Tobacco News on the Web
Archive, January, 1998
Note: These articles wink in and out of existence with the frequency of sub-atomic particles. Many links will be dead. In that case, these pages can be approached as bibliographies, both noting the event, and showing where you might look for further information.
- Somewhere hidden away in the plush offices of some big tobacco company, there must be a voodoo doll in the shape of Massachusetts with a whole bunch of pins stuck in it. For the past few years, the state has engaged in an all-out, multi-million-dollar campaign against smoking, fueled by extra state taxes placed from cigarette sales.
- In Texas it is now illegal for anyone under 18 to possess, consume, or purchase a tobacco product without a parent or guardian present. Those who break the law face a fine up to $250, a tobacco education course, and possibly lose their driver's license.
- Snohomish County might let the billboard industry erect signs nearly triple the maximum size, as an unofficial trade-off for a potential ban on tobacco advertising.
- China's biggest metropolis, Chongqing, has pioneered a tax on cigarette sales to help pay for anti-smoking campaigns, state television reported Friday. The city of 30 million imposed a tax of 0.1 percent on sales by cigarette manufacturers and vendors on January 1 to fund health education and smoking prevention activities.
- Michelle Riley, former California Olympic Trials Soccer Team Member, television commercials performer and health care worker, believes she can help smokers quit easily. . . She will send smokers, or those who care about them, her layman's prescription for smokers. Her dad, a former heavy smoker, devised this easy way to quit. . . They may contribute $35, or whatever they feel they can afford, to help cover part of the costs of this work and to help cure cancer. Half of the proceeds will be given to the American Cancer Society.
- The advertising campaign will initially focus on preventing the 1 million cigarette butts and 900,000 pieces of trash that are dropped on the ground or thrown from car windows each month . . . "Neat Neighbors" comprise the approximately 4.5 million residents who recycle and keep their properties neat and clean, but inadvertently flick 500,000 cigarette butts onto the ground and leave 40,000 dog droppings on the ground each month.
- Horvath, 33, of Fair Lawn, didn't fume or blow her stack. She seemed too much in shock. Instead, she just shook her head, repeating, "Three dollars for a pack of cigarettes? You've got to be kidding. I have to quit. That's it, I have to quit."
- Starting Wednesday, teenagers in Lawrence Township who crave nicotine will have to think twice about lighting up in public. That is when an ordinance prohibiting children under 18 from smoking will take effect. The Mercer County community of 27,000 last month became the latest to adopt an ordinance aimed at snuffing out underage smoking.
- The Teasley family represents a side of the great tobacco debate that doesn't get much attention outside North Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee, the side of growers who cultivate the nation's 124,000 tobacco farms. They don't deny that tobacco kills, smoking is addictive, and cigarette ads target children. But there are a few things they wish more people knew about tobacco.
- In the tobacco fields of Tennessee, where Gore's family used to grow 20,000 pounds of the crop every year, the vice president is now Public Enemy No. 1. He is despised not because of his tough antitobacco stance but because he used to hold himself up as a friend of the tobacco farmer.
- Alabama's new law requiring stores to have licenses to sell tobacco takes effect today, but many stores won't have their licenses. There's no need to worry though. The Alabama Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, which is supposed to enforce the law, is not going to be tough initially. "We'll probably have a grace period for some that have turned in their applications," said Charlie Baugh, director of enforcement for the ABC Board.
- The whole idea behind the tobacco permit is to prevent stores from selling tobacco products to minors. Until now only the clerk could be fined. Now the owner or manager could be held responsible as well. Owners could be fined up to $500 for a first offense and $1500 for a second. Also, the store could lose the right to sell tobacco.
- Mississippi's $174 million in tobacco settlement money should be in state coffers by the end of January , state officials say. Jackson County Chancery Judge William Myers, Attorney General Mike Moore and tobacco industry liaison counsel Joe Colingo on Monday signed the final settlement order in Moore's lawsuit against the tobacco industry. The tobacco industry in July placed $170 million into a court-established trust fund as the first payment toward a settlement valued at $3.366 billion over the next 25 years.
- Where there's smoke, look for a fired-up Woodbury city official. He's concerned over the sale of cigarettes to minors. "Things have gotten out of hand," City Council member Doug Fischer said. "Surveillance by our police (last year) showed a ratio of one in three tobacco-product stores selling cigarettes to kids. Most times, clerks didn't even bother checking IDs to verify the age."
- The Turkish government is selling a 51% stake in the country's alcohol and tobacco monopoly, Tekel, to B.A.T Industries PLC for $100 million, under a deal in which B.A.T has pledged to invest $300 million. The deal involves B.A.T taking over one of Tekel's six cigarette factories as well as the sales and distribution rights of the monopoly's two best-selling local cigarette brands, according to State Minister Eyup Asik.
- And a University of South Carolina researcher announced this year that she has found a way to make the tobacco plant a better factory for va ccines, cancer-fighting drugs and other beneficial products. . . Among the beneficial products that could soon come from tobacco, researchers say, are treatments for Alzheimer's Disease, Tourette's Syndrome, Parkinson's Disease, ulcerative colitis, Attention Deficit Disorder and schizophrenia.
- Aiming to help managed care plans get their patients to quit smoking, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is pledging more than $5 million in grants to plan and evaluate smoking cessation projects. The nation's largest health care philanthropy is undertaking the effort because it believes few doctors and nurses know how to incorporate strategies for giving up tobacco use into their encounters with patients.
- But tobacco companies, claiming fire-safe cigarettes would not be commercially feasible, have repeatedly overpowered or outflanked such efforts. And the way they have done it, secret documents and interviews show, is a textbook example of a powerful industry using its wealth and ingenuity to stave off regulation. They have done it through a sophisticated, two-pronged strategy that has included bankrolling in-house scientists and outside consultants to debunk the technical feasibility of safer cigarettes. At the same time, they have attracted the strangest of bedfellows by doling out millions of dollars worth of grants, contracts and services to cement an ingenious alliance with fire-safety organizations. In the process they have won the favor, and in some cases the silence, of credible groups whose whole purpose is saving lives.
- Fifteen people in two families were displaced by a fire that damaged a Richmond District home last night, San Francisco firefighters reported. The fire apparently started in back of a home on Seventh Avenue and may have been the result of discarded smoking material, firefighters said.
- SAN DIEGO, Dec. 30 (UPI) _ A state appellate court has ruled (Tuesday) that a 17-year-old boy who gave a pack of cigarettes to a 15- year-old friend is not liable for damage caused by the friend when he dropped a cigarette and started a fire. The Fourth Appellate District in San Diego says it would be unreasonable to make everyone who knows that a friend is going to smoke a cigarette liable for any fires started if the friend drops that cigarette.
- Carr says a burning cigarette on a couch started the fire.
- The Manville Personal Injury Settlement Trust and H.K. Porter Co. -- both liable for claims by workers exposed to asbestos -- sued several tobacco companies to recoup billions of dollars paid to workers who smoked. The lawsuits, following a complaint filed in September 1997 by former asbestos maker Raymark Industries Inc., challenge the sweeping immunity that the tobacco industry would gain in the proposed $368.5 billion national tobacco settlement.
- The Manville Personal Injury Settlement Trust announced today that it had filed a lawsuit against seven tobacco companies. . . Robert A. Falise, Chairman and Managing Trustee of the Trust, stated that the lawsuit was filed to prevent the proposed tobacco settlement legislation from cutting off the rights of asbestos victims to sue tobacco companies. "The Tobacco Settlement as proposed is unjust and unfair to our Trust beneficiaries, the beneficiaries of the other asbestos trusts, and claimants of all former asbestos manufacturers who are or were smokers," Mr. Falise noted. "The tobacco companies should be required, through this lawsuit or through legislation, to pay their fair share of the injuries they have caused and will continue to cause to trust beneficiaries who are or were smokers," Falise added.
- Lorillard Tobacco Co. has paid more than $1.5 million to the family of a California smoker who died of cancer, the first time a U.S. cigarette maker has ever paid a smoking-related personal injury claim, lawyers said on Wednesday. . . Horowitz, a Beverly Hills psychoanalyst, died in 1996 from a type of lung cancer attributed to the asbestos found in the filters of Kent cigarettes Lorillard manufactured in the early 1950s.
- Smokers who make a New Year's resolution to quit are getting an assist from the state as it doubles the tax on cigarettes, cigars and other tobacco products. Store owners believe the new tax is an ill-guided policy that will damage the state's retail businesses in ways legislators and Gov. Christie Whitman did not consider. Cigarette distributors say manufacturers will not reduce their wholesale prices to offset the higher tax. So, they say, the full 40 cent-a-pack increase will be passed on to consumers.
- New Jersey smokers can strike a huge blow for themselves - and fairness - if they refuse to buy their tobacco products in New Jersey. As of today, cigarettes are going to be cheaper in every neighboring state than in Jersey. Buy interstate. Refuse to play the Whitless blood-sucking game. Send her a message that tax rape is unacceptable.
- Economists say textiles and tobacco are the two industries struggling in North Carolina. Neither is much of a factor in the Triangle economy. Tobacco's troubles Tobacco used to be, and some of those former employees have a different take on the Triangle's prosperity.
- In a new twist on the growing alarm over the dangers of tobacco, a Jupiter man is suing his ex-wife for $1 million for exposing him to secondhand smoke during their 13-year marriage. Anthony A.G. Kehle III, 59, claims that his ex-wife's two- to three-pack-a-day habit gave him lung cancer, requiring doctors to remove two-thirds of his lung.
- Little Rock businesses will have to pay $100 to continue selling tobacco products in 1998 as part of the city's attempt to snuff out teen-age smoking. The city also plans to control how and where tobacco is sold and advertised and make restaurants be more clear in designating nonsmoking sections. The ordinance establishing those controls, however, is on hold until the city gets a waiver from the federal Food and Drug Administration, which has jurisdiction over the sale of tobacco to minors.
- Minors throughout Texas who use or buy tobacco products will face a range of harsh punishments -- including forfeiting their driving privileges -- under a sweeping new law that takes full effect New Year's Day. Senate Bill 55, passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. George W. Bush in the spring, will make Texas the toughest state in the country when it comes to people younger than 18 smoking, dipping snuff or chewing tobacco.
- The mandatory ID checks for tobacco purchasers are among the last provisions to be implemented of a sweeping anti-smoking law passed by the Legislature this year. . . In addition, retailers must educate their employees about the law, employees must sign a form indicating they understand the law and direct consumer access to tobacco products would be prohibited except in bars and adult establishments.
- SMOKING HAS BEEN snuffed out in nearly all public places in Boulder since Nov. 14, 1995, after voters approved a no-smoking law by almost 55 percent. Unlike California's new law, Boulder made exceptions for restaurants and bars that built self-contained, ventilated smoking areas. Then there is the Sundown Saloon, which hews to the letter, if not the intent, of the law. . . Patrons continue puffing ‹ and the bartender will sell you a pack if you're short. "We comply with the ordinance," says one bartender, Tony Milazzo.
- Health Canada's decision to approve a fungicide the United States has classified as a "possible human carcinogen" for use on tobacco crops was driven by trade and competition, a federal official says. The department's Pest Management Regulatory Branch approved Aliette, also known as Fosetyl-Al, last summer so Ontario tobacco growers would be better able to compete with farmers in North Carolina, Kentucky and Connecticut, said Chris Warfield
- Agriculture officials have denied on a number of occasions that it is funding any type of research which would increase nicotine levels at the same time Health Canada was pushing anti-smoking legislation through the House of Commons. But documents obtained by The Star shows nicotine levels are crucial to the government-grown tobacco crop at Delhi, Ont. . . "The work done by the department is aimed at ensuring that nicotine levels in the tobacco crop are within the range required by trade standards (2.2 to 3 per cent)," the document says.
- Teenagers have been warned they could easily catch the disease this New Year's Eve by sharing drinks, cigarettes and dip for potato chips.
- Mafco Consolidated Group Inc. today announced the redemption of its Value Support Rights (NYSE: MFO-R) for $0.56 per VSR, payable on January 30, 1998 to holders of record on January 15, 1998. Accordingly, the transfer books for the VSRs will close permanently at the close of business on January 15, 1998.
- When I was a little girl, I remember asking God to give me something important to do with my life. I wanted to help other people. And now I get letters from people who say, "After I saw your show, I called my estranged brother and asked him to come home." Or "I saw your show, and stopped smoking." That's inspiring.
- Don't put up with secondhand smoke. Nobody has the right to pollute your air or give you cancer. If someone says, "This is a free country," remind him or her that the country may be free, but no person is free if he has a habit he can't control.
- The move came after smoking in bars was banned in California. Quit executive director Judith Watt said Victoria should follow suit as soon as possible and she urged the State Government to start consultations with the hospitality industry tomorrow. Ms Watt said it was inevitable Australia would follow the same path. . . "This law might look draconian, but the evidence is clear that environmental tobacco smoke is very harmful. Not to take measures to protect the public is opening up all employers and managers of public places to the possibility of litigation from customers or employees."
- The new year has rung in a major international victory in the battle for clean air. Frankfurt, Germany's international airport -- the busiest in continental Europe -- has banned smoking in most of its passenger areas. It's a bold and controversial move in a country where there are almost no limits on smokers.
- HOLLYWOOD -- Careless smoking by an emphysema patient on oxygen caused the first fatal fire of the year in Broward County, officials said.
- In other fires, an elderly Brampton woman died in a fire police believe was caused by careless smoking. Shirley Anne Morgan, 68, had apparently been smoking in bed Friday night in her seventh-floor Beech St. apartment in Brampton, said Peel Region police Staff Sergeant Neil Masson.
- Hawker Lim Lye Huat kept his word and quit smoking after he promised to do so if his daughter scored seven As in her Lower Secondary Assessment (PMR). . . "If I have the willpower to quit smoking, they should also have the will to study harder. Quitting this 34-year habit also means I will save money and I will invest it for the education of my three daughters."
- Ilene Barth has collected a wealth of arcana about the sot-weed and its users. . . But Barth doesn't paper over the dangers or delusions of smoking.
- Richard Ball, a lighter collector, says: "The Dunhills are the most highly collected. There's been a dramatic increase in the value of Ronsons because of their aesthetic appeal."
- "We are really only the third public entity -- along with Mississippi and Florida -- to ever get money from the tobacco company," she said. . . "(The city) ought to receive some of that money directly, because we sued early in the game . . . before 30 other states, including the state of California," she said. "I resent very much the actions of a number of state attorneys general who say that . . . local governments are not entitled to any money."
- At any rate, I think the cigar craze is fading but I wanted to make sure it wasn't just me. I checked with an expert, John Carvelli of Newport Beach, who heads a prestigious national association of cigar aficionados. My instincts were correct. Those who were puffin' on the big ones before the craze remain committed, while the acolytes of the avant-garde are fading away.
- The tobacco tax, which was raised 12.5 cents a pack last July, produced $7.1 million in December, $1.1 million more than estimates and $2 million more than a year ago. For the fiscal year to date, the tax has produced $39.7 million compared to $25.3 million a year ago.
- Virginia's alcohol regulators are preparing quietly to become the state's sole agency for tobacco control, including the possible licensing of any retail seller of cigarettes or other tobacco products.
- A top aide who resigned from Gov. Lawton Chiles' office in November over loans from a state tobacco attorney once ordered criminal background checks of two vocal critics of a Chiles' appointee. The appointee, Joe Bruner, also had loaned money to the aide, Harold Lewis -- $2,500 in 1994. Lewis, a former inspector general for Chiles and a chief architect of the state's $11 billion lawsuit against cigarette makers, ordered the Florida Department of Law Enforcement last April to look into the backgrounds of two Fort Walton Beach residents.
- Last fall, amid much fanfare, Gov. Fob James and state Attorney General Bill Pryor unveiled legislation that would force tobacco companies to start paying the state $3.9 billion over the next 20 years. But with the new legislative session just 10 days away, there appears to be little enthusiasm among many lawmakers and anti-tobacco advocates to approve the controversial tobacco assessment bill.
- Voting: Supporters have ended signature drive to put 50-cents-a-pack levy on June ballot. They will now back a similar proposal for November. . . Hertzberg said he and other initiative backers have dropped their campaign so they can concentrate their efforts on the campaign for a 50-cent cigarette tax initiative led by actor-director Rob Reiner.
- A SMOKER was convicted of burgling a shop after being identified from a DNA sample taken from a cigarette butt discarded at the scene of the robbery . . . "There are all sorts of ways of collecting DNA samples but we believe this is one of the first involving a cigarette end."
- Investors should watch moves by the tobacco industry to shield substantial non-tobacco interests from future litigation. Ninemsn
- Candy cigarettes are still sold in packs and boxes like the real thing. A pack sells for about $1 at candy stores, such as Mr. Bulky candy stores in shopping malls.
- "Tracey Takes On ..." begins a third run of episodes tomorrow night at 10. If you are one of the viewers who pays for HBO primarily for Ullman (and "The Larry Sanders Show"), you won't be disappointed with her 1998 collection, beginning with "Tracey Takes On ... Marriage" tomorrow, "Tracey Takes On ... Hollywood" next week, and future shows on smoking and loss.
- MICHAEL DOUGLAS wants to quit smoking -- again. "I've stopped a couple of times," he joked.
- Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Reiser and two of their funnyman buddies have changed their New Year's Day brunch tradition in the years since they hit the big time -- they added Cuban smokes and caviar.
- A mass ashtray toss heralded the arrival of the New Year at all buildings and restaurants throughout California; this sweeping smoking ban sent cigarette aficionados underground, and left guys like collector Herbert Zach crying in his beer. He's amassed 6,021 packages of cigarettes from places like Cameroon and Uruguay . . . To commiserate, Zach should hook up with Maui Cheetah, who posts his formidable lighter collection on the Web. These hobbies beg the question: What's more deranged? Smoking, or fetishizing smoking?
- People who smoke at work are likely to be marked down on job performance, reducing both "the probability of their promotion" and their income, a noted organizational behavior expert said. "Employees who smoke are rated lower on key performance measures by their own leaders than those who do not smoke," said Ron Gilbert, a management professor at Florida International University in North Miami. Since 1989, Gilbert has studied the performances of thousands of supervisory and non-supervisory workers in both civilian and military organizations.
- The story of Humphrey and tobacco also contains a little-known, personal chapter. Humphrey's father, the former vice president, once was a heavy cigarette smoker who quit in the early 1950s. He died in 1978 at age 66, after a battle with bladder cancer that had spread to his colon. In a recent interview, Humphrey said that a few years ago he asked a researcher familiar with his father's illness whether smoking might have caused the cancer. "The doctor said, `Absolutely it did,' " Humphrey said. "I was kind of shocked -- I really didn't know it."
- A judge has ruled that the Dept. of Correction's no-smoking policy is not "cruel and unusual punishment." An inmate challenged the policy.
- Smokers, junk-food eaters and couch potatoes - prepare to examine your habits; 1998 will see the launch of a major government assault on the way we live. A White Paper on food standards, a Green Paper (followed by a white one) on public health and a White Paper on smoking are promised by the summer. . . The White Paper on smoking will set out measures to reduce cigarette consumption, as well as banning tobacco advertising.
- In the early hours of Friday, December 12 1997, the Tasmanian Parliament passed a law that will send shockwaves throughout the tobacco industry. All 54 politicians in the State's two Houses of Parliament supported a Public Health Bill that has been hailed by anti-smoking advocates as being at the leading edge of the fight against the tobacco industry.
- A LEADING specialist has called for urgent research and funding after warning that lung cancer could soon outstrip breast cancer as the biggest killer of women. Dr Kwun Fong said many women were continuing to ignore anti-smoking campaigns. . . "Smoking is responsible for about 80 per cent of lung cancer cases but despite the statistics and all the warnings and campaigns, a significant number of women continue to smoke," Dr Fong said.
- Porta King Building Systems in Virginia Beach won a $125,000 contract from the General Services Administration for prefabricated storage buildings and outdoor smoking shelters.
- Woodfield Enterprises, Inc. and Windsor Capital Corp. Complete Reverse Merger
- "We are setting a precedent, creating an atmosphere where fans can enjoy baseball and cigars together," said Vince Naimoli, Devil Rays managing general partner. The Cuesta-Ray Cigar Bar will open in March, the same month the team plays its first regular-season game. It will coincide with the introduction of a new cigar -- the Cuesta-Ray Devil Ray cigar -- that will be sold only at Tropicana Field.
- TAMPA, Fla., Jan. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- America's two favorite pastimes -- cigars and baseball -- together at last! Major league baseball's new expansion team, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, is making history, bringing the first cigar bar to a major league baseball stadium. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays are teaming up with America's oldest family-owned cigar company, J.C. Newman Cigar Company, to open the first Cuesta-Rey Cigar Bar at Tropicana Field.
- To crystallize the premodern view, [Tom] Wolfe offers "the statue of James Buchanan Duke of the American Tobacco Company that stands in the main quadrangle of the Duke University campus. He's leaning debonairly on his walking stick and has a great round belly and a jolly look on his face and a cigar in his left hand. The statue just comes right out and says: 'He made a lot of money in tobacco, he gave you this place, he loved smoking, and here he is!' "
- From a paper titled "Crime and Custom in Corporate Society: A Cultural Perspective on Corporate Misconduct," given by UNC-CH law professor John M. Conley and Duke University anthropology professor William M. O'Barr at a recent conference on "Deterring Corporate Misconduct." The paper focused on a study of three cases of corporate misconduct. Here's an excerpt of the professors' analysis of what led tobacco company executives and their attorneys to suppress and destroy documents showing they knew about the addictive effect of nicotine. . . In the tobacco case, the mutually reinforcing effects of the two cultures may have inflated the value of secrecy exponentially. Initially, members of each culture -- corporate and legal -- drew on secrecy as a resource in responding to the crisis of adverse information. But as they did, secrecy took on a life of its own, so dominating the thinking of individual members that it became a determinant of their behavior. In the end, secrecy may have taken on such intrinsic value that corporate and legal actors ceased to question whether what they were doing was legally or morally right.
- BY CHRIS AYRES CIGARETTE makers could avoid the Government's ban on tobacco advertising by using exhibition space within public areas such as railway stations to promote products. The possible legal loophole was discovered yesterday as one of Britain's largest outdoor advertising groups, Maiden, signed a five-year deal to manage exhibition space within Railtrack's mainline stations. Maiden said that tobacco companies, which spend an estimated 50 million a year in the UK on marketing their products, could decide to use the space as an alternative to billboard and press advertising.
- Angry over a "60 Minutes" show about human rights abuses and government corruption, the Palestinian Authority has told CBS television crews they will no longer have free access to cover events and interview Palestinian officials. . . The segment, by correspondent Ed Bradley, entitled "Brother vs. Brother," said that prices for such items as cigarettes, cement, flour and gasoline had risen because the products were controlled by monopolies that are controlled by the Palestinian Authority.
- Seydou Camara, Director of the Public Companies Bureau (BEP), told Reuters that 45 percent of Societe Nationale des Tabacs et Alumettes du Mali (SONATAM) would be available for Malian and foreign investors and four percent for the staff.The state will retain 51 percent of shares.
- A $280 million joint venture between tobacco giant B.A.T Industries Plc and Turkish Tobacco State Enterprise Tekel won the go-ahead from the Turkish government on Monday. B.A.T . . . said it would contribute $145.6 million cash in return for an initial 52 percent stake. Former state monopoly Tekel, which dominates the Turkish cigarette market, will contribute $134.4 million in the form of its partly completed cigarette factory at Akhisar and working capital in return for a 48 percent stake in the group.
- Shares of Cie. Financiere Richemont AG have taken such a beating this past year that some analysts see a buying opportunity, even as skeptics remain unmoved. . . . The naysayers dwell on tobacco's troubles in the U.S. and Europe, and the rapidly disappearing market for luxury goods in financially troubled Asia.
