Tobacco News on the Web
Archive, February, 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.
- But the [Manville] trust has been so inundated with claims that it is paying just 10 cents on the dollar. In its case filed Dec. 31 in federal court in New York, the trust is demanding that cigarette makers pour billions of dollars into its compensation fund, pointing to studies showing that smoking dramatically boosts the risk and severity of asbestos illness. The scathing complaint accuses cigarette makers of waging "an aggressive campaign of disinformation and deceit" about the hazards of smoking--an eerie echo of the charges that brought asbestos makers themselves to their knees. But the irony also extends to the pedigree of the lawyer filing the suit--Manville trust general counsel David T. Austern. During the time cigarette makers "and their agents" conspired "to mislead, deceive and confuse the public," in the words of the complaint, the industry had no agent more important than Austern's father.
- Mercer County farmer Bruce Harper, who chairs Gov. Patton's agriculture advisory board, proposed raising the state's 3-cent excise tax on cigarettes by 15 to 30 cents. He said it could raise up to $160 million to help tobacco farmers diversify. Patton said the plan sounds reasonable; many lawmakers said it has no chance.
- As director of consumer policy for Attorney General Hubert H. Humphrey III, Blanke worked hard last year for legislation that gave Minnesota one of the toughest tobacco control laws in the country. But it was the city he lives in that took a lead in enforcing the law. Minnesota's approach is to give local governments the option to license stores that sell cigarettes.
- Utah judges tired of seeing the same adolescents in trouble for underage smoking want the state to set up special tobacco courts for repeat offenders. Teens would be sent to the proposed tobacco court for their fourth smoking offense and face the option of completing a rigorous treatment program or paying a fine of up to $250.
- "Tobacco offenses are basically not enforced; they are not being dealt with as serious violations of the law," said 3rd District Juvenile Court Judge Joseph W. Anderson, architect of the tobacco court concept. And underage smoking is serious, he insists, not only because it violates the law but also because of evidence that tobacco is a "gateway drug" as well as a long-term health threat to the young. But faced with a caseload topping 10,000 citations each year, can the state's juvenile court system realistically play an active role in tobacco abuse enforcement and prevention? Not as presently structured, Anderson said. But what if a bank of pro tempore judges recruited from the ranks of bar associations was appointed to conduct a "tobacco court" that deals exclusively with young, repeat offenders?
- Anti-smoking lobby group ASH says it's pleased the Ministry of Health will continue using children to try to catch retailers out for selling cigarettes to minors. An Invercargill District Court judge has thrown out a case against a number of retailers charged with selling cigarettes to a 14 year old boy, saying it amounted to entrapment. But ASH spokeswoman Trish Fraser says using children to try and buy cigarettes is the only way the Ministry of Health can catch offending retailers. Trish Fraser says she applauds the Ministry sticking with the programme despite the court ruling. Meanwhile the Ministry is considering an appeal.
- PUFFING on a Cuban cigar is how Karen Littleton unwinds after a day at the office. A surge in cigar smoking among young Australians is setting sales of premium cigars on fire.
- Associated Press photographer Ed Reinke, based in Louisville, Ky., documented the 1997 cycle of tobacco farming and its impact in one Kentucky community.
- After 80 years the cigarette company is stopping its factory tours . . .
- Meanwhile, CARNIVAL is offering 579 Caribbean cruises on 11 ships -- including the 2,040-passenger Paradise, its second new ship set for this year, and the first cruise ship to ban smoking for passengers and crew. (Almost all cruise ships prohibit smoking in restaurants and theaters, and most permit cigar and pipe smoking only on deck. Most also allow smoking in cabins. But there are a number of variations. WINDSTAR, for example, allows cigarettes in designated sections of restaurants and lounges, while PRINCESS allows it in sections of its bars. Celebrity allows smoking on the port side of the deck only. RADISSON'S PAUL GAUGUIN has a Connoisseur's Club where aficionados can buy and smoke cigars in a specially ventilated area. Carnival allows cigars and pipes in designated areas, except on the Paradise.)
- But even smoke-free California is not a safe place to take your lungs to the office, on a bus or anywhere else in public. In this the season of cold and flu, the greatest hazard of appearing in public is not tobacco smoke, but rather contagious disease. And strangers who would not dream of blowing smoke in your face seem happy enough about coughing and sneezing whenever they see you coming. Isn't there a double standard here, when the same folks prohibited from smoking in my office building can sneeze me home for a week of hell with the reigning bacterium of the season?
- The House sent the Senate a bill that would prohibit smoking or using tobacco products on school grounds. The measure is aimed at the 19 remaining schools in the state that still allow tobacco usage on school grounds.
- It may not be popular with the inmates, but New Hampshire's prisons could be smoke-free for the convicts' own good in five years if new Corrections Commissioner Henry Risley has his way. "It's not a high priority for us right now, but I think it's predictable that there won't be too many years before most places will be smoke-free," he said. . . "I think the train is really rolling down the track. A lot of correctional agencies and correctional facilities have become smoke-free."
- Proposals to increase the salary of the governor and other top officials and boost the tax on cigarettes by $1.50 a pack will be on the agenda for Maryland legislators this week.
- Both sides will have a chance to present their arguments in a formal setting Feb. 19, when the Common Council's Zoning, Neighborhoods and Development Committee holds a public hearing starting at 1:30 p.m. Common Council President John Kalwitz, who introduced the ordinance, said he and other aldermen agreed to hold a special meeting in anticipation of a large turnout.
- A state legislative committee approved a proposal that would double the state cigarette tax to 25 cents per pack in an effort to steer teens away from smoking. Under the bill approved by the Joint Labor, Health and Social Services Interim Committee Friday, the estimated $5 million to $6 million generated by the new tax would be used to educate Wyoming youth about the health risks of smoking.
- State lawmakers are expected to review a bill this week that would double the state cigarette tax to 25 cents per pack in an effort to steer teens away from smoking.
- Brazilian cigarette and tobacco company Souza Cruz SA said on Monday it planned to distribute to stockholders 160 million reais in profits earned in the second half of the year.
- Schweitzer-Mauduit International, Inc., today announced it has acquired a controlling interest in COMPANHIA INDUSTRIAL DE PAPEL PIRAHY, a specialty paper manufacturer located in Santanesia, near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Pirahy was previously a wholly owned subsidiary of SOUZA CRUZ S.A.
- BROOKE GROUP LTD. announced today that its wholly-owned subsidiary Liggett Group Inc. has obtained the consents of the required majority of the holders of Liggett's 11.50% Series B and 19.75% Series C Senior Secured Notes due 1999 to various amendments to the Indenture governing Liggett's Senior Secured Notes. The amendments provide, among other things, for the extension of the date of the February 1, 1998 mandatory redemption of $37,500,000 principal amount of Liggett's Senior Secured Notes to the date of final maturity, February 1, 1999.
- Japan Tobacco Inc. said Monday it had concluded a licensing agreement with U.S.-based Pillsbury Co. for sales of processed foods in Japan. Japan Tobacco will acquire all 40,000 shares issued by Pillsbury Japan, a 100% Pillsbury unit, to make it a JT unit. Beginning Feb. 27, the new company will sell the U.S. company's processed foods, such as the 'Green Giant' brands, under the JT trademark, Japan Tobacco said.
- Lara Coyne says she started smoking in the 10th grade for a simple reason: "It was the thing to do." Then she did something a little less cool: She quit and promised her mother she'd never touch cigarettes again. So both mother and daughter were dismayed that Philip Morris sent Lara a smoking survey offering free lighters and promising cigarette coupons for answering the survey questions. Along with her preferred brand and purchasing practices, the survey requested names of other smokers who might appreciate cigarette coupons. "It's kind of tempting, when you get stuff in the mail, to start up again," the Virginia teen-ager said.
- The latest issue of the Palindromist takes on such current issues as the cloning of a sheep ("Dual Ewe -- we laud") and anti-smoking legislation ("Cigar? Toss it in a can. It is so tragic.").
- You won't find many dusty, molded-plastic exhibits in the World of Life section of the new California Science Center in L.A. Many brains--surely bigger brains than those on display--were utilized to create biological exhibits that will educate, enthrall, challenge and amuse individuals of all ages. . . . You can watch anti-smoking videos while sitting in a chair made of cigarette butts that coughs when you plop down.
- In the first-ever Heart and Stroke Report Card on the Health of Canada's Kids released today, youngsters received some very poor marks, especially in daily nutrition and exposure to second-hand smoke at home. But, it was in the area of exposure to second-hand smoke that most concerned Foundation officials. Approximately half of Canadian children are exposed to second-hand smoke at home, by their own parents and visitors.
- It says something about our times that one of the only moral crusades that has the consistent backing of modern governments is directed against a source of sensual pleasure that does not directly flow, as drugs and pornography do, into the swelling river of delinquency. Of course tobacco, used to excess, can damage one's health. But the same is true of meat, soap, alcohol, cars and computers. Besides, what do we mean by health? The average smoker gains mental relaxation, social confidence and an easy form of hospitality from his habit: Are these not parts of health? And are we necessarily right to trade them for a few extra years of life, when most of us live too long in any case?
- In past days, we've heard a lot of excited jabber about "perjury, subornation of perjury and obstruction of justice." We fully agree that presidential honesty is of utmost importance. But if untruthful testimony is hailed as a high crime and misdemeanor, let's not be selective. The Justice Department should seek indictments of every tobacco executive who ever swore on the Bible that cigarette smoking isn't addictive.
- Sen. Edward Kennedy said Tuesday he would aggressively push legislation, over Republican objections, that would raise $92.4 billion over five years for children's programs through a $1.50-per-pack increase in the cigarette tax.
- The basic tobacco quota will drop about 9 percent this year, but for most individual burley growers, the effective quota means they will be permitted to grow all they can possibly manage, analysts say. Quotas announced this week by the Agriculture Department would allow burley farmers to sell 920 million pounds in 1998, worth about $1.7 billion at current prices. . . Officials said that while basic tobacco quotas will fall about 9 percent, average support prices will rise nearly 2 cents a pound to a record $1.778.
- The administration will ask Congress once again to overturn smoking-benefit rulings by its own general counsel. Those rulings would grant millions in compensation to veterans who smoked on active duty and have become ill as a result.
- Basic tobacco quotas will fall about 9 percent this year, but average support prices will rise nearly 2 cents a pound to a record $1.778, officials said yesterday. The drop is somewhat smaller than anticipated, as tobacco inventories came out lower than expected and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman declined to add or subtract from the quota formula.
- Governor Kirk Fordice and state Senator Bill Hawks of Hernando say the state's seven percent tax should be lowered to six percent by using money from the 3 point six billion dollar settlement with big tobacco. Both say taxpayers are the clients in the lawsuit and deserve the money back. Fordice and Hawks also want a limit of 150-dollars per hour on lawyers fees in the litigation. Attorney General Mike Moore says that's all covered in the settlement. "The tobacco industry has agreed to pay the attorneys fee. Now the governor wants to limit attorneys fees to 150 bucks an hour. Who's side is he on?"
- Rep. Craig Hosmer, D-Springfield, has proposed legislation banning tobacco products in state prisons, a move he said would reduce the risk of lawsuits and curb health-care costs. Testifying before the House Committee on Correctional and State Institutions on Tuesday evening, Hosmer said lawsuits filed by inmates because of the health effects of second-hand smoke could result in expensive litigation. . . The ban, which includes cigars and smokeless tobacco, would be effective Jan. 1, 1999.
- For decades, cigarette makers have waged "cold, calculating war on our people's health, and advertising has been their prime weapon of choice," Chiles said. . . If people see cigarette billboards or bus stop ads after Monday, they can report them to a state anti-tobacco hotline: 888-584-8326. . . Lamar hopes to recoup some lost tobacco business from a children's anti-smoking campaign funded by the state settlement.
- Billboards advertising tobacco products will become a thing of the past in Florida within a week as the tobacco industry moves to comply with a ban on outdoor advertising, state officials said on Tuesday. Beginning Feb. 9, tobacco advertising will no longer be permitted on billboards, bus stops and public transportation vehicles, officials said at a news conference. The ban is part of Florida's $11.3 billion lawsuit settlement with the tobacco industry.
- VERO BEACH, Fla., Feb. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- More than 20 percent of the high school students in Florida under the age of 18 think of themselves as "smokers," according to a new statewide survey by GROSS, Get Rid Of Student Smoking, Florida's largest grassroots student activist organization. . . "These are students who already think of themselves as hooked on cigarettes . . . ," Shafranski said. The survey, taken in high schools in cities across the state, found that 23 percent of male students and 20 percent of female students labeled themselves smokers, Shafranski said.
- Garo the drug-detecting dog scratched and sniffed and nibbled on the backpack, which reeked of cigarettes. His search was in vain -- there were no cigarettes this time. But he'll be back. Garo and Luger, two German shepherd dogs who work for private investigator Andrew Novotak, are trained to find cigarettes, marijuana, cocaine, heroin, pills and alcohol.
- The only tobacco farmer in Congress, the leading cash crop in Kentucky, shook hands with other farmers in Grant County on Monday when his campaign trail stopped in Northern Kentucky. Congressman Scotty Baesler, a three-term representative from Lexington running in the May 26 U.S. Senate Democratic primary, toured the Grant County Courthouse, the Williamstown business area and met with Northern Kentucky University officials.
- Lockyer criticized outgoing Atty. Gen. Lungren on two counts: not suing tobacco companies sooner, and not trying harder to prohibit the sale of semiautomatic weapons that are virtually identical to weapons banned under state law. In recent months, Lungren has reversed positions and is attempting to ban more assault weapons and has joined other states in suing the tobacco industry. Lungren had said that a statute written by Lockyer and then-Speaker Willie Brown prevented him from suing the tobacco industry sooner. That law was part of the so-called Napkin Deal . . "We have all now become much more aware of the dangers and health risks associated with tobacco than we were a decade ago," said Lockyer, who in recent years has become among the most ardent anti-tobacco lawmakers in the Capitol.
- Health Minister Allan Rock should break his promise to exempt auto racing from tough new tobacco laws, Liberal Senator Colin Kenny says. . . "He shouldn't do it (keep the promise)," Kenny said. "Scrap the whole promise and the reason is it's unconstitutional just to exempt one (sports event and not others)." The Canadian Cancer Society has thrown its weight behind Kenny's proposal.
- Canada would become the first country to implement and enforce laws controlling the hazards of cigarettes if Health Canada has its way. A confidential Health Canada report, obtained by CTV News and Ottawa-based researcher Ken Rubin, calls for new federal laws to regulate the content and emissions of cigarettes. The 20-page report, Towards a Smoke-Free Canada: Tobacco Product Control for the 21st Century, is Health Canada's blueprint to make Canada smoke free. It recommends that the first step be to seek the regulatory powers needed to enforce new rules for tobacco products.
- A DEEP wedge has been driven into Germany's political class by a new anti-smoking law which is pitting pipe-puffing Helmut Kohl against party colleagues. The rift runs right down the Cabinet table - Horst Seehofer, the Health Minister, is insisting on the right to smoke, while Angela Merkel, the Environment Minister, wants tobacco banished from the workplace - even the Chancellery.The law, put forward by 136 non-smokers from all three major parties - Christian Democrats, Free Democrats and Social Democrats - goes forward for its most important reading tomorrow.
- Half of children's respiratory illnesses are caused by second-hand cigarette smoke, according to a new study which yesterday prompted calls for greater prevention of passive smoking. United States research showed passive smoking was responsible for between 40 and 60 per cent of childhood asthma, bronchitis and wheezing. Council on Smoking and Health chairman Professor Anthony Hedley said not nearly enough was being done in Hong Kong to prevent such illnesses.
- Anti-smoking groups have called on federal and state governments to fund a class action against Australian tobacco companies after a Melbourne woman with emphysema and chronic bronchitis withdrew a long-running lawsuit. The national lobby group, Action on Smoking and Health, yesterday said Australian tobacco companies would continue to deny the direct link between smoking and ill-health unless forced during the legal process to admit it. The group's executive director, Ms Anne Jones, said tobacco companies in the US had already acknowledged that nicotine was addictive, smoking caused ill-health, and that they had knowingly marketed their products to children.
- TEENAGE drug abuse is ultimately a community responsibility, says a Tasmanian Government still reeling from the shock findings of a survey. After the public release on Monday of Cancer Council of Tasmania survey details, Community and Health Services Minister Peter McKay said yesterday it was vital for parents to become involved in fighting drug use. . . It also showed a large proportion of non-prescription painkillers were being used for non-medical purposes but the main drug issues facing students involved alcohol and tobacco.
- CHINA is certain to become part of the Formula One circuit by 1999 even if it fails to acquire the super status this year. Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One chief, told the South China Morning Post he was certain the Chinese city of Zhuhai, which borders the Portuguese enclave of Macau, would host part of the grand prix circuit next year.
- Anti-tobacco activist Hathai Chitanondh has urged government authorities to take serious action against tobacco firms for indirectly advertising their products to boost sales among youngsters. A number of "Marlboro Classics" and "Camel Trophy Adventures" clothes-stores often place campaign posters in various department stores - despite the practice being against the law.
- STATE Rail is facing legal action by more than 100 commuters and employees over its alleged failure to enforce smoking bans at stations. The class action is being co-ordinated by a national anti-smoking group and will include a claim for damages for health problems caused by exposure to smoke.
- A major tobacco company has launched a public relations program directed at individual journalists in an attempt to create doubt about studies on the dangers of passive smoking. . . W.D. & H.O. Wills yesterday began a series of private media briefings, which it said were aimed at ensuring "balanced" coverage of a forthcoming report on passive smoking and lung cancer from the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Wills, which withdrew from the now defunct lobby group, the Tobacco Institute of Australia, in 1996, said tobacco firms were now pursuing media relations individually, and it expected to take a more proactive role. In a presentation to the Herald, Wills' manager of corporate communications, Ms Catherine Byrne, and its manager of scientific issues, Dr Linda Rudge, questioned the credibility of previous studies on passive smoking, especially for lung cancer.
- A court case brought against three tobacco companies in Australia was settled on Monday without payment of any money by the defendants, said W.D. & H.O. Wills Holdings Ltd. The litigation brought by Melbourne-based Phyllis Cremona against Wills, Rothmans Holdings Ltd and Philip Morris Australia, a unit of Philip Morris, was discontinued on terms which were confidential, Wills said.
- R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. has ended tours at its Whitaker Park cigarette manufacturing plant because of declining attendance. The popularity of the tours peaked in the '70s, when they were attracting 60,000 visitors a year, said Maura Payne Ellis, a company spokeswoman. By 1992, the number had declined to 45,000 visitors a year and it dropped to about 20,000 last year, Ellis said. The last tour was Saturday, she said.
- I'd argue that avoiding a company like Philip Morris actually helps our shareholders, because the liability risk in such situations is impossible to quantify. When you're trying to get the best return at moderate risk, you don't want to blunder into situations that could turn into black holes.
- During Burn Awareness Week, Feb. 8-14, 1998, the Shriners, members of the fraternal organization that operates Shriners Hospitals for Children, are asking parents and other caregivers to be aware of the dangers posed by cigarette lighters and take steps to keep their children safe.
- Director Michael Mann has set Al Pacino and Russell Crowe to star in an untitled film based on the true story of tobacco executive-turned-whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand and his relationship with 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman. Mann will begin shooting in late April from a script by Eric Roth ("Forest Gump") for Touchstone Pictures. The film was developed from "The Man Who Knew Too Much," a Vanity Fair article by Marie Brenner that Mann optioned in 1996. The piece detailed how Wigand's life was almost ruined by a smear campaign and litigation waged by the cigarette industry.
- Doctors and scientists keep saying how bad cigarettes are for your health, but kids keep starting to smoke and adults don't quit. A panel of experts will convene this week to discuss Americans' enduring love affair with tobacco. Joining former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop on the panel at The New School will be Michael Erickson of the Centers for Disease Control and Cornell University professors Richard Klein and Susan Koniak.
- A new chapter in this sordid saga began unfolding recently in a courtroom in St. Paul, Minn. The opening statement by a tobacco lawyer in that trial, coupled with comments made only a few days later by tobacco executives appearing before Congress, offer damning evidence that this industry's word means virtually nothing.
- All of this leads to but one reasonable conclusion: This budget may be a lot of things, but balanced isn't one of them. The president simply is blowing smoke in the taxpayers' eyes.
- He is a tobacco company lawyer who hauls down more than a million dollars a year from his law firm. Who's paying Starr a million bucks per annum while he plots to unhinge the presidency? Which tobacco company? . . . There's a huge potential here for all kinds of blackmail. We've rendered our presidency virtually impotent.
- Much of the disagreement to date stems from a confusion on the part of the antismoking forces over whether their goal is to harm the cigarette industry or to help consumers. The most sensible basis for policy is to foster rational and informed smoking decisions. As a practical matter, such an approach should lead policymakers to embrace rather than condemn technological improvements that enhance the safety of cigarettes. . . The government should establish a standardized rating system to assess the relative risks of cigarettes so that consumers can make informed choices.
- Mr. Clinton would pay for a fair amount of his program with a tobacco bill that he has thus far not submitted. He is relying on Congress to write it. He says that as a deterrent to smoking, it should raise the price of smoking $1.50 a pack in real terms over 10 years, and he proposes a division of the revenue. The problem with that will be if the money becomes more important than the rest of the bill, and the tobacco companies are able, as is their intent, to buy weaker legislation than might otherwise be passed.
- Democrats can barely conceal their glee over a budget that relies on $65.5 billion of tobacco money - and is more a 1998 campaign document (or a trap for Republicans) than a truly balanced budget. "If the Republicans want to say, "We'd rather protect the tobacco companies than improve education,' they're going to be in big political trouble," says Democratic pollster Mark Mellman. But some Republicans think - perchance they dream - that this is one Clinton political trap they can slip.
- Sure, Kentucky is a tobacco state. But Kentucky also has a long tradition of home rule and respecting local decisions on everything from alcohol sales to animal control. If Lexington, Louisville, Louisa or Livingston want to go further than the state to protect kids from tobacco products, then more power to them. HB 381 should become the law.
- If President Clinton gets his way, cigarettes will top $4 per pack in a few years in New Jersey, the state that already has the third-highest tax on tobacco. The cost, however, would no longer end with smokers. New Jersey now is one of several states that use tobacco taxes to provide medical and health insurance for children and the working poor. The federal tax on top of state taxes might deter smoking, but there also might be less for health insurance.
- Two West Virginia students, Mark Jones, 17, of North Marion High School in Farmington, and Tasha Daft, 14, of Mannington Middle School in Mannington, today were named the state's top two youth volunteers in The Prudential Spirit of Community Awards . . . Mark transformed a minimal volunteer position with a local tobacco coalition into a self-initiated drug and tobacco prevention program geared toward youngsters. Cowboy Dave, Mark's stage persona, takes a wooden horse with anti-drug messages hanging from its ears to day care centers, schools, scout troops, libraries, summer camps, and church groups throughout Marion County. Since the project debuted in December 1996, Mark has made 63 appearances as Cowboy Dave, reaching nearly 1,300 children with his drug free message. "I have learned how to give of myself and get only hugs and smiles in return," said Mark, who is now modifying his presentation to focus on a growing problem in his area: chewing tobacco.
- Efforts to reduce sales of tobacco products to minors are paying off, according to a 1997 compliance summary by the Kentucky Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. The summary was provided today in Bowling Green during a retailer training workshop designed to further educate retail employees in preventing underage tobacco sales. . . Hicks, who is also president of the Kentucky Grocers Association and the Kentucky Association of Convenience Stores, added: "The law enacted in 1996, along with the WE CARD program, has greatly enhanced the understanding by everyone -- retailers, as well as consumers -- that underage tobacco sales cannot be tolerated."
- Three Maryland women who suffer from asthma have sued two national restaurant chains under the Americans With Disabilities Act to force them to ban smoking. Sharon Breedlove of Howard County, Ellender Edwards of Annapolis and Charleen Evans-Thomas of Garrett County are suing the owners of the Red Lobster and Ruby Tuesday chains in federal court in Greenbelt. The three women allege that they tried to eat at the chains' restaurants in Montgomery County last year but had to leave because smoke from the smoking sections polluted the buildings and impaired their breathing. "Smoke in the air of a restaurant prevents access for these people just as surely as a staircase would prevent access for people in wheelchairs," said Neil B. Katz, a Rockville attorney representing the plaintiffs. "This is a civil rights issue."
- Not long after Gov. Kirk Fordice and Attorney General Mike Moore completed their war of words over legal fees in the tobacco settlement, a bill to cap what lawyers can make died in the state Senate.
- Lawyers fearing a looming Washington deal will kill a Florida smokers lawsuit clashed Wednesday with a judge over fixing a trial date and giving Big Tobacco another chance to break up the massive case. Stanley Rosenblatt told Florida Circuit Judge Alan Postman that a sweeping $368.5 billion congressional pact might come at any time and a delay in the start of a trial could mean the end of the Florida lawsuit. "Every one of these clients would be shafted," Rosenblatt said, referring to the two dozen or so mostly elderly and sickly plaintiffs attending a hearing at the Miami-Dade County Courthouse.
- To the dismay of two dozen sick smokers who crowded his courtroom on Wednesday, however, Postman would not reset the Feb. 9 start date he postponed last month. . . "Please give us a new trial date," Stanley Rosenblatt, an attorney for the smokers, asked Postman. Rosenblatt is concerned that the passage by Congress of tobacco legislation could shield the industry from further trials.
- Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Alan Postman set no date, but he refused to disband the class-action lawsuit covering sick Florida smokers and ruled a jury can decide whether punitive damages are needed to penalize cigarette makers. "They want to wait until everybody dies," said a bitter Carole Weiss of North Miami, who smoked for more than 35 years. "We're not going to die. There's always going to be some of us."
- Stanley Rosenblatt told Florida Circuit Judge Alan Postman that a sweeping $368.5 billion congressional pact might come at any time and a delay in the start of a trial could mean the end of the Florida lawsuit."Every one of these clients would be shafted," Rosenblatt said, referring to the two dozen or so mostly elderly and sickly plaintiffs attending a hearing at the Miami-Dade County Courthouse.
- The American Lung Association is endorsing the plan to raise the state's cigarette tax by $.75. According to the health agency, an estimated 45,000 children in New York state will choose not to start smoking if this increase goes into affect.
- A Miami advertising agency was picked Wednesday to mastermind the state's massive anti-tobacco marketing blitz that even some of the agencies competing for the lucrative contract suggested might be media overkill. CRISPIN, PORTER & BOGUSKY ADVERTISING narrowly won the overall vote, slipping by BEBER SILVERSTEIN AND PARTNERS of Miami by 1.4 points on a scale of 100 after final presentations. PARADIGM COMMUNICATIONS Inc. of Tampa came in third, 4.2 points behind Crispin Porter. It also was the highest bidder.
- The battle lines are being drawn in Rolling Meadows over a proposal to ban children from the smoking sections of restaurants. While proponents say they can't understand why anyone would oppose something that relates to the health of children, restaurateurs are beginning to express concern about what such an ordinance could do to their business.
- Christine Todd Whitman is no friend of the tax man. In her four-year tenure as New Jersey's governor, she hadn't raised a single levy -- until now.
- A high-speed chase on Hwy. 401 ended with the arrest of a suspected tobacco smuggler Wednesday night. . . About $8,700 worth of contraband tobacco was found in the car. Calvin Leaf, 27, of Cornwall faces smuggling and traffic charges.
- Greek farmers have parked hundreds of tractors along the country's main north-south motorway, staged rallies across the nation and blocked access to one of the nation's key airports to protest government austerity measures. . . The farmers _ mainly cotton, tobacco and olive oil producers _ are demanding settlement of debts owed to state banks, increased subsidies and cheaper fuel.
- America's tobacco growers are bracing for a roller-coaster year, whether or not Congress passes sweeping legislation on the buying, selling and marketing of cigarettes. "You'll see a very volatile market this fall," W.B. Jenkins, president of the North Carolina Farm Bureau Federation, told a House Agriculture subcommittee yesterday. He predicted a second consecutive year of falling prices for flue-cured tobacco coupled with a steady decline in the amount of golden leaf farme
- Gallaher Group Plc, Britain's leading tobacco company, said on Thursday it has formed a joint venture with REEMTSMA, the German tobacco manufacturer, in Kazakstan. Reemtsma is to become a one-third shareholder in Gallaher's cigarette manufacturing plant in the major city, Almaty.
- The Jordan launch was a bit of a farce. The sponsors-Benson & Hedges were about as subtle as a Sherman tank-their logo was on board above the drivers' heads 33 times! Poor Damon Hill most definitely did not enjoy being a yellow cigarette bill-board but for 6 million dollars-and fourth child on the way I suppose he had to grin and bear it
- New research by economists at Cornell University suggests that higher taxes reduce the number of teenagers who smoke far less than public intuition or political rhetoric suggests -- a heresy to some in the anti-smoking lobby who have been calling for tax increases of as much as $2 on a pack of cigarettes. "It's sort of against the conventional wisdom," economist Donald Kenkel said of the study's findings. He and two Cornell colleagues, Philip DeCicca and Alan Mathios, based their work on an examination of data from U.S. government surveys of some 25,000 elementary and secondary school students in 1988, 1990 and 1992.
- "Adults think kids start to smoke because they want to be cool," said the driver, Shannon Hatch, who's 18 and a senior at Bloomington Jefferson High School. "That's just not true. Kids are curious. They try it. Then it gets out of control. I know I'm addicted."
- The flight then proceeded without further incident until, after about an hour or so, a fracas started at the rear of the plane. Someone was punched in the face, and a shouting match broke out - again concerning smoking in undesignated areas.
- The ban will take effect with the beginning of its summer schedule on March 29, the airline said Wednesday. Surveys found more than two-thirds of Lufthansa passengers -- including many smokers -- are in favor of no-smoking flights, it said. . . But smokers can take heart: Lufthansa said it will continue to work with airplane manufacturers to develop technical solutions that will allow smokers to light up on board without bothering non-smoking passengers.
- Getting six-figure gifts from dozens of corportions, unions and rich patrons, Democratic and Repubican national party organizations together raised $67 million in unregulated "soft money" last year, an advocacy group said Thursday. Tobacco giant Phillip Morris was among the Republicans' largest donors at $1,123,715, Common Cause said
- The Clinton administration has decided it doesn't want to pay disability benefits to veterans who say they got hooked on tobacco by smoking cheap government cigarettes. In the proposed budget submitted to Congress this week, the administration says it hopes to save $17-billion over the next five years by refusing to grant future claims of some 500,000 veterans who might be eligible for disability compensation for their smoking-related diseases.
- VA Committee Chairman Bob Stump (R-Ariz.) told Acting Secretary Togo D. West Jr., that "[T]his year's budget has some good proposals to strengthen our commitment" to veterans. . . Stump cautioned, however, that "these proposals [to increase benefits] are linked to the repeal of the authority to pay disability compensation to most veterans who have health-related conditions attributable to tobacco. If Congress doesn't go along with the repeal of the authority to pay tobacco- related benefits, we will not be able to report legislation enhancing education and compensation benefits, or any other benefit" to which restrictive budget rules applies.
- Comedian Robin Williams and his wife donated $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee late last year, but the party raised less money than Republicans by more than $37 million. . . One problem for Democrats is their growing reliance on labor union funds. In the past four years since Republicans won control of both houses of Congress, corporations have switched their donations heavily to the Republicans. For example, tobacco giant Phillip Morris (MO - news), fighting to influence proposed legislation to regulate the sale and advertising of cigarettes, gave the RNC $250,000 on Dec. 23, bringing its total contribution last year to $761,756. The company also gave $228,253 to the National Republican Congressional Committee and $60,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
- California demonstrated enlightened leadership when it became the first state to ban smoking in bars. It should not back off now.
- You report that they acknowledged that nicotine is addictive, and that it is addictive "as the term is commonly understood." Yet they failed to define that "common understanding," leaving open a loophole the size of Marlboro Country.
- Today's question: Should Texas copy a new California law to ban smoking in bars? What impact would it have on patrons and businesses?
- Federal investigators seek documents from Eastman Chemical Co., a maker of cigarette-filter materials, to see if tobacco firms sought material to manipulate nicotine delivery. Others pore over ad agencies' papers; one person says interest in youth campaigns "goes way beyond Joe Camel."
- Ending decades of government neglect, the Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether cigars should carry a U.S. surgeon-general warning label to alert consumers about the product's deadly consequences. The inspector general's office of the Department of Health and Human Services also is opening a two-pronged inquiry into how cigars escaped federal regulations and how teenagers and young adults are being lured to smoke cigars and other tobacco products. Policy recommendations are expected to follow.
- The Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether cigars should carry a U.S. surgeon general warning label to alert consumers that the product causes cancer and other health problems. The inspector general's office of the Department of Health and Human Services also is launching a two-pronged inquiry into how cigars escaped federal regulations and how teenagers and young adults are being lured to smoke cigars and other tobacco products. Policy recommendations are expected to follow.
- Damaging information about the tobacco industry was disclosed here Thursday as a congressman released documents detailing the industry's attempts to specifically target African Americans, in particular African American youths. Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), who released the material, said: "These documents make clear that the tobacco industry was targeting blacks, including black teenagers, at the same time the industry knew that tobacco was addictive and caused lung cancer and other smoking-related disease."
- R.J. Reynolds apologized yesterday. "We do recognize that some of the highlighted sections from selected documents may be unfortunate or even offensive, and we repeat what we said earlier that negative stereotypes, regardless of the point in history in which they were written, are inappropriate," the company said in a statement. It also said, however, that "adult smokers of different ethnic backgrounds should have information about brand options in the market in order to make informed purchase decisions."
- They also led to calls from African-American and other minority lawmakers, as well as from Dr. Louis Sullivan, the former secretary of health and human services, that some proceeds from any tobacco legislation enacted by Congress be directed toward minority communities. . . "With this additional transit effort, Kool will cover the top 25 markets in terms of absolute Negroes," the document stated.
- Another batch of tobacco documents has shed further light on how two companies designed marketing tactics geared toward teen-agers and minority groups. Michigan Rep. John Conyers, the senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, released the papers Thursday dating back to 1973, mostly from RJR Tobacco Co. and Brown and Williamson. . . One 1982 analysis broke the black smokers market into three segments it called "Coolness," "Virile" and "Stylish."
- Newly released tobacco industry documents provide another glimpse into how extensively the industry targeted young people -- and black youths in particular -- in its search for billions in profits. . . The documents released today show that, in 1973, an R.J. Reynolds marketing profile included a study of black smokers aged 14-20. A 1981 marketing plan stated, "The majority of blacks ... do not respond well to sophisticated or subtle humor in advertising. They related much more to overt, clear-cut story lines." A series of documents from 1972 point to the Brown & Williamson Co.'s efforts to attract youth smokers with sweet-flavored cigarettes, including blending artificial ingredients to produce a cola-like taste. "It's a well-known fact that teen-agers like sweet products. Honey might be considered."
- Internal documents from the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co. appear to detail a long-running marketing strategy aimed at underage smokers. The hundreds of pages of documents, which also include detailed descriptions of marketing efforts to minority smokers, are being released this morning by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the issue of legal protection for the tobacco industry.
- Hundreds of internal documents from the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co. will be released this morning by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on legal protection for the tobacco industry.
- At Tobacco Free Washington's upcoming semiannual meeting, Dr. John Blatherwick, medical health officer for the Vancouver-Richmond, B.C., Board of Health, will be speaking about the importance of local support for anti-smoking ordinances. WHEN: Monday, Feb. 9 from 9 a.m.-2:30 p.m. WHERE: DoubleTree Hotel, SeaTac (formerly Red Lion Hotel)
- Ten healthcare organizations were honored today with $40,000 grants from SmithKline Beecham for their exceptional work in the delivery of community healthcare at the first annual SmithKline Beecham Community Health IMPACT Awards ceremony. . . * Health Promotion Council of Southeastern Pennsylvania (Philadelphia) operates health education programs focused on African-American, Latino and Asian communities that build healthier lives through disease management, primary prevention and effective health communications, and earn impressive results: 65% reduction in illegal tobacco sales to teens in Philadelphia
- Even stricter laws are needed to limit the sale and advertisement of cigarettes and other tobacco products so that teen-agers and adolescents would be deterred from smoking, a San Diego City Council committee concluded yesterday. "I'm always amazed when I see kids walking home from school and they're smoking," City Councilman Juan Vargas said. "It doesn't seem to be a problem to get cigarettes."
- The price of a pack of cigarettes in Maryland will double if two state legislators have their way. Sen. Chris Van Hollen Jr. and Delegate Barbara Frush plan to wage a firefight against teen-age smoking, beginning with a bill that would raise Maryland's cigarette tax as much as $1.50 a pack. But influential leaders in the Senate, including House Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr., Allegany Democrat, and Senate President Mike Miller Jr., Prince George's County Democrat, say they will oppose the bill.
- The Mississippi House voted 95-25 Tuesday to ban smoking in the chamber during sessions except in designated areas. . . The rule, which affects only the House, allows committees to develop their own policies on smoking. There is no Senate rule on smoking. However, senators who do smoke often congregate at a table off to the side of the chamber. The House defeated Simmons' proposal to ban smoking anywhere in the chamber.
- The results of two public opinion polls released Thursday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that most Americans support programs to improve and safeguard community health. . . Additionally, the California poll registered considerable support for allocating certain state and local revenues to fund public health programs. For this purpose, 81% favored an increase in state taxes on tobacco products, and 78% approved of a similar tax increase on alcoholic beverages.
- Young people who partake in a "party" lifestyle during their college years are much more likely to smoke than less hedonistic students, according to a new study. "High-risk behaviors, such as using marijuana, drinking heavily, and having multiple sex partners, are the strongest correlates of smoking status among this population," say researchers led by Dr. Karen Emmons of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts. Their findings, published in the current issue of the American Journal of Public Health, were based on a random survey of the habits and behaviors of over 17,500 college students at 140 campuses across the United States.
- Researchers said Thursday that at least 6 percent of adult U.S. smokers are "intermittent smokers," people who smoke occasionally. They also expressed fear that many of those smokers, most of whom have no more than a few cigarettes on the days they smoke, are not aware that smoking can increase substantially their risk of developing lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease and high blood pressure.
- Director Philip Kaufman is in talks with Warner Bros. to helm "The Runaway Jury," based on John Grisham's legal thriller of the same name.
- Clumsily plotted and filled with great musicians who prove they can't act, "Blues Brothers 2000" is fun anyway. The PG-13 covers frequent crude language and occasional out-and-out profanity. Scantily clad dancers gyrate at a club, booze is consumed, and a child tries to smoke a cigarette but a cool dude tells him "no."
- If the glow has worn off your Golden State, let me tell you about a place where smokers are welcome to puff just about anywhere. Where the folks who adjourn to the front porch at parties are the nonsmokers. Where tobacco has its own museum, and even the mountains are Smokey. A place called Tennessee.
- Regardless of whether the proposed legal settlement turns out to be the best course, Congress should not hem and haw about cracking down on tobacco legislatively. Much of what needs to be done to curtail smoking can be done without the tobacco industry's buy-in (or bailout). Settlement or no settlement, this session of Congress should give the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate nicotine and impose a tax that would make teens much less likely to buy cigarettes. Clinton could help by jump-starting the discussion of what the legislation (and any settlement) should look like, instead of just outlining how the money they may yield will be spent.
- But the other problem with the Clinton plan is that it relies on teen smokers to maintain their habit so as to fund the settlement and, ultimately, the day-care tax credits. No smoking, no credits. Likewise the settlement would fund anti-smoking education efforts. If you want to quit, the government is here to show you how. But somebody has to continue smoking to fund the anti-smoking education. The fact is Mr. Clinton is counting on teen smoking. Perhaps it's time the federal government kicked the habit too.
- So the payment from cigarette companies isn't a tax hike at all. It's a tax cut for every one of us now paying tobacco's deadly bill.
- The Wyoming Tobacco use Prevention Coalition will hold a press conference on Sunday at the Hitching Post. Their Legislators and supporters will rally around a tobacco tax to help push it through the house and senate. The tax would increase tobacco sales by a quarter
- The National Poison Centre has hit out at MALAYSIAN TOBACCO COMPANY (MTC) for claiming that passive or second-hand smoke is harmless to health. Labelling the claim as another ploy to "dupe the public," its director Prof Dzulkifli Abdul Razak said this was MTC's strategy to allow its foreign counterparts to move into the Asian market following the collapse of the Western market. . . Dr Linda Jean Rudge had reportedly said that ETS was a very minimal contributor to the substances contained in the environment.
- Edgar Bauer, a nonsmoking editor at the German Press Agency, was not one of them. Parliament's 336-256 vote, he wrote, means that smokers can proceed, as before, to "dump into the air stinking, toxic and cancerous substances, in public and at their place of work, without general smoking bans and without fear of a fine."
- Germany's anti-tobacco movement pledged Friday to renew its fight after parliament's lower house voted down a law banning smoking in the workplace. Burkhard Hirsch, a member of the centrist Free Democrats, the junior partner in Chancellor Helmut Kohl's coalition, said Germany would eventually have to follow other countries in banning smoking in public places. "The legislation will be repeated, and it will in the end succeed," Hirsch said in an interview with Saarland radio.
- Even though some politicians and medical groups called it a bitter defeat for non-smokers in Germany, a country with almost no restraints on smoking, they said the heated discussion had for the first time raised public awareness. "The decision is a defeat for tolerance, the spirit of consideration, and health in our country," said Gerald Haefner, a member of the Greens who led the cross-party alliance that wanted to outlaw smoking in public buildings. "The winners are selfishness and those, including the federal government, who profit so handsomely from the addiction of so many people," he added. "I have never run into such a tenacious and determined lobby as the German cigarette lobby."
- BONN, Feb 5 (Reuters) - The German parliament on Thursday rejected a bill that would have placed strict limits on smoking in public buildings and the workplace. After a heated two-hour debate, the Bundestag voted by 336-256 against the measure that would have banned smoking in public buildings and public transportation. It would have also required companies to set up separate rooms for smokers. The bill was voted down after a year-long battle waged between a cross-party alliance of parliamentarians eager to protect the health of non-smokers and opponents of the legislation led by Health Minister Horst Seehofer.
- A proposal to restrict smoking in the workplace, which parliament is to vote on Thursday, would cost German employers billions of dollars to implement, a pro-business economic think tank said Wednesday. The proposed law -- which would create the first federal restrictions on smoking in Germany -- is supported by organizations like the German Cancer Society but has been criticized as unnecessary by business groups.
- The subject of the ads will change -- topics to be tackled in subsequent ads include drug policy, school prayer and privacy. Each ad will begin with the same opening question, "Let me ask you something ..." and will close with the same tag line: "Think about it." Radio ads also are being considered. And the ACLU hopes to persuade other magazines and newspapers to run the campaign free.
- For 30 years Thelma Williams has spent more time with Anthony and Isabella and their child, William, than she has with many of her living relatives. She sneaks out to libraries to be with them. She searches for them in court records. She smiles at their ghosts as she drives past the old forts and plantations that shaped their lives: Fort Monroe, where they were sold to an English sea captain; Jamestown where William was baptized, Blue Bird Gap Farm where their slave descendants may have lived.
- Still, most of the after-work crowd wearing name tags and mingling around the Leather District bar were more the navy suit type, despite the jazz trio and the funky decor. "Look, people are smoking, drinking," said event chair Theo Nix Jr., a lawyer. "He's not boring."
- The way Clinton has things set up, after all, members of Congress now have every reason to swallow a questionable ban on class-action suits so as to keep a deal together that would deliver all those teachers and Medicaid slots. . . Neither Clinton's gambit nor the Republican move to save any tobacco money for tax cuts serve the public's interest of getting the details of a settlement right. . . Congress should hang tough on the tobacco deal and decide the immunity issue on its own merits - not on the hope of funding a few modest social programs.
- Indeed, recent disclosures from tobacco company documents of their aggressive efforts to target teen-agers make any talk of immunity increasingly unpalatable. But Mr. Clinton should not give up on the idea of comprehensive legislation . . . he has yet to unveil specific tobacco legislation. Instead, he has left the details to Congress. This hands-off approach is unlikely to generate the public support needed to force a reluctant Congress to place public health needs before the financial interests of cigarette makers.
- The legislation has been requested by Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. (D), who said it would greatly strengthen Maryland's lawsuit seeking more than $3 billion from cigarette makers to recover Medicaid costs the state incurred in treating smoking-related illnesses. But opponents -- including the tobacco companies and business groups -- are complaining that Curran's efforts are unfairly changing the rules in the middle of the lawsuit and could mean a dramatic change in Maryland's negligence laws, which have long favored big business. . . At issue is a Maryland law that says someone who has been injured can't collect from the responsible party if he or she contributed in any way to the injury.
- When Attorney Charlie Condon met with attorneys working on South Carolina's lawsuit against tobacco companies this week, he gave each a toy boat. "I told them that's the only yacht they're going to get," he said Friday. That was Condon's way of telling the group of high-profile attorneys he was cutting the fees they could make from the lawsuit by more than half.
- Ms Phyllis Cremona . . ., 47, who has emphysema and chronic bronchitis, said she would pursue the legal action but could not comment further. . . After two years of litigation, the legal costs in the case are estimated at more than $10 million, far more than she would have been awarded in damages. . . . Ms Cremona, who began smoking as a teenager, has been released from any liability for legal costs as part of a confidential settlement announced this week.
- The Marlboro Man soon will ride off into the Texas sunset, accompanied by R.J. Reynolds' Camel and the sassy ladies who advertise Virginia Slims. As part of Texas' historic $15.3 billion settlement with the tobacco industry, the advertising icons will become extinct on billboards in the state within four months. . . "The tobacco advertisers have had a long-term relationship with the outdoor advertising industry, which means they have prime space across the country," Wisz said. "Advertisers know they're good locations and when the spots come available, they want them."
- But unlike past grower meetings, this year's gathering was played against the backdrop of the proposed, $368 billion national tobacco settlement now under debate in Washington. Everyone was worried, from Hunt on down. "I don't think there is any question that 1998 will be the toughest year the tobacco growers of North Carolina have ever faced," Hunt told the group. "In all sincerity, I believe this year will determine if there is a future for tobacco."
- Dakota and Washington county authorities are looking for a businessman who they say disappeared with thousands of cartons of stolen cigarettes he ordered for several suburban tobacco shops he operated. The two counties recently charged Gerald Hanz Busman, 30, with swindling a total of $727,578 worth of cigarettes, about 38,000 cartons, from three tobacco distributors in Minnesota and Michigan.
- A New Hope man allegedly has swindled distributors out of $700,000 worth of cigarettes and fled the state without paying for the tobacco products, according to criminal complaints from Washington and Dakota counties. Both county attorneys charged Gerard H. Busman Jr., 30, with duping two tobacco distributors -- one in Minnesota and the other in Michigan -- into taking bad checks for thousands of cartons of cigarettes
- Even stricter laws are needed to limit the sale and advertisement of cigarettes and other tobacco products so teen-agers and adolescents would be deterred from smoking, a San Diego City Council committee has concluded.
- Are teenagers who smoke the victims of drug addiction? This controversial issue is to be examined by a Sydney study, believed to be the first of its kind, which will test the use of nicotine patches in helping teenage smokers to quit. One of the researchers, Ms Renee Bittoun, yesterday said it also would assess their level of nicotine addiction. "The general perception in the adult population is that they're too young to be addicted and that it takes decades of smoking to be full-on addicted," she said. . . "It's a fairly risky strategy embarking on cessation work with kids because I think that it sends a message that if you are smoking and even if you haven't been smoking for very long, you need help to get off," said Associate Professor Simon Chapman of the University of Sydney
- What brings this all to our attention is a new product by an Austin, Texas, woman named Sheree Thomas who came up with a personal smoke deodorizer she calls Banish. Thomas, a former nightclub singer and former smoker, owns and operates a 6-year-old Texas-based business that specializes in removing tobacco smoke odors from homes and cars. . . Banish is becoming available nationally in $2.69 and $6.99 bottles at convenience, drug and grocery stores.
- Social investment funds have been around for years but have always been dogged by performance so generally lackluster that it looked nearly impossible to combine management and morality. That may be changing. Last year was a good one for social investment funds, with 20 scoring A or B grades from Lipper Analytical Services and carrying Morningstar's desirable four- and five-star ratings. "You really can't be halfway social," says David D. Tripple, chief investment officer at the Pioneer Funds, which are not considered social funds but which have a policy of avoiding tobacco or alcohol stocks. "If you have a large-cap fund with a ton of Philip Morris stock and you buy my fund because it doesn't own Philip Morris, there's a conflict.... You're trying to be a little bit pregnant, which doesn't work."
- Following merrily in their wake is the Scotch malt whisky industry, which is using the cigar club image to engineer a mini-boom in American sales. . . Allied Distillers says sales of its single malts, such as Laphroaig and Glendronach, to America are up 38% over the past three years. Ken Lindsay, director of brand heritage, said half of that was due to demand created by cigar-club customers.
- Rep. Michael Bilirakis has never been a smoker, but he is a good friend of the tobacco industry. The Palm Harbor Republican consistently has voted to help tobacco companies. Of 14 votes in the past decade, Bilirakis has voted in favor of the industry 10 times, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. Tobacco companies have given him generous campaign contributions and free trips. They paid for a trip in 1990 so he and his son could visit Louisville and see the Kentucky Derby.
- For his part, Satcher has promised to promote non-controversial stands such as discouraging smoking and teen sex and encouraging good nutrition and exercise. "I want to use the power of these positions to focus on issues that unite Americans -- not divide them," he wrote to Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a surgeon who is one of his supporters.
- City officials are considering a ban on tobacco billboards in areas where children live or play, a proposal that is drawing the ire of civil libertarians. Eight members of the 30-member Board of Aldermen, many representing poor and minority constituents, are sponsoring the ordinance. They said neighborhoods are saturated with billboards and posters hawking alcohol and tobacco.
- The snow storm that clobbered the eastern half of Kentucky last week also destroyed a Paducah area tobacco crop. Grower Joe Wilson . . . says his crop was worth at least 25-thousand dollars, and that the warehouse may have held over one million dollars worth of tobacco.
- AUSTIN, Texas, Feb. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Some 64 percent of Texas youth said the threat of losing their driver's license would keep them from smoking, according to a recent statewide survey conducted for the Texas Department of Health (TDH). Another 23 percent said the sanction would make them cut back on smoking. Senate Bill 55 imposes a range of penalties for tobacco use by Texans under 18, including mandatory attendance at tobacco education classes, required community service, a $250 fine and suspension of the driver's license for repeat offenders.
- As burley growers lament one of their worst crops in years, a new problem has appeared on the horizon: a likely shortage this year of the fertilizer that helps give tobacco plants their bulk. Fertilizer distributors warned this week that supplies of sulfate of potash, which tobacco farmers put on fields in the spring just before turning the soil, could come up 10 to 20 percent short.
- An Indian tribe gasping for jobs has turned a health club into a cigarette factory. In a building that once featured basketball courts and treadmills, the Omaha Nation Tobacco Co. produces about 50,000 cartons of cigarettes a month. It is the only tribally owned cigarette plant in the country. Omaha brand cigarettes with an Indian head on the package are machine-rolled from North Carolina tobacco and sold in regular, light, ultra-light and menthol varieties by 27 tribes across the country and at some off-reservation stores.
- Shares of Swisher International Group Inc ( SWR - news) and some other cigar makers fell on Monday after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said it would take a closer look at the industry. Swisher was off 1-1/8 at 13-1/4 in midday trading and General Cigar Holdings Inc (MPP - news) was off 1/2 at 17-3/8 in exchange trading.
- Eye Technology Inc acquired all of Star Tobacco and Pharmaceuticals Inc's capital stock in exchange for not less than $30 million of preferred stock that would convert into about 90 percent of outstanding Eye common stock, Star said Monday. Eye Technology intends to change its name to Star Tobacco & Pharmaceuticals Inc, and Star managers have assumed control of both companies, the release said. Star was formerly a private company. Star managers are pursuing recapitalization plans as part of a strategy to become a player in markets for safer tobacco and products and items to help people stop smoking, the release added. Eye Technology makes lenses which are implanted in the human eye after cataract surgery.
- Eye Technology, Inc., St. Paul, Minnesota (NASD Bulletin Board:EYTC) and Star Tobacco and Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Petersburg, Virginia jointly announced today that, in a "reverse acquisition" transaction, Eye Technology has acquired all of the capital stock of Star Tobacco and Pharmaceuticals, Inc., of Petersburg, Virginia, in exchange for not less than $30 million face amount of Preferred Stock, convertible into Common Stock which would equal approximately 90% of the outstanding Common Stock of Eye Technology. . . Star is the only company ever to file with the FDA for a tobacco product with therapeutic claims. . . Star has also begun to market nationwide a pleasant tasting tobacco -flavored chewing gum -- GUMSMOKE(TM) -- a functional chewing gum specially formulated as an alternative to smoking and smokeless tobacco products.
- Linda Torgerson's eloquence defies the monotone of a machine, hitting you with the power of personal, painful experience. She is a casualty of the tobacco wars. "Linda's just one victim of the tobacco industry," said Judy Kapp, executive director of the Smoke Free Coalition, who accompanied Torgerson to court. "This is why we exist," Kapp added, nodding toward her friend: "To prevent things like this from happening. Linda puts a face on the problem." . . But the best anti-smoking strategy they may have found at North St. Paul High comes with a blond ponytail, twinkling blue eyes and an edifying tale, told through the electronic buzz of her hand-held squawk box: "Listen to me," Linda Torgerson tells the wide-eyed teen smokers. "Listen to me, and think of me, every time you want a cigarette."
- By title, Lindsey is a deputy counsel, with an office upstairs from Clinton's in the West Wing of the White House. In that role, he is the White House's chief representative in negotiating an agreement with the tobacco industry.
- PRESIDENTIAL press secretary-turned-public relations powerhouse Jody Powell is making light of a recent health scare. Powell, who once labored for Jimmy Carter, had a heart attack while chopping wood at his Maryland home just before Christmas. The 54-year-old is a heavy smoker and has been urged to give up the evil weed, reports the Washingtonian. But Powell has a better idea. He recently told a pal, "The doctors want me to quit smoking, to stop eating so much good food, to cut down on my drinking. Hell, I'm going to stop chopping wood."
- Treasure Island [Resort & Casino] divides its segmented structure into mini "casinos" and it recently designated "Casino One," which is one of the oldest parts of the facility, as 100 percent smoke-free. I was surprised to discover -- and I'm delighted to report -- that it has a significantly different atmosphere. Most no-smoking areas in casinos differ only in one respect: Nobody's blowing smoke in your face. Treasure Island, by contrast, actually smells differently -- or more accurately, it makes you aware that the rest of the casino complex maintains a heavy odor of tobacco.
- The liability question, as the administration itself suggested in its testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, is absolutely the last that ought to be settled. First are all the other aspects of the bill -- what will be done to discourage smoking, what the industry will give. Then will be time enough to measure and decide what if anything it ought to get in return.
- The Senate should beat down efforts to prevent a vote and confirm Dr. Satcher.
- And why this assault on tobacco? The answer can be stated in two words: political correctness.
- Your Jan. 30 editorial "Help for the farmers" tacitly endorsed U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar's bill to eliminate the federal tobacco program. I never thought I'd see the day that The N&O would endorse proposed legislation that would create a financial windfall for cigarette manufacturers! . . The economics of tobacco production are complicated and the potential effects on this region's economy from any national tobacco settlement are even more complicated. Disseminating cherry-picked data about quota owners and endorsing legislative proposals without understanding the full consequences to the region's economy is reckless. Your recent articles and opinions have done nothing but distort the real issues and increase the anxiety of thousands of honest, hard-working people who are concerned for their future.
- Desperate for a deal, the tobacco industry has mounted a new campaign, replete with the requisite confidential documents. A memo dated Dec. 22, 1997, and stamped "Privileged and Confidential" outlines a strategy for the industry to follow. Noting the "mounting opposition" to a settlement, the memo says: "It is therefore imperative that the companies begin to address Americans through an array of means, including paid advertising, direct contact and free media." One of the campaign's goals, the memo says, is "to create momentum and pressure for our package. Make politicians feel that failure to act positively on that package runs political risks because the voters will punish them." Voters are to be told that a "new day" has arrived and the tobacco companies are "changing the way we do business." At the top of the "target audiences" cited by the memo are "soccer moms."
- The Federal Trade Commission has issued orders to several leading cigar manufacturers requiring them to file "special reports" on their sales and advertising expenditures. . . This is the first time the Commission has sought such information from the cigar industry. Studies of cigar marketing show strong increases in cigar sales and raise concerns about increasing use of cigars by high school students (14-19 year olds). . . The Commission's vote to issue the orders was 4-0, with Commissioner Mary L. Azcuenaga not participating.
- Federal regulators, alarmed about booming sales of cigars and their sudden popularity among teenagers, are about to end decades of leniency toward the industry. The Federal Trade Commission is moving toward requiring the nation's largest cigar manufacturers to report how much they spend on advertising and promotions, including their clever use of product placements in movies to glamorize cigar smoking. . . Cigars, it turns out, pack a far greater wallop than previously thought. One premium brand of cigar -- a thick one, eight inches long -- recently was found to contain 444 milligrams of nicotine, 40 times more than most cigarettes, Dr. Henningfield says. In terms of exposure to nicotine, savoring a couple of premium cigars a day is the same as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, he says.
- A plantiff attorney in the nation's first second-hand smoke trial says he will prove the tobacco industry covered up evidence that sidestream and second-hand smoke is dangerous.
- A jury has been selected in the first second-hand smoke suit to come to trial.
- For 17 years, MILDRED WILEY worked as a nurse in the psychiatric ward of a Veterans Administration hospital, tending to chain-smoking patients in a steady blue haze of cigarette smoke. . . In May 1991, Mrs. Wiley was stunned to learn that she had lung cancer. A month later she was dead at 56 . . . Attorneys for her widower will go to court Monday to try to convince a jury that secondhand smoke can cause cancer, the first such trial in an individual's cancer death. . . The case will involve so many witnesses (about 100) and so many lawyers (about 50) that it is being held at Muncie's Horizon Convention Center instead of a state courtroom. Muncie is about 60 miles north of Indianapolis.
- Virginia House Democrats are proposing that local governments be free to raise cigarette taxes by up to a dime a pack to help pay for a two-year, $700 million school construction plan they are casting as an alternative to Gov. James S. Gilmore III's effort to cut the car tax. It is the latest in a series of ideas Democrats have offered to try to slow the legislative momentum of the popular tax cut that won the governor's race for Gilmore (R)
- Smoldering cigarettes caused two early-morning fires yesterday that killed three people, including an elderly woman and her daughter, Columbus fire officials said.
- A state Ethics Board official has strongly objected to a Journal Sentinel article that said the agency would review records raising questions about whether Gov. Tommy Thompson was lobbied by a Philip Morris lobbyist while traveling in Australia in 1996. . . Ethics Board attorney Jonathan Becker, in a letter addressed to a reporter, acknowledged that he responded to the reporter's request to review lobby reports by saying he would. But, Becker said in the letter, "It is grossly unfair for you to have characterized my willingness to look at Philip Morris' lobbying reports as anything other than a desire to cooperate with the press and to satisfy my own curiosity."
- "Finally, based on the information in the board's possession, there are no facts to support a characterization of the Governor's trip to Australia as other than one undertaken in his official capacity to promote the state's interests."
- A Republican attempt to require any tobacco settlement money to go back to the taxpayers has earned quick criticism from DFLers as an attempt to undermine the state's lawsuit. "We think it's inappropriate and unseemly for politicians to be squabbling about how to spend tobacco recoveries when the case is still being presented to a judge and jury," said Eric Johnson, top aide to Attorney General Hubert Humphrey III.
- State attorneys have objected to a report that said ethics officials would review records raising questions about whether the governor was lobbied by Philip Morris Cos. during an Australian trip in 1996. A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter received a letter Monday from Jonathan Becker, an attorney for the state Ethics Board, stating he told the reporter during a casual conversation that he would look at the Philip Morris lobbying reports, but only because of a "desire to cooperate with the press and to satisfy my own curiosity." Becker called the resulting news story Jan. 30 misleading and inaccurate in saying that ethics officials would examine records in Wisconsin and Minnesota regarding the question of whether Gov. Tommy Thompson talked with a tobacco lobbyist during the trip.
- Meanwhile, leaders of the Republican minorities in the House and Senate unveiled a set of bills that would: *Commit any settlement in the Minnesota tobacco trial, which could amount to several billion dollars, to tax relief. The author, state Rep. Todd Van Dellen, R-Plymouth, said he also wants legislation limiting the enormous fees, perhaps as much as $1 billion, that the private attorneys hired by the state could earn.
- Mexican conglomerate Grupo Carso SA (E.GCP) Chairman Carlos Slim Helu returned to work after recovering from pneumonia and a heart operation, a company official said Tuesday.
- The real crux, though, is whether the cigar craze has staying power so that the basic supply and demand dynamic driving the recent good times can moderate without collapsing. . . Still, CONSOLIDATED CIGAR might start to look interesting if the big swinging Wall Streeters continue to beat this stock down.
- Caribbean Cigar Company as transferred the production of its brands, Celestino Vega(TM), Rum Runner(TM), Island Amaretto(TM), and West Indies Vanilla(TM) to its Dominican Republic production facilities. . . The uncertainty of the Indonesian economy, the logistics of Far East production, and the high cost of shipping, duties and a dispute with the Indonesian manufacturer, all contributed to management's decision regarding the move.
- London-based Glaxo has hired Rick Gleber, a onetime Clorox marketing executive and now Glaxo's first manager of consumer marketing. Mr. Gleber is trying to locate smokers' haunts so he can place ads there for Glaxo's stop-smoking pill, Zyban. The consumer campaign for Zyban, which began in the fall, is "probably the first case where we have launched a [prescription] drug with such a strong focus on the consumer," Mr. Gleber says.
- The R&B vocal group Boyz II Men will help promote an anti-smoking writing and production competition for young people, federal health officials said Monday. The Grammy Award-winning quartet will team up with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to promote the health agency's third annual Teen Media Contest for middle and senior high school students. The theme of this year's contest will be "Smoke Free -- It's The New Evolution." The group, which released its third album, "Evolution," last fall, will appear in high school newspaper advertisements and participate in an Internet chat line on the CDC's Web site.
- Bennett LeBow is a hero or a traitor -- it all depends on whom you ask. . . LeBow's stand has won him an ally in one of tobacco's bitterest enemies. "More than any other tobacco executive, I think, he has stood out and told the truth," Minnesota Attorney General Hubert Humphrey III said in an interview last week.
- Lyons Partnership of Dallas, which licenses Barney products, has sued or plans to sue at least 700 costume shops and other retailers in 20 states. The company claims that dressing like Barney is copyright infringement. The problem? Lyons said if people see those in costume smoking, drinking and swearing, it will tarnish Barney's image.
- Beach Boys founding member Carl Wilson, who was credited with keeping the band together in tough times, insisted on appearing in more than 100 performances last year even though he was dying of cancer. Wilson, who died Friday at 51, refused to let his illness keep him from completing the band's 36th annual tour last summer, the band's publicist, Alyson Dutch, said Sunday. . . Wilson, who was the seminal surf band's lead singer on many of their classic recordings, including "Good Vibrations" and "God Only Knows," died in Los Angeles of complications of lung cancer. He also had brain cancer.
- "Tobacco Blues' puts a human face on those Kentuckians who grow tobacco. . . And it shows the moral ambiguity they wrestle with in growing a crop that is harmful as grower after grower admits he doesn't want his children or any young people to use tobacco. The one-hour documentary airs at 10 p.m. today on the Kentucky Education Television station WCVN (Channel 54).
- A FEW weeks back, Polish newspaperman Jacek Kalabinsi followed a visit to North America by advancing the paradox that any peasant couple in Europe lives better than any couple in the United States. Peasants, wrote Kalabinsi, eat everything -- particularly bread, cheese, and red meat -- enjoy smoking pipes and cigarettes, and enhance their conversations with plenty of wine. Their American counterparts nibble in terror generated by mass-media warnings . . . Every day the list reads like the FBI's Most Wanted. The list begins, of course, with the spawn of the damned: cigarette smokers.
- As if the whole tobacco settlement weren't complicated enough, we now have the Clinton administration proposing to spend one-fifth of the $368.5 billion in expected revenues on new social programs. There is, of course, the minor problem that Congress has not yet approved the settlement. On top of that, we have the trial lawyers who brokered the deal already counting on fees upward of $14.5 billion--never mind what their client, the public, might have to say about that.
- People often live with the impression that they're fine when they aren't. There's no crime in that. But a good surgeon general could be an engaging prod that pushes the country to see and meet its evolving and multifaceted health needs.
- Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you." That's usually said with a wink and a nod, but sometimes it's a valid observation. For the past three decades, black activists and health practitioners have been arguing that their demographic has been targeted disproportionately by cigarette and alcohol manufacturers. For all these years, those corporations have denied it, even as billboards loomed over black neighborhoods extolling those very products. Last week, newspapers across the country announced something interesting. Seems proof has come to light that the cigarette companies had indeed spent a significant portion of their advertising dollars in minority communities.
- Today the Senate may vote to end Mr. Ashcroft's filibuster, in which case Dr. Satcher will probably be confirmed. But a better answer is simply to forget the whole thing. . . As a result, the surgeon general's role has amounted to little more than warning people not to smoke, recommending condoms and, in Dr. Elders's case, advocating masturbation--a role perhaps more suitable for a captain of the Federal Behavior Bureau.
- I wrote that song while smoking a cigarette. I did everything while smoking a cigarette. Before sex, during sex, after sex -- a cigarette. In elevators, trains, planes, maternity wards, funeral homes -- time to light up. Why aren't we all dead?
- Two Florence lawyers who are part of Attorney General Charlie Condon's billion-dollar lawsuit against the cigarette industry own a share of tobacco farming operations. According to U.S. Department of Agriculture records, Mark Buyck Jr. and Hugh Willcox of the firm Willcox McLeod Buyck and Williams own tobacco allotments, or licenses to grow tobacco.
- The first installment of Mississippi's multibillion dollar settlement in its tobacco lawsuit arrived in Jackson on Tuesday and was immediately invested temporarily. The initial payment of $170 million has been in a bank in Jackson County since last summer. It was wired to the state treasury and then put into temporary U.S. Treasury notes, where it will draw 5.2 percent interest.
- By Frank Phillips, Globe Staff, 02/11/98 Acting Governor Paul Cellucci is considering capping the fees five law firms could receive as a result of the state's multibillion-dollar suit against the tobacco industry. With new administration projections that Massachusetts could reap as much as $5 billion in its attempt to recover smoking-related health-care costs, the firms handling the case could earn up to $1.25 billion under a 25 percent contingency-fee agreement negotiated with Attorney General Scott Harshbarger.
- The deposition transcript of a Brown & Williamson official who repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering questions in a civil class action against tobacco manfacturers will be unsealed, a state Supreme Court judge in Manhattan has ruled.
- Under Harshbarger's plan . . . the state would expand MassHealth, the state's Medicaid program, to cover 100,000 families and working adults earning less than 200 percent of the poverty line - $32,100 for a family of four. In a second phase, Harshbarger would tap funds Massachusetts may receive as part of a settlement from tobacco companies to cover as many as 100,000 more people.
- A coalition of more than 150 children's groups and several key legislators are proposing an increase in Maryland's cigarette tax of $1.50 a pack over several years to discourage teenage smoking. . . Even Sen. Christopher Van Hollen Jr. (D-Montgomery) and Sen. Paul G. Pinsky (D-Prince George's), the key sponsors of this year's proposal, acknowledge they have an uphill fight.
- RUNNING DIRECTLY against the political grain, state Sen. Christopher Van Hollen Jr. asked his colleagues last night to approve an election-year tax increase -- as much as $1.50 in the per-package cost of cigarettes. Betting that public antipathy to big tobacco provides fearsome leverage, the Montgomery Democrat filed his bill last night.
- Del. James F. Almand, D-Arlington, and Sen. William Mims, R-Loudoun, will introduce legislation for the Republican governor [which] would create an exception to the Virginia Tax Secrecy Act to give the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control access to state tax information about tobacco wholesalers . . The agents would use the list to enforce state laws against under-age tobacco sales. . . The proposal will put off a showdown over licensure . . . As part of the compromise, Almand will ask the legislature to carry over his original bill until next year and study the licensing issue instead. Virginia is one of 34 states that doesn't license retail tobacco outlets.
- Metro Detroiters have mixed feelings about a proposal by President Clinton to increase cigarette taxes by $1.50 a pack over the next three years. "People are going to do what they want to do regardless of the government," said Bernard Gilmer, 46, of Detroit.
- Today it's the tobacco companies being sued because their products caused health problems. Tomorrow it could be ski areas, ice cream makers or even auto manufacturers . . . "If we proclaim ourselves to be a free society, we have to be willing to let people live freely, and be accountable for their own actions," he said. Bandow and Mike Hotra of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group that promotes free-market policies, urged the lawmakers to vote against a bill pending in the Vermont House that would take away some of the defenses that industry typically uses when it is sued.
- The Rev. Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina Church . . . in cooperation with United HealthCare of Illinois, Thursday unveils one of 12 billboards that will go up around the South Side, admonishing alcohol, tobacco and billboard companies for failing to comply with a new city ordinance regulating where alcohol and tobacco billboards can go up. Billboard companies locked a number of alcohol and tobacco accounts into long-term contracts before the ordinance went into effect.
- County Judge Ted Wood read a county employee's letter asking commissioners to ban smokeless tobacco from the workplace. Wood declined to name the author. "I know smoking is considered to be rude," the letter read. "However, dipping is repulsive. I have walked into this building and seen persons spitting into a bottle and then taking a drink from the same type of bottle." Chewing gum is repulsive, too, Commissioner John Dodson said. He smacked loudly in demonstration. "Do we stop that also?" he said. . . The discussion collapsed without a vote.
- Stores that sell cigarettes would need a special permit under a proposal approved in San Mateo County yesterday. The permit would serve as a tool to help snuff out tobacco sales to minors. County supervisors unanimously approved an ordinance that would require stores to obtain and display a "tobacco retailers permit" that could be revoked if clerks sell tobacco products to minors. Backers promised it would be one of the toughest local controls in the state. But retailers bemoaned the proposal, saying they would be required to pay an as-yet undetermined permit fee. They say the proposal punishes all for the sins of a few.
- A proposed ordinance aimed at preventing tobacco sales to minors in Contra Costa moved ahead yesterday without its most legally questionable restriction. The Board of Supervisors voted 4-0 with one abstention to pursue a local law that would limit tobacco advertisements in stores and prohibit tobacco company sponsorship of youth events. It would also ban distribution of cigarette company "gear" such as clothing and accessories.
- Sometime in the next couple of weeks, the health minister will have to get up on that wire, introduce amendments to his government's anti-smoking law in the House of Commons and hope he doesn't fall on his face. . . