to Pascagoula, Miss., to celebrate his 26th anniversary, Scruggs hopped his Lear jet, leaving Moore to catch a ride with Motley.Here's a companion table

Henry Dinger, representing the tobacco industry, told a panel of appeals court judges that such information is considered a trade secret. Besides forcing his clients to supply the information, the state law would violate a federal law that specifies what information is on cigarette labels and in advertising, he said. Dinger said details of ingredients submitted to Massachussets would be "on the Internet and in the hands of every cigarette manufacturer not only in the United States, but in the world" within 24 hours.

Tobacco-state senators scrambled Thursday to head off what they decried as a plan by Republican congressional leaders to raise the cigarette tax by as much as 50 cents a pack and use the money for cuts in other taxes as part of the balanced-budget agreement.     Aides to the tobacco-belt lawmakers said the proposal was being considered as an alternative to a plan by Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.

Norman Mayo, 61, believes he might have avoided his health problems if he had been warned on milk cartons about fat and cholesterol. . . . "If tobacco products can be required to have warning labels, why not dairy products?" said Mayo, a former smoker. "I think milk is just as dangerous as tobacco." . . . Jon Ferguson, a lead counsel in the state's lawsuit against the tobacco industry, said likening milk with tobacco was silly. Milk, he noted, is not addictive.

Dr. Steven S. Coughlin of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, and colleagues there and elsewhere analyzed data collected on more than 330,000 men enrolled in the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial. The researchers compared the prevalence of various characteristics and behaviors among the almost 400 subjects who died of kidney cancer over a 16-year period and the remaining members of the cohort. . . The finding of an approximately twofold increased risk of kidney cancer among smokers compared with nonsmokers is also consistent with estimates from previous studies. Published in June 1, 1997 Cancer

After interviewing more than 2,000 Vietnamese men and women aged 18 years and older about their smoking habits, Christopher N. H. Jenkins of the University of California in San Francisco and researchers with the Vietnamese Community Health Promotion Project found that 72.8% of men and 4.3% of women in Vietnam smoke. Published in June 4, 1997 JAMA

NEW YORK, June 5 (Reuter) - The New York Stock Exchange said . . . four public representatives were re-elected: Geoffrey C. Bible, chief executive Philip Morris Cos Inc (MO) . . .

Chen is director of public affairs for the American Lung Association of Alameda County. Mackay is director of Asian Consultancy on Tobacco Control in Hong Kong. . . Chen notes that Chang has "rock star status" among Hong Kong teenage girls. "He's allowing himself to be used by a major drug pusher," Chen said, referring to the tobacco companies. . . Dr. Mackay has watched Chang's association with tobacco-sponsored tournaments in Hong Kong and other Asian cities for a decade. In 1992, she wrote a letter to a Hong Kong newspaper about the "gentle irony" of Chang being hailed for speaking out against teen suicides. "His message would be more credible and effective if this were not his fifth Marlboro Championship in Hong Kong. Any young hero who allows his name to be so closely associated with cigarettes might be advised to think carefully where he stands before delivering health and "anti-suicide' messages to the young," Mackay wrote. . . "He can't avoid playing those events," Ross said.

"There is much talk, and it's far beyond rumor, of increasing the tobacco tax by 21 cents to 50 cents per pack, which would raise 15 to 30 billion dollars a year," Faircloth said. "Is a deal not a deal? We either agree not to raise taxes any farther or we don't agree. I think it's an outrage that this is even under consideration." Faircloth and North Carolina Republican Sen. Jesse Helms met with Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott to protest the plan.

And on that August day, a high-powered Covington lawyer made it clear to Edell that he didn't think much of the Cipollone family's argument. "He argued that [the dangers of smoking] had never been proven," Edell recalls, "and that the industry never withheld any information, never misled the public."

The Legislature has been good to the tobacco industry this year. Soon, lawmakers and the governor must decide if cigarette makers will chalk up 1997 as merely a good year for them, or a great one.

• 06/08/97 KING, the Veteran, Got Most of What He Wanted Portland Press Herald

Teachers are having to show in court to testify, and big caseloads are getting bigger. As punishment, Pa. students are being fined. But is addiction deterred?

Most major tours and rock shows this summer have corporate backers like Guinness beer, Skoal smokeless tobacco [we might add Philip Morris' Marcia Byrne Woman Thing tour & CD] and Vans skateboard shoes. But Lilith has a bookstore chain, a retailer of women's shoes and a maker of skin-care products, all picked for their high-minded ideals and the amount of money they dole out to charities.

MERCURY Asset Management, the leading fund management group, is joining the anti-smoking campaigners with the launch of Britain's first charitable fund to exclude buying shares in all companies that make or sell tobacco products. The fund will shun some of Britain's biggest industrial groups including Lonrho and Bunzl, as well as BAT, Imperial Tobacco and Gallaher, the cigarette companies. It will also exclude two retailers - Alpha Airports and T&S Stores - both of which generate more than 10 per cent of turnover from the sale of tobacco products. MAM has launched the Charishare Tobacco Restricted Fund in response to heavy demand from NHS charities and in the wake of growing concerns among trustees about the need to balance ethical investment with maximising returns on charitable funds.

Greg Keary is restless. As an options trader, he spends his whole day making high-risk bets on whether a stock will rise or fall in price. His specialty is a fiendishly volatile sector of the stock market, the tobacco industry. At 27, Keary runs the options trading post for R.J. Reynolds, the nation's second largest tobacco company. Even as Florida divests its tobacco stocks, sophisticated investors around the world are betting huge sums on the daily legal and political battles over Big Tobacco

Tobacco experts say wet weather is a breeding ground for the fungus, which wiped out the state's crop in 1979.

The mini-gallery reads like a Hollywood who's who: A picture hangs of John Travolta decked out in black, smoking a cigarette and looking very much like Chili Palmer from "Get Shorty"--the inscription, "Thanks for everything." . . . If these walls could talk, they would say they belong to Don Michaelson, his son Gerald Michaelson and Paula Schoen, physicians who specialize in show business

If there's one celebrity whom nobody would peg as a smoker, it's k.d. lang. Radiantly healthy and famously vegetarian, with a voice as smooth as a baby's bottom, the Grammy-winning singer could be the anti-Joe Camel--a poster girl for clean living.      So chain-puffers and anti-tobacco activists alike may be a bit surprised by the

• 06/08/97 A Torch Song Anthology about Dangerous Pleasures NY Times
  
  On the surface, it might appear that Ms. Lang, who is a nonsmoker, has made an album that glamorizes cigarettes with titles like "Love Is Like a Cigarette," "Smoke Rings" and "Smoke Dreams." But collectively the songs portray tobacco as an unhealthy, addictive crutch and the smoking of cigarettes as an affectation that is also as dangerous as a romantic obsession.
• 06/09/97 Lang Voice Still Magical, But Torch Singing Starts to Wear Thin Newhouse News POSTNet ("hot off the wires"--expires quickly)
• 06/05/97 "DRAG" Reviewed (New York) Daily News
  
  "I'm definitely going to get killed by the American Lung Association," lang smiles implishly in her New York hotel penthouse. Not that the anti-smoke brigade should care. "Drag" uses smoking as a metaphor for the risks of romance. Like love, cigarettes can serve as a filter for notions of glamour and danger, intoxication and addiction. "The appeal of cigarettes and, to some degree, of love, is rooted in the desire to kill yourself," lang says with an artist's view of romance. "There's self-destruction in smoking, as there can be in love. That's what drew me in." Lang's rapture with the subject makes "Drag" her most impassioned album since 1992's smash, "Ingenue."
  • Here's an unofficial "Drag" page. The Warner Bros kd lang page doesn't have anything on "Drag" yet (Release date: June 10). There's already an Internet Protest Page

His wife, Judy, said the cause was lung cancer, a disease whose diagnosis last year had prompted Joice to quit smoking.

Yet every day we permit our children to be exposed to billboard advertising that glamorizes smoking and drinking. No wonder underage consumption of alcohol and tobacco is on the rise. We must stop sending mixed signals to our kids and ban billboards that advertise alcohol and tobacco. We must do no less.

Henry Dinger, representing the tobacco industry, told a panel of appeals court judges Friday that such information is considered a trade secret. Besides forcing his clients to supply the information, the state law would violate a federal law that specifies what information is on cigarette labels and in advertising, he said.

The decades-old American Tobacco Company memos discussed research on increasing nicotine levels in cigarettes. They indicated copies were to be given to Hager and several other company officials. Hager, now 60, said he dealt heavily during his 34-year career with tobacco leaf supply -- not with now-controversial nicotine research. After reviewing the memos, Hager said he was "totally vindicated." He said they didn't name him as author or direct recipient and that one wrongly named him as executive vice president at a time he actually was on disability retirement.

He was less sure whether he should also talk about his sister Nancy, a smoker who had died of lung cancer in 1984. For guidance, Mr. Gore called Frank Hunger. As head of the Justice Department's mammoth civil division, Mr. Hunger is one of the Clinton administration's point men in its war against the tobacco industry. Mr. Hunger was also married to Nancy Gore for 18 years and has remained an integral part of the Gore extended family. He encouraged the vice president to press forward.

The state House is reviewing a bill that would require the state pension fund to divest its tobacco securities, valued at $190 million

Massachusetts Treasurer Joseph Malone reiterated his determination to divest the state of its tobacco stocks, but told the Public Service Committee he needs legislative authority to do so, State House News Service reported. Malone, who is expected to make a bid for the Republican slot in the 1998 gubernatorial race, said he wants to sell off the state's $190 million in tobacco holdings, which are part of the portfolio of stocks held by the state's $18 billion pension fund. The Public Service legislative committee heard a bill on Tuesday authorizing Malone and and other fund managers to divest.

State Tax Department employee Julio G. Del Corso appears to have won his crusade for a smoke-free workplace. State Tax Commissioner Danny Payne said yesterday his department plans to build a separate smoking room at its Richmond headquarters at 2220 W. Broad St. His announcement came nine days after a Times-Dispatch report on complaints about secondhand smoke in the Department of Taxation offices. . . Smoking will be restricted to the single smoking room when it's opened by next June, Payne said. Employees no longer will be able to smoke in an open work area on the first floor or in the cafeteria.

Alabama plans to start offering rewards of up to $50 to store clerks who enforce a state law banning cigarette sales to teenagers. But the unannounced plan, led by Attorney General Bill Pryor, already is making some antismoking advocates fume. . . But antismoking advocates who supported the state law are already raising questions about the people involved in the effort. The team includes Mr. Pryor, state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board officials, state health officials and representatives from several retailers' trade groups. Antismoking advocates complain that two group members, a public-relations executive and a lawyer, have done work for tobacco-industry giant Philip Morris Cos.

It boiled down to a matter of personal freedom vs. corporate responsibility. Walker Elementary School fourth-graders - taking on the roles of jurors, judge and lawyers - put the cigarette on trial last week during a mock trial at the University of Arizona College of Law. . . The mock trial was part of a classroom unit on health and social studies taught by team teachers Keira Moody and Polly Kimminau.

Republican Gov. Pete Wilson will sign the bill at a press conference in Los Angeles and call on the state's attorney general, Dan Lungren, to file immediately California's lawsuit, Wilson's spokeswoman, Lisa Kalustian, said. State sources said Lungren, also a Republican, would comply with the governor's request and could file the state's lawsuit as early as Thursday.

Hanson Group and Imperial Tobacco yesterday survived the cut that would have excluded them from the FTSE 100 index, despite being the 101st and 103rd-largest quoted companies in the UK respectively.

The decision centred on mandatory health warnings on cigarette packages, which state: "Smoking is bad for your health." Acting on a complaint by the National Committee against Tobacco Use, the court faulted the two firms for preceding the warning with the words, "According to Law No. 91-32..." The court said the words additional "held the (health message) up to ridicule" by suggesting that only the law supported the conclusion that cigarettes were bad for health and not years of scientific research.

The country is in the grip of a silent epidemic of oral sub-mucous fibrosis triggered by the increasing use of gutka, a widely chewed, highly addictive concoction unique to the sub-continent. Sub-mucous fibrosis represents the early stages of a rare and incurable disease leading to mouth cancer. While the government is still to wake up to the grim situation, there is evidence to confirm that the recent public outcry for a ban on gutka is urgent and justified. According to Anil Lakhina, commissioner of the Food and Drugs Administration, the Rajasthan High Court recently directed the Union government to appoint a committee to examine the use of tobacco in paan masala, gutka and other such products, and its effect on public health.

Cigarette maker Liggett Group Inc., whose ongoing losses have worsened since it settled a number of tobacco lawsuits in March, said Wednesday it is discussing a possible restructuring of its debt. Liggett said it doesn't expect to be able to generate the cash needed to make the payments on the notes, based on the company's net loss for 1996 and anticipated 1997 operating results.

National Tobacco Co. LP, the nation's third-largest maker of chewing tobacco, is buying North Atlantic Trading Co., the biggest maker of "roll-your-own" cigarette papers, and the new company plans to raise $115 million by selling high-yield bonds to finance the deal and refinance existing debt. The closely held companies will use the North Atlantic Trading name after the merger. The new company will be based in New York.

As customers walk in, a sign at the end of the counter advises people to "Look for no additive cigarettes here." They don't have to look very hard. Above the counter, which is perpendicular to the entrance, is a 7-foot-long, lighted sign saying, "No additives. New Winston. True taste. No Bull."

Think of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., and three cigarette brands that made it a powerhouse come to mind: Winston, Salem and Camel. In 1970, those brands ranked first, third and sixth nationwide, respectively, and accounted for one-third of the cigarettes sold in the country. . . And for the first time in 30 years, Winston is not Reynolds' leading brand. The company's new flagship is a savings brand that was once mothballed for poor performance: Doral.

He gave the friends cigarettes with different levels of nicotine but did not tell them which cigarettes they had been given. . . As a result of that study, Schachter came up with the idea that social interactions can affect the acidity of urine, which affects nicotine retention and, therefore, cigarette consumption -- a metabolic explanation for why smokers smoked more in social gatherings. Hood said that that idea had been validated since then.

A man who was told he had six months to live and was hooked up to an oxygen tank got an eviction notice from his landlady. She's worried that his smoking could start a fire if the tank leaked."There are some days I don't smoke at all," said John Womack, 67, who is dying from pulmonary disease. "But I start getting nervous about dying and thinking about things that happened in the past and I need one." . . . Oxygen is not combustible, but acts as an accelerant to nearby flames. A leak into the air could cause a cigarette to burn faster and possibly out of control, oxygen providers said.Here's the story at the 06/12/97 Boston Globe

Attorney General Al Lance's lawsuit was filed in the Fourth District Court in Boise against Philip Morris Cos Inc (MO) and several other tobacco companies, his office said. In a statement dated June 9, Lance said his lawsuit was similar to those filed by other states.

Oregon's complaint, filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court in Portland, charges the tobacco industry illegally targeted minors and made fraudulent claims in its in advertising, colluded to suppress research into the effects of smoking and unfairly profited from the alleged fraud.

In an 18-page opinion dated June 6, 1997, Judge George Finkle rejected the state's claims of breach of special and general duties, unjust enrichment, performance of another's duties to the public, and restitution and/or disgorgement of the defendants' profits, the companies said.

• 06/10/97 Court Affirms Tobacco Complaint--AG Reuters
  
  A spokesman for the Washington State Attorney General's office said Tuesday that the court affirmed its antitrust and consumer protection complaints against tobacco companies. "The core of our case remains," said John Hough, senior assistant attorney general for the state of Washington.
• 06/10/97 RJR Statement On State Court's Second Rejection of AG's Claims PR Newswire
  
  "Last November, the court found the state must essentially `stand in the shoes' of Medicaid recipients it purports to represent," said Daniel W. Donahue, senior vice president and deputy general counsel of R.J. Reynolds. "This opinion reinforces that position in rejecting the state's standing to assert claims without showing that either smokers or the state relied upon any of the alleged wrong doings by the tobacco industry in making decisions relative to cigarettes and smoking.
• 06/10/97 Court Dismisses Medicaid Claiims--PM Philip Morris PR Newswire

A large spread crossed in Philip Morris Cos Inc (MO) options Tuesday in what analysts said could be a bullish play. The Philip Morris July 45 call traded about 11,625 contracts and the July 50 call traded 11,155. In afternoon trading, the stock was down 1/8 at 42-3/4 on turnover of about 7.1 million shares. "It's a pure bull spread," said Michael Schwartz, a managing director at Oppenheimer & Co, noting the open interest in the two options was relatively thin ahead of Tuesday's trade.

[T]he American Cancer Society's Rhode Island division has published a pamphlet called "Smoke-free Dining in Rhode Island." The intent was to publicize establishments where smoking is banned altogether.

Florida's $2 billion college tuition prepayment trust fund will divest tobacco holdings from its investment portfolio, the fund's executive director said Tuesday. The fund holds $12.8 million of tobacco stock and corporate notes, accounting for less than one percent of its total value. Of that, $11.5 million is in Philip Morris Cos Inc (MO) and $1.3 million is in American Brands Inc (AMB), the fund's executive director, Tom Wallace, said.

Vitamin C may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease related to smoking, by blocking platelet-activating factor mimetics created by exposure to cigarette smoke. With colleagues from several US centers, Dr. Hans-Anton Lehr of the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, explains in the May issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation that cigarette smoking nearly instantly "...induces leukocyte adhesion to the vascular wall and formation of intravascular leukocyte-platelet aggregates."

The number of women who smoke during pregnancy continues to decline, dropping to 14% in 1995, a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report says

A federal judge's recent decision to open the court record of a case involving the former research chief at Philip Morris USA marks a victory for the public's right to know what's happening in the courts. On May 23, U.S. District Judge Robert E. Payne of Richmond lifted a protective seal he had placed on a telephone conference that had made local and national headlines. In the course of the call, attorneys for Dr. Thomas S. Osdene revealed that they were trying to get the Justice Department to grant their client immunity from prosecution. Earlier newspaper and broadcast reports had said the government had flatly refused to give Osdene legal protection in return for testimony against the tobacco industry. But the transcript that Payne put on the public record suggests that Osdene's lawyers could yet strike a deal with Justice -- making the former research chief the first high-level government witness against Philip Morris.

Several members of the Drug Abuse Advisory Committee said more information should be included on the labels, including information concerning long-term treatment and safety. Specifically, the advisory committee said it wants: secondary outcome measures such as withdrawal; additional research by industry and research community including post-marketing surveys; data concerning extended outcomes; and to set up a symposium with various societies and investigators regarding what is known about nicotine and labeling.

More than two decades after Norway banned all tobacco advertising, cigarette smoking hasn't been snuffed out. While smoking has declined overall -- to 33% of all Norwegians from 42% in 1975 -- the biggest drop came in the early years after the ban was imposed in 1975. Since then, the decline in smoking has largely leveled off.

"Smoking a nargile is nothing like smoking a cigarette," a 71-year-old pensioner named Ismet Ertep said as he looked up from his pipe. "Cigarettes are for nervous people, competitive people, people on the run," he said. "When you smoke a nargile, you have time to think. It teaches you patience and tolerance, and gives you an appreciation of good company. Nargile smokers have a much more balanced approach to life than cigarette smokers."

For a decade or more there have been no tobacco signboards, posters, print or television ads or signs at point of sale. Yet the Singapore Health Ministry has reported that the smoking rate for 18 and 19-year-olds rose from nine per cent in 1984 to 12 per cent in 1995. Your correspondent, Judith Mackay, does not consider the obvious that advertising bans do not reduce tobacco consumption. Instead, she clutches at straws and, disturbingly, appears to advocate further removal of commercial and individual freedoms. Tobacco company sponsorships, all of which take place outside Singapore, can hardly be at fault. Hong Kong statistics show conclusively that sponsorships here have no effect on consumption.

Indonesian stocks fell yesterday, led by Gudang Garam and HM Sampoerna on worries slowing sales growth may hurt earnings at the two cigarette-makers.

5) Cigars. Every other guy seems to be puffing away on one. I'm surprised that the caddies are able to keep the smoke out of their players' eyes. Actually, I saw a few bag toters smoking stogies while on the job as well. Nationwide, cigar consumption has doubled in the last four years. Must have something to do with the extra health benefits derived from having a hot stinking wad of oozing tobacco staining your teeth and poisoning your jaw. But I digress.

The images of blackened lungs, dirty commodes and smoke-filled stalls may shock adolescents into thinking twice about smoking. But after three years, the Smokeless States Project seems to have turned off more adults, who find the youth-oriented media blitz to be downright offensive.

• 06/10/97 Ads Reach Kids, Turn of Parents Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. You can view the "Cow Ad" from this page.

"We think things are changing," said Glen Mayfield, a lawyer in Ormond Beach. He should know -- his law firm has filed more than 80 cases in Florida, including 38 in his home county, Volusia. Four suits have been filed in Lake County, 10 in Orange County, two in Osceola and 13 in Seminole. Brevard County lists six suits. "Florida has become a hot spot for the suits," said Richard Daynard . . . The reason for the sudden change? A $750,000 judgment for a man in a Jacksonville court last August.

The Clinton administration may tap Acting Solicitor General Walter E. Dellinger III to argue one of its most-watched appeals: the landmark battle over the Food and Drug Administration's authority to regulate tobacco. It's slated for hearing the week of Aug. 11 before the 4th Circuit, which includes Dellinger's home state of North Carolina. "He'd be perfect," said one Justice Department source. "He knows the 4th Circuit so well."

But under the soft-money loophole, corporations and individuals can give unlimited funds to political parties for "party building" and "get out the vote" drives, which are vaguely defined. Thus, tobacco giant Philip Morris became the GOP's biggest donor, giving $2.5 million for the 1996 campaign, while various labor unions led the list of Democratic donors. All told, the Democrats received $109 million in soft money, and Republicans took in $127 million for the 1996 election cycle. The result: Both parties used tremendous amounts of soft money to pay for television ads that had all the appearances of being commercials for a particular candidate.

What makes Barbour such a rain-maker for his firm, Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, is his close ties to the Republican leaders who now control the legislative agenda. . . . Indeed, he helped elect many of the Republicans in Congress whom he is now calling on to promote the interests of his new corporate clients. "Haley Barbour is one of the key access lobbyists in Washington," said Ronald Shaiko, academic director of the Lobbying Institute teaching program at American University. "If he can't get in the Republican leadership's door, then no one can. He is the key door-opener on Capitol Hill, and that's what his clients are purchasing. For that alone, his services are worth a lot of money." . . . Since January, he has garnered the "big five" of tobacco: the Philip Morris Companies, RJR Nabisco, U.S. Tobacco Co., Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. and the Loews Corp. These companies already have an arsenal of Washington lobbyists, but lobbyists say that Barbour provides extra door-opening and strategic firepower for these companies at a time when their financial future is being shaped in Congress.

The bill is called the Tobacco Use by Minors Deterrence Act, and it engages neighborhood retailers, their employees, law enforcement, families and kids to share the responsibility of curbing underage tobacco access and use. The Tobacco Use by Minors Deterrence Act includes recommendations from a 1994 report on tobacco use among youth and responsible retailing, published by a working group of state attorneys general and from the Institute of Medicine's 1994 report Growing Up Tobacco Free.

Mr. Szymanczyk, 48 years old, fills a new position at the company. He previously was executive vice president, marketing and sales, for Philip Morris U.S.A. . . His new post includes responsibility for manufacturing and research and development, in addition to marketing and sales. During his tenure, Mr. Szymanczyk has presided over some of the most successful years ever for Philip Morris's No. 1-ranked Marlboro brand. Despite an onslaught of legal and regulatory attacks, Marlboro has continued to increase sales and pick up market share. In fact, under Mr. Szymanczyk, Philip Morris has gotten even more aggressive in its promotion and marketing efforts.

Havana Republic, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board:HVAR), a cigar manufacturer, distributor and retailer, announced today that it has purchased a 50 percent interest in Tabanica S.A., a Nicaraguan cigar company. Tabanica S.A. operates a cigar factory and two plantations in Jalapa, Nicaragua, a region considered to produce the best tobacco outside Cuba.

Proposed settlement terms emerging from talks between the tobacco industry and its foes are fueling rumors that there will be big job cuts at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. Company officials, however, strongly denied yesterday that any cuts are pending; and a tobacco-industry analyst predicted some "select" cuts but no drastic employment moves by Reynolds, the No. 2 maker of cigarettes in the United States.

• 06/12/97 OPINION: The Crusader's Mentality Spin Left, Michael Tomasky
  
  It's one thing to single out tobacco; but crusaders will not stop there, because crusaders never stop. Suppose government studies find that bacon cheeseburgers are a killer. . . Future generations of crusaders will attempt these moves, because crusaders, of the left or the right, always know what's best for everyone: . . I have faith that most people will make reasonably responsible decisions (witness the fact that the vast majority of the American adult population has given up smoking, or plans to). But that's a faith that's utterly alien to the mentality of the crusader.
• 06/12/97 OPINION: Who Is Joe Camel? Spin RIght, John Calvin Batchelor
  
  There are no extenuating circumstances for which the Feds can deprive you or your advertiser the right to make your case in public. . . The last refuge of the political scoundrel is child care. . . Once EPA establishes its authority to hire Tobacco Police, it can move on to the major air pollutants in our country: petroleum products. Ban tobacco today; ban the car tomorrow.

Lautenberg and two fellow Democrats, Richard Durbin of Illinois and Ron Wyden of Oregon, said they would introduce an amendment to the product liability bill to make clear that tobacco would not be eligible for proposed caps on punitive damages in the bill. However they acknowledged that at this point no Republican senators have endorsed their proposal although at least 16 state attorneys general have.

Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, made public a handful of the thousands of confidential Liggett and Myers Tobacco Co. documents which he said show disturbing patterns of "potentially criminal or fraudulent conduct" by the industry. Waxman said he was making them public because if the three dozen state attorneys general suing the tobacco companies reach a settlement, which would have to be approved by Congress, he wants to ensure broad disclosure about the companies' past activities and require accountability for the future. . . Waxman released documents specifically from Liggett, and said they are not the most important of the company's documents, which are at the center of a court battle over their release. The papers he released did not include any of the 3,500 documents that describe Liggett's joint defense strategies with other tobacco companies.

Secret tobacco industry documents show that a leading company developed safer cigarettes in the late 1970s -- ones that animal experiments showed could "dramatically reduce" tumors -- but decided not to sell them. . . Rep. Henry Waxman . . . said they show that a pending tobacco settlement with the rest of the industry would allow cigarette makers to keep hidden thousands of other still-secret documents. "They want a settlement that would be the biggest cover-up of all time," Waxman charged.

At the same time, some of the 35 states suing the industry to recover smoking-related Medicaid costs said they are lining up five whistleblower scientists to testify against cigarette companies in their multibillion-dollar lawsuits. . . The as-yet-unidentified scientists, who were on contract to the industry Council for Tobacco Research in the 1980s, are prepared to say company lawyers thwarted their research as it was drawing links between cancer and smoking, people who are helping prepare for the trials said yesterday. . . "The plaintiffs lawyers have touted their so-called whistleblowers before, only to find that when all the facts come out, there is not the substance there that they claim," said Peggy Carter, a spokeswoman for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco.

"Had Congress intended to restrict the FDA's authority to such a precise, technical concept of sale, it would not have used the broad phrasing that it did," the Justice Department said. "Promotion and advertising can readily be considered part and parcel of 'sale, distribution or use.' "

• 06/11/97 Justice Dept. Urges Court to Uphold FDA Regs on Advertising Reuters
  
  In a 41-page filing with the appeals court in Richmond, Va., department lawyers said a federal judge wrongly decided that the Food and Drug Administration lacked legal authority over advertising and promotion of cigarettes. They also argued that the judge correctly held that the FDA has the power to issue youth access and labeling restrictions, but was wrong in preventing those regulations from taking effect.
• 06/12/97 FDA Appeals Tobacco Ruling AP Washington Post
• 06/12/97 FDA Asks Appeals Court to Reverse Tobacco Ad Ruling Dow Jones (pay registration)

Maybe that's why, 21/2 years after Joycelyn Elders resigned in controversy, the job of America's top doctor is still unfilled. . . The office has become such an ideological battleground that the White House and possible opponents are poring over the past writings and record of the doctor likely to be the nominee, David Satcher, head of the federal Centers for Disease Control since 1993. . . The post has since been filled by acting surgeon general Audrey Manley, a career public health service employee. . . Aides say she is now preparing new reports on dental health, mental health and how smoking affects women and minorities.

"The medical community worked arm-in-arm, hand-in-hand, with the tobacco industry," family practitioner Alan Blum told a group at the Texas Medical Center Library this week. "The AMA allowed the industry to get away with murder." Blum's talk on the subject came as "The Unfiltered Truth About Smoking and Health," a small historical exhibit containing stacks of documents he said illustrates the connections, went on display at the library. At the heart of Blum's claims are numerous documents taken from 150,000 pages of internal tobacco industry correspondence and reports. The documents were produced by tobacco manufacturers in the 1980s during a major lawsuit.

Both sides in this controversy are well-intended. Both insist they have acted on principle. Fair enough. The only trouble is they've lost sight of the maingoal: to get kids to quit or never start smoking.

The Committee on Health Care, with approval from the cigarette-smoking Senate President Thomas F. Birmingham, watered down the tough antismoking measure and substituted a version that would allow smoking in private offices and designated areas. . . The panel's new version - which was pushed by the Senate chairman, Mark Montigny - would place responsibility for developing a smoking policy in the hands of the building superintendent, who works directly for the legislative leadership. Montigny insisted Birmingham gave him no directions. The superintendent, Dennis Smith, has been under pressure from state Public Health Commissioner David Mulligan to create a smoke-free State House, but has resisted, saying he needs approval and direction from Governor William F. Weld, House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran, and Birmingham.

Pennsylvania Treasurer Barbara Hafer Wednesday endorsed a proposal to force the city's pension fund to divest its tobacco stock holdings. Speaking before the Philadelphia City Council Law and Government Committee, Hafer said the tobacco industry is 'experiencing unprecedented attacks by consumer groups, health organizations, and federal, state, and local governments.'

Beyer was shaking hands at the Virginia Pork Festival in Emporia when R.A. "Bob" Williams approached wearing a tobacco warehouse cap and offered a few words of homespun political analysis. "If you don't have tobacco people with you, it's going to be a tough year," Williams said. Beyer thanked Williams and moved on. But Del. A. Victor Thomas (D-Roanoke) said the Democrats' platform will save them in rural areas. "The topic for Virginia is education and higher education -- that's the only thing that matters," he said.

[R]esearchers . . . have found that teenagers who smoke show early signs of blood vessel damage. Early signs of blood vessel disease were also found in teenagers and young adults who were obese or had high blood-sugar levels. "Heart disease is developing from childhood," the lead author of the American study, Professor Henry McGill, said yesterday. . . . The study is part of a continuing project examining tissue and blood taken from 3,000 males and females who died of accidents, murders or suicides between the ages of 15 and 34.

Supplementation with vitamins A or E is "not recommended" in men with previous MI who smoke, according to a report in the June 14 issue of The Lancet. The results of the 5.3-year Alpha-tocopherol Beta-carotene Cancer (ATBC) Prevention Study suggest that the two supplements may actually increase the risk of fatal coronary heart disease in this population. Dr. Janne M. Rapola of the National Public Health Institute in Helsinki, and colleagues in Finland and the US, studied the incidence of major coronary events in a cohort of 1,862 men, aged 50 to 69 years, with a history of MI who smoked. The subjects were randomized to vitamin A (20 mg/day), vitamin E (50 mg/day), both or placebo.

You reported that at Chelsea Clinton's graduation ceremony (front page, June 7), some of her classmates "pulled out cigars" after receiving their diplomas. If her fellow graduates from Sidwell Friends School view using tobacco as a symbol of arriving at adulthood, I'd say something was seriously lacking in their education, even at $14,000 a year. EILEEN SANDLER REICH Westfield, N.J., June 10, 1997

The solution would appear to lie in the Government's hands, by adopting the approach used in Victoria, Australia, where part of the levy on tobacco is clearly earmarked for sports promotion and sponsorship.

• 06/12/97 MASSACHUSETTS: LIGGETT CEO Testifies on Tobacco AP Washington Post
  
  "We believe firmly that we and other manufacturers can comply easily with these requirements." . . He brandished a prototype carton of L&Ms, which he said could be ready in a couple of months for sale around the nation, saying the label "conforms pretty much to what you see on a package of potato chips and a can of soda."
• 06/13/97 LIGGETT Agrees to Cooperate with Disclosure Law AP Winston-Salem Journal
• 06/12/97 Maverick Tobacco Co. CEO LEBOW Breaks Ranks Again CNNfn
• 06/12/97 LIGGETT's LEBOW Expected to Testify for Disclosure Law Today Boston Globe
  
  Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, who has insisted that ingredient disclosure be part of any national settlement, is also expected to testify at today's hearing and is said to be eager to hear LeBow's views on implementing the law from the tobacco industry's perspective. "I am cautiously optimistic that we may be able to take this initiative on the road, and establish the same type of testing and disclosure requirements for the whole country," Harshbarger said.

The state of Maryland launched a $150,000 advertising campaign yesterday urging the state's bars and restaurants to ban smoking. Gov. Parris N. Glendening unveiled the print, radio and television advertisements at news conference in a smoke-free Annapolis restaurant. The Democrat said the state will not pass any laws forcing restaurant and tavern owners to ban smoking, but officials hope to persuade restaurateurs to forbid smoking.

Wilner's firm said it was dropping all but about 30 of the 100 lawsuits filed on behalf of smokers who say they have suffered cigarette-related illnesses. . . Wilner's next tobacco trial is Aug. 4. He represents Joann Karbiwnyk in a lawsuit against Reynolds.

The consolidation will provide tobacco companies relief from the wave of individual court actions by sick smokers. Further, if the class-action suit filed on behalf of Florida smokers scheduled in September fails, Wilner's clients and any other Florida smokers covered by the suit cannot sue again on their own.

Under a $200,000 contract signed Thursday, the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation's tobacco-control agents will begin using teenagers in enforcement sweeps to see whether store clerks are illegally selling cigarettes and other tobacco products to young people under age 18.

• 06/12/97 FLORIDA Enters First Youth Smoking Pact with FDA Reuters
  
  Florida will conduct unannounced checks on hundreds of retail stores and send the information to the FDA. In turn, the agency will warn retailers the first time if they are found selling tobacco to minors. Second offenses will result in a $250 fine with greater amounts for subsequent violations.

And if the rain doesn't let up, blue mold spores, which are hanging in the air over Kentucky, could wipe out entire fields. "The yields cannot possibly recover back to where they could have been," said Gary Palmer, an extension tobacco specialist for the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture.

[Sen. Quentin] Kopp, I-San Francisco, said Thursday's action by Lungren on behalf of the state should help Kopp's legislation to allow product liability lawsuits by individual smokers or their survivors. . . . The tobacco industry, which employs some powerful lobbyists in the state Capitol, is fighting hard against the bill. . . "There should not be one standard of law for people you like and another standard for those that you don't like," said Peggy Carter, a spokeswoman for RJ Reynolds Tobacco Co. in North Carolina.

The Federal Health Minister, Dr Wooldridge, said the Government would spend $7.5 million over two years on the television, radio and print campaign to encourage the 25 per cent of Australians who smoke to give up. The campaign targets 18-to-40-year-olds, with advice on quitting. The television advertisements show how smoking damages lungs and arteries. "I imagine many smokers will be shocked, perhaps disturbed, maybe a little frightened, after seeing these ads," Dr Wooldridge said.

The print and billboard campaign--estimated at $25 million-plus by Morgan Stanley--aims to find a compelling image for RJR's No.2 cig brand (Doral is No.1). Some ads show beer-swilling regular guys who like "real" tobacco. Over the past year, Winston's market share fell from 5.3% to 4.9%, with a domestic volume drop of 11%. One reason is Winston lacks a clear identity, RJR figures.

If the government ever clamps down on tobacco marketing and sales, cigarette stores would be in a very good position. The only reason to go into a cigarette store is to buy cigarettes, which makes it is easier to screen out minors. The stores also remove cigarettes from the sight of non-smokers.

It would be culturally blasphemous to draw too close a parallel between an advertising symbol like Joe Camel and a tragic figure like Mayakovsky, who shot himself the year after he wrote his drama about the interplay of freedom, pleasure, and risk. On the other hand, the horrified cries of Mayakovsky's authoritarians will be ringing in Joe Camel's ears as he roars out of town for the last time on his big motorcycle. Because he still won't be wearing a helmet. --Charles Paul Freund is a senior editor at Reason magazine. He smokes Benson & Hedges because the advertising promises him quality.

Though some, like the American Smoker's Alliance, are supported by Philip Morris, others, like the At Home with Lyndelle homepage, seem independent ventures, offering an odd mixture of anti-anti-smoking links, amateur science, tips on vegetable gardens, chat rooms and "distant healing."

To examine advertising more closely--and TV shows and other forms of entertainment--is to discover that most of it is aimed at our youth and that much is nothing more than glitter-splattered lies. Perhaps we should ban all of it. Or, as an alternative, perhaps we could teach our children how to separate right from wrong, truth from lie, fact from fiction--how to use good judgment, to be responsible for one's self. Nah. Eliminate The Camel! It's a quick, painless solution, and I'm sure it will end teen smoking.

• 06/13/97 LA Times Item
• 06/14/97 SF Chronicle Item

• 06/13/97 EDITORIAL: Smoked Out--After Months of Excuses Lungren is Forced to Sue Tobacco San Jose Mercury News
  
  Lungren's lack of enthusiasm prompted officials of the American Lung Association to demand that he negotiate only on the Medi-Cal costs and not get into discussions about tobacco advertising or limiting the companies' liability in lawsuits. They are afraid that once he gets into a room with tobacco attorneys, he may give away the store. We share those concerns.
• 06/12/97 CALIFORNIA Seeeks Billions from Tobacco Reuters
• 06/12/97 Gov. Signs Tobacco Liability Bill AP/San Jose Mercury News
• 06/12/97 CA Likely to Join Suit LA Times
• 06/12/97 CA Gov WILSON Signs Bill Paving Way for Tobacco Suit Reuters

• 06/13/97 Kidnap Fears Rise Times of London
  
  A senior British businessman said: "All the big multinationals here have to deal with extremely dodgy distributors, particularly those involved in the sale of cigarettes and vodka. Threatening people's lives is how they do business."
• 06/13/97 Minister Dismayed at Threats to Foreigners CNNfn
• 06/12/97 Britons Flee Moscow Gangsters--2 PHILIP MORRIS Families Flown out under Abduction Threat Times of London
  
  Two British families were flown out of Moscow under tight security yesterday after being threatened with abduction by the Russian mafia. Sandra Preston and Carol Cockburn and their children were protected by a private security firm as they were left the country after receiving the threats. Both of the women's husbands work for the American tobacco company Philip Morris. . . "One minute they were here, the next their kids were taken out of the Anglo-American school and they were rushed to the airport."

The Riverside Brewing Co. has had a good experience with its no-smoking policy, which has been in effect since the restaurant and bar opened four years ago, said manager Catherine Samarin. "No one has complained yet," she said. . . "This will be enforced the same way (the first smoking ban) was enforced, through voluntary compliance," [Colleen Stevens, a spokeswoman for the Tobacco Control Section of the California Department of Health Services] said. "And it works. The state hasn't issued a fine since the ban on smoking in restaurants started."

"Although Congress itself has precisely and technically defined many of the terms used in the act, it did not define this phrase," the brief says. "Therefore, FDA was free to adopt a common-sense definition of those terms, encompassing the full process of selling and distribution, of which promotion and advertising are integral parts." In addition to authority to restrict the sale, distribution or use of "devices," Congress gave the FDA the power to impose "other conditions," the brief says. "FDA found that this explicit delegation includes the authority to restrict the promotion and advertising that helps to create demand for tobacco products among young people. . . . As the district court recognized elsewhere in its opinion, it had an obligation to uphold FDA's construction of the act unless there are compelling indications that it was contrary to what Congress intended. There are no such compelling indications here."

When the Pentagon last fall raised the price of discounted cigarettes sold in military supermarkets in an effort to cut consumption and improve troops' health, medical experts cheered. But a panel of the House National Security Committee complained that the Pentagon had failed to consult Congress before approving the price increase, and it pledged revenge. Last week, it was payback time for panel members, many of whom receive campaign donations from tobacco interests. The full committee approved a proposal last week to stop the Pentagon office that ordered the increase from managing the military's $16 billion retail businesses. The responsibility for overseeing commissaries and exchanges would be transferred to the Pentagon's comptroller. That would essentially leave the director of the office, Stephen O. Rossetti Jr., out of a job. . . The full House is quite likely to support the plan, which is in the Pentagon budget bill for the 1998 fiscal year, when it votes on the bill in the next several weeks. Here's a short version of the story at the Chicago Tribune

"When baby boomers were in their 20s, they focused on themselves. Now that they're in their 40s, they are focusing on their children. They want things to be better for their kids. What baby boomers want, they get."

James S. Gilmore III, the Republican candidate for Virginia governor, doesn't want you to think of him as Big Tobacco's candidate.

That's not news, but this is: Four out of 10 smokers who want to stop say they won't quit smoking if it means they'll gain more than five pounds, according to the poll. One in four said they wouldn't stop puffing if it meant gaining any weight at all -- a view expressed by more women than men. "So what we have here is a serious reality gap," says psychologist Cynthia Pomerleau, director of the Nicotine Research Laboratory at the University of Michigan. That's because more than two-thirds of all quitters do gain more than five pounds -- and 20 percent to 30 percent put on more than 15 pounds. To unhook more women from cigarettes, Pomerleau says public health campaigns should "encourage a broader view of body image itself," one that also would "include looking youthful, looking healthy, looking womanly and feminine, being athletic and capable, having a nice voice, nice skin, nice teeth, nice smile, nice breath and flattering clothes" -- all aspects of physical attractiveness that smoking degrades.

Despite increasing hostility toward smoking, a regional convenience-store chain recently began promoting itself under a new retail name: "Tobacco Road." . . . [O]fficials of Louisville-based Keil Brothers Oil Co. think the change last month also will be a highway to greater profits. . . "This phenomenon actually started in response to the hostile environment against smokers," said Lindsay Hutter, vice president of industry relations for the National Association of Convenience Stores. "It's an attempt to make customers feel more comfortable buying tobacco products." . . That makes tobacco sales a lucrative market, whether it's politically popular or not, Hutter said. In convenience stores alone, tobacco sales net $17 billion a year, equivalent to 26.5 percent of all store sales excluding gasoline. Keil Brothers officials insist the new name was not inspired by the tobacco industry, which faces an uncertain future over advertising. Instead, the decision was based on a marketing study and pure economics, said company vice president Greg Pence.

The 55 senators who voted against the Hatch-Kennedy proposal to increase the cigarette tax got three times more money, on average, from tobacco PACs than the 45 senators who voted in favor of the cigarette tax.

• 06/14/97 Majority Leader TRENT LOTT (R-MS) Washington Post
  
  Lott gave $7,500 to charity from five speeches, including one to R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.
  Washington Post
• 06/13/97 LARRY CRAIG (R-ID), Chairman, Senate Republican Policy Cmte AP Washington Post
  
  Craig took nine trips paid for by private interests in 1996, including one to Phoenix, Ariz., and Spokane, Wash., with his wife to speak to the Tobacco Institute
• 06/13/97 CHRISTOPHER S. BOYD (R-MO), Chairman, Small Business Cmte AP Washington Post
  
  Honoraria, all donated to charity: $2,000 each from McGraw-Hill Defense Contractors, the Tobacco Institute, Washington Discussion Group, Edward D. Jones Co.
• 06/13/97 HENRY WAXMAN (D-CA) AP Washington Post
  
  A key anti-tobacco lawmaker, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., traveled to New York at the expense of the Smoke Free America Awards. Arizona Republican
• 06/14/97 ILLINOIS: RAY LAHOOD (R-Disctrict 18) AP POSTNet ("hot off the wires"--expires quickly)
  
  The Tobacco Institute paid him $2,000 for a speech.

The House tax writing committee late yesterday rejected a proposal that would have raised taxes on cigarettes by 29 cents per pack to 53 cents. The amendment was offered by Representative Nancy Johnson, a Connecticut Republican, who had sought to inject the proposal into the larger tax bill that the House Ways and Means Committee is considering.

• 06/13/97 House Panel Defeats Cig Tax Dow Jones (pay registration). Here's Part 2
• 06/13/97 29-cent Cig Tax Hike Defeated AP Washington Post
• 06/11/97 US Rep NANCY JOHNSON (R-CT) Seeks to Raise Cig Tax Reuters
  
  Republican Rep. Nancy Johnson Wednesday said she will seek to increase the cigarette tax by 29 cents per pack in order to raise $20 billion over five years to pay for a new child health insurance program. Johnson will offer the proposal when the House Ways and Means Committee begins debate later Wednesday on amendments to tax legislation as part of the five-year balanced budget deal

Researchers at Purdue University pooled a group of people such as Selzer -- heavy smokers and casual drinkers in their 30s -- and concluded that alcohol alone can prompt smokers to crave a cigarette. All 60 participants in the Purdue study thought they were drinking vodka tonics, but half drank only tonic water. The result: Those who drank alcohol had a 35 percent higher level of cigarette cravings than those who didn't drink alcohol.

People who have healthy gums are highly likely to develop gum disease within two to five years if they smoke cigarettes, University at Buffalo dental researchers have found. The study is the first to show a direct association between smoking and the development of gum detachment and loss of bone in the jaw - symptoms of periodontal disease - in healthy people.

The Farm Income Improvement Foundation, formed in April, set guidelines for the grants this week aiming them at three types of projects: resolving the lack of curing space, blue mold control and market preparation. Projects committee chairman Marshall Coyle, a Bath County farmer, said hundreds of farmers have already expressed an interest in the grants.

"If RJR got knocked out of the box, it would definitely be a heavy collision for us because we've all supported them and they've done so much for us," said Wheeler of the Charlotte Motor Speedway. "They've brought us into the 20th century of sport. We would be faced with our biggest challenge and replacing them right off the bat would be far more difficult than people think."

A new compromise bill introduced by Rep. Rob Cameron (R-Rumford), on behalf of the administration, contains both a doubling of the tobacco excise tax and a comprehensive tobacco prevention program that the majority of legislators and the administration have agreed on. It also proposes that most of the revenue be placed into a tax surplus fund for the Legislature to decide next session what type of tax relief to give back to the people of Maine. In the closing hours of this legislative session, I hope we do not forget the human and economic toll tobacco is ravaging here in Maine.

He pursues a scorched-earth policy when it comes to following the corporate paper trail. He is focused on his opponent's vulnerabilities, obsessed with their inconsistencies. "They Ciresi and his associates don't miss deadlines. They always press," said Minneapolis attorney Michael Berens, who opposed Ciresi in interuterine-device suits and admires his courtroom ability. "The defense focuses its angst and anger on Mike Ciresi, and they take their eye off the ball.""You have to put this case into a totally different category," said state Attorney General Hubert Humphrey III, who hired Ciresi and the Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi firm. "It is the mother of all lawsuits."

Col. M. Wayne Huggins, head of the state police, wrote May 28 about [Julio] Del Corso's request to cite his boss, Tax Commissioner Danny Payne, for allegedly violating the Virginia Indoor Clean Air Act. The act provides for a civil penalty of not more than $25 for any person who continues to smoke in a designated no-smoking area after having been asked to stop, Huggins wrote the tax employee. But the state police chief noted the state police's primary function is to enforce traffic and criminal laws. "Because of the current demands provided by this agency, we are unable to enforce the provisions of the Indoor Clean Air Act within the City of Richmond," Huggins wrote. He advised Del Corso to try to settle his concerns within the tax department.

You will be enjoying the excitement and fun of a Walt Disney World vacation on a ship that is as close to a non-smoking vessel as possible. Smoking is not allowed in the staterooms and only in three public rooms.

Anybody at R.J. Reynolds who claims to be surprised by children's fascination with the character is a moron or a liar. . . Watch any child when a cartoon image comes on TV; it's a moth to flame. And R.J. Reynolds knows it, and has always known it, and when they start mouthing their line about smoking as an "adult decision," may they choke on their lying tongues.

A report on 1995 data by the National Center for Health Statistics shows 7.3 percent of all babies born weigh less than 51/2 pounds. . . The mystery about the low-birthweight data is this: For years, health professionals have said tiny babies are a result of women being denied health care, teen births, racial differences and abuses during pregnancy such as smoking, drinking and drug use. Yet, many of those factors are improving. Some examples from the report: Tobacco use among pregnant women has declined 29 percent since 1989. As of 1995, 14 percent of pregnant women used tobacco . . So why does the low-birthweight rate remain so high?

With numerous tobacco company sponsors among its race teams, Formula One would be strongly affected when the legislation goes into effect in 1999. Such legislation is pending in a number of other countries that host Formula One races.

TOBACCO companies are giving away cigarettes in pubs, clubs and other public places in a marketing drive aimed at beating the proposed ban on advertising. The tactic is prompting anti-smoking campaigners to urge Frank Dobson, the health secretary, to ban the practice of luring smokers with free cigarettes. . . The manufacturers see "below the line" promotion as an important alternative to advertising on posters and in publications. They are hiring promotional companies to give free samples, money-off vouchers and T-shirts emblazoned with cigarette brand names wherever people socialise or travel. . . Two weeks ago a team from Rothmans descended on Barringtons, a large pub in Battersea, south London, loaded with packs of cigarettes. They mingled with the customers and handed out free cigarettes. Pub-goers in Oxford have also experienced "free cigarette nights" in the past month.

The company has launched two new brands of cigarettes to consolidate its position as country's leading cigarette manufacturer, it said. ITC's leaf tobacco exports increased by 30 percent in volumes and 65 percent in value in 1996/97.

Late last month the ministers of health called on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) general secretariat to consider the ban as part of its bid to crack down on smoking. The GCC is a political and economic forum comprising Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar. Advertising executives said the proposed ban would strike a powerful blow to the region's young advertising sector and local economies. . . . "The economic impact of tobacco advertising is big," Joseph Ghossoub, president of the International Advertising Association's UAE chapter, told Reuters. "The impact of stopping cigarette advertising is going to be felt by everybody."

The bizarre passion among children here for the electronic "virtual pets" known as Tamagotchi is about to take a sinister dive into the nether reaches of the underworld. A Hong Kong company is about to replace the animals, which must be electronically fed and cleaned to stay alive, with the adolescent thug hero of a weekly comic book called Young Triads. . . [G]ame owners will have to feed the hero, Chan Ho-nam, cigarettes and alcohol to enable him climb the hierarchy of his triad criminal secret society. The new toy [is] being produced by the publishers of the Chan comic, King's Fountain Ltd. . . King's Fountain administrative manager, Paul Chu, insists the triad Tamagotchi is aimed at adults, like the comic.

For Philip Morris Cos., the 1990 Phoenix Grand Prix was more than good auto racing. It was also good politics. Company documents obtained by Bloomberg News show that executives used invitations to the race to foster their relationship with Republican Rep. Dan Schaefer of Colorado, who promised to help derail a bill by Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman to restrict tobacco advertising and increase federal tobacco regulation. "If we need any help with Henry, let me know," a memo quoted Schaefer as saying. Waxman's bill was later defeated. As the tobacco industry closes in on a settlement with its opponents that will have to be approved on Capitol Hill, the documents highlight a concern among anti-tobacco advocates: that lobbyists will pry concessions from friendly lawmakers that the tobacco industry negotiators couldn't gain.

Dr. Thomas S. Osdene asserted his Fifth Amendment privilege during the morning session at the Richmond law firm Hunton & Williams, sources said. The retired Philip Morris vice president took the same position in mid-May when questioned by lawyers representing the state of Texas.

RUSSIA'S sporting world was in a state of shock yesterday after the head of the country's most popular football team was murdered in what police said was a gangland assassination. Larisa Nechayeva, director-general of the Spartak football club, was shot by an unidentified assailant on Sunday at her dacha in the village of Taratino, near Moscow. . . In the sporting world, criminals were initially attracted by government tax-free incentives aimed at subsidising Russian sports. Certain sporting associations, such as the National Sports Fund, received licences to import duty-free cigarettes and alcohol. The sporting organisations instantly became a target for the mafia, which quickly took over the business.

• 06/16/97 RUSSIA: Philip Morris Steps Up Security The Wall Street Journal (Pay Registration)

Gudang Garam and Sampoerna fell more than 1 per cent. The stocks account for about 13 per cent of the index. Here's the WebSite of the Jakarta Stock Exchange

Antismoking leaders in the Massachusetts Senate lost big yesterday when Senate President Thomas F. Birmingham gaveled through without a word of debate - and without their knowledge - a watered-down version of a State House smoking ban. With Birmingham, a smoker, presiding, the Senate voted to approve and send to the House a smoking regulation bill that sidesteps the sort of ban that applies to almost all other state office buildings. Birmingham's deft parliamentary maneuver - made in an informal session when only noncontroversial bills are moved - caught antismoking leaders off guard. "We're trying to clear up the smoke in the State House. At the same time we have to worry about the smoke in the legislative process," said Senator Warren E. Tolman (D-Watertown) . . . Tolman said he will exercise his right to force a debate on the bill at the Senate's formal session next week.

Under the law, a minor convicted of using or possessing tobacco may be required to attend a tobacco education course or pay a fine ranging from $125 to $250. Teens who do not attend required courses could have their driver's licenses suspended. The law, the bulk of which takes effect Sept. 1, also increases penalties for selling tobacco to a minor. Retailers would face fines of up to $500 for a first offense and up to $1,000 for subsequent offenses. The measure also places new restrictions on tobacco advertising, prohibiting tobacco signs within 1,000 feet of a school or church and implementing a 10 percent fee on the price of tobacco billboards.

"We have stated we are going to file a lawsuit," South Dakota Attorney General Mark Barnett said in a telephone interview. "It will take a few weeks to put the suit together. I'd say 30 to 60 days to cycle up a lawsuit."

Revenue from the state's tobacco tax will drop 3% this year compared to last, the first annual decline since the 40-cents-per-pack tax was imposed in '94, the state Department of Revenue said.

"That is tremendous news," said Brad Christensen, spokesman for the Arizona Department of Health Services, which administers anti-smoking and health programs funded by the tax. "We're in business to put ourselves out of business."

Punitive damages are awarded in less than 4 percent of civil lawsuits that reach juries and are given most frequently in business cases in which a claimant has been harmed financially rather than physically, according to a study released yesterday by the Rand Institute for Civil Justice. . . The findings were released at a time when Congress is considering controversial legislation to cap punitive damages in cases involving faulty products and negotiations between tobacco companies and state attorneys general are stumbling over how to deal with punitive damages.

The results were striking. Nonsmokers and light smokers correctly predicted their chances of reaching the age of 75, compared to standard actuarial tables. But heavy smokers were far too optimistic.

• 06/13/97 HEALTH: Heavy Smokers Downplay Health Risks Study by Dr. Michael Schoenbaum, an economist at the University of California School of Public Health in Berkeley. published in American Journal of Public Health. Reuters Health eLine
  
  Data for the new study came from a survey of a national sample of about 7,000 adults ages 50 through 62. . . "However, among current heavy smokers, expectations of reaching age 75 were nearly twice as high as actuarial predictions," says Schoenbaum. He notes, for example, that male heavy smokers expect a 67% chance of getting to 75 or beyond, while medical studies suggest they only have a 26% chance. Female heavy smokers similarly overestimate their chance of reaching age 75. "These findings suggest that heavy smokers -- men and women -- typically don't understand the health risks," the researcher notes.
• 06/14/97 Heavy Smokers Blind to Risks; Overestimate Odds of Reaching 75 SF Chronicle
  
  "Tobacco companies are wrong to claim that smokers are making rational, fully informed choices when they decide to smoke," he said.

  Estimated probability of survival to age 75 by smoking status:
  Personal estimate / Insurance estimate

  MEN
  Never smoked 67% / 68%
  Former smokers 63% / 63%
  More than 25 cigarettes/day 50% / 26%

  WOMEN
  Never smoked 68% / 83%
  Former smokers 68% / 70%
  More than 25 cigarettes/day 60% / 31%

Lung cancer mortality has flattened out for males whereas it has soared by 400 percent for females over 55 years of age. Rosie the riveter began smoking in the shipyards in World War II. Today the ghastly consequences show up in lung cancer statistics. For cigarette smoking there's at least a quarter-century lag in expression of lung cancer. That's why tobacco is such an evil seducer.

As medical and public health professionals discussed strategies for reducing exposure to the carcinogens and tars of tobacco smoke, other investigators presented research findings that point to the potential benefits, or at least feasibility of exposure reduction. Results from three teams of researchers indicate that exposure reduction may help reduce the death and disease associated with tobacco consumption.

Steadily reducing the number of cigarettes smoked, along with using a nicotine patch or gum, may be more effective in helping heavy smokers kick their tobacco habit than stopping cold turkey, researchers reported at a tobacco research meeting in Nashville, Tenn. According to a panel of smoking-cessation experts, offering hard-core smokers more options such as using a nicotine-replacement tool while still smoking, rather than outright quitting, can benefit smokers and lead to smoking cessation. The approach, known as exposure reduction, can help smokers who are unable or unwilling to quit lower their intake of harmful carcinogens and tars contained in cigarettes . .

Clinical results from a 209 patient safety and efficacy clinical study of OT-nicotine (oral transmucosal nicotine) were presented Saturday, June 14 at the annual meeting of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT) in Nashville, TN. OT-nicotine, being developed by Anesta Corp. (Nasdaq: NSTA), is a new smoking cessation product consisting of a dissolvable matrix containing nicotine, which is attached to a handle. This Phase 2 clinical study compared use of OT-nicotine for smoking cessation with the use of a nicotine transdermal patch and nicotine polacrilex gum.

Salomon Brothers said on Tuesday it raised its rating on the shares of RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp to buy from hold, believing there will be a tobacco settlement. . . Analyst Diana Temple also said in a research note she believed RJR would have enough cash flow to permit a $1.50 per share dividend if there was a $15 billion payment in the tobacco industry settlement.

Carl Bender, founder and president of Virtual Cigar Shop Inc. ( http://www.vcigar.com), became an Internet cigar vendor by accident. . . He also used search engines to locate other cigar-related sites, or sites with certain demographics. When he found one that looked good, he would e-mail them and make an offer: "If you want to be partners with me and take a commission," he says he wrote, "fine." His idea was that he would give 10% to a site that had his banner or a hot link that brought a buying client to his site. Ms. Hoffman says, "He's using what we call outcome-based advertising... . I think it's the future of advertising on the Web."

The RJR deal is expected to include a $150 million seven-year issue as well as a $200 million 10-year issue, sources said.

SB 552, authored by Diane Watson, D-Los Angeles, would raise the tax to 87 cents, making it the highest in the nation . . . But even factoring in the tax losses from smuggling, SB 552 will produce important new revenue. And it is expected to cut cigarette consumption 3 to 4 percent and put a dent in the rising teen smoking rate. Aha, say opponents. Hiking cigarette taxes is self-defeating! If too many people stop smoking, tax receipts will go down and you'll have to find a new source of revenue for health insurance. We think that would be a delightful dilemma.

• 06/17/97 Strongest Proof Yet Links Smoking and Cervical Cancer Dr. Steven Waggoner of the University of Chicago conducted the study; published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. CNNfn
  
  A tobacco carcinogen [NNK] was found among women with cervical cancer in a new study, providing one of the strongest links to date between that type of cancer and cigarette smoke. The carcinogen also was found in women exposed to secondhand smoke . . While previous research was based on questionnaires and medical records, the current study was based on physical evidence that compared cervical mucous in smokers and nonsmokers.
• 06/17/97 Carcinogen Found in Smoker's Cervix Reuters Health eLine
  
  Tobacco, along with other factors such as nutrient deficiency, oral contraceptive use and socioeconomic factors, are suspected of interacting with human papillomavirus, or HPV, to cause invasive cervical cancer. . . In the new study of 15 female smokers, the women had an average of 47 nanograms (ng) of NNK per gram (g) of cervical mucus, with a range from 12 ng to 115 ng/g. While 9 out of 10 nonsmokers also had detectable levels of the carcinogen in the cervical mucus, they had much lower levels, an average of 4 to 31 ng/gram. Nonsmokers probably had the carcinogen in cervical mucus due to secondhand smoke, or because the women may have occasionally smoked cigarettes, the researchers noted.

The President's budget request for the FDA includes $34 million for the implementation of the rule. . . The fight is likely to take place at the subcommittee level . . The House Agriculture Subcommittee is expected to vote on the FDA tobacco rule appropriation in the third or fourth week of June. The Senate Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development and Related Agencies, which also has jurisdiction over FDA funding, is expected to report a bill to the full committee in early July.

Hatch and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said they would keep fighting for an increase in the federal tobacco tax, to finance health coverage for children beyond the $16 billion already approved. James Manley, a spokesman for Kennedy, said the two senators would offer their proposal as an amendment on the Senate floor.

Hatch, R-Utah, and Kennedy, D-Mass., filed eight amendments Monday with the Senate Finance Committee and will push for their inclusion in the budget-reconciliation bill now before the panel.

Reynolds's unusual counterattack in the seven-year war over Joe Camel comes at a delicate moment.

• 06/17/97 RJR Sues FTC over Cartoon Ban AP Washington Post
  
  RJR sued in its corporate home of Winston-Salem, asking the court to order the FTC to withdraw its complaint against RJR and to close its investigation. "We have asked the court to review the facts -- which clearly demonstrate an agency engaged in harassment and political interference in a fair process," said RJR spokesperson Peggy Carter.
• 06/17/97 RJR Sues FCC over Joe Camel Action RJR PR Newswire
  
  [T]he FTC action against Joe Camel violated not only the Commission's own rules and procedures, but also the Administrative Procedure Act, the Government in the Sunshine Act and the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution. We have asked the court to review the facts -- which clearly demonstrate an agency engaged in harassment and political interference in a fair process -- and order the Commission to close this investigation, to withdraw its complaint against Joe Camel and to be enjoined against such future violations of law and procedure.

The latest Democratic plan would divide revenues from the higher cigarette tax between tax cuts supported by the governor and Democratic-backed health insurance for thousands of uninsured children. "This is the best offer we can come up with," said Senate President Mark Lawrence, D-Kittery. He said it represents a sincere effort to end the stalemate by meeting the governor halfway.

"If you simply do the math, one in nine current Maine children will die because of tobacco-related illness," Maine Attorney General Andrew Ketterer told reporters.

Attorney General Jeffrey Pine says in the suit filed today against nine major tobacco companies that the cigarette makers used fraudulent and misleading advertising to market their product to youths.

Pension Board chairman Ben Hayllar had told Council on Thursday that his board would comply with Council's wishes that the city sell $20 million in tobacco stock, but not within six months, as Council originally wanted. Instead, Hayllar said the board would take the action "as soon as feasible." But in a letter to Council Monday, five of the Pension Board's eight members -- including city Controller Jonathan Saidel -- argued that the board's primary responsibility is to pensioners and that the stock sale should be put on hold, pending a "proper economic and fiduciary analysis" by the board.

But since last fall, three of the city's marquee employers -- Planters, USAirways Group and R.J. Reynolds International, another unit of what is now RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp. -- have announced plans to slash nearly 2,000 jobs, almost all of them high-paying or management positions.

Chiles and Butterworth said industry offers to curb advertising, restrict sales and pay billions for children's anti-smoking and smoking cessation programs are significant. But the state still insists on reimbursement of billions of dollars it has spent on Medicaid costs for smoking-related illnesses.

Denver's ban on cigarettes at the Central Library will go up in smoke when the world's leaders come to town. The leaders and their top aides will be allowed to smoke if the mood seizes them. "I don't think we're going to see the eight leaders huddled outside the main entrance lighting up on a cigarette break. Obviously that's not something that's reasonable for us to ask," said Anya Breitenbach, public relations manager for the Denver Public Library. . . . Library officials have removed books and increased ventilation in the rooms where the leaders will meet.

As Mr. Lockyer walked into the meeting, kicking off the "Big Five" budget talks among the Legislature's four political leaders and Gov. Pete Wilson, he gave the governor a peace offering in the form of a $20 cigar. "I thought it was just a nice gesture," says Mr. Lockyer, a Hayward Democrat. "I know he's a fan of good cigars. So I took him one." Maybe he should have offered a whole box. Apparently underwhelmed by the spirit of the stogie, the Republican governor told Mr. Lockyer and Assembly Speaker Cruz Bustamante they couldn't bring in their own Democratic staffers for the negotiations.

It may be that "in restaurants here there seems to be a smoking section and a chain-smoking section," as Susan Wermcrantz, a tobacco industry analyst at Argentina's Banco Republica, said. And Jorge Vives, president of Argentina's Chamber of Tobacco Industry, agrees health is not high on the list of concerns here but said: "In Latin America the industry faces other problems." . . Among them is the mountain of contraband cigarettes that in some countries make up as much as half the market. . . [and] foreign tobacconists already have a firm grip on several markets in the region, with foreign brands in many cases the most popular ones.

• 06/17/97 ONTARIO May Follow BC CP
• 06/18/97 ONTARIO Premier MIKE HARRIS Leery of Smoke Suit CP
• 06/17/97 SASKATCHEWAN Wants Provinces to Work Together on Suit CP
• 06/17/97 CANADA: BC Launces Multi-Pronged Assault on Cig Makers with attack ads, lawsuit-enabling legislation. Globe and Mail
• 06/17/97 Tobacco Responds to Legislation UPI
  
  The Canadian Tobacco Manufacturer's Council says the proposed anti-tobacco legislation created by the British Columbia government will not solve anything. CTMC President Robert Parker says if politicians are really serious about the smoking-related problems in Canada, then "I think they should search for something other than headlines and more revenue." . . Parker told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation today that the biggest profit taker from the tobacco industry is the government and that "about 88 percent of the non-cost tobacco revenues go right into the pockets of government." He says that money should "vastly exceed" any health costs associated with tobacco products.
• 06/17/97 BC Tackles Tobacco Industry Canada News
• 06/16/97 CANADA Weighs Joint Effort with Provinces on Suing Tobacco Reuters
  
  Health Minister Allan Rock said on Monday he hoped to discuss a joint approach with Canada's provinces on the issue of suing tobacco companies. . . "Similar action to that announced today by the government of British Columbia is also being considered by other provinces," Rock said in a statement. "I'll be meeting with my provincial colleagues in September, at which time I hope that coordinated approaches between both levels of government can be discussed."
• 06/16/97 CANADA: BC Paves Way for Tobacco Suit Reuters
• 06/16/97 BC Targets Tobacco AP Washington Post
• 06/15/97 CANADA: BRITISH COLUMBIA Set to Lay Legislative Groundwork to Sue Tobacco Reuters
  
  British Columbia Premier Glen Clark and Health Minister Joy MacPhail will hold a news conference on Monday to announce a new attack against smoking, the government said in an advisory on Sunday. . . . Legal sources said the announcement would include details on new legislation enabling the government to sue. "They reviewed the existing class-action legislation and decided they felt they had a better case with separate legislation," said one source. Vancouver's Province newspaper reported Sunday that the legislation is aimed at forcing tobacco companies into negotiations over paying the costs of health care for smoking-related illness.

Restaurants that completely ban smoking may discover a new customer base, economic studies suggest. The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit remains aware of the research and wants to collect its own, specifically from area restaurants. Paul Jarman, health promotion officer with the health unit, said it's willing to work with restaurants to compile an unbiased study of the economic impact of smoking regulations. The health unit suggests an independent third party to research and write the study, the University of Windsor's business faculty.

Seems Paul is a member of the Remuf sect, a little-known offshoot of the French Huguenots which believes that on the eighth day God said, "Let there be smoke."

Wigand filed a countersuit saying the company was portraying him in a false light. But he agreed to drop that countersuit on Tuesday after he reached an agreement with Brown & Williamson. Under the agreement, Wigand will drop the lawsuit and, in exchange, Brown & Williamson will end a lengthy session of depositions which Wigand's lawyer, John Aldock, has said amounted to harassment. An attorney for Brown & Williamson called the agreement Tuesday a victory for the company.

Do you notice tobacco advertisements at stadiums and in sports magazines? Do you think it encourages kids to start smoking? Should tobacco companies be allowed to sponsor sports events or advertise in sports magazines? Write to us and tell us your opinion. . . . E-mail it to Bob_Der@sikids.com.

Winston is the title sponsor for the entire National Hot Rod Association circuit. And not only does Heartland Park, like most motor speedways, sport numerous tobacco-related advertisements, it also features a Winston-sponsored interactive pavilion, including a virtual reality theater and a drag-racing simulator ride.

Both the governor and the Legislature agree that the tax should be raised by 37 cents. And we both agree that some of the money raised should be used for a prevention program despite having disagreed on the exact amount. Our compromise begins by accepting the governor's expenditure of $2.5 million a year for a prevention program to target youth smoking, which is considerably less than was expected in the bill we originally passed. Based on relatively conservative estimates, $27.5 million in revenues would remain after the prevention program. To break the impasse and reach a true compromise, Democrats are willing to return half of the money, $13.75 million in tax relief per year, if the governor is willing to spend the other half of basic health care for kids and low-cost prescription for the elderly. In the truest sense of the word, this represents a common sense compromise.

So, hats off to those who are standing up courageously to assure that the one realistic chance of providing health care to needy Maine people -- the tobacco tax -- is not lost to the rhetoric of tax relief.

The County Health Board voted yesterday not to to appeal the June 2 decision by U.S. District Court Judge Dennis Hurley, which held that such an ordinance should be passed by elected officials. Shortly after the decision was handed down, Republican legislators introduced a bill to ban smoking in health-care facilities, schools, universities, colleges, public businesses and public performance and assembly places. . . . There were some differences of opinion yesterday among the elected officials, as some Democratic legislators suggested the Republican bill might be invalid in that some of its provisions would be weaker than existing state legislation.

Howard County students who get caught smoking on campus next year likely will face suspension and a mandatory smoking-cessation class on the first offense. Members of the Howard school board said last week that they plan to adopt the stricter rules because parents and students have complained that some high school bathrooms become so smoky that nonsmoking students don't use them.

The confirmed spread of the devastating blue mold tobacco fungus to Central Kentucky has heightened concern among tobacco experts that the state's No. 1 cash crop might be doomed if the rain doesn't let up. Here's the Same AP story AP Washington Post

• 06/18/97 Blue Mold Threatens Tobacco Crop AP/POSTNet ("hot off the wires"--expires quickly)
  
  The confirmed spread of devastating blue mold fungus to central Kentucky heightened concern among tobacco experts that the state's No. 1 cash crop may be doomed if the rains don't let up. William Nesmith, a University of Kentucky plant pathologist, said Wednesday that blue mold had spread into the heart of the state's burley growing area in central Kentucky. The disease was reported late last week in two southwestern Kentucky counties and has been found in parts of Tennessee and North Carolina. Nesmith said blue mold may be active but as yet unreported across two-thirds of North Carolina. "The enemy is now inside the door; it's in the trenches with the farmers," Nesmith said. "If the farmers don't get it under control and the weather remains that way, we could be in serious trouble. It could wipe out the entire plant bed."

Blue mold fungus has turned up in burley tobacco fields in six Tennessee counties this growing season, and agricultural officials fear that if it's not brought under control, the state's $225 million-a-year crop could suffer extensively.

Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture Tommy Irvin announced today the opening date for tobacco markets has been set for July 22, 1997 . . "This is the optimal time to sell," Commissioner Irvin said.

Paul J. Lucas, regional government affairs director for Philip Morris, said in his letter that any double-digit hike in the tax would be considered "punitive." That, in turn, might become an issue, he said, when Philip Morris considers expansion and reinvestment at its Wisconsin subsidiaries -- Miller Brewing Co., Oscar Mayer Foods and Kraft Foods Inc. Let's face it: The letter is a threat, pure and simple -- and hardly veiled, except perhaps in smoke. As a lobbying tactic, it didn't work, either; key legislators, Democrats and Republicans alike, quite rightly made it clear they would not be intimidated. As a matter of fact, lawmakers point out, there is considerable support in the Legislature to raise the cigarette tax even more . .

• 06/19/97 WISCONSIN: Tax on Smokes Could Affect Subsidiaries, PHILIP MORRIS Warns Lawmakers Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
  
  "I am greatly concerned that 'punitive' creates an image of Wisconsin as an unfriendly place to do business and re-invest in operations," Lucas said in the letter. "Please know, when Miller, Oscar Meyer (sic) or Kraft Foods seeks to re-invest in new or updated facilities, or to expand operations in Wisconsin, the senior executives of these operations have to go to Philip Morris in New York and make their case. "Punitive tax treatment may well be an issue impacting expansion/-re-investment plans at its Wisconsin subsidiaries," the letter said.

District Judge Kenneth Fitzpatrick has scheduled a hearing for next Tuesday to determine whether the cigarette makers acted improperly in refusing to turn over some of the 150,000 pages of documents for court review in a suit filed by the state. . . Fitzpatrick Wednesday said he expects the tobacco companies to supply "unevasive answers to questions" and to produce "all additional documents."

• 06/18/97 CALIFORNIA: Report Tracks Tobacco Contributions UPI
• 06/18/97 Tobacco Industry Analyzed in New Report Business Wire
  
  The tobacco industry contributed a total of $1,250,804 to state legislative officeholders and candidates between January 1, 1995, and December 31, 1996, according to a new analysis by researchers at the UCSF Institute for Health Policy Studies
• 06/18/97 CALIFORNIA: Holding Government Accountable: Tobacco Policy Making in California, 1995-1997 The latest report from UCSF includes, in addition to 1995-96 industry contribution data, a detailed dciscussion of tobacco control in California, recent smokefree legislation, the "napkin deal," the litigation about Proposition 99, and copies of all the ads run by health orgs in their campaign to restore Prop 99.

Japan Tobacco's local wholesalers charged in October last year in a complaint to South Korea's Fair Trade Commission that the Korean tobacco company had unlawfully obstructed the sales of Japanese cigarettes in South Korea by suspending the supply of domestic tobaccos to stores that sold Japanese cigarettes. The South Korean FTC ruled on May 20 in favor of Japan Tobacco, recognizing the allegedly unfair trade practice by the Korean firm.

When most Tamagotchis get hungry, their owners give them food; Tamahonam asks for cigarettes and alcohol. Virtual dogs play ball and fetch toys, but to help Tamahonam relax, owners give him a virtual knife to let him wage turf battles. "Tamahonam, naturally, will have the same habits and behavior as Chan Ho Nam," says Paul Chu, a manager at King's Foundation. While Young Triads is sold only to people over 18 in Hong Kong, Mr. Chu says his company will sell Tamahonam "to anyone who is willing to pay for it." The toy is expected to be launched in Hong Kong late next month and will be sold primarily through the comics' distribution channels. (Mr. Chu declines to disclose the planned retail price, but similar toys here typically cost the equivalent of US$20 to US$50.)

WHO predicts cancer cases will at least double globally during the next 25 years as people in developing countries take up unhealthy habits such as smoking. It said coronary heart disease -- for which smoking is a main risk factor -- was now the world's biggest killer disease. "As tobacco consumption is increasing in many developing countries, the lung cancer epidemic seems certain to continue and grow," it said.

The California Environmental Protection Agency report released today on the Health Effects of Exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke attributes between 4,200-7,440 deaths from cardiovascular disease in California due to environmental tobacco smoke.

One group got nicotine chewing gum and were given recommendations for a diet. The second group were given the gum low calorie diet of 420 calories a day off and on for six weeks out of the 16-week experimental period. After 16 weeks, half of the second group had stopped smoking and lost an average of 2.1 kg (nearly five pounds). Only 37 percent of the first group stopped smoking and they gained an average of 1.6 kg (3.5 pounds)."In behaviour modification programmes, generally one small change is made at a time but we used both a very low calorie programme and standard smoking cessation strategies to treat a group of women who used smoking to control their weight," Rossner told the Eighth European Congress on Obesity in Dublin. "We found not only good smoking cessation results but also that the weight increase, which previously led to a resumption of smoking, was changed to weight control," he added in a statement released in London. "This suggests that new strategies can be developed for this patient group."

The rooms, separately ventilated, will be the only places that smoking will be allowed in Concourse B. Currently, smokers are assigned to designated areas, including parts of the food court.

In a letter to David Mulligan, Massachusetts public health commissioner, the president of the National Smokers Alliance identifies the DPH study as "no more than a crude clone of a study by Stanton Glantz, the protocol for which is bicycled around the country for the precise purpose of convincing legislators that restaurant smoking bans will have no negative economic impact." . . . The war on tobacco has become too big, too powerful, and too rich to play by the rules. Those gripped by the lust to control the behavior of others aren't interested in honest research, or the property rights of restaurant owners, or passing laws that apply even in the State House. They're interested in making people do what they command. . . Who knows what they'll command tomorrow?

By the mid '30s, tobacco chewing had become a lost art, but spittoons still graced our courtrooms. Traditionally, the judge had one and there were four at counsel table -- two for the plaintiff and two for the defendant. The spectators had none, since they were free to go outside and spit on the lawns surrounding the courthouse. As for the jurors, bailiffs, clerks and court reporters, well, they just had to go spitless.

January: Despondent over the latest uproar, Camel goes into seclusion with longtime friends Mr. Ed, Francis the Talking Mule, Spuds McKenzie and Barney the Dinosaur (who, incidentally, smokes four packs a day).

The fact is, the settlement only covers American smokers, who make up 4 percent of the world's total. U.S. tobacco companies such as Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds already sell most of their cigarettes overseas, and rising incomes in the developing world suggest they can look forward to bigger markets.

The guys in the machine shop at the Owens-Corning Fiberglas factory had a little game they would play from time to time. Whenever one of their colleagues celebrated his retirement from the nation's largest producer of fiberglass insulation, usually after a career of 20, 30, even 40 years, they would take bets on how soon he would die. . . Nobody was sure why some men seemed to die quickly. The only things for certain were that many of them had breathing problems and almost everybody smoked cigarettes.

CONCLUSIONS: Continued patient care beyond the 2- to 4-week period associated with the nicotine withdrawal syndrome is indicated when abstinence is attempted by smokers with prior major depression.

Sunny days in the mid-80s with low humidity may be perfect weather for tourists, but it's terrible for tobacco farmers.

The message has gone out to 300,000 children in 44 states via Tar Wars, a program that combines school curriculum and community involvement, and caps it with an anti-smoking poster contest that earns the top finisher a trip to Disney World. Judging of that contest was what brought the youngsters to Utah this weekend. Top prize went to Caitlin Bonfiglio of Idaho, who didn't attend but won with a painting of a boy in bed, dreaming about what he might become if cigarettes don't cloud his goals. Utah's state winner, Carla Samala of Hill Air Force Base, captured an honorable mention with her poster that declared: "The only adults who smoke are youth who couldn't quit." Jeff Cain, a family physician from Denver who cofounded Tar Wars in 1988, had to smile. The points made in the posters are his grail.

• 06/22/97 A Tobacco Tale: 1871-1997 A timeline with some intriguingly unusual data ("1873: The Civil War is over and Myers Brothers and Co. uses the theme of North-South reconcilliation to sell "Love" tobacco"), plus a list of the top 5 selling cigs, with figures, for 1930, 1950, 1970, 1990. NY Newsday
• 06/22/97 Tobacco: Ancient Plant, Modern Problems Reuters
• 06/20/97 Tobacco War Smoldered for Decades CNNfn
• 06/20/97 Milestones in Tobacco Fight: 1954-1997 AP Washington Post
• 06/20/97 US History Marked by Passion for Drugs Denver Post
  
  The "most agreeable and pleasant smoke" for everyone, even "delicate women," was marketed by a St. Louis company about 20 years after the end of the Civil War. It seemed it was good for almost anything that ailed you. "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.
• 06/21/97 Ready to Exhale: Deal Signals Wane in Long US Affair with Tobacco Dallas Morning News
• 06/21/97 A Silly Millimeter in History Ads May Vanish, but their Images Linger On. Henry Allen, Washington Post
• 06/20/97 Tobacco Facts Health, Business & Consumption data. CNNfn

Why are upscale cigars, smoked sparingly, probably harmless? And who can argue with that? The qualifications in the above sentence speak to the tone of the piece. No mention of oral cancer, secondhand smoke or heart disease.

The Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday that the family of a Texas man who died of lung cancer can pursue claims that a cigarette maker did not properly warn him that tobacco is addictive. . . Texas Attorney General Dan Morales said . . . the agreement, if approved by Congress and the White House, would include funds to cover any damages that may be awarded. Wiley Grinnell, who smoked Lucky Strikes or Pall Malls for 33 years, sued the American Tobacco Co., manufacturer of both brands, in 1985, shortly after he was diagnosed with lung cancer.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) wants smokeless tobacco banned from the All-Star Game July 8 in Cleveland and has written letters to the sport's hierarchy seeking support.

  "Smoking is a costly habit to the military and to the taxpayers of the United States," Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon said. "We lose over $500 million a year in health-related costs and close to $400 million a year in lost productivity from smoking breaks." Bacon said the aim was to reduce the proportion of people in the military who smoke to 20 percent by the year 2000, down from 32 percent now and 51 percent in 1980. To that end, U.S. military stores raised tobacco prices last Nov. 1, with prices for a carton of generic cigarettes rising to $8.75 from $7.09 in the United States, still well below supermarket prices.

• 06/20/97 PENTAGON Curbing Tobacco Ads AP Washington Post
• 06/19/97 PENTAGON Tries to Cut Down on Smoking in the Military Virginian-Pilot
  
  The Pentagon intends to step up efforts to reduce smoking in the ranks by limiting the visibility of tobacco products in its commissaries and exchange stores and banning tobacco promotions aimed exclusively at military members, officials confirmed Thursday.
• 06/19/97 PENTAGON Steps Up Effort to Limit Promotion, Sales of Cigarettes Washington Post
  
  Stepping up efforts to curb cigarette smoking among military personnel, the Pentagon intends to ban such promotional practices as military-only discount coupons and tobacco company payments to stores for favorable product placement, and will limit the amount of shelf space reserved for tobacco products in military outlets.
• 06/19/97 Military Attempting to Cut Tobacco Promotions AP POSTNet ("hot off the wires"--expires quickly)
  
  "Our primary goal here is ... to reduce the number of people in the military who smoke. And we've been approaching that from several directions, and we will continue to work toward that goal," Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon told reporters at a briefing. . . . Pentagon officials have proposed to Congress that as part of the effort to curb smoking, they intend to ban such promotions as discount coupons for the military, tobacco payments to stores to increase displays, and to limit the amount of shelf space for tobacco products.

• Smokers are evenly divided on whether they smoke because they want to or because they are addicted to nicotine.
• Most non-smokers, but only a third of smokers in the poll, said measures to reduce cigarette smoking in the United States have not gone far enough.
• Majorities of both groups favored finding a way to regulate the use of nicotine, according to the national poll taken Wednesday and released Thursday.
• Only 16 percent of smokers and 26 percent of non-smokers think cigarette companies should bear the main financial responsibility for health problems caused by smoking.
• The one-fourth of respondents who smoke mostly disagree with the majority of non-smokers who say the government should ban all cigarette advertising.
• Sixty-three percent agree that some day the price of cigarettes will be so high they will stop.

 What makes this a difficult public health challenge, Glenn-Rivera said, is that so many Indian tribes use tobacco in religious ceremonies, typically burning it in a bowl or pipe, or sprinkling it in a fire as they pray or chant. "Some tribes," she said, "have tobacco in their origin stories." So on Saturday, at an information table near the entrance of the powwow at the Hansen Dam sports complex, Glenn-Rivera offered plastic rulers decorated with vivid photos of cancerous lungs--but they were stacked under a poster depicting a traditionally dressed Indian whose prayers were wafted to heaven on tobacco smoke.

The curbs agreed to by U.S. tobacco companies Friday have provided a hot topic for the more than 5,500 ad makers here (Cannes, France) this week for the 44th International Advertising Festival. "Everybody's talking about this; everyone is stunned," says Bob Barrie of Fallon McElligott. Executives here say Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds put ad rights on the bargaining table with state attorneys general this year because the giants are practiced at reaching consumers in overseas markets where ad restrictions are already in place. Those markets include France, the United Kingdom and some Asian countries. . . For example, cigarette companies sponsor fashion shows in Malaysia. They also operate branded travel agencies and nightclubs. Several executives say the U.S. action may hasten adoption of more stringent ad standards in countries where tobacco advertising already is under scrutiny.

Attorneys from Israel and European Union countries met in Brussels this month for a strategy session on how to sue tobacco companies. They were given pointers by many of the players involved in the U.S. litigation, including Jim Tierney, a former attorney general from Maine who coordinated the state lawsuits. "We won't need to start all over again," said Amos Hausner of the Israeli anti-smoking campaign. "The mere fact that they (tobacco companies) admitted liability is a strong basis for our cause of action." . . . But as the anti-smoking drive gains momentum in Western Europe, it has made few inroads in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Far East. In eastern Africa, tobacco companies face no restrictions beyond health warnings on cigarette boxes, and there are no anti-smoking lobbies. . . One company has sponsored smoking contests in western Kenya, with participants competing over who can smoke the most cigarettes simultaneously.

Martyn Day, who is representing 23 lung cancer sufferers in Britain's first class action suit against two tobacco companies on a no-win, no-fee basis, said the $368.6 billion U.S. case and the tobacco companies' admission that their product is addictive "has been a fantastic development for Britain and the rest of the world. . . It provides an atmosphere where, for the first time perhaps, the wall of invulnerability that the tobacco companies over 50 years have built around themselves is now totally gone. The emperor has no clothes," he said in a telephone interview.

At that time, the company's after-tax profit was between $6 and $8 million per year. The total of excise and sales taxes the company remitted to federal and provincial governments was about $150 million a year, or about 20 times that company's profit. . . The truth is governments have made far more money out of tobacco than has the tobacco industry, not just "a fair share of cash" as your editorial states.

"It's wrong to see a settlement in the States as an opportunity to pursue tobacco companies in other countries," one analyst said. "There are big differences in legal structure that make it harder for plaintiffs to sue the tobacco industry elsewhere." The U.S. settlement "will have a limited impact on European tobacco companies," said another specialist, Emilio Alvarez at Morgan Stanley.

Parliamentary leaders, trying in vain to push through legislation to protect non-smokers, said they expected the $365 billion settlement in the United States to help revive the efforts that powerful tobacco lobbies have been thwarting. "(It) will give an important push to pass through a bill to protect non-smokers," said Roland Sauer, a member of parliament from Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Christian Democrat (CDU) party. . . . But Sauer and leaders from the cigarette industry said German product liability laws were fundamentally different from those in the U.S. and there was no real chance companies here could be held accountable for the effects of tobacco. A cross-party alliance including members of Kohl's centre-right coalition along with the opposition Social Democrats and Greens introduced a bill last year that would have curtailed smokers' rights. But the measure ran into stiff opposition from tobacco lobbies and has since been stalled in parliamentary committees.

"They (foreign firms) often have new policies, but it cannot directly influence China," he said. "We have our own methods." . . . "The United States is a litigious society (unlike Japan), and I don't think the settlement would have any immediate impact on Japan's tobacco industry," said Masako Nagayasu, analyst at Kankaku Research Institute Corp. . . The U.S. settlement could have implications for future anti-smoking laws in New Zealand, Associate Health Minister Neil Kirton said. "Obviously the settlement has major implications for anti-tobacco legislation on an international scale," Kirton said. "The proposed regulations will set a benchmark against which other anti-smoking measures will need to be judged."

Anti-smoking campaigners said Sunday they plan to brace for new marketing drives in Taiwan by U.S. tobacco companies once tough new restrictions are adopted back home. Beginning Sept. 19, smoking by minors will be illegal and it will be prohibited in most public places in Taiwan. The Education Ministry has banned smoking and cigarette sales at schools.

The Australian Medical Association's national president, Dr Keith Woollard, said yesterday that the $US368 billion ($A490 billion) agreement was a cheap way out for American tobacco giants and gave them immunity from being sued. "The Americans have done a deal that will put cash in the states' pockets but in return the tobacco companies get immunity . . . from now on they get to go on killing people with immunity from being sued," he said. . . The executive director of the Quit campaign, Ms Judith Watt, criticised the deal, saying Australia already had tougher tobacco restrictions than many of the proposed US regulations.

But the facts of the matter are that two of the biggest players in the Australian industry, Philip Morris and BAT plc, have agreed to settle liability claims. This can only support the case of anti-tobacco foes in Australia and around the world.

The territory's two main tennis promoters are hoping Hong Kong's legislators will avoid being influenced by last week's landmark settlement in America which brings a tobacco sponsorship ban in the US closer to reality. Hong Kong lawmakers will this week rule on whether to ban tobacco sponsorship of sports and arts events in the territory, an issue which has sparked furious debate since the motion was proposed by Dr Leong Che-hong on January 15. . . "The US ruling couldn't have come at a worse time," said Brian Catton, tournament director for Hong Kong's Marlboro Championships, whose sponsor, Philip Morris, pumps in around US$3 million a year.

In a sense, the American legal system was ensuring a measure of social justice that we have secured in this country through our political system. The US tobacco companies will now have to put up the price of cigarettes by about 50 cents a packet in order to pay for some of the health-care costs of the less-well-off. The combination of tobacco taxes and an NHS free at the point of need achieves all this and more in Britain at a fraction of the cost in lawyers' fees.

So far 11 health authorities in Sussex, Kent, Surrey and south London have joined forces with Croydon Health Authority to split the preliminary legal costs to prepare their challenges. . . Terry Hanafin, chief executive of Croydon health district, which approved the initiative at a board meeting on Friday, said the next stage would be a drive to recruit local health managers across Britain. "The idea is to make tobacco companies pay into a fund to help with the cost of treatment for people suffering from smoking-related diseases," said Hanafin this weekend. . . Surveys in London have shown that more than half of all 14-and 15-year-olds have already started smoking, a picture repeated in urban areas throughout the country. One in two will die from the effects.

• 06/21/97 UK Medics Say Tobacco Firms Should Pay Health Costs BMA attacks tobacco. Reuters
• 06/21/97 Deal May Boost Britain's Resolve CNNfn
• 06/21/97 UK Anti-Smoking Groups Rejoice AP Washington Post
  
  The American tobacco settlement will embolden efforts of Britain's new government to take action to discourage smoking, physicians and anti-smoking activists said Saturday. But British tobacco industry officials said the U.S. agreement would have no impact in their country. . . Clive Turner, executive director of the Tobacco Manufacturers Association, said it was impossible to draw comparisons between the United States and Britain. "In essence this is a unique American solution to a unique American problem," he said. "We are comparing apples with pears if we try to compare the United States with the U.K. market."

Social support, whether through formal counseling or just family and friends, can make the difference, says Jed Rose of Duke University in nearby Durham. "It's extremely difficult for most smokers to kick the habit permanently on their own," Rose, the inventor of the nicotine patch, told CNN. "On any given attempt to quit, less than five percent ... actually succeed."

• 06/23/97 Cig Tax Foes Vow Fight in Senate The Wall Street Journal (Pay Registration)
• 06/23/97 Most Americans Favor Cig Tax to Pay for Child Health Care Reuters Medical News
• 06/22/97 GOP Says CLINTON Will Support Tax Bill; HATCH, LOTT Disagree on Cig Tax Hike AP Washington Post
  
  Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said on CNN's "Late Edition" that, despite the agreement reached with the tobacco industry last week, the Senate should go ahead with its decision to add a 20-cent tax to cigarette packages as a way to ensure that children have adequate health insurance. The agreement has the tobacco industry paying up to $80 billion for health care, but Hatch said that was "months and months away" and the money from the tax hike will be needed "to dovetail because we're still not doing enough in Congress even though it's been quite a battle." But Lott said the 20-cent tax "may not be necessary, it may not be supported in view of the overall global agreement."
• 06/22/97 RUBIN Supports Cig Tax Hike for Child Care Reuters
  
  U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin on Sunday supported an increase in cigarette taxes to pay for expanded health care for children. "We had been under the impression that was deemed a violation of the budget agreement," Rubin told CBS television's "Face the Nation" program. "If it's not a violation of the budget agreement, then the idea of using the tobacco tax for children's health or other children's programs seems a good idea."
• 06/21/97Smoke signals on tobacco tax Boston Globe
  
  A Senate panel's lopsided vote to nearly double cigarette taxes injected new intrigue yesterday into the debate over the largest tax cut bill Congress has seen this decade.
• 06/21/97 Tax Vote Adds to Political Intrigue Sacramento Bee
  
  Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., who voted for the Finance Committee tax bill, became defensive when asked at a news conference to assess its prospects for passage. And lawmakers from tobacco states promised a fight on an issue the House Ways and Means Committee did not address in its version of legislation aimed at providing a net $85 billion in tax cuts. "This is not a tobacco press conference," Lott said, when asked about the Finance Committee's 18-2 vote late Thursday for a bill that included the proposed 20-cent-per-pack tax on cigarettes.
• 06/22/97 House GOP Open to Raising Cig Tax Washington Times
  
  House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Archer, Texas Republican, said the $18 billion tax increase should be "looked at in the context of the tobacco settlement," which would raise cigarette prices by 75 cents a pack. House Speaker Newt Gingrich also reacted cautiously, saying Republicans should "go very carefully" about raising taxes.
• 06/20/97 Fed Cig Tax Would Increase Under Senate Panel Agreement The Wall Street Journal (Pay Registration)
• 06/20/97 Administration Backs Tax Reuters
• 06/20/97 Panel OKs Tax Cuts, Seeks Levy on Cigs LA Times
• 06/20/97 Panel Passes Cig Tax Hike Washington Post
• 06/20/97 Panel Seeks 20 cent Rise in Cig Tax The New York Times (Free Registration)
• 06/20/97 Senate Panel OKs Cig Tax NY Newsday
• 06/19/97 Senate Finance Cmte OKs Cig Tax Reuters
  
  Senate tax writers agree Thursday to increase cigarette taxes by an addition 20 cents a pack as a way to defer some higher taxes on airline tickets and extend health coverage for uninsured children. Sen. William V. Roth Jr., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, announced the cigarette tax hike after a closed-door session in which members of the panel worked to fine-tune an $85 billion net tax cut over the next five years. Roth, R-Del., said the cigarette tax -- which would be in addition to the current 24 cents federal levy on each pack -- will finance several changes to the tax package that he released earlier this week.
• 06/19/97 Senate Panel Plans Cig Tax Increase Dow Jones (pay registration)

Maine will have the fourth-highest cigarette tax in the nation on Nov. 1, the date a stiff new cigarette tax, signed into law Friday by Gov. Angus King, takes effect. The new law will cost Maine's 250,000 smokers an extra 37 cents a pack

A Florida judge ruled Monday that tobacco companies may introduce evidence showing that the state of Florida was partly responsible for smoking-related injuries sustained by Medicaid patients because it once made and sold cigarettes.

Free-speech lawyer Floyd Abrams finds it "disheartening that so many attacks on First Amendment values are proceeding at once. . . First Amendment issues are always unpopular," Abrams said. "That's why we need a First Amendment." . . A voluntary agreement to curb tobacco ads would be appropriate, Abrams said, but not federal regulations that interfere with free-speech rights.

Tobacco companies have also seized on the giveaway programs. Philip Morris Co. denies that Marlboro Gear, largely made up of cowboy-like outerwear, is aimed at teens. To get the gear, participants must mail in a form stating they are over 21. But Marlboro is now the brand of choice for 60% of teen smokers, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Camel has a similar program called Camel Cash, which features Joe Camel on its "dollars." Despite talk of a legal settlement with tobacco companies that could ban such programs, new initiatives that appeal to teens are appearing. U.S. Tobacco Co.'s Skoal brand and Philip Morris' Virginia Slims are both sponsoring rock concert tours.

• 06/23/97 Corporate WebSites for Kids Including RJR's www.nabiscokids.com Offers Oreo shooting game and Chips Ahoy screensaver and Philip Morris' www.oscar-mayer.com Kids can learn to surf with World Wide Weener Web tutorial. June 30, 1997 Business Week

Demonstrating how blurred the once-solid line between advertising and editorial content in magazines has become, the American Society of Magazine Editors is now urging editors to resist influence from advertisers over what appears in their publications. Specifically, the society, in a statement issued last week, discussed the so-called "early-warning trend," in which advertisers are notified of upcoming stories that they may object to, and which the society does not condemn. "The ASME board worries that some advertisers may mistake an early warning as an open invitation to pressure the publisher or editor to alter, or even kill, the article in question," the society said. "We believe publishers should -- and will -- refuse to bow to such pressure."

Jim Fouts, a high school government teacher who also is president of the Warren City Council, for years has espoused an anti-smoking message to anyone who will listen. He has even faxed letters to President Clinton, former presidential candidate Bob Dole and every attorney general in the country.

Joining a growing movement in Duluth and Hermantown and throughout Minnesota against underage smoking, Cloquet also is banning cigarette vending machines, counter displays and self-service for single packs. The city's move follows Gov. Arne Carlson signing a hotly debated bill in May requiring all local governments to license groceries, convenience stores and other retailers that sell tobacco products. The bill, which is being contested by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., also requires annual sting operations that uses minors and for tobacco companies to disclose five ingredients.

n the wall of Andre Calantzopoulos' office in Warsaw hangs a glass cabinet displaying dozens of the more than 300 brands of foreign cigarettes, including seductively packaged "his" and "hers" brands, that the tobacco giants are churning out to entice Polish smokers. Calantzopoulos, an executive of Philip Morris Cos. for a dozen years, has worked in some of the world's heaviest-smoking countries. But of Poland, where he is the company's managing director, he said: "I've never seen anything like it in my life. People go to the kiosk and say: 'Do you have any new cigarettes for me to try?' "

But despite the tough stance, Canadians are lighting up more than ever. An estimated 31 percent of the population smokes. "Oh, I noticed them (the warnings), but it made no difference," said smoker Robert Allston. "It made no difference at all. It even said smoking can kill you, and I still smoke." In fact, most Canadian smokers say no amount of warnings and regulations can get them to kick the habit. . . "I can actually say I don't enjoy smoking," she said. "I smoke because I am addicted."

The National Health and Medical Research Council hopes to circumvent the court order by downgrading the report from council-endorsed guidelines to an information document . . The Tobacco Institute of Australia took the council to the Federal Court last year, claiming that the council's working party had failed to consider submissions on passive smoking research provided by the institute. Justice Paul Finn found in favor of the institute, ruling that the working party - under the council's statutory requirements - should have considered non-peer-reviewed research along with peer-reviewed research. The council's chairman, Professor Richard Larkins, said the council would consider removing endorsement from the document. "If we decide to review all the non-peer-reviewed research provided by the Tobacco Institute, we will be swamped and the report will not be released for another year."

New Zealand Monday announced it joined a treaty already signed by the United States, Canada and Australia that bans smoking on many international flights. New Zealand Transport Minister Jenny Shipley announced the move during a meeting in Canada of transport ministers from Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum countries. The accord bans smoking on non-stop flights between the four countries that have signed it.

A Vietnamese scientist has developed an herbal "cocktail" that shows promise in treating addiction to opium, heroin and possibly cocaine. Now researchers at Johns Hopkins University's Center for Chemical Dependence in Baltimore will analyze the mixture to determine how it works. They also may conduct animal toxicity tests with scientists at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. If it proves safe in animals, its safety may be tested in humans. The Vietnamese have named the mixture of 13 herbs "heat of the sun," or heantos, and they call it a cure for addiction. The United Nations Development Program has bet $400,000 in funding that the Vietnamese are right.

Tobacco stocks have ridden a whitewater course through recent sessions. Bellwether Philip Morris crested at $47.25 on anticipation of the announcement of a settlement with 40 states, dipped to $45.50 Friday on news of the deal, plunging with the entire market Monday to $42.75 before jolting up again.

It's that quandary that leads Grant to Philip Morris -- a well-established company that dominates its industry and, in Grant's opinion, has excellent management. Plus, Philip Morris' valuation measures are opposite those of other big stocks. In other words, this stock is cheap.

The carnival shell game is now being used to catch smokers in the act. Illicit smokers are caught by a super- sensitive smoke detector and/or match flame detector, both hidden under the shells of conventional smoke detectors. . . The Cigarette SmokeBuster(R) senses cigarette smoke and the CigaretteBuster(TM) senses the flame from a lighter or match. Both products then play a verbal message or sound an alarm which makes them ideal to enforce no-smoking rules in public and or private locations as required by the new Tobacco Settlement. Voice Products Inc. is the world leader in smoking enforcement.

He is also opening a retail cigar store at 901B South Miami Avenue in a joint venture with Macabi, a leading South Florida cigar company. Fittipaldi will personally unveil his new line of cigars on Thursday, June 26, at an exclusive media event hosted by The Mad Hatter, a restaurant adjacent to the Fittipaldi-Macabi Cigar Store (901 South Miami Avenue).

 Is there any solution to the cigarette mess? Should they just be banned? Heck, marijuana's illegal and lots of people would argue it's a lot less harmful. But then wouldn't you have to ban alcohol as well? Are there any real answers here? I don't know. But I do know one thing. I'm damn glad I don't smoke.

"Judging from the fact that everybody still is working weekends, I haven't seen any slackening of the pace," said Tom Pursell, senior counsel for the Minnesota attorney general's office. "We are going to go full bore." . . . the latest legal skirmish, the attorney general and Blue Cross have accused Brown & Williamson and its 1994 merger partner, American Tobacco Co., of violating a court order requiring them to hand over research documents. Ramsey County District Judge Kenneth Fitzpatrick recently agreed, saying the companies "willfully failed" to answer questions and produce documents. The judge had planned to hold a hearing today to consider sanctions against the companies. But Brown & Williamson on Friday appealed the order and asked for a delay in the hearing. Weeks or months of appellate fighting now will determine whether the companies must hand over the research papers.

"They have two options, the industry, at this point. They either settle my case or we try," Moore told reporters at a meeting of state attorneys general in Wyoming. Any settlement of the Mississippi case would be separate from the proposed nationwide settlement with the tobacco industry announced by state attorneys general last Friday.

The tobacco industry is in talks with Florida and Texas, and has reached an agreement with Mississippi, to delay trial dates in suits over the costs of treating sick smokers. In exchange, the states want the industry to guarantee some concessions made in last week's settlement agreement. . . These would include beefed up warning labels, restrictions on access by minors and bans on certain advertising, including billboards and the use of cartoon figures in ads

The FDA had requested $34 million, which health officials considered barely enough to get the new program on its feet. But the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee cut the request to $15 million. . . . [FDA authority to regulate tobacco] depends on having the funds to take action.

The failure to give states adequate funding for this important youth access provision is a troubling sign about Congress' commitment to protect children from deadly tobacco products. The Clinton administration requested $34 million to be used primarily for grants to state agencies to enforce the FDA Rule provision requiring that stores check the photo identification of anyone attempting to buy tobacco products who appears younger than 27 years of age. By allocating only $15 million for this program, the subcommittee has severely weakened the FDA's effort to make it harder for kids to buy tobacco.

Hatch has signed onto a Senate Finance Committee proposal that would boost the federal tax by 20 cents a pack and give half that revenue to a variety of corporate tax breaks. Kennedy, who was fuming as the deal was brokered behind closed doors last Thursday night, is now alone in his bid to persuade the Senate to earmark all the tobacco tax money for children without health insurance. Though his aides acknowledge that Kennedy may be fighting a losing battle when the Senate takes up the tax bill tomorrow, Kennedy will try taking away the proposed tax breaks for the airlines, the real estate industry, and upper-income taxpayers facing high estate taxes. Kennedy and Hatch were still working together on their 43 cents increase as they were marching up the marble steps of the Senate last Thursday on their way to place a conference call to more than 200 social activists.

Senators are expected to approve a 20-cent-per-pack increase by week's end. "Anything that is properly packaged for the right reasons with the correct labels on it is probably something I would be willing to look at," Armey said at his weekly news conference. Armey swiftly added he had "no more predilection in favor of raising that tax any more than I would have of raising any other tax." A short while later, Gingrich said Armey had "said it exactly the right way. "Under the right circumstances, you know, with the right conditions for the right reasons -- sure. But I don't know what those are, and we haven't talked about it in leadership at all," he added.

The Kentucky Laborers Union health and welfare fund has become the first in Kentucky to sue the tobacco industry over money spent on members' smoking-related illnesses. The fund, which represents 1,700 workers in Kentucky, filed suit last week in U.S. District Court in Louisville. Funds in 11 other states have filed similar lawsuits in the last month, and attorneys involved in the suits said they expect eight or nine more to be filed this week. "It's picking up steam,"

U.S. Magistrate Judge James B. Todd said Mikesell "poses a danger to this community" because of his history of criminal activity and the current allegations against him.

Agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms say in court documents that Mikesell sold the cigarettes to smugglers and laundered money through his W.T. Cummins Co. . . . ATF agents say in court records that Mikesell bought cartons of cigarettes in Kentucky, where the state tax is 3 cents a pack, and then had them shipped to Michigan, where the state tax is 75 cents a pack. The cigarettes were then sold for retail price or less in Michigan while avoiding that state's tax. Such a practice would create as much as $7 in profits for each carton sold by a smuggler. So far, Mikesell, 50, has been charged only with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, a chage that resulted from last week's raid.

The issue was first raised in March by City Council member Ulysses X. White (R) in response to a call from a constituent. At the time, City Attorney Robert Bendall advised the council that the best way to avoid a legal challenge to such a ban would be to demonstrate that the ordinance was needed to protect public health. At Monday's council meeting, four representatives of public health agencies talked about the health risks associated with smoking and the allure of cigarette advertising to children

"On behalf of AAHP (American Assn. of Health Plans), I congratulate all ten finalists for this year's award," said AAHP President Karen Ignagni. . . "The winner of this year's award, HealthPartners of Minnesota, was selected because their anti-smoking campaign best symbolized the dedication of health plans to improving the health and well being of their local community." In 1996, HealthPartners launched an aggressive and highly successful counter-tobacco promotional campaign targeting teens. The campaign included bold, imaginative MTV-style television commercials, radio ads, billboards, events, and other activities designed to show teens that smoking isn't cool.

The head of the House Appropriations Committee is trying to undermine a public vote on the use of tobacco tax funds for a new health lab. Rep. Bob Burns, R-Glendale, released a legal opinion yesterday stating it is unconstitutional to hold a referendum on legislation dealing with "support and maintenance" of state agencies. That, he said, makes the petition drive by health groups to block funding of the lab illegal.

Although the United States is cracking down on the sale and marketing of cigarettes at home, its government still officially helps the tobacco industry expand in other countries. . . The battle was particularly concentrated in Asia in the late 1980s, where American companies argued that Asian governments were often merely trying to protect revenue from their local products and State monopolies. But the nascent anti-smoking groups in those countries argued that American brands were better marketed and their appeal led to increases in smoking overall, as well as in brand-switching from local cigarettes.

Actors Chuck Norris, George Hamilton and Jim Belushi have asked Dominican tobacco king E. Leon Jimenez to craft them cigars with a personal touch, according to company president Jose Leon. . . Leon said Wednesday he hoped to earn $210 million a year in tobacco exports to Europe, the United States -- and, of course, Hollywood.

The Commission was strongly criticized by the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development . . . when it adopted the report by Miguel ROSADO FERNANDES (UFE, E) on the reform of the common organization of the market in raw tobacco. The rapporteur thought the Commission was trying to reduce or even eradicate this European crop using health as a pretext. . . The committee is proposing that the 30% reduction in the budget for the sector should be achieved over five years with each country deciding on how this should be done. Furthermore, '2% of aid should be held back for the promotion of research into raw tobacco with the aim of countering its harmful effects' and 'incentives and financial assistance should be provided for research and experiments with a view to obtaining tobacco varieties which are low in nicotine and tar'.

Sri Lanka plans action to cut tobacco and alcohol consumption and promotion, President Chandrika Kumaratunga said on Wednesday. . . . "No head of state or government has addressed this problem positively so far. Hence, as a responsible government we cannot turn a blind eye to substance abuse because of the serious implications they have on our youth," Kumaratunga said. The statement did not say how the government planned to curb the consumption and promotion of tobacco and alcohol. It said a committee had been appointed to make recommendations.

A licensing pact between India's ITC and Britain's BAT Industries is likely to benefit both firms and may boost the premium-brand cigarette market, officials of the Indian tobacco and hotels firm say.

The suit was filed at the Seoul District Prosecutor's Office by the Citizens Movement Against Over-Consumption, a club of religious and civil rights activists who are spearheading an anti-import campaign. "Legal action is needed to curb a salient sales campaign here by US tobacco firms," group leader Park Chan-sung said. . . . "We will also talk with other domestic civic groups on filing a similar suit against South Korean cigarette producers," Mr Park said.

The loopholes include allowing hawkers and other small retailers to continue featuring cigarette display ads in their shops. "Tobacco brands could take over entire shops because there's nothing in the law that limits the size of the cigarette displays," said Derek Gould, principal assistant secretary for the territory's health department. . . The ad ban also doesn't prohibit tobacco companies from using cigarette brand names on nontobacco products, such as Marlboro Classics clothing or Benson & Hedges restaurants. Nor does it ban the use of those "diversified brands," as the industry calls them, for arts and sports sponsorships.

• 06/25/97 HONG KONG Lawmakers Slap Blanket Ban on Tobacco Ads Reuters
  
  Hong Kong lawmakers have passed a tough law banning tobacco advertisements in public places, including the display of names of cigarette brands when corporate giants sponsor sports and cultural events. The passage late on Tuesday of what was a controversial government bill bans all display of advertisements of tobacco products, while restaurants, banks, supermarkets and department stores will be required to designate no-smoking areas. The bans will take effect two years from Friday, when the law will appear in public records, a government spokesman said on Wednesday.
• 06/25/97 HONG KONG Tobacco Institute Slams Ad Ban Reuters

Shares of cigarette maker PT Hanjaya Mandala Sampoerna (HMSP.JK) and Gudang Garam (GGRM.JK) have fallen this week on investor concern over a slowdown in the growth in the industry, analysts said on Wednesday. Sampoerna was down 225 rupiah to 8,700 rupiah on a volume of 2.2 million shares on Wednesday, while Gudang Garam closed unchanged at 9,575 rupiah after touching a low of 9,375 in active trading of 1.1 million shares. . . Analysts said negative sentiment on tobacco stocks was due to concern that growth in the industry had been slowing down. They said the proposed U.S. legal settlement with American tobacco firms had had little impact on the local market.

A tiny Virginia company is poised to beat Big Tobacco to the market by removing one cancer-causing chemical from cigarettes. Tennesseans are testing smokeless cigarettes [Eclipse] that may send fewer toxins into the lungs. And Duke University researchers are creating tobacco-free "cigarettes" that offer the nicotine kick of a regular smoke without the cancer. But just when does a cigarette become truly safer? And does last week's tobacco settlement ensure cigarette makers won't merely lure back would-be quitters with false safety promises? . . Star Tobacco Corp. of Petersburg, Va., is preparing to remove from cigarettes a worrisome class of cancer-causing chemicals called nitrosamines. Chairman Sam Sears told The Associated Press the company would file papers with the FDA within weeks detailing the method, but he could not say how soon test marketing would begin.

Warning: Listening to "Drag," k.\d. lang's new album, may severely weaken the resolve of ex-smokers. At least that's true of the album's genuinely potent tracks, which are an enticing blend of romance and nicotine. . . Unfortunately, the trouble with "Drag" couldn't be more obvious: What could have been an inspired song suite has been stretched into a concept album that's almost as trendy as the proliferation of cigar rooms. After a while the songs begin to sound alike, and as the pacing becomes increasingly sleepy, the album's title takes on an unintended meaning.

If RJR is prevented by the government from sponsoring the Winston Cup circuit and any other involvement in racing, the sport will go on. It's too popular and too attractive as a marketing tool not to find some company that will sign up as a title sponsor. Nabisco, RJR's sister company, is a potential sponsor (the Oreo Cup?) Many forehands ago, in the 1980s, Nabisco sponsored the men's pro tennis tour.

In spite of the network guidelines making TV programing a smoke-free zone, characters not only smoke, they burn. Roz on "Frasier" alone can give you secondary smoke damage.

On the day that the tobacco industry agreed to a financial settlement larger than a hundred Michael Ovitzes might see in several lifetimes, I bought a pack of cigarettes, my first in 15 years. . .

Yep, smoking for me was an idea that had died of lung cancer - until I met Tisha (old girlfriend) and her Newports. Before long I was hooked, a pack a day, which led me to my true destiny: cigars. Just like Hope, Berle, Burns, Columbo, the pimps and Sammy D. Even the mobsters on the Bugs Bunny cartoons smoked stogies, not to mention Mister "take no prisoners" himself, Wolverine of the X-Men. I don't recall any effort to snuff out these stogie-smoking "role models" in an effort to protect us suggestible youth. Maybe because, unlike the Marlboro Man, cigars weren't central to what made these characters cool. That's why Joe Camel has more in common with Bugs or Wolvie than with the Marlboro Man: His cigarette is practically an afterthought. . . If we like Joe, maybe it's in spite of, not because of, his nasty little habit. Maybe it's the fact that he's universal, with no racial or economic characteristics drawn in. Maybe it's because he knows how to have fun in a gloomy world. Plus the fact that Joe Camel is Joe Kool.

"Hi, hep cats!" I'd greet MTV viewers in a spot aired heavily on that network to achieve maximum exposure of my square self to impressionable young people. Grinning goofily, I'd pick a Camel from behind my ear, whip a bulky lighter from the pocket of my seersucker jacket, light up with a flourish, take a deep drag, exhale a cloud of smoke and say slyly: "Glenn Miller gets me in the mood."

"Who's disappearing?" said Joe, adjusting his beret. "I'm just going abroad -- Europe, Africa, Asia. That's where cigarette sales have been going up 5 percent a year. Yes, sir, it's a whole new smokey world over there." "I was wondering why tobacco stocks haven't been plummeting," I said.

Speaking out for the first time, a former tobacco company executive yesterday said his firm once targeted young smokers by paying to paint Kool cigarette logos on Volkswagen vans owned by college students. Russell Stewart, a former advertising chief for Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co., said the rolling ads complied with federal regulations that barred advertising aimed at youths under age 21. But company executives knew the tactic, used during the 1970s, came close to crossing the legal line, he said. "Obviously it influenced as many people under 21 because they saw the same cars," Stewart said. He recounted the tactic on the eve of his scheduled testimony today at a City Council committee hearing on a proposed law to ban tobacco ads within 1,000 feet of schools.

Survival: Lung cancers accounts for a quarter of all cancer deaths. On average one person dies of lung cancer every 15 minutes. Five year survival rates are 8 per cent for men and 7 per cent for women. Trends: The Macmillan report says that lung cancer is set to drop sharply in men from 13 per cent to 4.4 per cent while it will double in women reflecting the later stage in which women took up smoking.

Consumers for Quality Care, based in Los Angeles, charged Kaiser with hypocrisy for running high-profile anti-smoking campaigns while at the same time quietly loading up on tobacco investments. Kaiser spokeswoman Beverly Hayon confirmed that Kaiser held $5 million in Philip Morris bonds as of Dec. 31, 1996. But she said investment managers were in the process of unloading the bonds before yesterday's disclosure -- not for ethical reasons, but because the bonds weren't paying adequate returns. Hayon said the last of the bonds would be gone as of this morning.

Recipient organizations and specific contribution amounts include: United Way of Rockingham County--$40,000 . . Rockingham County American Red Cross--$3,500 . . Rockingham County Council on Aging--$3,500

The lawyer who helped coordinate the state of Florida's lawsuit against tobacco companies Thursday urged Britain's National Health Service to press its own lawsuits. Tim Howard said he would tell directors of NHS trusts -- the government-contracted operators of local health services -- that the tobacco industry had intentionally addicted British citizens and passed on the health costs to the NHS.

Smoking in Ottawa restaurants should be restricted further in a region-wide effort to curb the scourge of second-hand smoke, a city committee decided yesterday. Non-smoking areas in restaurants will jump to 70 per cent of total space from the current 50 per cent by Oct. 1, leaving less room for smokers if full council approves the decision next month. . . Phil Waserman, a director of the Ottawa Restaurants Association told councillors his group supports the committee decision, pointing out some restaurants already exceed the new requirement.

Bennett LeBow, chairman of Brooke Group Ltd said Thursday that the company's Liggett Group would raise prices of cigarettes if legislation is enacted to carry out a tobacco settlement. In a letter to state attorneys general, LeBow criticized comments made by Richard Scruggs . . . He said that Scruggs comments in the press are "patently false and evidence a continuing breach of your obligations to ensure that the Liggett agreements with you are honored." He said the idea that Liggett is receiving more than it bargained for in last week's accord because an upfront payment is waived is "preposterous."

June 25, 1997

Reynolds attorneys said at a pretrial conference Tuesday that they needed more time to prepare for an August 4 trial in a lawsuit filed on behalf of Joann Karbiwnyk, a former smoker who contracted lung cancer. But Circuit Judge Michael Weatherby said the trial date had already been moved from June to August and he was not inclined to make further delays.

The mortality risks for lung cancer, CHD and chronic lung disease among smokers who switch from cigarettes to cigars or pipes is nearly half that for smokers who continue to smoke cigarettes, according to a report in the June 28th issue of the British Medical Journal. But cigarette smokers who switch to cigars or pipes are still at close to a 50% greater risk of dying from these three diseases compared with never-smokers. Dr. Nicholas Wald of St. Bartholomew's and the Royal London School of Medicine and Dentistry . . . and Dr. H.C. Watt analyzed deaths that occurred among more than 21,000 men recruited to participate in a prospective study between 1975 and 1982. The study subjects were followed until October 1993. Smokers who switched to cigars and pipes from cigarettes had a 46% lower risk of mortality from the three smoking-related diseases than cigarette smokers. But those men who switched to pipes or cigars had a 68% higher risk than never-smokers and a 51% higher risk than pipe or cigar smokers who had never smoked cigarettes of dying from lung cancer, CHD or chronic lung disease.

A Senate effort to increase tobacco taxes to help pay for children's health faces tough hurdles as negotiators prepare for final budget talks with the House and President Clinton, lawmakers said Friday. The Senate tax bill, approved Friday, includes a 20-cent tax on each pack of cigarettes, with $8 billion of the proceeds targeted for children's health insurance. . . On a 70-30 vote, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., lost an effort Friday to add 23 cents more to the cigarette tax in the bill . . . But Kennedy predicted that Clinton administration support for the smaller increase in tobacco taxes would help the Senate measure survive during upcoming negotiations with the House.

Earlier in the day, the Senate turned away a move to further raise cigarette taxes. By a 70-30 vote, the Senate killed an amendment by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., to add 23 cents more to the tax on a pack of cigarettes. The proposal would have raised another $12 billion for health coverage for uninsured children from poor families.

• 06/27/97 HELMS, FAIRCLOTH Fight to Keep Tax on Cigs from Rising Too Much Winston-Salem Journal
  
  Tobacco-state senators surrendered to political realities and decided not to fight a 20-cents-a-pack cigarette-tax increase in the Senate tax bill yesterday, but battled against amendments to raise the tax even more. The battle could become stiffer today, however. The Clinton administration signed off late yesterday on an attempt to increase the tax by 43 cents a pack. . . . "We are destroying an industry that has served this country for 300-plus years," said Sen. Lauch Faircloth, a North Carolina Republican who was raised on a tobacco farm.
• 06/27/97 LOTT Would Prefer No Cig Tax Rise in Bill Reuters
• 06/27/97 KENNEDY Plan to Raise Cig Tax Defeated Senate defeats amendment to tax bill. Reuters
• 06/27/97 Senate Blocks First Attempt to Further Boost Cigarette Taxes AP Dow Jones (pay registration)
  
  Voting 58 to 41, lawmakers killed an amendment offered by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., that would have added another 11 cents per pack to a 20-cent increase already written into the tax bill.
• 06/27/97 CLINTON Administration Backs Kennedy Tobacco Tax Boost Dow Jones (pay registration)
• 06/27/97 KENNEDY Tobacco Tax Backed Boston Globe
• 06/26/97 KENNEDY to Propose Raising Cig Tax Reuters
  
  Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, said Thursday he planned to offer an amendment to the Senate tax bill that would increase the cigarette tax by 23 cents per pack. . . The tax would be in addition to the 20-cent cigarette tax increase already in the Senate tax bill. Kennedy acknowledged the proposal faced an "uphill battle" this week.
• 06/26/97 Administration Backs Cig Tax AP Washington Post
  
  In a shift, the Clinton administration threw its weight Thursday night behind a proposal by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy to almost triple cigarette taxes. Tax legislation being debate by the Senate would raise the current 24-cents-a-pack tax to 46 cents. Kennedy wants to raise it by still another 23 cents to a total of 69 cents a pack.

Swedish tobacco company Swedish Match (S.SWM) said Friday it is in talks with Turkey's KAV Orman Sanayi to investigate the possibilities of setting up production of matches, lighters and tobacco products in Turkey. If the outcome of the talks is favorable, Swedish Match and KAV will establish a new company in Turkey. KAV will transfer its current match operations and related assets to the new company, Swedish Match said. KAV is the largest match producer in Turkey with sales of around $14 million in 1996.

Philip Morris Cos.' (MO) Philip Morris International Inc. unit increased its stake in its Cigarros La Tabacalera Mexicana SA joint venture to 50% from about 29%. Grupo Carso SA holds the remaining 50% of the venture, a Mexican cigarette business.

Philip Morris International Inc said Friday that it and Mexico's Grupo Carso SA de CV (CARA1.MX) had restructured their interests in their joint cigarette business in Mexico. Philip Morris said under the agreement it would increase its equity interest in the business to 50 percent. The business is now being conducted by Cigarros La Tabacalera Mexicana SA de CV, or Cigatam. . . Cigatam has held the license to make and market certain Philip Morris brands, including Marlboro and Benson & Hedges since 1975. As part of the pact, the license is being extended to the year 2020 . . .

Lawyers for the state wanted to charge the industry for the health care costs projected over the next 30 years, but Florida Circuit Judge Harold Cohen stopped the clock at Aug. 1, when the trial is scheduled to begin.

Florida should get "a few hundred million dollars" annually to end its landmark lawsuit against the tobacco industry, Attorney General Bob Butterworth said Thursday. Butterworth said he would present Gov. Lawton Chiles' settlement offer to tobacco negotiators by Monday.

"The tobacco industry is correct in that the law does not allow for collecting now future damages," Judge Harold Cohen ruled.

The judge hearing Florida's Medicaid lawsuit against cigarette makers ruled Thursday that the state's openness law on documents in lawsuits is constitutional, potentially paving the way for publication of thousands of secret tobacco company documents. . . . "I am directing Rutter to review the remaining documents under the Sunshine In Litigation Act and to take the next step and determine if these trade secrets contain evidence of a public hazard or not," Cohen said. Under the act, trade secrets can be made public if they are deemed to involve something considered a hazard to the public.

The state will have an "impossible" task in proving cigarettes are inherently defective after a ruling Tuesday by the judge in the Florida lawsuit against tobacco companies, Big Tobacco attorneys said. Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Harold Cohen agreed with tobacco attorneys that the state needs to prove a cigarette "reaches the consumer with something `wrong' with it" to prove the companies are liable for damages. "The mere fact that a product may have inherently dangerous qualities is not now nor has ever been sufficient under Florida law to render the product defective," attorneys wrote in their motion, comparing tobacco to whiskey and butter.

The bill to eliminate that shield (SB 67) passed easily in the Senate in April but, needing 41 votes, went down 36 to 24 in the Assembly, with the possibility of another vote at a later date. Reasons for the defeat varied, but it remained clear that despite setbacks nationally and strong anti-smoking measures enacted in the past, "big tobacco" has not lost all its clout in Sacramento. Tobacco lobbyists seeking to influence the vote were out in force Thursday, outnumbering rival lobbyists working the corridors of the Capitol by 15 to 2, according to anti-tobacco lobbyist Paul Knepprath of the American Lung Assn. of California.

A bill that would clear the way for individual product liability lawsuits against the tobacco industry has failed in the California Assembly. It fell five votes short of the majority needed for passage, but proponents received permission to schedule another vote as early as Monday. . . . The bill was sponsord by Sen. Quentin Kopp, I-San Francisco. Assembly Republican leader Curt Pringle advised lawmakers to hold off action on the bill until details of the national settlement with the tobacco industry are finalized.

Tobacco growers in Ohio's only burley tobacco market say they don't advocate hooking under-age smokers. But, not surprisingly, they have problems with Washington's plans to clamp stricter regulation on tobacco.

800-JR Cigar Inc. (JRJR) was priced at $17, opened at 19 3/4 where it's trading after setting a high of 20 1/2. Price talk was $14 to $16 in the deal led by Wheat First Butcher Singer.

Profits from Rothmans, its tobacco business which merged with that of Rembrandt in January, rose from £587 million to £795.9 million.

Mixed reactions to RJR Nabisco's first bond offering since 1995 may reflect concern about whether the worst is over for tobacco companies and their bondholders. . . . Investors who bought the bonds said the deal was oversubscribed, but other money managers said they wouldn't consider RJR debt exposure right now due to volatility in the sector and credit rating concerns.

Next week, in the space-invader drama "Men in Black," chain-smoking aliens use a dolly to make off with cartons of Marlboros.

Most of that money went to auto and boat racing, the newsletter said. R.J. Reynolds spent somewhere around $30 million, much of it on Winston sponsored NASCAR racing. IEG went on to say that tobacco companies pitch in about 20 percent of all motor sports sponsorship money.

Norsigian ("It rhymes with Norwegian," she says) was in St. Louis last week for a conference of the National Women's Studies Association at the University of Missouri at St. Louis. She conducted a morning-long session titled: "Health and Medical Technologies for Women: Sorting Miracle from Menace." Smoking is one of the major menaces to women's health that Norsigian worries about . . .

Don Smith, a veteran reporter and editor who worked for The Times Orange County Edition for 34 years, has died. He was 71. Smith died at home Thursday of complications of emphysema. . . . Smith, like many former journalists, was a heavy cigarette smoker, his wife said, and it cost him. "Many times he'd be sitting in front of me in the newsroom with three or four cigarettes lit at once," she said. After nearly dying of pulmonary diseases in 1985, Smith finally quit, and became a crusader against smoking, urging colleagues to quit.

Dr. James S. Todd, a former vice president of the American Medical Association who was the voice of the nation's physicians during the Clinton health care debates, died of cancer Tuesday, said the AMA. He was 66. . . Dr. Todd participated in several recent health policy discussions, ranging from the regulation of tobacco products to a reduction in the number of new doctors being trained.

Anti-smoking groups, citing a rise in teen-age cigar smoking, Thursday asked the Food and Drug Administration to regulate cigars the same way it regulates cigarettes and smokeless tobacco. Nine organizations filed a complaint with the FDA similar to the one filed several years ago that led to the historic drive to regulate nicotine as a drug. . . . The health groups . . . argued in their complaint that the FDA must take on cigars because of their use by youngsters.

Voting 30 for and 70 against, the Senate rejected a bid to levy an additional 23 cents-per-pack tax on cigarettes as part of pending tax legislation (S 949, below). This would have been on top of a 20 cent increase to pay for health care for poor children. The present tax is 24 cents per pack. A yes vote supported the tax increase. Feinstein voted yes. Boxer voted yes.

The showdown comes tomorrow and Senate sources say [Senate President Thomas F.] Birmingham and his lieutenants have rounded up a solid majority of Senate members to crush an attempt to put in place a strict antismoking policy that would make the 200-year-old State House, the most visited public building in the Commonwealth, completely smoke free. Despite pleas from public health specialists who say only a smoke-free building is environmentally safe, the Senate has recrafted a bill that allows for smoking in private offices and other designated areas in the historic structure.

John H. Hager, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor in Virginia, was quizzed yesterday about his career in the tobacco industry and nicotine levels in cigarettes during a deposition by anti-smoking lawyers. Hager said he spent more than three hours answering pretrial questions from a lawyer for plaintiffs suing tobacco companies in a Pennsylvania case. . . He called the session a businesslike "wide-ranging factfinding." Hager said he was asked about his career, his duties, issues involving reconstituted tobacco leaf and "a little bit about nicotine." . . Hager has said he dealt heavily during his 34-year career with tobacco leaf supply, not with now-controversial nicotine research. Although he initially was angry about anti-smoking lawyers entangling him in the Pennsylvania case and assigned a political motive, Hager backed off that criticism yesterday. "I didn't find anything about this conspiratorial or evil," he said. "It was business as usual."

Beginning Tuesday in Virginia, vendors who sell tobacco products will face new consequences for illegal sales to young people. Virginia lawmakers voted to authorize 140 state liquor agents to enforce the state's ban on cigarette sales to anyone 17 or younger at more than 10,000 outlets. They also doubled civil penalties on violators

sections. That is one difference Aeroflot intends to convey subliminally to Russian customers in its new ad campaign. One commercial, planned to debut in late summer or fall, features foreign passengers in business class, debating Russia's future. As the camera sweeps across the cabin, it glides over a beverage cart and a telltale cloud of blue smoke. "We can't say it, but we can show it," explained the ad campaign's creative director, Yuri Bokser, of Premier SV, the Russian advertising firm that is producing Aeroflot's $7 million ad campaign. "Russians want to smoke."

With the tobacco industry and government agencies at each other's throats concerning the emotional issues of cancer and liability, she knew that she had to tread carefully. "I took great pains," she says, "to make a balanced record that didn't make any political statement." . . The vogue for smoking cigars and cigarettes is a reaction to graver dangers, lang believes. "Sexuality is the new killer," she says. "And that's changed our attitude toward cigarettes in some ways. . . . We know they're very dangerous and very, very addictive. But now, a lot of my peers are dying of heroin overdoses. So in a way, cigarettes seem like a lesser evil. I also find the anti-cigarette thing kind of humorous when . . . we knew all along that it was bad for you."

Dade Circuit Judge Alan Postman said several complications, including an anti-tobacco lawsuit by flight attendants that is still taxiing along the runway, could delay takeoff of his case until early next year. "I can candidly tell you I'm thinking of a January date," Postman told lawyers for both sides.The judge indicated little sympathy for an official delay, saying he would not suspend or terminate the case "unless there's an act of Congress to deal with." Still, Postman conceded that delays associated with the flight attendants' case -- and then fall and winter holidays -- could push his case into next year.

Tobacco group Brown & Williamson said on Friday it would seek to delay the scheduled September 8 trial start of a Florida class-action suit until Congress acts on a tentative global tobacco settlement announced a week ago. But the trial judge, Alan Postman of Dade County Court, said the case on behalf of sick Florida smokers would proceed with pre-trial preparations throughout the summer.

In the end, the fight over the true cost of smoking holds as many lessons on the limits of social science as it offers directions for health policy. Rational man (especially when seeking tenure) can cook up many more "interesting" questions than the real world can answer. The result is an academic literature that often tilts public discussion despite brimming with such surreal gems as, "What is the cost to a person and his or her family of losing 28 discounted minutes [of life expectancy] for each pack of cigarettes smoked?" Or Viscusi of Harvard's acrobatic analytics showing that the trend toward lower tar content "makes cigarettes perform less well from a societal standpoint, because you don't get the savings that result from the fatalities." . . As politicians reviewing today's tobacco industry settlement no doubt realize, rival reckonings of the cost of smoking, taken with a grain of salt, will help inform the moral judgments and public health goals that finally shape policy.

Tessa Jowell, Public Health Minister, said the Government did not want authorities "engaging in local litigation". But the annual conference of the NHS Confederation, representing authorities and health trusts, agreed unanimously to set up a working group on bringing tobacco manufacturers to account. . . Support for the move was declared at the conference in Brighton by representatives of the Royal College of Nursing and British Medical Association.

Fluellen, a big, smiling man of 52, clicks his lighter as if he were cocking a gun. "I work in a hospital," he said. "I see them," he said of those X-rays, "and I go, 'Oh God, oh God.' It makes me so nervous I have to have a cigarette." Like most of the smokers here, he knows all about the agreement between the cigarette manufacturers and state attorneys general in which the industry would pay billions in damages, finance anti-smoking education programs and concede, in stronger language than ever before, that smoking is lethal and addictive. To which those here, almost to a smoker, reply, "So?" They smoke not because they were ever uncertain of the danger, but in spite of it, because smoking is pleasure, because that pleasure is addictive. Here's the item at the SF Chronicle

Does advertising money inevitably corrupt journalism? No. When I worked at Harper's, for instance, I watched Lewis Lapham, its editor, turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to the obvious unhappiness (and, in one case, vocal anger) of the advertising staff when he chose to run articles that were certainly not in the interests of Harper's hard-won advertisers. And last week, the print media largely did better than the tobacco-free airwaves in tearing apart the "tobacco deal," raising the right questions about whether the industry was getting off too lightly, and whether public health would continue to suffer as a consequence. Still, there is a reason why the American Society of Magazine Editors last week issued a public statement saying it was "deeply concerned" that the traditional courtesy call that magazines and newspapers give to advertisers before publishing negative stories (allowing advertisers to move or withdraw ads they feel might suffer if next to that article) has become "an open invitation to pressure the publisher or editor to alter, or even kill, the article in question."

MUCH has been made about the military furnishing cigarettes at a discount to soldiers. Here's why it's done: You are cringing at the bottom of a mud hole, rain dripping off your helmet. . . . You are not worried about what will happen 30 years from now. You just want to live until the next hot meal. You furtively light a cigarette. It's the closest thing to snuggling into mother's arms. Often it's the only friend a soldier has.

My outrage generator is out of order. Hard as I try to work up a full head of outrage about the tobacco industry, I cannot. It is alarming. Being outraged about big tobacco is the duty of every decent American just now. I cannot manage it. On the other hand, I become purple with outrage when someone writes a sentence that begins, "On the other hand . . ." You see what I mean: malfunctioning outrage generator. . . Look at the case of the vile tobacconists, for whom I feel no outrage whatever. They were just another group of consumer-goods peddlers who used modern salesmanship methods to get people hooked on their product. We are asked to find them uniquely hateful because they used their wiles on children. Struggling to achieve outrage, I end up asking why we should confine our anger to the tobacco set. Shouldn't we despise with equal fervor all consumer-goods salesmen who use modern advertising guile to make children crave their goods?

"Always, people are asking, 'How is the situation in the States?' " said Tuvia Lehrer, head of the Israeli health ministry's addiction-prevention program. "If it passes there, it will help us here."

"Until they improve the flavor, I'll stick with Marlboro," said Margaret Lucas while sampling an Eclipse cigarette inside the smoking lounge at Northgate Mall.

PHILIPPINES: 73 percent of adults and more than half of children ages 7 to 17 smoke. Tobacco cultivation major industry. Government campaigning against tobacco, but attempts to curb advertising have failed.

Indonesia's clove cigarette maker PT Hanjaya Mandala Sampoerna (P.HMS) said over the weekened that it will increase distributors' prices of its machine-rolled 'A-Mild' cigarettes and hand-rolled 'Dji Sam Soe' on July 7. Sampoerna said that prices of the 16-pack A-Mild and A-Mild Menthol cigarettes will be increased by 45 rupiah per pack to 1,206 rupiah.

Towering billboards declare "Today I Smoke." Diners light up in restaurants with toddlers bouncing on their laps. On TV, a rugged cowboy rides into the sunset, cigarette dangling from his lips. . . Critics say a major reason for the popularity of tobacco and the lack of restrictions against it is that the government owns two-thirds of the stock in Japan Tobacco, which controls nearly 80 percent of the cigarette market.

"We're good Germans -- efficient and super-obedient," says Gilmar Etjes, a strapping, blue-eyed farmer in this town that likes to call itself the World Capital of Tobacco. That, claims Etjes, the great-grandson of German immigrants, helps explain why farmers in these green hills of southern Brazil have become such fierce competitors for their U.S. counterparts. They work hard; they work relatively cheaply, and -- so far -- they haven't complained much about a job, involving heavy use of pesticides, that's literally making them sick.

Alarmed by the loss of tax revenues and the smugglers' arrogant disregard for the law, the federal government launched an intensive antismuggling campaign and assigned extra funds and resources to wage the war. Today, after spending an additional $315-million over the past three fiscal years, authorities have cut, but not stopped, the flow of illicit cigarettes. Many small-time operators in the trade have dropped out rather than risk the increased odds of prosecution and punishment. But others, particularly the organized smugglers, still trade in cigarettes, and many have moved into alcohol, drugs, firearms and other products. "If you are involved in smuggling, the commodity is irrelevant as long as it's a money-maker . . . That's what we are finding right now. We find drug people are now involved in cigarettes and vice versa."

Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co., the closely held producer of American Spirit, says sales have risen 60 percent to 95 percent a year since 1993 (it doesn't release actual sales figures), while employment is up, to 115 from 29. The Santa Fe, N.M., company recently built its own manufacturing plant after years of contracting out the work. Its cigarettes command a premium price--about $3.75 a pack in Massachusetts, which has high tobacco taxes, compared with $2.75 for regular brands. Santa Fe Natural makes no claims that its cigarettes are healthier. It doesn't have to. On San Francisco's Haight Street, a macrobiotic mecca, shopkeeper Mike Kazzouh says he moves 55 10-pack cartons of Natural American Spirits a month--nearly the level of Marlboro sales--to customers who ask for "the one that's better for you." Kazzouh says, "There's nothing healthier about them, but of course I will believe the people who think so, because they're paying more."

A quick survey of current screen fare shows smoking in some form is nearly inescapable. Cigarettes and cigars are as common in adult films - those rated R or NC-17 - as lusty profanity. Among movies aimed at children and teens - those rated G, PG and PG-13 - you might expect a different pattern. You would be wrong. Tobacco appears in some form in 10 out of the 12 first-run films reviewed in this summer's installment of the quarterly Movie Guide For Enquirer Parents. . . These summaries contain the customary information on language, nudity, violence and other issues of concern to parents. This time, we also note instances of smoking.

A fungus is threatening to wipe out the tobacco crop in Lancaster County, where 95 percent of Pennsylvania's harvest is grown, perhaps as much as half by Amish farmers.

Some burley tobacco growers -- facing destructive crop diseases, a worker shortage and the uncertain future of the product -- are risking loss of their federal quotas. "We probably have more farmers who are in danger of losing tobacco quotas than we've ever had before," said Anna Felty of the federal Consolidated Farm Service Agency here. In Greenup County alone, about 80 quotas totaling roughly 75,000 pounds are in danger of being lost. Under federal regulations, growers must farm or lease their burley allotments at least two of every three years or lose them.

MAYSVILLE--No one was injured in a fire that destroyed two tobacco warehouses early yesterday. Firefighters from seven departments battled the blaze at Liberty Loose Leaf Warehouse and the Growers Tobacco Warehouse.

Long-time smokers with no symptoms of disease may show signs of genetic alterations in the tissue lining their lungs, a possible early warning for risk of developing lung cancer. These study results, reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, represent the first molecular study of the genetic effects of tobacco smoke on normal lung tissue in smokers, according to the researchers. Dr. Li Mao and colleagues at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, studied 54 long-term smokers, 40 of whom were still smoked at the time of the study. The researchers used a bronchoscope to examine the participants' lungs and remove small samples of lung tissue. The tissue samples were studied at the cellular level for abnormalities at three chromosome sites. These sites are the locations for three genes which normally act to suppress tumor growth: the FHIT gene, the p16 gene, and the p53 gene. Thirty-nine of the 54 smokers had evidence of genetic deletions in at least one site, and 13 had genetic alterations at two or more sites. Among five nonsmokers similarly tested, only one such genetic alteration was found.