- "It's Time to Quit Smoking" . . . takes aim at smoking among women. For a free copy, send a self-addressed, stamped business-size envelope to The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Resource Center/APO65/VS, P.O. Box 96920, Washington, DC 20090-6920.
- The opening scenes of "Matters of Life and Death," the fascinating new PBS documentary airing next Sunday, offer a nightmarish glimpse of the state of medical care less than 100 years ago. . . But the greatest impact on people's lives and well-being has come from advances in public health: the development of vaccines for polio and other childhood infections, the global eradication of smallpox, an understanding of the role of nutrition, clean water and sanitation in preventing disease, the widespread availability of antibiotics, and an ever-expanding awareness of how environmental factors -- tobacco, sunlight, asbestos, air pollution, chemical carcinogens -- contribute to chronic illness.
- His new law firm has a less cozy public image. Verner Liipfert has come under criticism for doing legal and lobbying work for the tobacco industry. Dole's role is primarily one of bringing in new clients and by all accounts, he has had much success.
- The embalmed corpse of Mao Zedong, still a hallowed icon of Chinese communism, was back on public display in Beijing Tuesday after a long absence. . . In the spirit of China's new commercialism, dozens of souvenir stalls at the exit offered tourists an endless variety of Mao kitsch, from Mao lapel pins to packets of Chairman Mao Memorial Hall cigarettes
- My husband is sexually excited by women smoking cigars. I'm not a smoker but have began to smoke two or three cigars a month to satisfy his fetish because I love him dearly. Am I doing my health any harm? A. First of all, congratulations for being willing to help your husband fulfill this fantasy of making love to a woman who smokes cigars. I am not a medical doctor, so I can't really advise you on the health risks of smoking two or three cigars a month. I don't believe that there is any harm, but I don't know that for certain.
- Women who smoke are at no greater risk of developing lung cancer than male smokers, according to a new study. The findings from Denmark published in the journal Epidemiology do not confirm previous reports that suggested a higher risk of the disease among female smokers. . . SOURCE: Epidemiology (1998;9:79-83)
- Lancaster County tobacco farmers still aren't able to cash in on their top crop.The Paradise Tobacco Auction was canceled again Monday morning as no buyers were prepared to bid on the million pounds of tobacco up for sale."There's no market anywhere," auction owner Eric Probst said. "No tobacco is leaving the county. It's a miserable situation."
- The company that owns all seven billboards in Manassas has agreed to stop accepting ads for cigarettes and other tobacco products, the Manassas city attorney announced last night. Several other localities, including Baltimore and Anne Arundel County, have passed ordinances banning billboard ads for cigarettes. But Manassas may be the first community in the country that has negotiated a voluntary agreement to eliminate the ads from all its billboards, anti-smoking activists and advertising industry officials said.
- State Sen. Ernesto Scorsone said yesterday that the platform for his congressional campaign will focus on education, protecting social programs like Medicare and helping tobacco farmers. Scorsone, a Democrat, announced several months ago that he would run for the 6th District congressional seat being vacated by U.S. Rep. Scotty Baesler, who is running for the U.S. Senate. . . Scorsone said he wants to make sure that all tobacco farmers, including tenants who lease their allotments, are protected in any tobacco settlement.
- A Senate panel reacted coolly on Monday to Gov. Lawton Chiles' plan to spend $57 million over the next six months to educate Florida youngsters about the dangers of smoking. . . But the wide-ranging initiative drew harsh scrutiny from a newly formed Senate oversight committee, with some members questioning whether a costly anti-tobacco campaign will work with kids.
- Legislative leaders have until week's end to block or allow the governor's plans for spending the first $57 million -- including $15 million for anti-smoking advertising.
- In a formal kickoff to enforcement of Minnesota's new law aimed at keeping children away from tobacco, 13 Twin Cities mayors publicly pledged Monday to "do their part so kids don't start" smoking. . . Cities across Minnesota have been gearing up since August to administer a 1997 law that requires licensing and yearly checks of every tobacco merchant in the state to see if they abide by a longstanding ban on sales to minors.
- There are other issues about which Hoosiers will be hearing plenty - if not quite as loudly as tax cuts and education. The legislature may consider: - Repealing the law that prohibits municipalities from regulating the sale or advertisement of tobacco products.
- A self-made man who started out selling motor bikes, he has become so rich he could afford, early in 1997, to donate a gift of one million pounds sterling ($1.6 million) to the British Labour party's election campaign. It was a donation that rebounded, but with little apparent ill effect, when he was accused of attempting to influence Prime Minister Tony Blair's position on tobacco sponsorship in Formula One, after the Labour party won the British general election on May 1.
- Sara Stratton, 17, is a senior at Dulles High School. Sara wrote to Yo!: "This essay is about my grandfather who died from lung cancer a few years ago. I never knew him without a cigarette in his hand. I would love the chance to express the heartache and pain that my family went through due to this drug. My goal is that just one person will read this and that it may save their life."
- The internal proposal, prepared by the corporate affairs department for the company's senior executives, also urged that Philip Morris undertake a "more responsible and progressive offense" aimed at protecting nonsmokers, and called on the company to drop out of the Tobacco Institute, the industry trade group, as part of a broader strategy to put controversies related to cigarettes behind it. The document, titled "Philip Morris Corporate Affairs Strategic Plan for 1993," addresses a variety of issues, related not only to cigarettes but also to the company's other products.
- In an internal company memo proposal for 1993, the world's largest cigarette maker considered a plan to "unilaterally begin work on legislation to modify, restrict or reform advertising of cigarettes to young people," The New York Times reported today. The memo predicted that if the company took a "more progressive position on tobacco," it could "move into a higher moral playing field, to neutralize the tobacco issue and to focus attention on other, more appealing products." The diversified company includes Kraft Foods Inc. and Miller Brewing Co., A copy of the memo was mailed anonymously to the Times, and Philip Morris spokesman Victor Han on Tuesday confirmed its authenticity, the newspaper said.
- AFTER A BRIEF respite from litigation this fall, the tobacco industry is girding for what will likely be the most difficult court battle it has ever faced, beginning Jan. 20 in a St. Paul, Minn., state court.
- In a potentially costly ruling against tobacco manufacturers, Ramsey County District Judge Kenneth Fitzpatrick has determined that the state can seek punitive damages, in addition to actual ones, when it tries to prove that industry misconduct contributed to decades of health problems.One anti-smoking activist said the punitive figure could reach $5 billion.
- A day after suggesting that he might not sign a bill banning outdoor tobacco advertising in most of the city, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani worked out an agreement with City Council Speaker Peter Vallone on Tuesday that keeps the legislation intact but extends to six months the time in which businesses must comply with the ban, aides to both men said. The mayor is expected to sign the bill in a few days, giving the city one of the most restrictive pieces of anti-tobacco legislation in the country.
- Now the City Council wants to go a step further to outlaw tobacco ads on billboards, storefronts and water towers, but the Constitution might stand in the way.
- Giuliani said that while he agreed with the general goals of the bill, which would outlaw tobacco advertising within 1,000 feet of schools and playgrounds, he had doubts about its constitutionality. "Some of the length and breadth of it, from a purely constitutional point of view, I have questions about," he said. "But the policy behind it is a very good one, and it's one I'm very supportive of." . . Council Speaker Peter Vallone said the mayor had discussed his concerns at a meeting with him on Friday. "I'm disappointed that he raised those objections," Vallone said. "We went through this pretty carefully." He added: "If the mayor vetoes it, we'll probably override it, because the vote was 45 to 3."
- Ad groups are planning to sue the city of New York over its proposed ban on outdoor tobacco advertising and marketing, the industry's first direct challenge of a wave of such actions around the country.The suit, in which ad groups will join with New York retailing organizations, could be filed as soon as this week
- esponding to continuing public fears and complaints about rowdiness on the city's subways, the MBTA yesterday announced a sharp increase in the number of officers patrolling the transit system. . . "It's disorder" that bothers MBTA riders, he said. "We're going to deal with people that scale those turnstiles ... who stand around smoking. We're going to deal with rowdy behavior."
- Atty. Gen. Tom Miller proposed a $58 million cigarette tax increase that would boost the tax to 56 cents a pack from the current 31 cents. Miller said the hike is part of an anti-tobacco campaign aimed at preventing youths from taking up smoking.
- A Florida judge Tuesday dismissed tobacco company arguments against using Florida law in a class-action suit on behalf of all sick smokers in Florida. The trial is tentatively scheduled to begin next month in Miami and is being pressed by Susan and Stanley Rosenblatt . . . Lawyers for Philip Morris Cos. Inc. and other cigarette makers had argued Florida's laws should not be used in the trial since the sick smokers very often lived elsewhere in the United States before moving to Florida. . . "Florida ... has the most intimate relationship with the instant case .... The states in which members of the plaintiff class were previously domiciled has little to do with the parties or the causes of the accident," Miami-Dade County Circuit Court Judge Alan Postman wrote in a ruling.
- The state faces an embarrassment of riches, forced to spend $200 million on unproven anti-tobacco programs in less than two years or risk losing the money.
- Gov. Lawton Chiles is champing at the bit to spend millions of dollars on an anti-smoking campaign targeting Florida's youth. But some lawmakers are uneasy, questioning what Florida will get for the $200 million it will spend to combat underage smoking.
- Rep. Bill Williams, D-Saxman, is proposing to roll back last year's tax increases on pipe tobacco and cigars. Williams said the goal of the original increases, which took effect in October, was to discourage children from taking up the smoking habit. Lawmakers raised state taxes to a dollar a pack on cigarettes, and also tripled the tax rate on cigars and pipe tobacco. But Williams said teens aren't likely to be purchasing anything as expensive as a good cigar. "Younger people do not smoke cigars and pipe tobacco," Williams said. "You can't just go in a grocery store and buy a good cigar and pipe tobacco."
- NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 6, 1998--Prompted by extensive market research, Air France announced today that all flights to or from the USA and Canada will become non-smoking, effective March 29, 1998.
- A new Brigham Young University policy requires non-BYU students who live in BYU-approved off-campus student housing to attend other Mormon educational programs such as LDS Institute classes, which are noncredit Mormon religion classes offered at public colleges. . . Landlords for such buildings must also enforce the school's honor code, prohibiting overnight guests of the opposite sex, tobacco, alcohol, coffee and tea and immodest dress. Normally this would be a blatant violation of the federal government's Fair Housing Act, but provisions within the federal Higher Education Act do allow schools to regulate such student behavior.
- Banking group Lloyds TSB Group Plc and cigarette maker Gallaher Group Plc were added to Dresdner Kleinwort Benson's "top ten" list of stocks expected to outperform in 1998, the investment bank said on Wednesday.
- Ferrari said on Wednesday they were not concerned at the decision of main rivals Williams' to switch from blue to red livery this season. . .The livery, which reflects the change of title sponsor from one cigarette brand to another, is in stark contrast to the mainly blue and white colours the team have run with for more than a decade.
- Philadelphia Eagles center Steve Everitt was cleared Tuesday of a drug paraphernalia possession charge lodged after police stopped him for speeding last year. . . Police said Everitt, 27, of Mount Laurel, was travelling 74 mph in a 50 mph zone when his 1996 Ford Bronco was stopped on Nov. 4. Police said his blood alcohol registered .16 and .17. The blood alcohol limit in New Jersey is .10. But Richard Saferstein, former chief forensic scientist for the New Jersey State Police, said the results were skewed because police failed to wait 20 minutes after Everitt removed a wad of chewing tobacco from his mouth before administering the test. Tobacco contains volatile chemicals that can alter the blood alcohol readings, Saferstein said.
- A federal judge rejected an effort by tobacco companies to move a lawsuit brought against them by New York state to federal court. The case will be heard instead in state Supreme Court and the trial date could be moved up, the state's attorney general said. Federal District Court Judge Lawrence McKenna ruled Thursday in New York City that "state law claims constitute the real body of this case."
- Alan Landers, the ruggedly handsome model who puffed on up to four cartons a day while posing for Winston ads in the 1960s, wants the tobacco industry held accountable for rotting his insides. . . "I'm endorsing Winston cigarettes not knowing I would be handing others a death sentence."
- The export law may be an obscure way to haul cigarette makers into court. But its use shows how determined U.S. prosecutors are in the Tobacco Wars.
- Just like each of the tobacco giants all have "safe", low-nicotine cigarettes in development in case they're needed, each of them is ready with a high-nicotine smoke, Shannon says; they would never let one of them have it to themselves. Except they all denied it to the government, and that's a criminal offense. "The more Justice gets from B&W, the more dirt it gets on the rest of them," Shannon says. "There are a lot of tobacco lawyers that just went on the clock today."
- The Justice Department filed what is known as a criminal information against DNAP. Such a filing virtually always means that the defendant will plead guilty. Indeed, department sources said that DNAP would plead guilty to one misdemeanor count of conspiring to illegally export tobacco seeds--a charge that carries a fine of $200,000 or twice the profit that DNAP made on the nicotine project.
- The story of the high-jolt Y-1 tobacco plant added a dash of cloak-and-dagger glamour to the Food and Drug Administration investigation of the tobacco industry in 1994, when officials alleged in congressional testimony that Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. had grown the plant to manipulate the levels of nicotine in its products.
- 10/18/95 Brown & Williamson Papers Disclose How Ammonia Spurs Nicotine Delivery Alix M. Freedman, The Wall Street Journal (pay registration)
- Leading U.S. tobacco companies enhance nicotine delivery to smokers by adding ammonia-based compounds to their cigarettes, according to two major internal reports by Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. The $45 billion tobacco industry vehemently denies that it seeks to keep smokers hooked by increasing nicotine levels in cigarettes. But the confidential reports obtained by this newspaper indicate that, while cigarette makers may not bolster nicotine content per se, most are adding chemicals that increase the potency of the nicotine a smoker actually inhales.
- The criminal charge, while a misdemeanor, demonstrated that the Justice Department is ready to draw blood in its 3-year-old investigation and could jumble efforts in Congress to settle huge lawsuits against the tobacco industry for smoking-related health care costs.
- a spokesman for BAT said: "We accept that we were party to a technical infringement of a law which was subsequently repealed. It looks like pretty desperate stuff by the department." The law in question was repealed in 1991.
- Brown & Williamson has not been charged with any violation, so it wouldbe inappropriate to discuss the Justice Department's action. But the following points should be considered: -- There was nothing secretive about the development of Y-1 tobacco. Infact, an official of the U.S. Department of Agriculture originally developedthe plant, which later became Y-1. . .
- A biotechnology company agreed Wednesday to plead guilty to conspiring to grow high-nicotine tobacco secretly in foreign countries so Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. could "control and manipulate the nicotine levels in its cigarettes." In the first charges arising from the Justice Department's 3-year-old tobacco investigation, a criminal information was filed in Washington against DNA Plant Technology Corp. of Oakland. The company agreed to cooperate with the investigation, and no date was set for its plea.
- The U.S. government Wednesday brought the first criminal charges in its tobacco industry investigation, alleging a California biotechnology firm conspired with a cigarette maker to develop high-nicotine tobacco. Justice Department officials said DNA Plant Technology Corp., which develops new plant varieties, has agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiring to violate the tobacco seed export law and to cooperate in the 3-year-old probe.
- One thing is clear. You can't trust the tobacco companies to regulate themselves. You can't believe their assurances that they don't manipulate nicotine levels in cigarettes for the express purpose of addicting people to them. As Congress and the president negotiate the terms of the settlement of the tobacco/health suit filed by the attorneys general of 40 states, they need to stand firm on the point that the nicotine in tobacco is a drug and is appropriately regulated by the FDA.
- A lawyer for a Boston-based group that has played a key role in lawsuits against tobacco companies over smoking-related health care costs told a judge Wednesday that tobacco giant Phillip Morris is using the court system to harass the organization.
- John Rumpler, who represents the Tobacco Control Resource Center at the Northeastern University School of Law, asked Judge Peter M. Lauriat to quash a sweeping subpoena Philip Morris has obtained in a Washington state court as part of ongoing litigation in that state. The center, through director Richard Daynard, has helped develop legal strategies that may force tobacco companies to repay the billions of dollars state governments have spent to care for ailing smokers. Rumpler told Lauriat that Philip Morris has demanded disclosure of "confidential information" from the center - including contacts the group has had with the media and with antismoking groups like the American Cancer Society. Philip Morris also wants information the center has shared with those organizations about smoking and its costs.
- Four workers' health care fundsrepresenting some 5,200 Tennesseeans -- workers, retirees and family members-- today filed a class action lawsuit against the eight major tobaccocompanies. The suit seeks to recover money spent treating workers fortobacco-related diseases.
- A study indicates the beleaguered tobacco industry has taken a new approach to all the negative public feelings about its product _ to present things as they aren't. In the report published today in the American Journal of Public Health, the authors say the industry has developed a strategy to secretly promote proposed laws that on the surface appear to be anti- tobacco but in reality are quite to the contrary.
- "The tobacco industry was nearly successful in tricking California voters into repealing their own tobacco control-laws, and in preventing enactment of the new statewide smoke-free bar law that just took effect on January 1," concludes Stanton A. Glantz, Ph.D., a professor of medicine at UCSF and senior author of a new case study of the California Uniform Tobacco Control Act, Proposition 188 on the 1994 statewide ballot.
- The former tobacco executive formally severed his contractual relationship with cigarette-maker Brown & Williamson, seeking not to renew his annual contract with the Louisville-based company in mid-December. "I have no ties at all now with the tobacco industry," Hager said. "They gave me a baseball bat, a Louisville slugger, as a going away present."
- Other initiatives: Fairfax and Arlington want to raise local 5-cent-a-pack cigarette taxes by as much as 15 cents a pack. Del. William C. Mims (R-Loudoun) wants a ban on cigarette vending machines.
- In a last-minute flip-flop, the board agreed yesterday to support legislation that would allow Loudoun to impose a tax on cigarettes and add the county to a list of jurisdictions that can restrict or prohibit parking on state-run secondary roads. The tobacco tax gained support after county staff members estimated it would generate nearly $500,000 a year in additional revenue for cash-strapped Loudoun.
- The black-owned Sarasota company says Florida's plan to contract with an advertising agency for a $200 million program designed to curb teen smoking is discriminatory because it requires the winning bidder to have yearly billings of $40 million. The requirement leaves smaller companies, which are more likely owned by blacks, in the lurch, according to court papers filed in West Palm Beach by Black Windows Advertising and Marketing Inc. that ask a judge to intevene in the bidding process. It may also violate laws requiring Florida to reach out to minority-run corporations, the complaint says.
- Mayor Brown is pushing a statewide ballot measure to raise the cigarette tax by 50 cents a pack to benefit programs for California's children. Brown said he would co-chair the California Children and Families Act of 1998, an effort headed by actor Rob Reiner to generate $700 million annually for early childhood development programs, parenting education and family support services and stop smoking assistance programs.
- CATCHING fire could have a far more serious meaning than making a string of birdies at the Victorian Open this week. . . Victoria Golf Club officials, who are hosting the Open, are believed to have asked members to refrain from smoking during their rounds for the past three weeks, given the dry summer.
- Nonetheless I like to read about cigars, and I have been thumbing through a slender new volume called "International Connoisseur's Guide to Cigars" by Jane Resnick. It is a nifty work.
- Tuesday, January 13: "Addiction: From Tobacco to Alcohol and Beyond" - A four-part series on the biochemical reactions behind addiction, its psychopharmacology, cravings, tolerance, withdrawal and recovery and a look at who is vulnerable.
- The National Academy of Sciences urged yesterday that the price of cigarettes be boosted by at least $2 a pack, calling it "the single most effective way" to keep children from smoking.
- "The single most direct and reliable method for reducing consumption is to increase the price of tobacco products, thus encouraging the cessation and reducing the level of initiation of tobacco use," the report said. The report, issued by the National Cancer Policy Board of the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council, repeated the conclusion of a 1994 Institute of Medicine report that recommended raising cigarette prices by a minimum of $2 per pack.
- A scaled-back plan for launching an anti-smoking campaign aimed at Florida youngsters was agreed upon late Thursday by legislative leaders and Gov. Lawton Chiles. Chiles had sought authority to spend $17.1 million immediately to initiate the program, but instead will be given the go-ahead for a $10.8 million plan.
- Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller on Wednesday proposed a $58 million cigarette-tax increase as part of an anti-tobacco package he said could cut youth smoking nearly 10 percent. "We see a real opportunity to do something about this issue because of the emerging consensus," Miller said. . . Miller said he wanted to boost the cigarette tax by 25 cents a pack, nearly doubling the levy, and use part of the money for an advertising campaign targeting youngsters.
- RJ Reynolds, one of the country's biggest tobacco companies, says it will financially support laws allowing smoking in Nevada's casinos. Some local politicians have already accepted campaign contributions from the tobacco industry.
- The tobacco industry has started contributing to legislators, in hopes of heading off any drive to ban smoking in Nevada casinos. Sen. Maurice Washington, R-Reno, received $1,000 from R.J. Reynolds, a major cigarette maker, and Sens. Jon Porter, R-Boulder City, and Randolph Townsend, R-Reno, each were given $500 from the Tobacco Institute.
- The federal Opposition's health spokesman, Mr Michael Lee, said the Government should force Rothmans to remove the kangaroo. "We risk Australia and kangaroo cigarettes becoming as closely associated as Hong Kong and chicken flu," Mr Lee said in a statement.
- The Formula One racing team Williams was accused Thursday of ignoring Australia's tobacco advertising laws after releasing its new logo featuring cigarette packaging and a kangaroo. . . Wooldridge condemned the $30 million sponsorship deal, but the Australian Medical Association, anti-smoking groups and opposition parties called on the minister to go further and close a loophole allowing tobacco sponsorship of motorsports.
- Anti-smoking groups have urged the Australian government to ban the Williams Formula One team from advertising a local cigarette brand on its cars in this year's Australian Grand Prix. The Rothmans company have struck a deal to use the Winfield brand logo and a picture of a kangaroo on Williams cars driven by world champion Jacques Villeneuve and Heinz-Harald Frentzen.
- Australian Medical Association president Dr Keith Woollard yesterday accused the tobacco industry of "thumbing their nose" at advertising regulations governing the industry and of exploiting Australia. . . "They are trying to gain an association with a national icon like the kangaroo and it is a bad message to send to the rest of the world."
- IN A MAJOR reprieve for ITC Ltd, the Customs Excise Gold (Control) Appellate Tribunal (Cegat) has fixed April 20, 1998 for the "hearing on merit" on the company's excise case. . . The tobacco giant had been charged by excise authorities for evasion of duty during the period March1983 and February 1987 amounting to Rs 803.78 crore apart from other penalties under the law. The excise department alleged that ITC in collusion with its retailers sold cigarettes at prices which were higher that those printed on the packages and evaded duty.
- Major tobacco companies, struck by hefty legal fees, unfavorable foreign currencies and a few restructuring charges, are expected to show a continued slowdown in profit growth in the fourth quarter. Weaker cigarette volume trends overseas also took their toll on earnings in the year-ending quarter.
- Henry H. Harrell, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Universal Corporation, confirmed today that the company continues to expect strong double digit growth for its current fiscal year ending June 30, 1998, and that second quarter results are expected to be consistent with that pattern of growth and generally in line with street expectations.
- DIMON Incorporated announced today that it expects its earnings for its second fiscal quarter ended December 31, 1997, to be less than the latest consensus estimate of $0.51 per share (fully-diluted) as reported by First Call.
- Ernie Wolfe sells coffins, but "I'm trying to take them out of the burial context, to get around the death thing," he says. . . While Andy Warhol was making meticulous facsimiles of Brillo boxes, the Ga people of coastal Ghana were beginning a tradition that has resulted in coffins that are dead ringers for Diet Coke cans or Marlboro cigarette boxes. . . Nii Anum's onion coffin is next to the school's McCormack Restaurant. What message does that send? How about his Marlboro cigarette-box coffin? "Marlboros represent significant status in Ghana," Tucker says. "But we are a smoke-free campus, and there was discussion about whether this was a suitable object here. I see this, though, as a bold, clear reminder of what smoking does to you."
- But a political sellout is taking place in Washington that, in a different way, is more scandalous than Brinkley's pratfall. I speak of the big-bucks seduction by Big Tobacco -- a/k/a Merchants of Death -- of three semi-legendary politicos: Ex-Sen. Howard Baker, ex-Gov. Ann Richards and ex-Senate Leader George Mitchell.
- The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has been quietly searching for a certain document - the original contract between Florida and its lawyers in the $11 billion tobacco settlement. Agents asked West Palm Beach attorney Bob Montgomery if he had it. Montgomery faxed back Friday that he did not. "I presume the governor has it," Montgomery wrote.
- Still unanswered: Which smoking cessation programs work best for youth? Should kids get nicotine patches to help quit smoking? How to make sure the anti-tobacco programs used are the most effective?
- Trustees for 24 union health and welfare funds based in Minnesota have filed a lawsuit seeking damages from tobacco companies for money the funds spent as a result of smoking-related illnesses and deaths. The suit, filed in Ramsey County District Court, is similar to those filed against tobacco companies by Minnesota
- Students in four of Schaumburg District 54's junior high schools face a double whammy if caught using tobacco. According to Schaumburg Police Officer John Rothecker, the 37 students cited for underage smoking last year were not only ticketed under the village ordinance, but also face mandatory suspension under district policy. Each citation carries a $50 fine. "There are school consequences, and there are police consequences," said Cassandra Williams, District 54's truant officer.
- A flurry of outcries against Brigham Young University's new housing policy spurred a sudden order by the administration to yank plans that would tighten regulations governing where students can live. . . Single students not living with a relative must live in BYU-approved housing, which must be segregated by sex, prohibit tobacco, drugs and alcohol on the premises and overnight guests of the opposite sex.
- Next time, I feel sure I shall answer back of my own accord. What were 20 small treats a day have become 20 acts of defiance. For a middle-class girl, who has never had a reason to rebel, this is worryingly exhilarating.Fags are fun.
- Some teen-agers call it a drag -- police in this city are cracking down on underage smoking. In the past three months, 18 youths have been sent before a judge, who fined them or ordered them to perform community service. About 40 other youths received warnings and notes sent home to their parents.
- BOOKER, the cash & carry group that paid £275m for Nurdin & Peacock in 1996, yesterday saw its shares fall almost 20pc as it blamed the timing of chancellor Gordon Brown's increase in tobacco duty for a profits warning
- 'Do you mind if I smoke?' he asks, producing a pack of herbal cigarettes. 'They smell like grass, but there's no nicotine in them. I recommend them.' Pacino was a 40-a-day man for more than 30 years. He quit in 1994 because it was ruining his voice but the habit of smoking remains, not quite conquered.
- While federal officials say Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. denied in 1994 that it had developed tobacco with high nicotine levels, an internal company memorandum shows that the cigarette maker had stockpiled 2 million pounds of such tobacco in 1990 and was planning to test it on smokers. . . At a 1990 meeting of the group, Pritchard told top BAT officials that it had "2 million pounds of Y-1 tobacco and would be consumer testing cigarettes with a low-tar nicotine ratio during the autumn," another document says. Later that year, Pritchard noted that tests involving products containing Y-1 were under way, another document shows.
- For DNA Plant, the trouble follows more than a decade of hopes raised and then dashed by sundry alliances in the agricultural processing and marketing field.
- The authorities in southern Brazil say they are investigating allegations that farmers are growing genetically-altered tobacco, which produces a higher nicotine content. .. The main tobacco company in the region Souza Cruz denies any knowledge of the findings.
- NEW anti-smoking laws for Europe under which tobacco companies would be forced to cut the level of tar in cigarettes and place limits on their nicotine content are being considered by Brussels.Buoyed by the recent agreement to ban tobacco advertising throughout the EU, Padraig Flynn, the Social Affairs Commissioner, wlll table the legislation before the British presidency concludes at the end of June, if he can find sufficient support.
- The Health Ministry is out to erase the word "tobacconist" from shop signs and is looking at the tobacconist listing in Telecom's Yellow Pages directory to see if it breaks smokefree laws. Ron Dunne, a smokefree officer with Crown Public Health, which polices the Smokefree Environments Act 1990, said every copy of the telephone book with the listing was illegal under the act. . . The act has forced some tobacconists to remove the word from their shop signs. Under the act, a person who publishes a tobacco product advertisement "without reasonable excuse" faces a maximum fine of $2000.
- Tobacco companies have long held a special spot in their hearts for women, courting them aggressively. Tactics include everything from marketing slim cigarettes with the now-famous slogan, "You've come a long way, baby" to underwriting women's political events.
- The argument that the rights of smokers are abridged by regulations and stiff taxes is easily assailed. Depending on which version of Exodus you read, it's the fifth or the sixth commandment: Thou Shalt Not Kill.
- Pursuant to Section 21D(a)(3)(A)(i) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, notice is hereby given that a class action lawsuit was filed on January 8, 1998, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Civil Action No. 98-0047, on behalf of all persons who purchased or otherwise acquired the common stock and warrants of Caribbean Cigar Company (Nasdaq:CIGR - news; "Caribbean Cigar" or the "Company") between August 14, 1997 and November 14, 1997, inclusive (the "Class Period").
- The research was led by Dr Karl Astell, a powerful SS officer and anti-Semite, at the Institute for Tobacco Hazard Research based at Jena University in what became East Germany and founded with a personal donation of 100,000 reichsmarks from Adolf Hitler. But despite its potential importance, the research was never released internationally and was finally consigned to the basement of the university in the last days of the Second World War. It was unearthed by Robert Proctor, professor of the history of science at Pennsylvania State University, as he was collecting material for his book, The Nazi War on Cancer, to be published later this year.
- There's a New Beetle now, and like the middle-aged former flower children and baby boomers who drove it, the Bug has aged, becoming more comfortable and corpulent and perhaps a bit more Angst-ridden. . . Even the cigarette lighter has disappeared, replaced by outlets for phones and laptop computers.
- Butts out: Most US diners don't want to eat smoke, according to a new survey by International Communications Research. The poll further shows that the desire for smoke-free restaurants and hotel facilities is strongest among those who have recently been to Europe or who are planning to travel there soon. Sixty-nine percent of those questioned preferred nonsmoking dining areas. Among travelers to Europe, the preference for smoke-free dining jumped to 82.6 percent.
- Before booking in England, take a look at "Eat, Drink & Sleep Smoke Free: The ASH Guide to Nearly 2,000 Hotels, Guesthouses, Restaurants and Pubs With Good Smoke Free Facilities" ($14.95). Copies are in stock at Travel Books & Language Center, 4437 Wisconsin Ave. NW, 202-237-1322. Elsewhere in Europe, plan to stay in chain hotel properties, many of which set aside smoke-free rooms. Check via the toll-free reservation numbers of Best Western, Hilton, Howard Johnson, Marriott, Sheraton and others. The Spanish-owned Sol Melia chain (1-800-336-3542), which operates Melia hotels throughout Spain, offers smoke-free rooms as do the Holiday Inn (1-800-465-4329) and the Castellana Inter-Continental (1-800-327-0200) in Madrid.
- Prof. W. Kip Viscusi of Harvard Law School calculates that the extra health-care costs of smokers are about 50 cents per pack of cigarettes. But smokers do not live as long as non-smokers and, thus, smokers create savings for taxpayers that usually aren't considered. Because smokers die earlier than non-smokers, taxpayers save expenditures that otherwise would be made for pensions as well as nursing home care and other costs related to conditions associated with old age. When those savings are computed (at a 3 percent discount rate), they more than offset the costs that smokers create.
- Now, if you think the multibillion-dollar beef industry can't find some scientists who will claim that BSE doesn't cause mad cow disease, you haven't been paying attention. (Understand that science cannot "prove" that smoking causes lung cancer. There is only a high correlation between smoking and lung cancer -- not "proof" in scientific terms.) In fact, one of the most troubling developments in the eternal problem of how to get accurate information in this world is the growth of "corporate science" -- research paid for by corporations and special interests that have a monetary stake in the outcome of the research.
- Norman Mayo, 61, of Bothell, Wash., sued the Dairy Farmers of Washington and Safeway Inc. [NYSE:SWY - news] in federal district court in May 1997, claiming that milk is "addictive." He alleged that his "particular taste" for milk was the cause of a mild stroke he suffered in 1994. But Judge Carolyn R. Dimmick isn't buying it. The judge dismissed Mayo's suit on Dec. 17, 1997. The court declined to impose a fine on Mayo for filing a "nuisance lawsuit" as it could have. . . Mayo said that his suit was inspired by the successful attack on the tobacco industry mounted by the federal government and some states
- A Long Island police officer has been charged with harassment for allegedly slapping a 15-year-old who didn't put out her cigarette quickly enough. According to the Nassau County district attorney, Chester Nakelski approached the teen who was standing outside and off the grounds of Schreiber High School in Port Washington and asked her to stop smoking.
- Accompanied by an entourage that included three aides and a private, armed security guard, Charlotte accountant Eugene Gay was in Fayetteville Friday drumming up support for his bid to win the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate seat held by Republican Lauch Faircloth. . . On tobacco, Gay said he would not accept PAC money from the tobacco lobby. He said he supported a one-time cash payment for tobacco farmers as part of the government's settlement withcigarette companies and an end to the federal tobacco price-support system.
- Seventy percent of Delaware's residents support raising the state's 24-cent-a-pack cigarette tax to 49 cents if the money is used for anti-smoking programs and education or health programs. The same amount said increasing the cigarette tax is the best way to provide affordable health insurance.
- But two proposals to take money out of the tobacco industry are on the table this year. "Children First" advocates will again be asking lawmakers to increase tobacco taxes to pour more money for kids' programs. . . And instead of taking Big Tobacco to court as most states have done, Attorney General Bill Pryor wants the Legislature to "assess" the industry $3.9 billion over the next 25 years.
- DeSoto County deputies were caught illegally selling cigarettes to inmates for up to $25 a pack, about 10 times the retail cost. Sheriff James Riley said two deputies have been fired and two have resigned. Smoking is banned in the jail.
- State senators from the St. Louis area who are in the last year of their terms are fattening their campaign chests, quarterly campaign finance reports show. . . Political action committees representing AT&T, local automobile dealers, candy and tobacco distributors, Ford Motor Co., several health care and insurance groups and housing contractors. Most of her contributors are individuals who live in or near Ladue. . . * Klarich - Political action committees representing AT&T, bankers, candy and tobacco distributors, defense attorneys, dentists and doctors.
- This year Rehbein placed fourth, besting only Rep. DuWayne Johnsrud, R-Eastman. Johnsrud was a noisy spitter, but only spit to 12 feet, 6-1/2 inches the first time, and 11 feet, 10-1/4 inches the second. "I've done all my spitting in Madison and I'm all spit-out," Johnsrud offered as explanation.
- A Fond du Lac Republican state representative and anti-smoking groups this week joined to call for action this year on a Senate-passed bill that would restrict youth access to tobacco products. State Rep. John Dobyns, the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association this week pushed for the bill, now awaiting action in the Assembly Small Business Committee.
- State Sen. Dorothy Rupert wasn't sure she wanted to introduce a bill banning smoking in cars when there are children present, but she finally decided the problem was too serious to ignore. "I've just been appalled at the things that I'm learning," the Boulder Democrat said at a Capitol news conference before introducing SB 98 on Friday afternoon.
- Rep. Mark Anderson, R-Mesa, has introduced legislation requiring landlords to set aside a percentage of their units for non-smokers. It also would put smokers and non-smokers on separate floors of multistory complexes and require, where possible, different ventilation systems for the two types of units.
- Reaction to ordinance ranges from bemusement to outrage in Sarajevo, where cigarettes are a cherished part of the culture, and nearly everyone lights up. . . The law also requires warning labels on cigarette packages and will remove advertising from television and radio. . . Already passed by the House of Representatives for the Muslim-Croat Federation, the law must undergo a final hearing at the House of Peoples, which legislates for the whole country. Its passage there is all but automatic.
- Mexican biotechnology company Empresas La Moderna SA (ELM) said Monday it has increased its stake in its seed producer unit Seminis Inc. to 92% from 62%. In a press release, La Moderna said it paid $284 million for the additional stake, which will enable it to 'consolidate its position in the agrobiotechnology industry, which currently is highly profitable.' Seminis Inc. is a fruit and vegetable seed producer based in California, with a global market share of 22% . . .
- Global Direct Marketing (GDM), responding to overwhelming demand for the Montecristi COHIBA Republica Dominicana, will continue to sell the cigar in the United States under a different label.
- Besides noting academic trends, the survey quizzes students on personal habits. Continuing a decade-long trend, the percentage of freshmen who smoke cigarettes continues to climb. More than 16% say they smoke frequently, nearly double the 1987 figure of 8.9%. Young women do more puffing than young men, 17.3% to 14.6%.
- Annual survey finds nation's students less interested in politics, classwork Smoking more. The percentage of freshman smokers, 16.1 percent, is at the highest level in 30 years, with women outsmoking men.
- The percentage of freshman smokers is at its highest level in 30 years, with 16 percent saying they smoke frequently. That compares with 9 percent a decade ago.
- Smoking among teenagers is on the rise across America and the trend is now hitting closer to home. West Virginia ranks number one in the nation for smoking among high school students and the number of teens using smokeless tobacco products is also on the rise.
- Affleck will then hook up with "200 Cigarettes," which follows various twentysomething revelers making their way to the same party on New Year's Eve 1981, in New York City's East Village. Noted casting director Risa Bramon Garcia will direct from a script by Shana Larsen.
- Will child-care advocates become more inclined to accept a weak tobacco bill that they might otherwise reject? Do the states begin to object, as at least one attorney general already has, that the federal government is siphoning off their share? If the spoils begin to dictate the outcome of this bill, the cigarette companies win. The logic becomes bizarre. Should smoking be encouraged for the sake of subsidizing an essentially unrelated social program? "Buy another carton of cigarettes to show your support for child care."
- But sin taxes are a concerted effort by state and local governments to raise revenue under the guise of enforcing a moral code of conduct without in fact doing so.
- Flight attendant Julie Duncan worked 25 years for Northwest Airlines--the smoky haze aboard the flights she's worked has taken its toll on her health and the health of other flight crews. Despite intense and consistent pressure from both employees and passengers to end smoking aboard flights -- not to mention acknowledged health risks -- Northwest management has steadfastly refused to ban smoking on all flights.
- As Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Colo., observed, "Some of these lawyers will become instant billionaires." Unfortunately for Mark Zedell [sic! This misnaming of Edell started with a Copley piece in December], he won't be one of them. He got out of tobacco litigation five years too soon. But still, the lawyer ought to be recognized for the important role he played in bringing about the biggest liability litigation in American history.
- The World Health Organization urged people Monday to eat fresh fruits and vegetables to prevent cancer, rather than fall back on beta carotene pills. The pills may even increase the risk of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease for smokers, said the U.N. agency, which recommended against promotion of the pills as a cancer-prevention remedy. . . He said U.S. and Finnish studies have indicated that men who smoke heavily may have an 18-20 percent increased risk of lung cancer or death from cardiovascular disease if they also take beta carotene supplements.
- San Francisco Mayor Wille Brown, once labeled tobacco's biggest ally, teamed up with Hollywood director Rob Reiner yesterday to push a new initiative that would help babies by taxing smokers 50 cents a pack.
- The California Children and Families First initiative directly asks voters to support an additional fifty cents a pack tax on cigarettes as a way to generate $700 million a year -- every year -- for programs that target children prenatally to age 5 to prepare them to be healthy, emotionally well-developed and ready for school. . . There will also be hundreds of millions of new dollars available for programs to help pregnant women and parents of young children to quit smoking. Research has proven that smoking by pregnant women and parents of young children is a leading cause of death and disease among infants.
- You probably saw Pamila Laffin last year on the television commercials. Her face bloated by medication and looking far older than her 26 years, she talked about how she developed asthma and emphysema due to smoking . . In March of 1997, Michele Wronski had seen Laffin's commercial and invited her to address schoolchildren from Holden, Rutland and Sterling. . . "Because I smoked and couldn't quit, I now have a brand new lifestyle," she told the children. "I lost my youth, I lost the way I look, and I lost my career plans ...
- "It's a good market but you've got to have good quality tobacco if you want to make money," said Rick Quire, an employee at Big Shelby Tobacco Warehouse in Shelbyville. "The last couple of years it didn't matter how you stripped it, everything brought $1.92 no matter what it was."
- The Volunteer Firefighters Association, which fears a Monongalia County anti-smoking ordinance would hurt bingo and other fund-raisers, are the latest to join a lawsuit that aims to snuff out the smoking ban before it takes effect next month.
- Jeb Bush's running mate, Secretary of State Sandra Mortham, withdrew today from his gubernatorial ticket after weeks of criticism over spending in her office. . . However, the selection announced in November was controversial from the start. First came reports that her office solicited a $60,000 donation from tobacco giant Philip Morris Cos. for Florida History Associates, a charity that supports the Museum of Florida History. The money, meant to aid the museum, was instead used as an expense account for her office.
- Teen-agers in this city on the Texas border that has been under a mercury scare for the last several weeks apparently dipped cigarettes in the shiny, potentially poisonous metal and smoked it, officials said Monday. Dave Hall, the city's emergency management coordinator, said a teen admitted Monday he dipped a cigarette in mercury and smoked it. The youth got sick and was under a doctor's care Monday.
- Teen-agers who stole about 28 pounds of mercury from the city's abandoned neon sign plant dipped cigarettes in the shiny, poisonous liquid and smoked them. At least one teen was under a doctor's care after admitting he inhaled a mercury-laced cigarette, said Dave Hall, Texarkana's emergency management coordinator. "We checked with the state Health Department, and that's the absolute worse thing you can do with mercury -- smoke it and be exposed to the vapors," Hall said.
- One-third of young women smoke, with 15 the average age of picking up the habit . . The findings come from a survey of about 14,600 women aged between 18 and 23 from across Australia as part of the Federally-funded Women's Health Australia project. . . Ms Wendy Brown, project manager and University of Newcastle gender and health senior lecturer, released the findings yesterday at the conference of the Australian Council for Health, Physical Education and Recreation. . . "It may seem like a party if all these women are drinking every week and smoking and not many of them doing much exercise, but with the high level of stress it doesn't seem to be too much of a party," she said.
- A RISE in smoking by young men, to nearly 40 per cent, has been disclosed by a Department of Health survey, published yesterday. The 1996 Health Survey for England shows a six per cent rise in smoking in men aged 16 to 34 since 1993, from 33 per cent to 39. Women smokers increased from just over 33 per cent to just under 35. . . " A spokesman for the pressure group ASH said: "These figures are worrying. We are aware of a new phenomenom called 'later starters', young men aged 18 to 24 who begin smoking then, possibly when they leave home for university."
- Under stricter laws that took effect Jan. 1, at least half of all seats in restaurants and bars must be smoke-free. However, even non-smokers seem to prefer sitting with friends who do smoke, leaving smoke-free sections almost empty.
- Mainland officials praise Philip Morris and BAT for their contribution to developing sport, saying that other firms, domestic or foreign, were not ready to spend so much. National Sports Commission vice-chairman Zhang Faqiang said: "We hope Marlboro can sponsor [the soccer league] this year and next. "Our opinion is that the sponsorship of sport offsets the negative impact of their products on people's health."
- Schweitzer-Mauduit International Inc. has reached agreement to acquire Ingefico S.A. and its pulp and specialty paper manufacturing subsidiaries, Groupe SAPAM and Papeteries de la Moulasse, located in St. Girons in the southwestern part of France.
- Standard Commercial Corporation today announced that it has acquired in trust the remaining 25.1% interest in Meridional de Tabacos Ltda from the family previously holding a minority stake. Standard now has a 100% stake in Meridional, the fourth largest leaf dealer in Brazil, and an agreement has been reached with the principal selling shareholder to continue as a part of the management team.
- The company designs, manufactures and markets air-purifying stalls for smokers. The stalls are enclosed on three sides by transparent, acrylic walls and use a cleansing system to treat the smokey air for recirculation, similar to the systems used in spacecraft. It even lifts the cigarette odor from a smoker's clothing, company officials say. Called SmokeBooths, the units can be installed in workplaces, restaurants or office buildings as an alternative to a specially designated smoking room. Purchase price: $4,000 to $8,000.
- Men Are From Mars & Women Are From Venus, a new magazine based on the nonfiction bestseller by John Gray about differences between men and women, will hit newsstands this week, the NewsAmerica Publishing Group said Monday. . . The preview carries ads for champagne, cigarettes, hair spray, fashion and films.
- Disney recently told writer-director Michael Mann to go back to the drawing boards to lower the $75-million budget of his untitled drama about the tobacco industry by about $15 million if he wanted financing from the studio.
- Appellate judges overturn a ruling that found boy financially responsible after a cigarette he gave to an underage friend started a blaze.
- Please help spread the word to teenage girls about the dangers of smoking. Our daughters may not understand that smoking not only increases their risk of developing lung and cervical cancer but can also affect their ability to have children by increasing their risk for problems such as infertility. . . I urge all women who smoke to talk with their doctors and develop a stop-smoking plan that works for them. Or they can get a free copy of "It's Time to Quit Smoking"
- The 1996 Carter cigarette product liability trial verdict should be overturned, Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation today told Florida's First District Court of Appeal. "The trial was riddled with numerous errors by the trial judge, and the jury was allowed to hear inadmissible, improper and purely speculative evidence," said Tom Bezanson, attorney for Brown & Williamson on appeal. "We believe the Carter verdict should be overturned."
- Corporations may not buy the silence of whistleblowers and prevent them from giving damaging testimony against the company in other states, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday. The 9-0 decision strips automakers, tobacco companies and other businesses of what once seemed a promising means for them to keep damaging internal information from jurors. If a nondisclosure agreement approved by a judge in one state could be used to block a whistleblower's testimony in another state, embattled companies could limit the impact of disgruntled former employees.
- In a ruling likely to unleash more whistle-blowers on corporate America, the Supreme Court freed a former General Motors Corp. engineer to testify against the auto maker in product-liability cases. Tuesday's decision could significantly shift the balance of power between plaintiffs and defendants in corporate litigation, because it hampers companies' ability to muzzle the testimony of disgruntled former employees.
- A federal appeals court has unanimously upheld an Indiana high school's policy that requires students involved in extracurricular activities to submit to random drug testing. . . Some would say this is an assault on Fourth Amendment rights, and what we say ... is outside the school is different than inside the school," said Rodney Taylor, the lawyer for Rushville Consolidated High School who argued the case in front of 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. Under the policy, students in extracurricular activities must consent to random testing for drugs, alcohol or tobacco. Students also must agree to the testing if they wish to drive to and from school.
- New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani Wednesday promised the City Council Speaker he would sign a bill banning cigarette advertising on billboards, store windows and other locations within 1,000 feet of schools. The measure, drafted by the City Council under Speaker Peter Vallone, a Queens Democrat, initially was opposed by the Republican mayor, who feared the 1,000-foot limit was too long and thus might prove unconstitutional. However, he explained Vallone's lawyers convinced him otherwise. "So later today I will be pleased to sign this bill."
- Philip Morris USA will stop making cigarettes at its Stockton Street factory within two years, displacing about 800 workers at its second-largest Richmond plant and rekindling concerns about the company's local presence. The brunt of the action will be felt by 600 members of the tobacco workers' union at Stockton Street since some younger employees may not be able to find other work at Philip Morris, sources said.
- Three members of a tobacco ring -- including one man previously convicted of helping the Montana Freemen -- were sentenced Tuesday for their roles in the fraud operation. Prosecutors said the scheme involved paying people, frequently migrant workers, to apply for a USDA tobacco dealer card. The ring then would use the dealer cards to record false sales and purchases of surplus tobacco in North Carolina, Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia. . . Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Swaim then called the operation "the most successful tobacco fraud operation in the history of tobacco." He said the ring took in a minimum of $28 million in fraudulent proceeds.
- With the state awash in money his final year in office, Gov. Lawton Chiles is sending the Legislature a $45.1 billion budget filled with programs for children -- including health care, day care and a campaign against smoking -- yet virtually free of new taxes. The budget proposal unveiled Wednesday bears the stamp of Chiles' battle with tobacco makers, a departing trophy for a governor who will retire at the end of this year after four decades of public service. "This budget clearly puts kids first. That's where they belong -- at the top of the state's agenda," Chiles said Wednesday. "We always said the fight with Big Tobacco was about protecting our children's health, so that's where we've put the dollars."
- Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles unveiled a $45.1 billion fiscal 1998 budget Wednesday that includes no new taxes and a 6.5% spending increase funded largely from an $11.3 billion tobacco settlement reached last year. Chiles reiterated his personal commitment to improve children's health, education and safety, where a large portion of the budget - and all of the tobacco money - will be spent.
- Gov. Lawton Chiles will recommend a more than $44 billion no-new-taxes budget today that focuses on improving children's health and safety and strengthening education, his office says. Florida's unprecedented $11 billion tobacco settlement and strong revenue projections will let Chiles propose the nearly 5 percent increase in spending without new taxes and with "very minor fee increases," . .
- In the final budget proposal of his political career, Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles will recommend today that Florida's windfall of tobacco money be used for major increases in children's health and substance-abuse programs.
- As a landmark lawsuit against the tobacco industry prepares to go to trial on January 20 in Ramsey County, the first curriculum in the country to take a hard look at the power of the media to encourage children to smoke or use other tobacco products was introduced today by the National Institute on Media and the Family at St. Anthony Park Elementary School in St. Paul. . . The ground-breaking curriculum, "Smoke and Mirrors: Media Literacy & Tobacco" is designed for school children in grades 5-8, the peak time for beginning to use tobacco.
- A proposal by the government's drug czar to ban smoking in the workplace met with tough opposition Wednesday -- including resistance by Germany's health minister. . . Anti-drug chief Eduard Lintner urged parliament's health committee, which is considering ways of protecting the rights of nonsmokers, to approve a workplace ban Wednesday. But key members in Chancellor Helmut Kohl's center-right coalition oppose the idea.
- Alcohol kills 35,000 a year but tobacco's UK toll now reaches 120,000. Yet there are two vital differences between the substances: unlike tobacco, alcohol only kills when misused; and even more important, used in moderation alcohol can prolong life rather than shorten it. We salute the EU for its tobacco advertising ban. Cigarettes have no benefits.
- 01/14/98 E.U. Denies Report It May Ban Alcohol Sports Sponsorship AP/Dow Jones (pay registration)
- A spokeswoman for the European Union Commission vigorously denied a report Wednesday that the E.U. could impose a ban on alcohol company sponsorship of sporting events. Barbara Nolan, spokeswoman for Social Affairs Commissioner Padraig Flynn, said the report in Wednesday's European edition of The Guardian has 'absolutely no foundation.'
- Austria Tabakwerke AG (R.ATW) is poised to launch its 'Memphis Blue' label in both the Japanese and Chinese markets, the news agency VWD reported Wednesday. 'We want to begin in both markets early in the year,' the agency quoted Tabak Chairman Heinz Schiendl as saying. The Memphis group of brands is the company's second largest after 'Milde Sorte,' with 27.8% of the Austrian market.
- Caribbean Cigar Company (Nasdaq: CIGR) (the "Company") today corrected recent industry press reports that had predicted the imminent collapse of the Company. "We are open for business today, and we intend to stay open for business," declared Company president Kevin Doyle.
- The Consumer Price Index rose 1.7 percent in 1997, helped by falling
costs for energy, fruit and meat. . . Tobacco bucked the trend, rising 7.2 percent.
- RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp.'s Winston cigarettes had sales gains for at least four consecutive months, a turnaround for a brand analysts once said had a terminal case of bad marketing. . . "They took a nice niche strategy and applied it in a larger sense," said Don Stuart, a marketing consultant with Cannondale Associates in Wilton, Conn. "It stands for something. It stands away from the crowd."
- Latino eighth-grade girls are more likely to smoke than any other group of junior high school students, breaking traditional trends that Latinos are the least likely racial/ethnic group to smoke. Phillip Morris Co. Inc., the largest tobacco company in the nation, has solid working relationships with virtually every major Latino advocacy group. Univision, the U.S.-based Spanish-language television network, is a major force among Hispanics. Its president and chief executive officer, Henry Cisneros, is under indictment for allegedly lying to the FBI and the U.S. Senate about how much he paid his mistress. Put those facts together and that is why some are crying foul over an unpublicized, unprecedented gathering of Latino politicians, activists and artists held recently in a posh Scottsdale, Ariz., hotel. The event was sponsored by Univision, Phillip Morris and the National Council of La Raza, the nation's largest Latino advocacy group. The event was called "Encuentro Dos Mil" . . .
- In its upcoming February issue, American Demographics magazine will feature a special report examining how often Americans have sex and how wealth, age, gender, religion, education, musical tastes, political affiliations and even TV-watching habits relate to our sex lives. . . -- The more TV people watch, the more frequent their sexual encounters
- The best-educated Americans are having sex the least.
- People who drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes have sex twice as much as the average.
- The more sex a person has, the more likely he or she is to report having a happy life and a happy marriage.
- Infomercial guru Kevin Trudeau has settled a Federal Trade Commission complaint that his pitches for six products--including purported cures for baldness and addictions--contained false and misleading claims, the FTC said Tuesday. Trudeau, who admitted no wrongdoing, agreed to pay $500,000 to customers and promised to refrain from future false claims. . . * An "Addiction Breaking System," promoted by Roger Callahan. The agency challenged his claim that the system--a series of gestures such as tapping the face and rolling the eyes--could end addictions to tobacco, alcohol and drugs.
- "To reach people you have to reach them in a wide variety of publications and advertising mediums," said Mark Smith, a spokesman for cigarette maker Brown & Williamson, which advertises its Lucky Strike brand in the gay press. The company's biggest competitor, Philip Morris, also pitches its top-selling Marlboro brand, as well as Benson & Hedges and Parliament, in the gay press.
- British cigarette makers Gallaher Group Plc and Imperial Tobacco Group Plc said on Wednesday the French government had agreed to price rises on their cigarette brands with effect from January 5.
OPINION
- 01/13/98 EDITORIAL: Hooked on Tobacco Sponsorships The New York Times
- The temptation to buy support from every special interest by spreading settlement money around looms large. The danger is that the flow of money will swamp principled argument that the settlement's regulatory tools are too weak to justify shielding the tobacco industry from future litigation.
- If you're still not convinced local governments should be free to enact tobacco-use ordinances stricter than state laws and regulations, here are some disheartening statistics from recent surveys. . . The state's recent efforts to check teen smoking are welcomed, but clearly there's room for more. Prohibiting local governments from taking steps is thick-headed of Frankfort.
- But the linchpin is the cigarette tax. In September, at the urging primarily of Senator Kennedy, President Clinton agreed to make such a levy a condition of his support for a congressionally approved deal with the tobacco companies, primarily to put real teeth in an effort to greatly reduce smoking by young people, but also to provide money for other children and health-related efforts. Now Clinton has signaled a specific use he supports of some of that money. The result is to hold the president's feet to two fires, since without a tax it becomes far more difficult to finance a comprehensive child-care policy responsibly.
- Mr. Sioeng's main business is tobacco, his initial connection with China. He has the world-wide rights to China's Red Pagoda Mountain cigarettes, which his Singapore company, World Wide Golden Leaf, produces with tobacco giant BAT.
- The Association of National Advertisers and other industry groups on Wednesday said they filed suit to challenge New York City's new tobacco advertising ban. Mayor Rudolph Guiliani said he would sign the City Council measure banning cigarette advertising on billboards, store windows and other locations within 1,000 feet of schools. Dan Jaffe, executive vice president of the Association of National Advertisers, said in a news release that the law, "would restrict and criminalize tobacco advertising in over 97 percent of Manhattan, 93 percent of the Bronx, 92 percent of Brooklyn and similarly large regions of Queens and Staten Island."
- Less than three months after winning the state delegate race, William C. Mims (R) is running again for office, this time in a special election Tuesday for the vacant 33rd District seat in the state Senate. . . Last year, Mims introduced 20 bills, 14 of which were approved by the General Assembly. The successful bills include legislation that . . increased the penalty for speeding through school zones while school-crossing lights are flashing, doubling fines for retailers who sell tobacco to minors and extending the prepaid college tuition program to graduate schools. . . Mims said he would introduce legislation banning cigarette vending machines and using state lottery proceeds to fund local school construction and renovations.
- Now it's a crime in Texas for people under 18 to use tobacco, or even just to have it. The law took effect Jan. 1 after a state survey showed that youngsters who tried to buy tobacco succeeded 56 percent of the time. Under the new law, a smoking teen or pre-teen can be fined up to $250. Those who have a driver's license can have it taken away in some cases.
- In a pilot program at St. Anthony Park Elementary School in St. Paul introduced Wednesday, David Walsh, president of the National Institute on Media and the Family, asked Bob Martinson's sixth-graders: "How many of you think it makes sense to smoke?" No hands went up. "How many think it's stupid?" All hands. "How can the tobacco companies trick you into doing it?" Hands shot up. The kids were eager to show off what they've been learning in the program: "They make you think it's cool" . . .
- More than 3 hundred students form across the state attended a day long youth jam session on tobacco. Using medical slides doctors presented the effects of smoking and smokeless tobacco on mouth, lungs and body. They were shown the chemicals tobacco products contain. The attorney general's office is developing a 62 million dollar pilot program aimed at changing kid's attitudes about smoking.
- U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein is moving ahead with a $1.2 billion ballot measure to improve California's public schools. She initially disclosed the proposal last month, then made a formal announcement today with her co-sponsor, Mayor Richard Riordan, in Los Angeles. If it qualifies for the ballot, voters will be asked to approve a $1- per-pack annual tobacco tax increase to finance the new spending for a longer school year, mandatory student testing, class size reductions and other reforms.
- Profits for China's state-run tobacco industry, the world's biggest cigarette producer, rose 8.4% last year to 90 billion yuan (CNY) ($1=8.2786 yuan) despite lower sales, an official report said Friday. The industry produced 1.6 trillion cigarettes, down 1% from 1996, the China Daily newspaper said. That is about three times the total output of the entire U.S. cigarette industry - the world's second-largest. The report blamed the drop in sales on smuggling and health concerns.
- In addition, some monopolies, subsidies and tariffs that the IMF believes have distorted prices and hurt Indonesia's export competitiveness also face elimination. . . The nation's controversial clove monopoly, controlled by Mr. Suharto's youngest son, Hutomo Mandala Putra, or Tommy Suharto, and long a symbol of the first family's preferential treatment, is to be ended, according to the preliminary IMF pact. Cloves are an essential ingredient in millions of perfumed kretek smoked by Indonesians daily.
- Tommy has other troubles too -- the end of his monopoly on the multimillion dollar clove trade. Cloves are an essential ingredient in Indonesia's popular perfumed cigarettes. . . Axing the clove monopoly, however, will help Suharto's eldest son, Sigit Hardjojudanto, and his half-brother, Probosutedjo, who are business partners of one of Indonesia's largest clove companies.F
- The government also . . . pledged to deregulate and privatise its economy, dismantling the Clove Marketing Board owned by one of Suharto's sons, removing formal and informal investment barriers and dissolving restrictive marketing arrangements. "The removal of the clove monopoly means that clove prices will eventually decline from current levels. This will benefit the clove cigarette companies," Partono said. He said fewer investment barriers could allow retail players like PT Matahari Putra Prima (MPPA.JK), PT Ramayana Lestari (RALS.JK) and PT Hero Supermarket (HERO.JK) more flexibility in expanding their stores.
- President Suharto today signed a reform package aimed at boosting Indonesia's troubled economy, the head of the International Monetary Fund said. . . Bloomberg News reported that an IMF official, who asked not to be identified, said Suharto is also likely to agree to the dissolution of the Clove Marketing Buffer Stock Agency, which has a monopoly over the multibillion-dollar clove trade and is controlled by Hutomo Mandala Putra, the youngest son of Suharto. Two of the 10 largest publicly traded companies on the Jakarta Stock Exchange, PT Gudang Garam and PT Hanjaya Mandala Sampoerna, are clove cigarette makers, and they would benefit from cheaper clove prices if the monopoly ends.
- About seven out of every 10 cigarettes smoked in India come from the stable of ITC. In a country that shows strong growth potential, and few signs of imposing restrictions on lighting up in public, that makes the stock a safe bet, analysts say. That isn't all. While most Indian blue chips are grappling with poor demand and a slower rise in earnings, ITC expects to sustain a strong profit growth on top of expanding market share. The country's largest cigarette maker also is stripping away loss-making units and focusing on tobacco and hotels as core businesses.
The CIGAR Caper Rich, in-depth series by the Baltimore Sun
- 01/11/98 The Shaping of an Illusion How the cigar industry manipulated the media, infiltrated Hollywood and escaped the government's watchful eye despite the health consequences.
- 01/12/98 Cigar Chomping Hollywood Heroes The industry pays well-connected brokers to put their product into the
hands of the hottest actors.
- "Oh damn, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait, wait, we got to find some cigars," exclaims actor Will Smith in "Independence Day." If you were among the more than 60 million people who watched the movie -- one of the most financially successful ever made -- you witnessed a persuasive promotion for cigars. Operating behind the scenes, cigar manufacturers paid Hollywood brokers to feature their product in the movie -- a type of stealth marketing that Congress thought it had stamped out.
- 01/13/98 Dangerous Product Gives Feds the Slip Cigars may be fashionable, but their smoke is packed with toxins. Says one expert, "This is what kills you in a house fire."
- 01/13/98 Danger or Delight: Smokers Offer Two Views of Habit Despite cancer, Hank Staab says, "I won't throw the cigars away. One day I might go back to smoking them."
- Proof that the cigar fad has reached the saturation point: when crime suspects are getting in on the action. That's what apparently happened with Serod Stanley, 22, whom police nicknamed the "cigar robber." Stanley was arrested on Monday on armed robbery charges in almost 20 convenience-store holdups in the past four months. Police say Stanley would ask clerks for a pack of Black & Mild cigars just before sticking them up and demanding the register money.
- Eight weeks ago, in honor of the Great American Smokeout, Real Women said "No" to smoking. Four, of them, in fact. They volunteered to quit, and we agreed to monitor their progress. One started the New Year smoke-free -- after a particularly bad asthma attack sent her to the hospital. Two dramatically cut down the number of cigarettes they smoke each day, and both are pleased with their progress. One dropped out.
- Northwest Airlines was accused in a lawsuit yesterday of trading the health of its flight attendants for profits by allowing smoking on lucrative Asian flights. The suit, believed to be the first of its kind over the issue of secondhand smoke, asks that it be certified as a class action to include more than 4,000 past and present flight attendants of the Minnesota-based carrier. Northwest, which flies in and out of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, is the only U.S. carrier to allow smoking on some international flights.
- A British company asked the Oklahoma Supreme Court on Thursday to overturn what Attorney General Drew Edmondson previously called the state's first major victory in its multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the tobacco industry. BAT Industries PLC asked the Supreme Court to accept original jurisdiction and issue a writ of prohibition against District Judge Tom Lucas of Norman. Lucas recently denied the British company's effort to have the state's lawsuit dismissed because of a lack of jurisdiction.
- Appellate judges on Friday ruled that Palm Beach County Circuit Court Judge Harold Cohen should not be forced to step down from Florida's litigation against the tobacco industry, the governor's office reported. The ruling clears the way for the state to petition Cohen next week to release part of the money won through an $11.3 billion settlement with the nation's cigarette makers.
- An appeals court on Friday refused to remove the judge supervising Florida's $11 billion tobacco settlement, clearing the way for the state to ask for the release of $750 million already in escrow.
- U.S. District Court Judge Alan Gold granted a motion for remand from West Palm Beach law firm Montgomery and Larmoyeux, saying the case would not be removed from state court and instead be heard in Palm Beach County. "By this ruling, the court is not stating that the plaintiff has a strong chance of succeeding on the merits," Gold said in a ruling signed Wednesday and distributed Friday. "It finds merely that plaintiff's argument is not baseless or frivolous."
- U.S. District Court Judge Alan Gold on Wednesday remanded Montgomery's lawsuit to Palm Beach County Circuit Court, where Montgomery filed it. In a 10-page ruling, Gold said the lawsuit could move forward.
- Florida's next big tobacco trial, a statewide smokers' class-action suit that was scheduled for Feb. 9 in Miami, has been postponed. On Thursday, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Alan Postman heard Robert Heim, lead counsel for Philip Morris, argue that Postman should decertify the class, effectively gutting the case. . . Heim said the class, an estimated 500,000 smokers, is too big for the court system to handle. With all 22 of Miami-Dade County's circuit judges working full time, Heim said, "we could get it done in 60 years." Postman seemed to agree, saying the case "may be unmanageable." But the judge ruled against Heim, giving no reason.
- The judge overseeing a class-action lawsuit on behalf of sick Florida smokers wants an appeals court to take up once again the question of squashing the massive case, attorneys said Friday. The 3rd District Court of Appeals has already ruled that the case brought by husband-and-wife lawyers Stanley and Susan Rosenblatt should go ahead, but the trial judge said he wanted guidance on the complicated Engle case.
- Internal memos from the nation's No. 2 tobacco producer will boost Arizona's chances of winning hundreds of millions of dollars from the industry, Attorney General Grant Woods said yesterday. Woods said the documents prepared by R.J. Reynolds "show without question they were engaged in an active effort. For decades they were targeting the teen-agers of our state to smoke."
- The AMA federal president, Dr Keith Woollard, said the thickening of the artery walls among non-smokers exposed to passive smoking was significant. "We always thought that because the actual quantity of smoke inhaled by someone in a room was much smaller than a smoker, that there would be a a linear relationship ... but there is [evidence] these low levels of inhalation of cigarette smoke are, proportionally, more dangerous than high levels," he said.
- The new research is expected to have a powerful effect on policy debates and future tobacco litigation because it is also the first major study to show a direct biological link between secondhand smoke and artery damage. This result is expected to spur efforts to ban smoking in all public places, and may ignite a whole new wave of liability lawsuits from people who were exposed to secondhand smoke through no choice of their own.
- Sen. Floyd Vrtiska of Table Rock introduced legislation calling for a 5-cent increase in the cigarette tax to pay for renovations at Peru State College and to provide more money for cancer research in Nebraska. The increase would put state taxes on cigarettes at 39 cents per pack. (LB 1195)
- Gilbert's continuing push to keep damaging store products out of young hands will surface at Tuesday's Town Council meeting. A proposed law set for discussion would require merchants to buy an annual tobacco sales license and require photo identification from all buyers younger than 26. Another suggested crackdown would require stores to keep tobacco products out of reach of customers. If members agree, the crackdown faces a future council vote.
- In a move that could send teachers to the curb for a cigarette, the Tempe Union High School District will ban smoking on all district property. Following the lead of the Tempe Elementary, Kyrene and Gilbert school districts, smoking at Tempe's high schools and district office will no longer be allowed, even outside school buildings. Sneaking a drag will even be a no-no for parents at football games and patrons at district-sponsored carwashes.
- The last bastion for cigarette machines in San Francisco was stubbed out yesterday. A Superior Court judge said the city could resume ordering bars to remove tobacco-selling appliances -- or face a $100 fine per day. "They are banned now, within the city limits," said Deputy City Attorney Owen Clements.
- Even with a new state law that prevents smoking in bars, an East Bay vending machine company is suing The City over a year-old citywide ban on cigarette vending machines in bars. Attorneys for TD Rowe of Oakland were expected to ask San Francisco Superior Court Judge Raymond Williamson on Friday for a preliminary injunction preventing The City from enforcing the ban.
- For the first time, nicotine levels in cigarettes are being made available on the Internet. The information is required under Massachusetts' new, first-in-the- nation law that orders tobacco companies to disclose all the ingredients in their products.
- The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, fearful that a plan in Manassas to remove cigarette advertisements from billboards may mean more smoking ads along Fairfax roads, has asked the county executive to see if he can negotiate a similar ban in the county. "You come up and down Route 1, and most of the billboards there already are advertising cigarettes," said Supervisor Gerald W. Hyland (D-Mount Vernon)
- The Village Board this week approved changes to the local ordinance regulating the sale of tobacco products to include mandatory carding of anyone under 27 and a sharp increase in the minimum fine for violating the ordinance.
- Four major advertising firms remained in the hunt on Friday for a lucrative state contract running Florida's multimillion-dollar youth anti-smoking campaign. . . The Miami firms still in the running are Crispin, Porter & Bogusky Advertising and Beber Silverstein & Partners. Paradigm Communications, of Tampa, and Jacksonville's William Cook Agency round out the state's final four.
- The tobacco giant Rothmans is trying to turn Australia's national symbol, the kangaroo, into a trademark to sell its Winfield cigarettes around the world. Rothmans International asked its Australian arm to protect a new kangaroo symbol and a solid-color Winfield cigarette pack as part of its global plan to make Winfield internationally known.
- -- The European Commission is to investigate a complaint from a group including cafe owners over the International Automobile Federation's (FIA) threat to cancel the Belgian Grand Prix. . . In his complaint to the Commission, Dupont said FIA had abused its dominant position and that agreements with international and national sports organizations to commercialize F1 races also violated EU law. FIA said Wednesday it had given organizers of the Belgian F1 until February 15 to give guarantees that the country's ban on tobacco sponsoring and advertising would not affect the race.
- The organizers of Formula One motor racing received another blow Thursday, when a group of more than 100 people living near Belgium's Spa racetrack filed an antitrust complaint with the European Commission. The citizens group is outraged that the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile, the sport's top authority, is threatening to cancel the 1998 Belgian Grand Prix race because of a new law restricting tobacco advertising in the country.
- A group of Belgian Formula One fans is seeking European Union help to force the sports governing body to drop a threat to cancel the Belgian Grand Prix, their lawyer said Thursday. The lawyer Jean-Louis Dupont said FIA's threat to cancel the Grand Prix, unless Belgium revises a new law banning tobacco advertising, infringed EU rules on business monopolies.
- Tobacco company Tabacalera SA (E.TAB) denied late Friday that Spanish law can hold it accountable for the death of a smoker. . . If Tabacalera wins the case, it said in a press release it will seek compensation from the litigants for the damage they are causing to 'the good name and image of the company.'
- Setting a precedent in Spain, the family of a man who died of lung cancer has filed suit against government-run tobacco company Tabacalera seeking $389,000 in compensation, a lawyer said Thursday. Following the example of similar cases in the United States, the lawsuit has been filed by Africa Pulgar Ross, the wife of Emilio Carraminana who died Nov. 19, 1993, at the age of 43, after he is estimated to have smoked up to 600,000 Ducados cigarettes over 27 years.
- Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is expected to hire away one of the tobacco industry's top troubleshooters, political strategist Thomas C. Griscom, as the Australian media conglomerate struggles to burnish its image. Mr. Griscom, currently a tobacco lobbyist with R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., a crucial player in the industry's settlement efforts, is about to join News Corp. in a newly created post to oversee public relations and corporate affairs, people familiar with the matter said. The 48-year-old Mr. Griscom is a former White House communications director in the Reagan administration and has strong Republican ties.
- R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. Friday said its head of external relations resigned from the high-profile job to join the communications department of News Corp. Reynolds said the executive, Thomas Griscom, would be replaced by Tommy Payne, currently vice president of federal government affairs.
- Spain's state-controlled Tabacalera (TAB.MC) was one of the hottest blue-chip stocks on the Madrid bourse in 1997 and talk that its privatisation may be imminent has kept the winning streak going in the new year.
- Tabacalera stock chalked up a nearly three percent rise on Thursday amid talk of imminent privatisation for Spain's dominant tobacco firm, analysts said. They said Tabacalera's 1998 outlook is bullish. The company was one of the top two performers among Madrid blue-chip stocks in 1997. Tabacalera was up 2.67 percent to 13,860 pesetas around midday on Thursday. The share price has risen more than 12 percent since the start of the year, three times more than the broader market.
- Spanish state holding company SEPPa said on Thursday that it would appoint on Friday the financial advisor for the forthcoming privatisation of tobacco firm Tabacalera (TAB.MC).
- The American Lung Association, the American Public Health Association and other anti-smoking groups say they plan to file a petition with the Food and Drug Administration Thursday urging the FDA to take further steps to crack down on tobacco without waiting for Congress to act. The FDA issued new rules on teen smoking in 1996, and the health groups want the FDA to use its powers under the law to take more steps in the areas of marketing and labeling.
- The American Public Health Association today joined other public health groups in petitioning the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to begin strictly regulating tobacco products as drugs and called on the Clinton administration and Congress to strengthen their support of the leaderless agency.
- Tar and nicotine content in cigarettes fell to the lowest level since the U.S. government began reporting test results three decades ago, the Federal Trade Commission said. The agency, however, said it will consider new evidence that the testing method understates by half the amount of nicotine inhaled by some smokers.
- Souza Cruz said it grew Y-1 exclusively between 1990 and 1994 and shipped it all to the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., the third largest U.S. cigarette maker. After that, the company said, "no Y-1 or any derivative of it remained in Brazilian territory." Gerson Cardoso, Souza Cruz's director of tobacco, said fumo louco was not related to Y-1 but to strains of a variety of Virginia tobacco that grows bigger than normal plants but has "absolutely normal levels" of nicotine.
- Scientists have known for decades that the tars and other solid components of cigarette smoke are harmful to human health. But what about the gaseous components of the smoke? New research shows that one category of these gas-phase chemicals, in particular a group called aldehydes, causes a large proportion of the damage, at least in blood plasma. Armed with this knowledge, a new filter could be designed to snag exactly these chemicals. While not encouraging anyone to smoke, the researchers believe they will be able to make smoking safer for those who have not quit. The researchers pinpointed aldehydes -- a group of chemicals known for their rich fragrances as well as their high level of chemical reactivity -- as a significant source of damage to cells and molecules resulting from filtered cigarette smoke. The group included Dr. Abraham Reznick of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Dr. Lester Packer of the University of California at Berkeley and Dr. Carroll Cross of the University of California, Davis Medical School. The results were published in several journals including the Biochemical Journal, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,Redox Reports and the Journal of Laboratory and Clinical Medicine.
- French researchers say that they had isolated a key component in the brain that controls nicotine addiction, a discovery that could make giving up smoking as easy as taking a pill. "This is the first proof that if a particular part of one of the brain's receptors is deactivated, so is dependence on nicotine," said Nicolas Le Novere, a member of the molecular neurology team at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.
- A scientist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, Marina Picciotto, said: "For the first time, one particular molecule has been shown to be critical for the events leading up to nicotine addiction." The discovery was made when scientists found the first of 11 sub-units, or molecules, of the nicotine receptor in the brain of mice. Advances in treating drug abuse may followHumans have the same so-called 'b2' sub-unit. "It's the first step in identifying the other components of that receptor and that pathway [that triggers addiction]," she said.
- Cigarettes from other states already have been found on store shelves in New Jersey, just weeks after the tobacco tax was doubled to 80 cents a pack Jan. 1. Last Monday, state tax agents found cartons of contraband cigarettes with Pennsylvania tax stamps in a Newark shop, The Star-Ledger of Newark reported Sunday. Meanwhile, vendors in Pennsylvania - where the tax is just 31 cents per pack - are reporting a huge jump in cigarette sales.
- Farmers in 3 states, including N.C., get more time for curing Burley-tobacco sales in North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia will be recessed after this week and resume in February to allow tobacco to cure, officials said Friday.
- Less than three months after winning a state delegate's race, William C. Mims (R) is running again for office, this time in a special election Tuesday for the vacant 33rd District seat in the state Senate. But . . . Mims faces a tough challenge from Democrat Jean S. Brown, a longtime Loudoun County civic activist who has vowed not to lose her third attempt at state office. . . Mims said he would introduce legislation banning cigarette vending machines and using state lottery proceeds to build new schools and renovate older ones.
- Tonight, thousands of codgers in shiny cummerbunds, sweeties in sequins, young turks in tails and diamond-drenched dowagers packed Richmond Centre like peanuts for the inaugural ball. . . At either end, major donors sat at tables. The National Rifle Association, Bell Atlantic, Mobil Oil Corp. and other sponsors paid thousands of dollars for the privilege. So did Philip Morris and the Smokeless Tobacco Council. . . Around 10:30, Jim Belushi -- wearing shades and puffing on a cigar like a genuine Blues Brother -- took the stage with his band. "This is a damn good state. I can smoke in Virginia," he said. Many ballgoers donned sunglasses in solidarity.
- Facing the loss of hundreds of jobs in Richmond over the next two years, the head of Philip Morris USA's tobacco workers' union is asking the company to soften the blow with an early retirement offer. . . The union executive was reacting to Philip Morris' plans to stop making cigarettes at its aging Stockton Street factory in South Richmond after mid-1999. About 800 employees from hourly and salaried ranks will be affected.
- Mayor Brown and New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani have more in common than a shared Newsweek magazine cover. This week, the two mayors, called the most dynamic in the nation last year by Newsweek, reluctantly signed legislation banning outdoor billboard tobacco advertising in their respective cities.
- Experts believe that about 20 percent of boys age 12 to 17 use smokeless tobacco. They take it up either because their friends use it or because they see baseball players and race car drivers using it.
- In the often ineffective war on cancer, attacking smoking is one of the few strategies that promise tangible success. To dismiss the tactic is a little like disparaging Mother Teresa's lifetime of good works. It's not that it can't be done; it's just that you need some mighty powerful arguments to convince anyone of your case. Bennett and DiLorenzo just don't have those arguments.
- Robin Marantz Henig displays a keen nose for nonsense in her trenchant review of "Cancerscam" (Dec. 21), by the libertarian tobacco propagandists James T. Bennett and Thomas J. DiLorenzo. But her powers of nonsense detection escape her in swallowing uncritically the authors' grossly inaccurate characterization of the Advocacy Institute, of which I am a co-director. In her review, she lends The New York Times's credibility to two of the authors' whoppers: (1) that the Advocacy Institute "instituted and coordinated" the use of public funds for "lobbying activity" through the National Cancer Institute's Project Assist; and (2) that the Advocacy Institute is "a blatantly political organization."
- Former NHRA Top Fuel drag racer Darrell Gwynn . . . said he and Robertson used to tell the other how much of an inspiration he was. For Gwynn, it was how Robertson handled the tobacco issue. "He'd say to me that when that kind of thing came his way, the words bounced right off because he was callused toward that sort of thing," Gwynn said. "For those of us who knew T. Wayne, that was the only thing he was callused toward."
- He worked for a tobacco company, R.J. Reynolds. And you may curse and spit about that. But whatever you may think about tobacco company involvement in sports, in finding a way to promote and influence, I for one applaud the man who was loyal to his company, to his constituents, and who loved -- and I mean loved -- the sport.
- WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) -- About 800 neighbors and colleagues from the sports and tobacco industries attended the funeral Saturday of T. Wayne Robertson, who headed sports marketing for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.
- Dubbed one of the most influential people in motorsports, Robertson started up such well-known and well-attended events as The Winston Race at the Charlotte Motor Speedway and the Winston Million, a grand-slam type of program where drivers can take home $1 million if they win three out of four major races. "He knew more about the art of sports marketing than anyone alive," said H.A. "Humpy" Wheeler
- T. Wayne Robertson helped turn what used to be the regional sport of auto racing into an international success. Robertson, a senior vice president at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. in Winston-Salem, died Wednesday during a boating collision in a Louisiana bayou. He was one of five duck hunters confirmed dead.
- T. Wayne Robertson, 48, head of sports marketing for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., was killed in a boating accident in southern Louisiana. Robertson was one of seven passengers on a craft involved in a collision with an oil rig crew boat near the intracoastal waterway in Vermilion Parish Wednesday morning. Robertson's career in sports marketing spanned 27 years, and for the past 14 years he was at the helm of one of the most respected corporate sports sponsorship organizations in the United States. Robertson was president of Sports Marketing Enterprises, a division of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, as well as a senior vice president of Reynolds Tobacco. He oversaw a department that managed RJR's umbrella sponsorships of NASCAR Winston Cup racing, NHRA Winston Drag racing, the Vantage Championship Senior PGA tournament and Reynolds Tobacco's other sports sponsorships.
- Joe Gleason, managing director of Manning, Selvage & Lee, a Washington public relations firm, said the companies should follow the lead of the alcohol industry and sponsor advertising with a message that essentially is, "If you're under 21, we don't want your business." Those kind of ads speak to a level of "corporate responsibility," said Gleason, who specializes in crisis management. "There's no magic wand" for the tobacco companies, Gleason said. "It's a long road to rehabilitation in the public's eye . . . but this would at least be a step in the right direction."
- The shares of these companies could be significant movers in U.S. markets Tuesday. . . Tobacco company shares may move as Texas settled its lawsuit against U.S. cigarette companies for $14.5 billion in health-care costs over 25 years. Texas becomes the third state to recover public money spent treating sick smokers.
- IT IS the anti-smoking industry's annual frenzy. The third weekend of the year is the critical one for those who made a resolution to kick smoking and this year there are more potential cures on offer than ever. They are being advertised on the radio, on the sides of buses, and in bookshop showrooms. Research suggests that the third weekend is a time when the physical addiction has receded but the post-holiday stresses of work have reinforced the psychological hunger for a relaxing fag.
- Major U.S. tobacco companies are expected to report higher earnings for the latest quarter, but investors will be paying more attention to continuing negotiations that could lift the legal cloud over the industry. "These overwhelm the fundamentals," said PaineWebber analyst Emanuel Goldman. "The developments relating to a national settlement are the key that drives these stocks and will be for a long time."
- In the battle over smoking's cost to society, two things are certain: Tobacco companies will shell out, and lawyers will rake in, huge sums. But how huge should huge be?
- Minnesota's three-year-old tobacco lawsuit, billed as the toughest state case the industry has faced to date, will be a rehearsal for a similar suit in Wisconsin next year. . . If Wisconsin's case goes to trial, lawyers for Wisconsin will use many of the same cigarette company documents, some 33 million pages of them, stored in warehouses in Minneapolis and London. The same expert witnesses who will testify in the Minnesota case will take the stand in the Wisconsin case, said Robert L. Habush, of Habush, Habush, Davis & Rottier, Wisconsin's lead attorney in the tobacco lawsuit. Four lawyers from Wisconsin have been admitted to the Minnesota bar so they can monitor the trial, Habush said, and they have access to the tobacco-company documents.
- 01/14/98 Diary of a (Male) Novelty Seeker
- 01/15/98 Tolerance and Withdrawal
- 01/16/98 Who is Vulnerable?
- 01/17/98 The Land of the Living
- Recovering from addiction is not like getting over hepatitis or beating a cancer. It's more like recovering from a bout of manic depression ‹ you need to monitor the disease for the rest of your life and may need psychotherapeutic drugs to help you control it.
- The University of Wisconsin Medical School will lead a $6.7 million, four-year effort to develop and strengthen smoking-cessation efforts by managed-care plans such as HMOs throughout the United States. "Our goal is to identify successful tobacco cessation projects that can be widely integrated into managed care," said Michael C. Fiore, director of UW's Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention.
- A pill called Zyban makes it easier to stop, and may lift your spirits and prevent the weight gain that sometimes occurs when smokers quit. In human trials of the prescription drug, 44 percent of the smokers who took the highest dose had quit by the end of a seven-week study, compared with 19 percent who got a placebo -- a pill with no medicinal value. . . The study was done by researchers at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.; the Palo Alto Center for Pulmonary Disease Prevention, Palo Alto, Calif., and Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center, West Virginia University, Morgantown, using volunteers from those areas.
- The question Jan. 4: "As of the first of the year, smokers are barred from lighting up in California bars. What further measures should the state take to weed out the smoking habit?"
- And the governor -- who came under fire as attorney general last year when his office indicated that it would not enforce the new federal tobacco regulations -- sternly told lawmakers his position on the matter. "Let me be clear on this subject," he said. "I will not tolerate tobacco being sold to children." He also pledged his support for Virginia's leaf growers, to thunderous applause from rural legislators.
- Tobacco farmers deserve our support as they face an uncertain future. I pledge the powers of my office to help prevent them from being innocent victims of federal tobacco legislation. Let me be clear on this subject. I will not tolerate tobacco being sold to children. I will continue to work for effective enforcement of our prohibition on selling tobacco to minors.
- Bowing to public pressure, a West Virginia county on Monday rescinded what opponents had described as one of the nation's toughest smoking bans. The Monongalia County Board of Health voted, 3-1, to revoke a regulation that would have prohibited smoking in bars and other areas. Opponents had vowed to sue the county over the ban. The lone board member who voted to keep the regulation said she was "ashamed" at the board's action. "The board is shirking its responsibility and caving into the tobacco industry," Betty Wiley said.
- Jeff Fryfogle reacted predictably yesterday to a state senator's plan to increase Ohio's legal age for buying cigarettes: "If I can die in a war, I should be able to get drunk and smoke a cigarette before I go." Fryfogle, a 24-year-old University of Akron graduate student from Austintown, said he is philosophically opposed to the proposal by state Sen. Grace L. Drake, R-Solon, to increase the cigarette-buying age to 21 from the current 18.
- A state senator says she plans to introduce legislation making Ohio the first state to prohibit tobacco sales to anyone younger than 21 years old. Sen. Grace Drake, R-Solon, told UPI today that while she remains "a social smoker" who started smoking when she was 17, she wishes she had never acquired the habit.
- State Sen. Grace L. Drake, R-Solon, has been drafting a bill to make it illegal to sell tobacco products to people under 21. She hopes to introduce the bill in about two weeks.
- After seven weeks, Naperville police say the number of teenagers ticketed under the city's recent ordinance that prohibits those under age 18 from possessing tobacco products was about what they expected. "We believe the word has gotten out," said Naperville Police Sgt. Lisa Burghardt. "Most of the kids now realize this is a law."
- The far-reaching bill, sponsored by the Idaho PTA, would require those who sell tobacco to be licensed, as they are in 43 states now. It would require all tobacco products to be behind the counter, out of a child's reach, and would ban two new tobacco products popular with teens that now don't fall under the state law's definitions.
- The call for increasing the state's cigarette tax has received the backing of two Republican legislators who want to use the extra money for anti-smoking efforts. State Rep. Rosemary Thomson, R-Marion, called for a 2-cent increase in the cigarette tax, generating $3.2 million a year.
- At a time when few people are willing to accept higher taxes, a variety of voter initiatives have been submitted to state officials for the November 1998 ballot to raise the tobacco tax, including a proposed $1 per pack tax hike for education reforms sponsored by Democratic U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
- the effects of drinking and smoking, are part of an emerging coalition striving to reduce local problems related to abuse of alcohol and tobacco. The La Habra Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs Coalition is composed of students, residents, PTA moms and religious leaders. They are aided by police officers and city planners.
- President of the Mumbai Regional Congress Committee Murli Deora has decided to file a public interest litigation (PIL) against tobacco consumption. Mr Deora said he had been collecting material over several months both from India and the U.S. on the adverse effects of tobacco consumption and he had now finalised a petition with the help of lawyer Haresh Jagtian.
- Yachts in the Whitbread Round the World Race are sailing into New Zealand waters amid controversy over the tobacco-sponsored names of three of the nine yachts. Anti-smoking lobby Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) said yesterday that giving the yachts their sponsors' names was "a cunning ploy". Ash wants the three tobacco-sponsored yachts -- Swedish Match, Silk Cut, and Merit Cup -- to cover up their names while in port, a move supported by the Health Sponsorship Council, which promotes the Smokefree logo.
- A cigarette smoker who lit up in a small fireworks factory set off an explosion that killed 17 people, three of them children, Chinese media reported Monday. The owner of the illegally run factory and his family were among those killed in the Jan. 11 blast in Susong, eastern Anhui province, the state-run Liberation Daily newspaper said.
- Last August, dozens of journalists from Latin America arrived in Miami as guests of British-American Tobacco Co., whose Brown & Williamson unit makes popular cigarettes like Kool, Carlton and Lucky Strike. The company paid for the visitors' air fare, hotel rooms and even dinners at expensive restaurants. At meetings like this, the reporters, from countries including Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Peru, heard company officials and paid speakers attack restrictions on smoking and cigarette advertising as scientifically unsound or artifacts of lawsuit-driven societies like the United States'.
- SOME of the world's biggest tobacco companies plan to circumvent the impending European Union-wide ban on cigarette advertising and sponsorship by legally promoting their cigarette brand names in new ranges of coffee products. The scheme is being tested in Asia by British American Tobacco (BAT), one of the world's largest tobacco companies, under the Benson & Hedges name. BAT confirmed last week that, if successful, its Benson & Hedges Quality Blend coffees would be rolled out internationally as an enterprise in its own right. A chain of branded coffee shops could follow.
- Turkish Tobacco State Enterprise TEKEL and B.A.T. Industries Plc signed a $280-million joint venture agreement on Tuesday, Anatolian news agency said. B.A.T. earlier said it would contribute $145.6 million cash in return for an initial 52 percent stake. TEKEL will give $134.4 million in the form of a partly-completed cigarette factory and working capital in return for a 48 percent stake.
- Sanford Bernstein analyst Gary Black said in a research note that he now rates the chances of a comprehensive settlement this year as a 60 percent probability, down from an 80 percent probability earlier. Black reiterated his outperform ratings on Philip Morris Cos Inc ((MO - news), RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp ((RN - news) and UST Inc ((UST - news), but the stocks fell after his comments about the proposed national settlement were released. Philip Morris, the second most active New York Stock Exchange issue, was off 1-9/16 at 43-5/8 in morning trading. RJR Nabisco fell 7/8 to 35-1/2, and UST was off 3/4 at 34.
- Nearly 70 percent of the smokers in a recent national survey on tobacco smoke odor say they're bothered, too, when their clothes and hair smell of smoke. Starting today, a new solution to this common problem begins filling shelves nationwide. Called Banish(TM) personal smoke deodorizer, the product removes same-day tobacco smoke odor trapped in clothes and hair. Unlike perfume or cologne, it contains no scent of its own, so it doesn't cover or mask the smell.
- STANDARD Commercial Tobacco Company (UK) Ltd has decided to pick up a 49 per cent stake in the south-based Trans-Continental Tobacco India Private Limited. Trans-Continental Tobacco was formed recently and is setting up a manufacturing unit for tobacco processing in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh.
- RIL has been dethroned by tobacco major ITC Ltd. . . ITC continued to remain the darling of speculators, helped by low floating stock and high foreign institutional investor interest. Average daily turnover in the ITC scrip has shot up to Rs 650 crore on the NSE - nearly five times the turnover in the Reliance scrip. Two months ago, the average daily turnover in the ITC scrip was Rs 350 crore.
- A young man splashed a gas station clerk with fuel injector fluid when she asked for identification before selling him cigarettes, police said. Authorities were still searching for the youth, who fled following the 1:30 a.m. Sunday attack, Sgt. George Girard said today. Jim McGough, owner of Jim's Mobil Station, said some of the fluid spattered into the clerk's eyes, and she was released after treatment at Holyoke Hospital.
- A 15-year-old youth shot a 4-year-old to death inside a home methamphetamine lab because the younger boy didn't get cigarettes fast enough, police said Monday. "The 15-year-old told him to get him his cigarettes and he didn't, and so he shot him," said Sgt. Brad Ringnes.
- A 15-year-old boy told authorities he didn't mean to fatally shoot a 4-year-old who was taking too long to retrieve some cigarettes, but the teen apparently offered little explanation for his behavior. "The mystery behind it is why he even got the shotgun out in the first place and took it into the kitchen," said Detective Steve Filson. "He did admit to firing the weapon."
- Compared with the high-stakes legal drama that will begin when Blue Cross and the state of Minnesota cross swords with the tobacco companies, Gene Montpetit's daily duel with smoking isn't very glitzy. No network satellite trucks will be parked outside the Downtowner Car Wash at 520 E. Seventh St. to help us follow the progress of Montpetit's fight. But it's the millions of daily tussles between Minnesotans like Montpetit and a highly addictive and highly profitable weed that drove Attorney General Hubert H. Humphrey to take on the tobacco industry.
- The survey, conducted on behalf of the Inter-Continental hotel chain, found the three most persuasive factors at present were a quiet room, clean surroundings and control over room temperature and humidity. In future, the report predicts, the safety of the hotel's location, and the availability of non-smoking rooms will rank second and third respectively [below internet access].
- METRO Council members Ron Turner and Ronnie Steine deserve credit for reigniting the dormant smoking debate with the state legislature. The two councilmen have introduced a resolution asking the General Assembly to permit Nashville to write its own anti-smoking ordinances. Four years ago, state lawmakers hand-delivered to the tobacco industry the rights of local governments to enact smoking restrictions. The noble sounding "Prevention of Youth Access to Tobacco Act of 1994" not only didn't address teen smoking, it stripped the ability of cities, towns and counties to pass their own laws to regulate tobacco use.
- The deal doesn't go nearly far enough in controlling an industry that cynically intended to turn kids into addicts by means of a well-documented strategy to, in a word, youthenize.
- If limitations are to be imposed upon attorney fees to maximize the amount of money that actually flows to claimants, restrictions should be imposed upon defendants' legal fees, too. This effort should begin with disclosure of the legal expenses incurred by defendants in any litigation in which fee limitations are sought to be imposed upon plaintiff counsel. Revelation of these fees can lead to imposition of "caps" upon the amount of legal expenses incurred in defending lawsuits. . . In addition to disclosure, a method should be developed to require defense counsel to relinquish fees that exceed a reasonable portion of the ultimate settlement or recovery paid to plaintiffs. Defense attorneys should not benefit financially if they have rung up large fees and had unfavorable results, just as contingency plaintiff counsel does not benefit financially if the fruits of its labor turn sour.
- When the Indonesian government announced on Jan. 15 that the monopoly on clove trading would be abolished, cigarette producers thanked God while investors snapped up shares of the country's two largest cigarette makers - PT Gudang Garam (P.GGR), and PT Hanjaya Mandala Sampoerna (P.HMS). Since then, Gudang Garam's share price has soared to 10,500 rupiah ($1=IDR11,550) at its close Wednesday from IDR8,750 on Jan. 15. H.M. Sampoerna has risen to IDR5,200 from IDR4,475 during the same period.
- AntiCancer today announced it has formed a joint venture in China to manufacture its new cancer drug, ONCase. The joint venture, to be known as Nanjing Kingsley AntiCancer Biotechnology Co. Ltd., will manufacture the drug for distribution in China and also for use in clinical trials in Europe. European trials are scheduled to begin towards the end of 1998. . . The Jiangsu Kingsley group is a multi-billion dollar Chinese conglomerate headquartered in Nanjing. It has interests in hotels and real estate as well as pharmaceuticals and tobacco sales.
- Please be advised that General Cigar Holdings, Inc. will have a conference call to discuss fourth quarter earnings on Thursday, January 22, 1998 at 2:30 p.m. EST. Domestic participants should dial 800-633-8485 and international participants should dial 212-784-2775. The reservation number is 3719775. The earnings will be released tomorrow morning (January 22, 1998).
- Financier Carl Icahn has purchased a 7.65 percent stake in Brooke Group Ltd., the company that is headed by his onetime ally and tobacco industry maverick Bennett S. LeBow. Icahn, who was one of the most feared corporate raiders of the 1980s, is paying $9 million for 1.5 million shares of Brooke Group, the parent company of cigarette maker Liggett Group, according to a filing Tuesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That amounts to $6 a share, substantially below Miami-based Brooke Group's recent prices.
- High River Ltd., the investment group owned by financier Carl Icahn, has agreed to buy 1.5 million shares of Brooke Group Ltd. (BGL) for $9 million, according to a regulatory document.
- In an effort to prevent the sale of tobacco products to kids who try to skirt youth tobacco access laws, Circle K and its parent company Tosco Marketing Co. are launching a comprehensive training program for employees at convenience stores in 38 states. . . Lavinia said Circle K hopes the "We Card" program will not only help sales associates make better decisions, but also remind them of their responsibilities under the law.
- A price increase is not the only thing that needs to happen. Mr. Clinton and Congress ought to make explicit, lay to rest questions about and possibly strengthen the Food and Drug Administration's authority to regulate nicotine as a drug and cigarettes as the instrument of its delivery. Restrictions need to be placed on the advertising and marketing of cigarettes; enforcement of the laws against sales to minors needs to be strengthened; greater efforts need to be made to encourage and help people to quit. That's what ought to be passed. If they can't solve the other issues, let those issues be the ones to wait.
- What the settlement does is release from liability the parent companies whose assets are sufficient to make the payments and confine the liability to subsidiaries whose assets are not. The $368.5 billion the politicians expect in exchange does not yet exist. It is money the tobacco subsidiaries hope to make in the future by selling cigarettes. If tobacco sales in the United States are high enough, the domestic tobacco subsidiaries will be able to make their payments. If they are not, the tobacco subsidiaries show their empty pockets, and that is the end of it. The money stops. Thus, the tobacco settlement is not money the tobacco industry will surrender to the American people as compensation, it is a partnership between the American government and the tobacco industry to sell cigarettes to the American people and split the profits. The mere prospect of that much money is already corrupting our political processes.
- The Contra Costa Board of Supervisors yesterday set aside concerns about First Amendment rights and plunged ahead with campaign spending limits but shied away -- at least temporarily -- from restricting the free speech of tobacco advertisers. . . Supervisors were more cautious about First Amendment issues involving tobacco advertising. . . The board decided to have county attorneys study the proposal and report back on February 10.
- While it is not clear that executives actually carried out the planned operation, the memo was prophetic in its description of what later took place in Sacramento. For two years running in the middle 1990s, Gov. Pete Wilson and lawmakers approved bills that diverted more than $100 million from anti-tobacco efforts, spending the money on health care programs, instead, and thereby blunting California's anti-smoking campaign.
- "To heighten business opposition to the campaign -- and to keep the governor warm to the issue -- contacts continue with the state chamber and manufacturers association," Malmgren added. "We hope to encourage business leaders and associations to support an alternative use of Prop. 99 media funds and to ask the governor to support such a change in funding direction." A cover letter from institute President Samuel Chilcote Jr. said Malmgren's memo "outlines our legislative and other efforts to redirect Prop. 99 media funds to other, more appropriate uses."
- The California experience, Lewin said, is "very much like the [national] deal." The public health groups and state attorneys general supporting the national tobacco plan, he said, could give the industry the same kind of cover that the doctors and minority organizations gave the industry in California -- and then the anti-tobacco forces could dissipate their energies fighting over funding.
- A survey of warehouses this month by Universal Leaf North America found that 25 percent or more of the remaining tobacco crop could be worthless. "If there is a market for this tobacco, we don't know where it is," said Tom Norvell, Universal Leaf's senior vice president. Throughout the eight-state Burley Belt, an estimated 50 million pounds is ruined, Norvell told the Burley Tobacco Growers Cooperative board of directors yesterday. And that estimate could turn out to be conservative, he said. If 50 million pounds were ruined, growers' income would be reduced by $95 million, or nearly 10 percent of the entire harvest. Some of the worst losses are expected in Central Kentucky.
- The tobacco industry wants Virginia legislators to lobby Congress for a package of restrictions on cigarette sales, and in the meantime to leave state laws alone. But an influential legislator said yesterday he won't wait for a national settlement to require Virginia to license all retailers of cigarettes and other tobacco products. Del. James F. Almand, D-Arlington County, said he will introduce legislation this year to require licensing, even though he knows that the General Assembly may wait another year before acting on it.
- Del. James F. Almand, D-Arlington County, chairman of the subcommittee on tobacco and youth of the House Courts of Justice Committee, has drafted legislation that would require licensing of all tobacco sellers in Virginia.
- Campaign for America, founded by Wall Street financier Jerome Kohlberg, began running a 30-second ad on cable television stations in nine states that were chosen because their Republican senators might be persuaded to support legislation that would ban soft money, said Douglas Berman, the group's president. The ad is running in Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New York and Ohio.
- Richard B. Mattox was legislative director for Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., last February when he accompanied his boss to the Tobacco Institute's legislative conference in Scottsdale, Ariz. Mattox, who was allowed to take his wife, racked up a transportation bill of $3,804, meals of $316 and lodging of $1,444 Feb. 15-17 at the Phoenician Resort, the records showed. "The Tobacco Institute ... knew how much the prices were going to be for airfare and lodging," said Thompson spokesman Edward Jackson. "If they chose to pay that, the congressman didn't have a problem with that."
- Conservatives including Sen. John D. Ashcroft (R-Mo.) yesterday launched a drive to block Senate confirmation of David Satcher as surgeon general, setting the stage for a potentially rancorous fight over his nomination after Congress reconvenes next Tuesday.
- Economic growth at home and relative peace abroad continue to benefit President Clinton, whose job approval rating stands at 60 percent -- the 22nd straight time since mid-1995 that Clinton's approval rating has topped 50 percent in Post-ABC News polls. At the same time, public support for Congress is as high now as it was in the euphoric days immediately after the Persian Gulf War in 1991. . . Two in three favor increasing federal taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products.
- Swedish drug company Astra (ASTRa.ST) said on Thursday that it had a "breakthrough portfolio" to tackle chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) . . . In a presentation at the group's R&D meeting in London Olof Selroos, senior medical adviser at Astra Draco, said Astra was targeting the condition with its existing asthma drugs Pulmicort and Oxis as well as with a completely new class of drugs. . . Selroos told the meeting Astra was also developing a combination therapy involving its Oxis Turbuhaler inhaler and was developing a new class of drugs with the code name AR-C68397AA, or 397.
- The ordinance, as now written, would prohibit smoking in Portland's more than 200 restaurants -- except in those with enclosed, ventilated smoking areas. Bars would be exempt from the rule, unless they were part of a restaurant.
- PORTLAND is considering imposing Maine's first citywide ban on smoking in restaurants in an effort to ensure smoke-free air for families who dine out.
- PATERSON -- Like most city residents, Connie Popa has long passed the ads showing smiling faces taking a puff from a Kool cigarette or a swig from another 48-ouncer. But instead of writing it off as a familiar part of the urban landscape, the 39-year-old school nurse took action. . . The council Tuesday voted, 7-1, to approve an ordinance barring such advertising within 1,000 feet of schools -- a move that would cover much of the city. If the law is signed by Mayor Martin G. Barnes, advertisers will be required to get a permit to advertise, and those pushing alcohol or tobacco too close to schools will have to remove them.
- Frederick County high school students would be subject to one of Maryland's toughest drug and alcohol policies under a "zero tolerance" proposal to suspend youths from participating in sports or school-sponsored activities if they are caught off campus using any illegal substance. The policy, reviewed by the county's Board of Education yesterday, would require students participating in extracurricular or co-curricular activities to sign a contract pledging not to use alcohol, drugs or tobacco on or off school property. County athletes already are required to sign the contract.
- The state will get $300,000 in federal funds for the study and prevention of tobacco-related illnesses, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The state has been given $62,000 a year over the past four years. The money was used last year for anti-smoking billboards.
- A TV reporter and cameraman in Salt Lake City recently were charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor after asking some students to chew tobacco in their high school parking lot. The TV folks said they wanted to get the act on camera for a story and were just asking the kids to do what the kids do every day. We're thinking it's one thing if the TV folks had come across the kids chewing tobacco, but to ask them to do it is another matter. We'll see what a court says. The case goes to trial in April.
- For more than a century, the Statistical Abstract has been the single most comprehensive one-volume compendium of data about the nation, a rich and vivid portrait of the United States in numbers. Produced annually since 1880, it's a mainstay of libraries and a tool of the trade for economists, demographers, statisticians, journalists and academics. Its pages, though gray with tables, detail the flesh-and-blood realities of today's America. . . By contrast, it has 50 tables on prices, 33 on recreation, 31 on petroleum, 25 on lumber and wood products and 18 on tobacco.
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- When Dasha Krivoshlyapov drank, Masha Krivoshlyapov suffered. And when Masha smoked, Dasha suffered. Together, the Siamese twins quit their habits, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported Wednesday.
- The day before Super Bowl XXXII, select NFL players will sign their first contract of the season when they pledge to help Americans "Commit to Quit" with Nicorette gum and NicoDerm CQ patches. After signing the contract, each NFL player will share a personal story on why he believes Americans should quit smoking cigarettes. The "Commit to Quit Kickoff" will take place from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday, January 24, at the 1998 NFL Players Party, taking place in Embarcadero Park in San Diego, site of Super Bowl XXXII. *
- Now travellers to Japan can breathe easier. All Nippon Airways (ANA) ( www.ana.co.jp) has developed an 'Air Curtain-Smoke Ventilation System' for the first-class section of the ANA Boeing 777 aircraft, allowing four smoking seats in the 12-seat cabin. ANA says the outlet of the airconditioning system has been repositioned to effectively form an air curtain separating the flow of air between the smoking and non-smoking areas. In addition, ventilators had been attached above the smoking seats to purge smoke out of the first-class cabin. ANA says the system went into operation from November 1.
- Today is Wednesday, Jan. 21. . . On this date: . . In 1908, New York City's Board of Aldermen passed an ordinance that effectively prohibited women from smoking in public ( However, the measure was vetoed by Mayor George B. McClellan Jr.).
- I remember one afternoon during spring training two years ago at Al Lang Field in St. Petersburg, Fla., Garagiola was accompanied by a man whose face was badly deformed on one side. He had gone through numerous operations for cancer. The man was Bill Tuttle, a standout center fielder for the Detroit Tigers in the 1950s. Tuttle had reluctantly come to BAT and Garagiola when the cost for the operations mounted, operations that were needed because of the cancer that had developed from his years of chewing tobacco. The dangers of chewing, a long-time habit of ballplayers, was an issue of grave importance to Garagiola, and he was going from spring-training camp to spring-training camp to speak with players as a group in each clubhouse, with Tuttle and Tuttle's wife relating their heart-breaking tale. "C'mon, you guys are invited, too," he said to reporters. "Everyone should know about this."
- The tobacco program is supposedly designed to operate at no cost to taxpayers. But as agricultural expert Jim Bovard says in his book, The Farm Fiasco, taxpayers end up getting hit because the government buys tobacco surpluses and provides interest-free loans to farmers. Even if tobacco were not deadly, the program would be an indefensible intrusion on the free market. The product's harm to people makes the program doubly indefensible.
- A Reidsville man called to tell the sad story of his mother, who has undergone lung cancer treatment. She never smoked but developed the illness, the son believes, after a lifetime of exposure to second-hand smoke from her husband, who died of emphysema. Tobacco companies can, and probably have to, dispute the dangers of second-hand smoke until the cows come home. But no matter what the corporate flacks say, it's a calculated risk that every smoker who lights up indoors in the company of non-smokers will have to decide.
- After these disclosures of their ethical and legal lapses, how can tobacco makers look at themselves in the mirror without self-loathing? How can they sleep at night with a clear conscience? And why do customers continue to buy and pollute their bodies and the air with this poisonous, addictive drug?
- I also have heard that under one of your programs, you will even pay me not to grow tobacco. What is the amount that I get to not plant the seeds and not harvest the crop? What sort of proof do you need to know that I am not farming? Is it allright if I plant Sweet William, organic cauliflower or mint instead, while I am being paid not to grow tobacco? (I have this weakness for mint julep, which I am sure you will understand.)
- Top 10 ways the tobacco industry is marketing to teens:
- 10. Old name: Marlboros. New name: Bitchin' Marlboros.
- 9. Replaced Joe Camel with those dreamy boys from Hanson.
- 8. New surgeon general's warning: "Whatever, dude."
- 7. Every pack now comes with a fully loaded Trans Am.
- 4. Flooded schools with new textbook: "Our Greatest Smoking Presidents."
- 2. New slogan: "Hey, kids, it's safer than crack."
- Taxpayers could save $49 billion over the next five years, and the environment would benefit, if 71 government programs and subsidies were eliminated, according to a report issued yesterday by a coalition of environmental groups. "It is outrageous that our hard-earned tax dollars subsidize multibillion-dollar polluting corporations," said Laura Scott of the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, or MassPIRG, one of the groups that issued the report. . . Other programs the report said should be cut include subsidies that support advertising in other countries by major corporations, which cost $450 million a year; subsidies for the tobacco industry; . . .
- A senior congressional Democrat demanded an investigation into how tobacco companies may have developed specific marketing strategies to woo blacks, Jews and other racial or ethnic groups. John Conyers of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, cited documents from the R.J. Reynolds Co. released last week that referred to marketing to blacks, Latinos and Jews. He asked Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde to hold hearings.
- Abbey, Gardy & Squitieri LLP said it commenced the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on behalf of purchasers of the company's common stock and warrants between August 14, 1997 and November 14. The lawsuit alleges, among other things, the officers and directors issued false and misleading statements about the company's financial condition.
- The Complaint charges CIGR and certain of its officers and directors with violations of federal securities laws. Among other things, plaintiffs claim that defendants issued a series of materially false and misleading statements regarding CIGR's financial condition and results of operations by overstating CIGR's accounts receivable, current assets, leasehold improvements, cash flow, and the demand for its products; understating its professional fees and advertising expenses, current liabilities, accumulated deficit, selling expenses, general and administrative expenses, and depreciation expenses; and falsely stating that CIGR had been profitable during a period in which it had in fact suffered losses.
- Attorney Norwood Wilner had been scheduled to go to trial on Feb. 2 on behalf of ailing smoker John Keegan against Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp, . . and Reynolds . . . But Reynolds spokeswoman Peggy Carter said the Keegan case had been taken off the Duval County Court trial docket and no new date had been set.
- Attorney General Jay Nixon told a Senate panel Thursday that he is pushing ahead with the state's own suit and soon will be hiring outside lawyers. Nixon assured members of the Senate Appropriations Committee that he would not repeat the troubles of Texas and Florida, where settlements are being held up while lawyers demand more than $2.2 billion for their work.
- Missouri is considering negotiating a settlement with tobacco companies, but is also watching how Congress reacts to a $368 billion blanket settlement proposal the industry offered the states last year, Attorney General Jay Nixon told lawmakers Thursday. Nixon briefed the Senate Appropriations Committee as it considered one senator's proposal to ask voters to earmark any proceeds from a Missouri tobacco settlement for health care -- and bypass having the money counted against a state revenue cap.
- The list of defendants in the class-action lawsuit includes all the well-known giants . . It also includes the name of a somewhat less familiar manufacturer and purveyor of tobacco products--Gilberto Leon. . . In his drab, 8-by-50-foot shop on Los Angeles' 6th Street, a couple of doors west of Western Avenue, Leon turns out about 20,000 handmade cigars a year, which he sells for a total of $35,000 to $50,000. . . Nonetheless, along with the big firms, Leon now stands accused by the Health and Welfare Trust of the Operating Engineers Local 12 of fraud and unlawful business practices in the production and sale of tobacco products.
- U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge filed for election to a second term Thursday, saying he was an effective player in a productive Congress. . . He said he will continue to work to ensure that tobacco farmers are protected in any settlement of liability suits against 20 cigarette makers.
- Now, Sen. John Hottinger wants to try another approach. Thursday, the DFLer from Mankato introduced a bill raising the legal age for smoking from 18 to 21. It would give Minnesota the highest legal age for smoking of any state.
- Circle K, a national chain with 55 stores in the Tucson area, would like to sell less tobacco to minors. In a business built on convenience, too many clerks have made it convenient for kids to buy cigarettes and smokeless tobacco. . . That's why the Phoenix-based company sent more than 100 employees, most of them store managers, through a training program yesterday afternoon in Tucson. The "We Card" program aims to eliminate illegal tobacco sales. Circle K is working with the Coalition for Responsible Tobacco Retailing, a Washington, D.C.-based organization funded in part by the tobacco industry.
- The tobacco industry hasn't paid the state one red cent in a multibillion-dollar lawsuit settlement, but the Legislature already is making plans for how to spend it. Sen. Alex Deccio (R-Yakima) and Rep. Phil Dyer (R-Issaquah), chairmen of the health care committees, want all the money to go into a state fund that pays for health care. But Sen. James West (R-Spokane) has a different idea.
- [Councilman Paul] Koretz's initiative to ban tobacco and alcohol billboards within 1,000 feet of schools, day-care centers and public parks was met with a lukewarm response at a recent council meeting. Despite the passing of a similar initiative by county supervisors in late December (which applies only to unincorporated areas), members of the West Hollywood council took no vote on the proposal. Instead they directed staff members to look into the possibility of banning only tobacco ads. . .
- Pueblo Y Salud will sponsor open conferences this Saturday in San Fernando and next Saturday in Pacoima, officials said. . . The San Fernando conference will be held from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Saturday at San Fernando Middle School, 1130 Mott St. The second conference will be held from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Jan. 31 at the Boys & Girls Club of Pacoima, 11251 Glenoaks Blvd. For more information, call Pueblo Y Salud at (818) 837-2272.
- U of T president Robert Prichard's directorship at Imasco, which owns the cigarette company, is but one of the sources of discontent. The three top Imasco executives in key fundraising roles for the university's new campaign just add to the concern about the growing influx of donations from the tobacco giant. "Some of us call the University of Toronto the University of Tobacco," said Heather Seline, policy analysis for the Ottawa-based Non-Smokers' Rights Association.
- National health organizations today called for a criminal investigation into the role of Canadian manufacturers in tobacco smuggling following the broadcast of CBC TV's "the fifth estate" yesterday. Three organizations, the Canadian Cancer Society, Non-Smokers' Rights Association and Canadian Council for Tobacco Control, demanded that the Commissioner of the RCMP do whatever is necessary to identify all of the players involved in the smuggling and to hold them accountable before the law.
- Some top Canadian tobacco executives knew their best American customers were smuggling exported smokes back into Canada, says the CBC's the fifth estate. The news show will air a story tonight at 9 p.m. linking one convicted smuggler with Imperial Tobacco and another alleged tobacco runner with RJR Macdonald. Company officials were knowingly part of the early 1990s pipeline of smokes to the U.S., where lower taxes cut the price in half, and back into Canada for illegal sale, the show alleges. It cites a U.S. court affidavit quoting Michael Bernstein, of Brown and Williamson, Imperial Tobacco's U.S. sister company, who pleaded guilty to smuggling last September in New Orleans.
- A man authorities say was the kingpin in a multimillion-dollar smuggling ring says a senior Canadian tobacco company executive knew the firm's cigarettes were being smuggled into Canada, the CBC's Fifth Estate reported Tuesday. Larry Miller told CBC he met with Stan Smith, then vice-president of sales for Canada's RJR Macdonald, in cities all over North America to talk about smuggling in 1993.
- It is absurd that Canadians know more about what they're spraying on bugs than putting in their mouths. Some smokers may not care. But those who love them, those who are breathing their fumes and those who aren't hooked need as much information as they can get.
- Relative to much of the continent, Quebec remains a smoker's paradise. Tobacco-related illnesses kill more than 10,000 Quebecers every year. So serious a problem cries out for serious solutions. . . Cadillac Fairview's initiative should embolden the provincial and municipal governments. If this real-estate company possesses the mettle to crack down, unafraid of the damage that shoppers' displeasure might inflict on their profits, politicians should also have the courage to act.
- South Korea's economic turmoil has severely hurt multinational companies' business over the past two months, said Song Duck Young, president of Philip Morris Korea Inc. . . Song said sales of its cigarettes fell by more than 50% in December, at the peak of the financial crisis that led the country to turn to the International Monetary Fund for a $57 billion bailout package.
- A Turkish union has sought to block a joint venture between tobacco giant B.A.T Industries Plc and Turkish Tobacco State Enterprise (TEKEL) for violating privatisation laws, a union lawyer said on Thursday. "We are saying that legally state-run companies must be privatised by their own special law. This was not done," Haluk Omerbas, attorney for the Tek Gida Is union, told Reuters.
- One of the bigger hurdles facing Championship Auto Racing Teams Inc., or CART, as it prepares to go public may be the recent groundswell of public sentiment against tobacco companies. The Troy, Mich., company operates an "open wheel," or Indy-style, car-racing circuit in the U.S. and several other countries. CART, which plans to raise about $84 million through the sale of 4.6 million public shares, is looking to expand its circuit internationally.
- A top marketing executive will succeed the late T. Wayne Robertson as head of the Sports Marketing Enterprises division at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. The company said yesterday that G. Clifton "Cliff" Pennell, Robertson's boss since early 1997, immediately becomes president of the sports-marketing division and will give up his role as head of marketing for the company's savings brands.
- RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp. (NYSE: RN - news) today announced that Lionel L. Nowell III has been named senior vice president, strategy and business development, effective January 26, 1998. Mr. Nowell, who will report to David B. Rickard, senior vice president and chief financial officer of RJR Nabisco, succeeds Michael G. DiNapoli, who has become the chief financial officer of R.J. Reynolds International.
- Universal Corp. said its N.V. Deli Universal unit agreed to sell all of its minority interest in a European spice company to the majority owner, Cosun, a Dutch cooperative. In a press release Thursday, Universal said it estimates it will report an after-tax gain of about $11 million on the transaction, which will be reflected in its third quarter earnings.
- UST Inc. expects higher earnings and continued unit volume growth in 1998, Chairman and Chief Executive Vincent A. Gierer Jr. told analysts during a Thursday morning conference call. The executive specifically targeted earnings per share growth of 8% to 10%. "1998 is going to be a good year," he said.
- UST Inc. today announced that consolidated results for the year of 1997 were as follows: Net sales of $1.4 billion, net earnings of $439.1 million, basic earnings per share of $2.39 and diluted earnings per share of $2.37. Net sales increased 2 percent as compared to the prior year while net earnings decreased 5 percent and basic and diluted earnings per share declined 4 percent and 3 percent, respectively.
- BRIGHT Packaging Industry Bhd, realising that its fibre-optic operations need "a lot of work" before seeing profits, is increasing efforts to promote its products in more countries. . . For its aluminium foil lamination division, he said the company has also recently been selected by a multinational tobacco company to participate in contracts for the supply of its products for the Asia Pacific region. "The tobacco industry is generally considered to be recession-proof and the consumption of cigarettes is therefore unlikely to be significantly affected by the slowdown of Asian economies," Markandu added.
- A two-career marriage offers couples the benefits of economic independence and career control, according to a Catalyst study released today at a press breakfast in New York City. . . CATALYST, the nonprofit research organization that works with business to advance women, pioneered the study of dual-career couples . . . PHILIP MORRIS COMPANIES INC., the world's largest producer and marketer of consumer packaged goods, sponsored Two Marriages, One Career: Making It Work In The Workplace.
- Japan Tobacco Inc. (J.JTB or 2914) said Thursday it agreed with Swiss pharmaceutical company F.Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. (Z.HR) to jointly market in Japan an HIV drug that the Japanese tobacco manufacturer had been jointly producing with Agouron Pharmaceuticals Inc. (AGPH) of the U.S.
- General Cigar Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: MPP - news) today reported net income of $14,028,000 or $0.49 per share on sales of $83,467,000 for the quarter ended November 29, 1997, compared to net income of $3,220,000 or $0.11 per share on sales of $52,382,000 in the fourth quarter of 1996.
- General Cigar Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: MPP - news) today announced the appointment of Edward B. Polite as Chief Operating Officer. He will report to President and Chief Executive Officer Edgar M. Cullman, Jr.
- Te Wiata would never say that touring was a drag, but not being able to have a drag sometimes makes her work that much harder. "I can't drink or smoke if I'm singing the next day because if I do, I can't hit some of the notes. I don't miss the drinking but I dearly love to smoke," she said. Te Wiata performs with the New Zealand Sympohony Orchestra for the BP Pops tour at the TSB Bowl of Brooklands next Wednesday. For her, nicotine withdrawal is the butt end of being a singer and she admits no matter what the rewards are, at times she laments the sacrifices she has to make.
- Griffin's Coconut Club (Beverly Hills) opened last weekend. It's his homage to the days when he sang with Freddie Martin's orchestra at the Coconut Grove. "People want to go out and have a good time. And this isn't like a jazz club where you sit and don't participate. Here you dance, you eat, maybe have a drink or a smoke. It's an inexpensive night out -- except for what you might have to pay the baby sitter," Griffin said.
- The President and Founder of D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) America, Glenn Levant, and Laurel Glen publishing have teamed up to provide a tool to help combat the increased drug use among children in America. The book, "Keeping Kids Drug-Free: D.A.R.E. Official Parent's Guide" is aimed at parents of children of all ages.
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- The National Grange wants to broaden international markets and eliminate capital gains and estate taxes. At a separate news conference, Grange President Kermit W. Richardson announced his organization's "Blueprint for Rural America," a 10-point plan for the future. . . Keeping tobacco a viable U.S. crop and protecting farmers' property rights also are part of the plan. Farmers' rights need to be balanced against the views of environmentalists, he said, adding, "Both sides have to be at the table."
- DNA's chief financial officer, Arthur Finnel, appeared in United States District Court here and admitted that the company shipped genetically-altered tobacco seeds to South America and other regions in order to grow a special high-nicotine tobacco, code-named "Y-1." While Brown & Williamson, the nation's third largest tobacco company, has not been charged, a statement by DNA said that company is continuing to cooperate with federal investigators.
- DNAP helped smuggle the seeds around the world for cultivation and experiments without the required permits, using code phrases such as "special materials" instead of "seed," according to court documents.
- The California biotechnology company admitted that it conspired with a cigarette maker to secretly develop a high nicotine tobacco plant and illegally smuggle the seeds out of the United States. U.S. District Chief Judge Norma Holloway Johnson accepted the plea, in an agreement under which the company will cooperate with the government in its ongoing investigation of the tobacco industry.
- A California biotechnology company pleaded guilty in federal court on Friday to secretly growing high-nicotine tobacco in foreign countries for a U.S. tobacco company. DNA Plant Technology Corp. of Oakland pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of conspiracy, giving the Justice Department its first conviction in its investigation of the tobacco industry.
- Scott Harshbarger could get a big holiday gift at the end of the year, a multi-billion-dollar settlement from the tobacco industry. But it could come too late. The Democratic attorney general is battling the industry in court, suing for the costs of smoking-related injuries. At the same time, he's running for governor and proud of his record as a noble knight fighting the tobacco dragon.
- The campaign fund-raising scandal has drawn new attention to the way moneyed interests buy political favors in Washington. But far from the nation's capital, many of these same donors operate unchecked in a venue that may prove more disturbing than the Lincoln Bedroom: the state courts. . . In Ohio, Justice Evelyn Stratton took in 64 percent of her campaign funds from lawyers and lobbyists, and the financial and insurance industries. The law firm that handled her campaign represents the tobacco industry in a case bound for her court.
- Mike Butler was desperate. After years of watching his mother suffer from emphysema, he was determined to snuff out his own 15-year habit of smoking three packs a day. So last summer when he saw a magazine ad promoting the prescription drug ZYBAN as a stop-smoking pill, he went to his doctor and asked for it.
- Under the topic "tobacco," a reference to legislation to implement the settlement negotiated last year by the tobacco companies and the state attorneys general, was the question: "Will we work to divide the Democrats from Kennedy?" . . Stopping the Kennedy alliances may be difficult. For example, Representative Constance Morella, the Maryland Republican being challenged by Ralph Neas, a longtime civil rights activist whom Kennedy has helped with fund-raising, has signed on as a cosponsor to the House version of Kennedy's tobacco bill.
- The police here have received reports of children selling mercury and smoking mercury-laced cigarettes. About 60 pounds of mercury have been found by the authorities or turned in so far, said Dave Hall, the emergency management coordinator for Texarkana, although he said perhaps only 40 pounds of that came from the factory.
- In addition to smokers, tobacco chewers and dippers will be unwelcome at all county facilities, including county-owned vehicles. The Midland County Commissioners' Court is revising its existing smoking policy, which will prohibit "smoking within county facilities and vehicles." The new policy will also prohibit the use of all tobacco products, including smokeless tobacco, such as snuff and plugs, said Commissioner James Brezina . . . "As long as they don't ban nicotine gum, I'm OK," said District Attorney Al Schorre.
- But Sen. John Marty, DFL-Roseville, isn't giving up his efforts . . . Carlson's spokeswoman says he wasn't lobbied on tobacco issues on the eight-day trade mission. But Marty has uncovered a report from Philip Morris lobbyist John Lenzi suggesting, Marty says, that Carlson was lobbied. During the trip, Lenzi reported spending more than $3,100 "to influence legislative action," the only such expense listed in his reports for 1996 and 1997.
- A $300,000 plan being pitched to the Legislature would track lung diseases to determine why an asbestos-related cancer is striking a disproportionate number of men in northeastern Minnesota. The plan, presented last week at a legislative meeting, calls for monitoring work-related lung diseases including asthma, silicosis, asbestosis and the asbestos-related cancer called mesothelioma.
- Democrats will undoubtedly revive the image of Lungren as right-wing crackpot, piling on attacks on his lack of military service (bum knees and kidney surgery made him 4-F, he says), the tens of thousands of dollars he has collected in donations over the years from the tobacco industry and what some consider lax enforcement of the state's assault-weapons ban. In short, they will reprise the 10-year-old campaign that shredded his treasurer nomination, this time on a grander scale.
- Smoking is vastly more damaging to peoples' lungs than air pollution, medical specialists said Saturday, criticizing the media for focusing too much on pollution. "Some 60,000 people each year in France die 15 years too early as a result of smoking," Bertrand Dautzenberg, a lung specialist at a Paris hospital, said at a conference in this southern French city. "A person who smokes a packet of cigarettes a day has one chance in two of dying from an illness related to tobacco," he said. "Air pollution every year aggravates the cases of 500 to 1,000 people who are already stricken with serious lung diseases and condemned in the short term," he said. "When these very sick patients are regularly submitted to air pollution, life expectancy is diminished by four weeks," he said.
- Ritts, commissioner of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA), is deeply concerned with this issue because it will have a profound affect on the women's tour. It comes down to this: If the ban on tobacco advertising is passed, the du Maurier Classic will be history. Period. "We don't want to lose the du Maurier Classic," Ritts said, "but, if we do, life will go on. "The real tragedy, though, will be the loss of the du Maurier Series." That is a five-tournament series held across Canada each summer to assist in the development of women golfers.
- The Finns have valuable experience to offer. Twenty-five years ago, Finland had the world's highest rate of cardiovascular disease. Finns smoked a lot, drank a lot, consumed a dairyland diet high in fat and cholesterol, and were too often sedentary. A mammoth public education campaign, which began in Finnish Karelia, just over the border from Russia, has been a huge success in getting Finns to adopt healthier habits. Between 1970 and 1990, the overall mortality rate in Finnish Karelia dropped by nearly 40 percent; improvements in the rate of cardiovascular disease and lung cancer were especially impressive.
- 53 percent of deaths caused by heart disease, 20 percent by cancer. World Health Organization figures smoking causes 32 percent of all male deaths, 5 percent of female deaths.
- For anyone wondering what it means for an economy to "melt down" or "implode," it is starting to happen here . . Because of the dramatic plunge in the value of the rupiah, enterprising traders are using foreign currency to buy up cigarettes and cosmetics by the carton and caseload for resale in other countries at two or three times the price . . . Jakarta residents are buying caseloads of Marlboro cigarettes at the equivalent of 20 cents a pack and shipping them for resale into neighboring countries such as China, he said, where they go for three times the price. . . " . . . anything that crosses borders and has international brand awareness -- people are taking it out by the container," said Meeks.
- Britain's High Court awarded compensation Friday for six former coal miners who suffered lung damage -- a landmark judgment that left the British government facing claims of $1.6 billion. In one of the biggest judgments ever awarded against the government, the court ruled that British Coal, state-owned until 1994, did not do enough -- particularly up to 1970 -- to protect miners from fine coal dust. . . The judge rejected claims that lung disease in miners was caused only by cigarette smoking, but said it was probable that both dust and smoking were to blame for emphysema.
- The prognosis is better for those people who give up smoking, but is poor for those who have extensive lung damage.
- The largest U.S. tobacco companies will raise cigarette prices for the third time in a year, adding nearly 3 cents to every pack sold. Friday's announcement came one day after a federal judge approved Texas' $15.3 billion settlement with the tobacco industry, the largest settlement in U.S. litigation history.
- Peter Harrisson took over a company heavily dependent on the US and Chinese tobacco machinery markets. Both have collapsed - and there is nothing Molins or its rivals can do about it. Officially, the shares are valued at 8.5 times the earnings that it is expected to make if it returns to the black next year. But privately the City will admit that the troubles in China - its largest profit earner - are almost impossible to quantify.
- PETER HARRISSON resigned as chief executive of the engineering group Molins yesterday, after five profits warnings which have seen the shares fall to less than a third of their value a year ago. . . September saw news of a downturn in orders for tobacco-making machinery from China.
- "It's really cathartic in a way," she said during an interview, smoking a cigarette--the one vice she still allows herself. ". . The students at Hollywood High wanted to know how long she had been stoned. Her answer was slow in coming. "It starts with the littler things. . . . I started smoking and I guess you can consider that a drug. It's addictive like a drug. There was heroin and the cocaine, it just didn't seem to stop."
- Tempting though it might be to strike a deal, Mr. Humphrey should continue to resist; his lawsuit may be the last hope of learning the whole truth about the tobacco enterprise.
- Deliberately hooking insecure and impressionable boys on cigarettes is a bad thing . . On the other hand, the neo-Puritanism that puts adult smokers on the same social plane as crack addicts is not by extension a good thing. Nor is it undisputably good social policy that 89 law firms in the state tobacco litigation get fabulously rich by pretending that all smokers are victims. . . Counselors Milberg, Weiss noted that RJR "was impressed with the transformation of Jack Daniels" from a drink for middle aged men to "a hip brand for young adults" and the "Marlboro of Bourbons." That liquor you sip while watching the Mississippi flow by may just be the next worst thing to a Merit.
- It won't stop until we throw out every politician on the take from tobacco interests, and that won't happen until the public shows its disgust at the polls. We hope that is in the next election.
- Reynolds issued a statement last week which said in part that the company's "position and policy have remained constant . . . smoking is a choice for adults and marketing programs are directed at those above the legal age to smoke." In other words, pay no attention to what you've seen with your own eyes, only to what we say. It didn't work for the Wizard of Oz, and it mustn't work for R.J. Reynolds.
- The proposed ban on smoking in Portland restaurants, unveiled this week by the city's health department and supported by a coalition called Citizens for a Healthy Portland, is a breath of fresh air for anyone who prefers to see, smell and taste their food in addition to eating it. Two groups, however, feel otherwise: the ever-shrinking number of cigarette junkies bent on killing themselves and dragging the rest of us down with them, and the minority of local restaurant owners who would rather fight City Hall than switch to common sense. We've heard from both already - and the City Council will undoubtedly hear more before it votes on the ban in early March.
- Until state budget writers recently agreed to put $791,000 into Colorado's lawsuit against cigarette makers, Attorney General Gale Norton's "tobacco team" was feeling a financial pinch. "We didn't have the money to buy filing cabinets," said Marty Allbright, Norton's chief deputy. "We had all these tobacco-company documents stacked up on the floor." The money means the tobacco litigation effort will move forward at a more deliberate pace, gathering steam toward a full-blown trial.
- A proposal to license sellers of cigarettes and other tobacco products won't have a big impact on sales, merchants say. An Arlington delegate says he intends to introduce a licensing bill in the General Assembly.
- Old Bridge Township council members are expected to pass a law that will ban underage smoking in public.
- Only a few of the quota owners actually grow tobacco anymore. . . But the newly released government records on quota holders show, among other things, that much of the buyout money would not go to tobacco farmers or tobacco-farming communities. Most of it, in fact, would go to individuals and businesses that don't grow tobacco.
- Advertising agencies are bracing for a political donnybrook as Florida picks a team to launch the huge anti-tobacco marketing program. The account, worth up to $59-million in billings, already has unleashed fierce competition. One losing bidder has filed a lawsuit. Lobbyists have been hired to influence what's supposed to be a non-political process. Even the selection committee is entangled in questions about conflicts of interest.
- Turning consumers away from a product is an odd challenge for even the smartest folks on Madison Avenue. How do you effectively campaign against a product that has been so hyped that the Marlboro Man and Joe Camel are household names?
- Claude Owen, Dimon chairman and chief executive, dismisses the suggestion that his company, like its aging neighborhood, is history. To the contrary, Owen insists Dimon's best days lie ahead. "Each year we break a record in how many cigarettes are produced in the U.S.," Owen says. "We think there's a real possibility to grow our profitability at double-digit rates."
- Maura Ellis, a spokeswoman for the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., estimated that the number of stores nationwide that sell only tobacco-related products has grown from 400 in 1992 to 5,000 this year. In 1992 the shops accounted for 1 percent of total sales; now it's about 13 percent, Ellis said.
- As for me, I quit smoking three years ago, after many attempts. I'll never resume the habit, not even if it meant I'd be helping pay for somebody's child care.
- The tobacco companies came to the State Board of Equalization last year with an interesting request: They wanted the board to issue a cigarette revenue stamp for a package that contained just one or two cigarettes.
- Lt. Gov. Gray Davis is keeping the heat on tobacco companies, summoning a whistleblower to tell legislators why California should press its legal claims. Davis sponsored a Capitol roundtable discussion today with Dr. Victor DeNoble, a research scientist who was fired by Philip Morris for documenting the addictive effects of nicotine. Sen. Diane Watson, chair of the Senate Health Committee, and others heard DeNoble advise against any out-of-court settlement with tobacco companies that would let them off the hook for decades of lying to consumers.
- Using sophisticated bioengineering tools, Marina Picciotto, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Yale Medical School, and colleagues at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, and the research section of Glaxo-Wellcome in Geneva, have pinpointed a particular molecule, the beta 2 subunit of a known nicotine receptor, as being essential to the process of nicotine addiction. This important molecular finding identifies the beta 2 subunit as a critical component in nicotine addiction, as well as a potential site for targeting the development of anti-nicotine addiction medications.
- Hey, gents, need another reason to stop smoking? More sex. According to a recent California study of married men ages 21 to 64, those who stopped smoking had almost twice as much sex (2.6 times per week) as those who still smoked. The main reason, the study concluded, is that tobacco use lowers testosterone levels. This study could become as effective as "the patch" in halting smoking.
- A 17-year-old juvenile parolee ignited a controversy when he decided to smoke a cigarette in the restroom of a Texas Youth Commission halfway house. The youth wound up in jail, prompting questions about the application of the state's new misdemeanor law against tobacco use by minors.
- The future of Maine's only independent drug store chain looks uncertain, as Downeast Pharmacy has sold 12 of its 17 stores. Downeast Pharmacy opened for business in 1984, just when the national chains started swallowing up local competition. Its founder, Michael Fiori, dedicated himself to community service, and refused to sell tobacco products, alcohol or toy weapons in his stores.
- A bill that would restrict smoking in most indoor public places is in line for debate in the Alabama House, but a tobacco lobbyist says the proposal is unnecessary because most locations already comply with the bill's provisions. The Alabama Clean Indoor Air Act, proposed by Rep. Demetrius Newton, D-Birmingham, would ban smoking or require no-smoking areas in any building or enclosed area open to the public, such as restaurants, banks and shopping malls, with few exceptions.
- My suggestion to the kids they will target is this: Don't keep these creeps in business. Don't buy into their propaganda, whatever form it may take. You wanna rebel? Then don't support companies that would sacrifice your life to their limos. Blow them off. And rejoice, as I will, when they finally go down in flames.
- A leading Senate Democrat in the fight over tobacco regulation said in a speech released Sunday that he wants a self-adjusting federal tax on cigarettes that would rise at least as fast as the cost of medical care. New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg, the senior Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, said the final version of a bill introduced last year by Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts could go beyond a simple $1.50-per-pack tax on cigarettes.
- An appeals court on Monday granted an emergency request by cigarette makers to delay the release of the first dollars from the state's $11 billion tobacco settlement. . . Steve Krigbaum, an attorney for the tobacco companies, said cigarette makers might not be able to recover money that is released if the deal were never made technically final.
- Pennsylvania's position against the tobacco industry is only strengthened by a trial against cigarette makers in Minnesota and a $15 billion settlement reached by Texas, Attorney General Mike Fisher said Monday.
- A large percentage of students who smoke also engage in behavior that puts their health at risk, according to Robinette Bacon, a consultant who helped prepare the 1997 Nevada Youth Risk Behavior Survey Report. "Smoking seems to be the starting (place) for most at-risk behavior," Bacon told the board members . . . Students who smoke are more likely to drink alcohol, smoke marijuana, fight at school, carry weapons at school, consider suicide, drive under the influence of alcohol and be sexually active.
- A group of trade unions, professional organisations and tobacco growers on Tuesday launched a campaign against a joint venture between British-American tobacco giant B.A.T Industries Plc and Turkey's state-owned tobacco enterprise. "We have planned protest meetings (in several Black Sea cities) to raise public awareness of what is happening, especially among tobacco producers," Orhan Balta of the Tek Gida Is union told Reuters. The group says the venture between B.A.T and Turkey's Tobacco State Enterprise (TEKEL) violates national privatisation laws. The union earlier this month filed a legal case against the deal.
- Ontario has seen a significant increase in smoking among its youth in the 1990s, according to a new University of Toronto-led study. The increase, following a decade of decline, can be blamed on a combination of lower taxes, high-profile smokers, continued cigarette advertising, illegal sales to minors and a government unwilling to attack the issue effectively, says one of the report's main authors. . . The report contends that smoking among females aged 12 to 19 increased from about 21.9 per cent to 28.7 per cent between 1991 and 1997. Among males in the same age group, there was an increase from 22.5 per cent to 28.2 per cent between 1993 and 1995. It slipped to 26.4 per cent in 1997.
- Lawyers for 43 lung cancer victims who are suing two tobacco companies went to the Appeal Court yesterday to try to overturn a High Court ruling which threatens to scupper the case and throw into disarray government plans to expand no-win, no-fee litigation. The ruling by Mr Justice Popplewell in October means the two firms of solicitors and two barristers representing the ex-smokers under no-win, no-fee deals could have to pay up to £20 million costs if they lose the case.
- Lawyers for the multi-party legal action against British tobacco manufacturers said conditional fee agreementscould be "destroyed" if they are held personally liable for the companies' legal costs. Estimates put the costs of the negligence action by 43 lung cancer sufferers at up to £20m. Their lawyers have made it clear that if they are at risk of paying the costs they will withdraw from the case. Yesterday Dan Brennan QC, for the plaintiffs, said it could have wide implications for conditional fee agreements (CFAs). He said a ruling making lawyers liable for the costs would "destroy the efficacy of such claims" by dissuading lawyers from taking such risks.
- The Court of Appeal delayed a decision on Monday in a potentially groundbreaking class action by 43 cancer victims against two of Britain's biggest tobacco companies for failing to curb the damage of smoking. The three judges were due to decide whether the lawyers representing the cancer sufferers on a 'no-win, no-fee' basis will be liable for the companies' legal costs if they lose the case against Imperial Tobacco Plc and Gallaher Group Plc . Citing the importance of the case and its implications, the judges decided to postpone their judgement until a later date
- The ruling Communist Party has expelled the chairman of China's largest tobacco firm for a spree of embezzlement and bribery that allowed his family to amass a fortune of nearly $10 million. . . The state-run Xinhua News Agency said Chu embezzled $3.55 million, his daughter collected bribes worth $4.82 million and his wife took graft worth $1.57 million. Tobacco is one of the most lucrative industries in China, with more smokers than any other country. The Hong Ta Group, with pretax profits of $1.78 billion in 1994, is China's No. 1 tobacco company.
- The ruling Communist Party has expelled the powerful chairman of China's largest tobacco firm for embezzlement and bribery that allowed his family to amass nearly $10 million.
- China's "Tobacco King" has been expelled from the Communist Party and is facing criminal prosecution for corruption, Xinhua announced yesterday. Chu Shijian, former chairman of Yunnan's Hong Ta Group - which manufactures one of China's best known cigarettes, the Hong Ta Shan brand - has been formally indicted and will be put on trial. If convicted, Chu could face the death penalty under mainland law. Xinhua described his case as scandalous, saying it involved nearly all his family.
- Fans and officials now say they want a detailed accounting of how the association spends its sponsorship money. The national soccer league was christened the Marlboro Professional Soccer League this year, allowing a U.S. tobacco company to circumvent Chinese laws banning cigarette advertising. The soccer association has not taken well to criticism in past years and has even pulled press credentials from critical reporters.
- DIMON Incorporated announced this week that Todd Haymore has joined the company as director of corporate communications. Previously, Haymore had been press secretary and legislative assistant to former Fifth Congressional District Rep. L.F. Payne (D-VA). Haymore succeeds Paul Ashworth, who has been promoted to vice-president for sales at DIMON. In addition to handling public and media relations, Haymore will focus his attention on state and federal government affairs and industry relations.
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BAT's plans to increase its stake in VST Industries to 50 per cent through two of its subsidiaries faced yet another setback as the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) decided to defer a discussion and decision on the proposal by six weeks.
- U.K. tobacco giant Imperial Tobacco Group PLC's (U.IMT) Chief Executive Gareth Davis said Tuesday current year trading has been affected by the delayed implementation of the U.K. budget's duty increase on tobacco products, which were announced in July, but came into effect on Dec. 1.
- So for starters, how about the tobacco companies making a substantial and appropriate donation for the costs of the diseases smoking causes in Hong Kong? Otherwise, I cannot help but feel cynical at the way the tobacco industry polishes its image by contributing peanuts to the Community Chest while causing death and devastation in the community.
- New Mexico hopes to recoup health care costs of Medicaid patients from the tobacco industry. Testimony began in a class action lawsuit by the state's Attorney General against several tobacco companies. . . A New Mexico-based cigarette company, the Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company, wants out of the lawsuit. The company's lawyer claims the fraud and deception allegations do not apply to his client.
- "What makes me feel this debate is so weird is that no one believes it immoral or awkward to offer a CEO a stock option that is valid only if the bottom line improves," says Charles Silver, a law professor at the University of Texas . . . Mr. Silver is advising private lawyers who negotiated a $15.3 billion settlement for the state of Texas against the tobacco industry earlier this month; the lawyers stand to get 15% under a contract with the state, although the fee is already being challenged in court.
- A study reported in 1994 found that infants who were breast-fed by mothers who smoked gained more weight than other infants. But a new study, reported this month in the American Journal of Epidemiology, failed to replicate those findings. Dr. Hendriek C. Boshuizen and colleagues at TNO Institute for Prevention and Health in The Netherlands studied 2,151 children, evaluating their growth at 1, 2, 3, 6, 9 and 12 months of age. They compared children who were breast-fed by smokers and nonsmokers to those who were bottle-fed by smokers and nonsmokers. The researchers report that they "...failed to observe any additional increase in body mass, length, or head circumference in infants of breastfeeding smokers compared with infants of the three other groups." They did find, however, lower birth weight and more "catch-up" growth during the first year for children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy.
- So regular sex and alcohol in moderation is now acceptable. But what remains unacceptable is smoking, and the facts become more frightening every day:
- The politics of tobacco turned into a family feud Tuesday when traditional House allies debated a resolution on whether to urge Congress to reject a pending deal with the industry. Rep. Robert Starr, D-Troy, led a charge, which was quietly encouraged by tobacco lobbyists, to throw out the original resolution and substitute it with one backing the deal that the industry helped to negotiate. That put him in conflict with Rep. Paul Poirier, D-Barre City, and the Health and Welfare Committee that he leads.
- The 48-89 Roll Call By Which The Vermont House Voted Against An Alternative Tobacco Resolution. AP/Boston Globe
- The town has passed an ordinance banning the self-service displays of cigarettes and tobacco products in stores where children are allowed. Voters approved the measure 14-7 at a town meeting Tuesday, making this town of about 7,000 the first municipality in the state to ban such displays. Violators are subject to fines.
- Investigators say the fire began in a chair on the second floor of a rowhouse in the 3900-block of Greenspring Avenue. Walter Nichols tried to put it out, but died. It's not clear if the cause of death was the fire, or something else.
- In a bid to position herself as the major Democratic rival to front-runner Scott Harshbarger, Patricia McGovern yesterday scored the attorney general for his role in the $368.5 billion settlement the tobacco industry reached with 41 states last year. The former Senate Ways and Means chairwoman argued the deal does not do enough to protect the rights of individuals harmed by tobacco or to punish manufacturers.
- A retired senior executive of American Tobacco Company, Hager submitted Nov. 25 to his second round of questioning under oath in an anti-tobacco lawsuit. He was pressed about his roles at the company and about a lemon-flavored menthol cigarette it developed, called "Lemon Twist." Also, federal agents investigating the tobacco industry obtained a copy of sworn testimony given in June by Hager in a different lawsuit. . . And Hager has disclosed that within three weeks after his election last year he attended a Republican Governors' Association conference in Miami as a consultant for Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp.
- The European Union Commission approved Wednesday a proposal to reform the E.U. tobacco market. The proposal, which must be approved by E.U. countries, seeks to encourage the production of higher-quality tobacco, reduce environmental damage from tobacco farming and facilitate the transfer of tobacco production quotas.
- Philip Morris Cos., the world's biggest tobacco company and a leading food and beer business, added to the warnings. Chairman and chief executive Geoffrey C. Bible said the dollar's continued strength could hurt profits this year and the Asian turmoil could slow business there.
- Peter N. Stidolph drove his pickup truck along the sandy lanes of his tobacco farm, pointing out the curing barns, the reservoir and the workers' village. "What you see here -- I've rebuilt everything," said Stidolph . . . The impending seizure threatens to undermine Zimbabwe's most successful economic sector, agriculture. Commercial farms employ one-quarter of Zimbabwe's workers. Tobacco alone accounts for 30 percent of the nation's foreign exchange.
- The federal government could face legal problems if it moves to soften tobacco advertising rules for auto sports but not for other groups, Health Minister Allan Rock acknowledged Tuesday. "It's a worry," Rock said as he arrived for a Liberal caucus meeting in this Georgian Bay resort community. "The Charter (of Rights) and its requirements apply to all legislation, even legislation dealing with tobacco. We're concerned about finding a solution that's legal as well as consistent with the health objectives."
- Strong sales of Winston cigarettes and higher prices all around helped RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp. turn a tidy but smaller profit in a tough year for tobacco. The parent of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. said yesterday that it cleared $337 million in net income in 1997 despite paying $218 million to settle tobacco lawsuits and $313 million to restructure its troubled overseas operations.
- RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp. reported a $197 million loss for the fourth quarter of 1997 as a result of expenses in a tobacco lawsuit and a previously disclosed overhaul of its tobacco business. But the company that makes Winston and Camel cigarettes and controls the food company that makes Oreo cookies said Tuesday its earnings would have been up 20 percent for the quarter if one-time factors were excluded from the comparison. It said its Winston brand was growing again and international tobacco trends were improving after big cutbacks announced last year.
- Shares in Nabisco, the US food business 80 per cent owned by the RJR Nabisco tobacco and food group, slumped $4¾, or 11 per cent, to $40 in early trading yesterday after the company warned of a gloomy outlook for the year ahead. Reporting its fourth-quarter results, Nabisco said underlying net profits were up 14 per cent to $172m, or 64 cents a share. But sales had fallen 2 per cent to $2.4bn, confirming a trend seen in 1997 as a whole.
- ELENA, Mont. -- It sounds like a recipe for trouble. Ban all forms of tobacco in a prison where 80 percent of the more than 1,200 inmates and half the guards smoke or chew tobacco. But a week after the total ban started at the State Prison in Deer Lodge, officials said last week, there had been no trouble. . . Over several months, officials had gradually reduced the number of cigarettes inmates could buy at the canteen. Starting on Jan. 1, no tobacco was sold, and inmates were supposed to turn in personal caches.
- The cheekful-of-snuff defense was spat back at the feet of Eagles center Steve Everitt and his attorney yesterday in Mount Laurel (N.J.) Municipal Court. Judge John L. Madden wasted little time finding Everitt guilty of driving while intoxicated on Nov. 4 . . . Madden wasn't buying the Everitt defense argument that the reliability of Breathalyzer tests was affected by the presence of smokeless tobacco in Everitt's mouth shortly before the tests.
- SERENA WILLIAMS, 16, played her much-publicized duel with an obscure ATP Tour player, 30-year-old KARSTEN BRAASCH of Germany, the 230th-ranked qualifier whose habit of lighting up during change-overs prompted the men's tour's no-smoking-on-court policy. After Braasch gave Serena a 6-1 dusting, VENUS WILLIAMS took her turn and was dispatched, 6-2.
- Twenty-five years after the U.S. tennis great made his unfortunate "Battle of the Sexes" challenge to Billie Jean King, a 30-year-old German with a nicotine habit proved on Tuesday that women shouldn't mix it with men at professional tennis. His victims were the teenage Williams sisters, Serena and Venus, who were keen to try their hand against the dominant sex and appealed at the Australian Open for a male professional, ranked around 200, to test themselves against. Karsten Braasch, ranked 203 and without a tour title in 10 years of trying, answered their call. On Tuesday, after a morning round of golf, a couple of beers and half a pack of cigarettes, he met the self-styled future of the women's game.
- In 1978, the Columbia Journalism Review surveyed seven years of leading national magazines to gauge coverage of tobacco. The magazine said it couldn't find a single article that would have given readers "a clear notion of the nature and extent of the medical and social havoc being wreaked by the cigarette-smoking habit . . . one must conclude that advertising revenue can indeed silence the editors of American magazines." . . "I blame the scientists as much as the media, if not more so," said Proctor, whose book, "> "Cancer Wars," was published in 1995. "The National Cancer Institute still only spends 3 percent of its budget on smoking, even though smoking causes 30 percent of all cancers. I think that's pretty scandalous. Science is much more political than we're willing to realize."
- Metro-page columnist Joe Soucheray has often written about cigars, and he appears on the cover of his 1994 book, "Modern, Caring, Sensitive Male" with a lit cigar. "If you want me to say cigars are dangerous, of course they are," Soucheray said in an interview. "I obviously do not advocate that anyone take up the custom." And Metro-page columnist Katherine Lanpher wrote in March 1996 about how excited she was to be hosting a "smoker" . . . She opined that cigar smoking, in which she partook, was "so hip." Lanpher said in an interview that she didn't consider her endorsement of cigars irresponsible. "I think a cigar a year isn't going to kill you. All things in moderation are OK," she said.
- Despite health warnings about tobacco and attempts to limit its availability, nearly one-half of all teen-agers in Kentucky schools said they smoked in 1997. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surveyed students in ninth through 12th grade and found that 47 percent were smokers, up from 34 percent in 1993. . . Smoking rates were highest among 12th graders, 55 percent of whom said they smoked.
- House of Representatives The State Board of Investment would have to divest certain tobacco stocks under a measure to be discussed in the Governmental Operations Committee at 10 a.m. in the Basement Hearing Room of the State Office Building. Senate
- Tobacco: The House Governmental Operations committee considers a bill to require the State Investment Board to divest itself of certain tobacco stocks, 10 a.m., Basement Hearing Room, State Office Building
- Over the past three years, Mexican magnate Alfonso Romo Garza has bought and sold nine companies in deals totaling nearly $3 billion in a bid to turn his Empresas La Moderna SA into a global agro-biotechnology powerhouse. But in his flurry of sales and acquisitions, Mr. Romo has confused shareholders, befuddled analysts and left the New York Stock Exchange-listed American depositary shares of ELM languishing with a 9.8% return in 1997, vs. a 51.8% return for the Mexican stock market in dollar terms.
- RONSON shareholders had their fingers burnt again yesterday when the cigarette lighters and luxury goods group warned that first-half losses will now exceed £7.5m. Despite assurances that a takeover is still on the cards, with news of a fresh approach from the management team, fears are that the group is continuing to sink deeper into the red.
- No further information is available at this time. NEW YORK -- Goldman Sachs & Co. analyst Marc I. Cohen lowered ratings on the nation's two largest tobacco companies, Philip Morris Cos. (MO) and RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp. (RN).
- Philip Morris Cos. Inc. reported a 12 percent drop in fourth-quarter earnings because of expenses in settling a Texas lawsuit over the costs of treating sick smokers and charges for realigning its international food business. But the company behind Marlboro cigarettes, Kraft foods and Miller beer said Wednesday its underlying earnings rose 10 percent from a year ago when unusual gains and charges are excluded from the comparison. The results were in line with Wall Street's expectations, but the company joined a list of multinational businesses warning of problems ahead in the fallout from Asia's financial crisis
- Reported Net Earnings Up 0.1% Underlying Net Earnings Up 12.6%
- Philip Morris Cos Inc on Wednesday reported fourth-quarter results slightly above Wall Street expectations, but the stock price fell as investors focused on diminishing prospects for a national tobacco settlement. "It's still what's on everybody's mind," said Scott & Stringfellow analyst John Kasprzak Jr. "While that's out there, I think that's what's going to move the stock."
- Former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland appeared assured Tuesday of becoming the first woman chief of the World Health Organization (WHO), which she has vowed to run more openly and efficiently. . . Brundtland, a medical doctor and public health specialist, is expected to reshape the agency to fight emerging and reemerging diseases, as well as to reinvigorate old campaigns against unhealthy practices such as smoking, excessive drinking and unsafe sex. "I firmly believe we have to place health on the top of the international political agenda," she told reporters.
- Some prisoners held a short-lived hunger strike, others threatened to hurt guards and one launched a court challenge from behind bars. But Ontario's experiment with smoke-free jails has generally not caused the kind of tension and violence that many had predicted, prison officials say.
- While inmates call smoking bans cruel and unusual, wardens say prisoners are getting healthier and jails are becoming cleaner. Smuggling? It's still going on, but prisoners are bringing in forbidden smokes instead of marijuana and cocaine. America's prison population had best get used to this. Lock-ups from California to Massachusetts have gradually gone smokeless in the 1990s, helped by lawsuits from non-smoking inmates. Most new prisons open smoke-free.
- Start with Mr Kenneth Starr, the lawyer brought in to investigate the Whitewater land deal back in 1994. You do not have to be a conspiracy theorist to see him as a right-wing attack-dog out to get the Clintons. A lifelong Republican, appointed as Solicitor-General by President George Bush, his chief client in private practice has been Big Tobacco. After the Clinton Administration's war on smoking, the cigarette manufacturers would love to see the back of the President - and Mr Starr was their hired gun.
- Antioxidant vitamins may help reduce the damage that smoking causes to the placenta, new research suggests. The findings of the study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, may have important implications for preventing growth retardation in the fetuses of pregnant women who continue to smoke despite being advised to quit.
- NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Specific genes may enhance the temporary "rush" some smokers get from nicotine, according to a new study appearing in the journal Health Psychology. Researchers speculate that therapies counteracting the influence of these genes could help smokers, especially depressed ones, successfully "butt out" for good. "The rewarding effects of smoking and the beneficial effects of nicotine replacement therapy for depressed smokers may depend, in part, on genetic factors," according to researchers at the Lombardi Cancer Center at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
- New research, appearing in the January edition of the journal Health Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association (APA), suggests that depressed people --and nondepressed people -- who smoke to improve their mood may do so because of differences in their genetic make-up, differences that may be important to the effectiveness of future treatments for depression and nicotine dependency. In their article "Depression and Self-Medication with Nicotine: The Modifying Influence of the Dopamine D4 Receptor Gene," psychologist Caryn Lerman, Ph.D., of the Georgetown University Medical Center, and her co-authors note that previous research has shown that people with a history of depression are significantly more likely to be smokers and be diagnosed as nicotine-dependent. Additionally, smokers are more likely than nonsmokers to report depressive symptoms and such symptoms predict relapse
- Using sophisticated bioengineering tools, Marina Picciotto, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Yale Medical School, and colleagues at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, and the research section of Glaxo-Wellcome in Geneva, have pinpointed a particular molecule, the beta 2 subunit of a known nicotine receptor, as being essential to the process of nicotine addiction. This important molecular finding identifies the beta 2 subunit as a critical component in nicotine addiction, as well as a potential site for targeting the development of anti-nicotine addiction medications.
- Compiling "a comprehensive, accurate listing of tobacco retailers represents an insurmountable task" because Virginia does not require a license to sell cigarettes or other tobacco products, said the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. So the ABC department asked the federal government for a list of retailers that could be checked by undercover teams for compliance with FDA rules that took effect a year ago to prevent the sale of cigarettes to under-age youth.
- Virginia officials sent the federal government plans today for a $1 million state program to crack down on retailers who sell cigarettes to minors, but the plan does not include what anti-smoking activists say is a key element in any such effort: requiring tobacco vendors to be licensed. The plan offered by Republican Gov. James S. Gilmore III's administration in response to new federal tobacco regulations calls for state enforcers to make 300 unannounced visits to cigarette vendors each month, using 15- and 16-year-olds in "sting" operations to see whether the merchants illegally sell to those younger than 18.
- State ethics officials will review records filed in Wisconsin and Minnesota that raise new questions about whether Gov. Tommy Thompson talked with a tobacco lobbyist about pending legislation during a 1996 trip to Australia indirectly funded by cigarette maker Philip Morris. Jonathan Becker, an attorney with the Wisconsin Ethics Board, said he was checking reports filed by Philip Morris lobbyist John C. Lenzi that show he claimed lobbying "preparation" time while on the trip as well as lobbying expenses around the time of the trip.
- State ethics officials will examine records in Wisconsin and Minnesota that raise new questions about whether Gov. Tommy Thompson talked with a tobacco lobbyist during a trip to Australia that was indirectly financed by the Philip Morris Cos., the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. Jonathan Becker, an attorney with the Wisconsin Ethics Board, said he was reviewing reports filed by Philip Morris lobbyist John C. Lenzi that show he claimed lobbying "preparation" time while on the trip as well as lobbying expense around the time of the 1996 trip.
- 01/30/98 CANADA: MANITOBA GOVERNMENT: Tobacco Mail Order Entrepreneur Charged M2 Presswire
- A joint investigation by Manitoba Finance Special Investigation and Revenue Canada Excise Investigations has resulted in 27 charges under the Excise Tax being laid against George Van Wallegham and Dawn G. Van Wallegham of Kenora, Ont.
- 01/29/98 MALAWI: Days of Tobacco Exports May Be Numbered Inter Press Services
- Malawi is worried that international anti-smoking campaigns will affect its vital tobacco growing and processing industry. Malawi is the 12th largest producer in the world and the crop is the country's major foreign currency earner and constitutes 14 percent of the gross domestic product. In the 1996/97 selling season, tobacco earned the country $233 million in exports. According to the general manager of the country's Tobacco Control Commission, Dr. Godfrey Chapola, tobacco growing provides a living for over half the farming population. "This in turn, means that fruitless job-seeking migrations to the cities, the 'urban drift' are averted."
- 01/29/98 AUSTRALIA: Legal Smokescreen Puts States on Notice The Australian
- ONE of the country's biggest tobacco companies has put every State and Territory government on notice that they may be sued for millions of dollars in franchise fees paid before a High Court decision ruling out State licence fees. WD&HO Wills has issued writs in the supreme courts of each jurisdiction for a total of $33 million after taking extensive legal advice.
- 01/31/98 SMITHKLINE, GLAXO Discussing Merger AP Washington Post
- In an industry where size matters, British pharmaceutical giants SmithKline Beacham and Glaxo Wellcome PLC are discussing a merger that would be the largest in corporate history. . . It would unite Glaxo Wellcome's product line, which includes ulcer drug Zantac and AIDS medication AZT, with SmithKline's antidepressant Paxil and over-the-counter products such as Aquafresh toothpaste, Geritol vitamins, the Nicoderm anti-smoking patch and Tums antacids.
- 01/30/98 Newsmaker: Mr. GOLDSTONE The PBS Jim Lehrer Interview.
- 01/30/98 RJR's GOLDSTONE Says Tobacco Will Decline Reuters
- The tobacco industry was going to decline which was a good thing for the country, said RJR Nabisco chairman Steven Goldstone Thursday. Goldstone, who earlier in the day told a congressional committee it was not ethical to target underage smokers with a product with known health risks, amplified his comments on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer television program. "This business is not going to grow," said Goldstone. Asked if he looked on that as a good thing for the country, Goldstone said: "Yes, I do."
- 01/30/98 New Documents On Research Are Damaging Richmond Times-Dispatch
- When Geoffrey C. Bible, the urbane chairman of Philip Morris Co. Inc., began addressing a congressional committee yesterday, he urged its members to take "a look forward to cut these Gordian knots of conflict." It was a heroic task Bible gave the House Commerce Committee, so his reference to Greek mythology ‹ where King Gordius tied the tightest knot ever ‹ seemed apt. In mythology, Alexander the Great managed to cut through the knot with his sword. But in real life, such knots aren't so easily untied and conflicts resolved ‹ especially when Philip Morris and its allies have so many strands of intrigue still emerging from their pasts.
- 01/29/98 New Tobacco Documents Show Philip Morris Targeted Kids Dow Jones (pay registration)
- New internal tobacco documents released Thursday suggest that Philip Morris Cos. (MO) also targeted children in its marketing campaigns. Top Democrats on the House Commerce Committee released four documents from the 1970s and 1980s that shows the nation's largest tobacco company's interest in selling to teenagers.
- 01/29/98 Democrats Release New Teen Smoking Documents Reuters
- House Democrats released damaging new documents Thursday showing that Philip Morris marketed Marlboro and other cigarette brands to youths as young as age 12. Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown read aloud brief excerpts from the papers as the House Commerce Committee began hearings into the proposed national tobacco settlement, in which top executives were testifying. Brown said the documents would show that Philip Morris, the nation's largest tobacco company, did market research on "children as young as 12 -- sixth grade boys and girls."
- 01/31/98 Official: Tobacco Prices Questioned AP/Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune
- The Justice Department is conducting a preliminary inquiry into whether there has been collusion in pricing tobacco leaf, a spokesman and other officials said Friday.
- 01/30/98 Justice Conducts Tobacco Probe Reuters
- 01/30/98 U.S. Begins Tobacco Antitrust Probe, Investigates RJR, Philip Morris, B&W The Wall Street Journal (pay registration)
- The Justice Department has opened a criminal antitrust investigation of three big tobacco companies -- B.A.T Industries PLC's Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp.'s R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and Philip Morris Cos. The inquiry is aimed at determining whether the companies violated federal antitrust law by colluding on the price of tobacco leaf, people familiar with the inquiry say.
- 01/30/98 Three tobacco cos targeted in criminal probe-WSJ Reuters
- 01/30/98 DOJ Probes Big Tobacco CNN
- 01/31/98 MARYLAND News UPI
- Maryland's top prosecutor wants to tilt the odds trying to win a 13 (B) billion dollar lawsuit against the tobacco industry. In a few days, lawmakers will consider a bid from Attorney General Joseph Curran to counter part of a pre-trial ruling, which scuttled nine of 13 charges the state brought. Tobacco company representatives say it's not fair to change the rules mid-stream.
- 01/31/98 Tobacco Industry Finds Move To Change Law In State's Favor Unfair Baltimore Sun
- Curran's proposal would improve chances in suit over smokers' care In a pretrial decision in May, Baltimore Circuit Judge Roger W. Brown dismissed nine of the state lawsuit's 13 claims. Curran's legislation, to be introduced in Annapolis next week, would undo some of that ruling by giving the state a broader right to bring common-law claims against cigarette manufacturers.
- 01/30/98 MARYLAND: State Readies Bill Key To Tobacco Fight; Measure Would Make Case Easier Against Cigarette Makers Baltimore Sun
- Setting the stage for a bruising State House battle with the tobacco industry, the Maryland attorney general's office is preparing legislation that would make it easier for the state to pursue its $13 billion lawsuit against cigarette manufacturers. The bill, which is expected to be introduced in the General Assembly next week, seeks to undo the effects of an adverse pretrial decision handed down by a judge last spring.
- 01/29/98 MARYLAND: Md. Smokers Get Ok To File Suit As Group Baltimore Sun
- The lawsuit, filed by Baltimore attorney Peter G. Angelos, is the fourth of the private class-action lawsuits filed in 26 states to meet a key test known as class certification. It clears the way for a trial in September 1999 to examine the plaintiffs' claim that the tobacco industry committed fraud by covering up for many years what it knew about the dangers of smoking. In a 69-page opinion, Baltimore Circuit Judge Edward J. Angeletti found that the arguments of smokers suing cigarette makers would be so similar that "judicial economies" dictate that they be united in a single case. He noted that he was not ruling on the merits of the plaintiffs' fraud claims, which must be proven at trial.
- 01/31/98 Y-1: BRAZIL High-Nicotine Study DisputedAP Washington Post
- The Brazilian Association of Tobacco Growers called a report that they were growing high-nicotine tobacco unfounded and offered a study Friday which they said backed up that assessment. The study, conducted by the Agriculture Ministry and the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, was solicited by the grower's association in response to an Associated Press report that farmers in southern Brazil grow high-nicotine strains known as "fumo louco" -- crazy tobacco in Portuguese -- by the ton and sell it to a company called Souza Cruz.
- 01/29/98 UK: Insurers May Bear Brunt Of Tobacco Compensation Costs The Independent
- Two leading insurance companies will be the main UK-based financial losers - not cigarette giant BAT - if multi-billion pound claims against the tobacco industry by former smokers are successful, it was claimed yesterday. Shares in BAT gained 11p to 558p yesterday after Paul Hodges at Schroder Securities issued a note warning that Commercial Union and Royal Sun Alliance would have to shoulder the costs of successful claims from former smokers, if - as seems increasingly likely - the tobacco companies fail to secure the support of Congress for their attempts to limit their liabilities by paying specific sums into court in individual US states.
*********************** - ©1997 Gene Borio, Tobacco BBS (212-982-4645). WebPage: http://www.tobacco.org).Original Tobacco BBS material may be reprinted in any non-commercial venue if accompanied by this credit
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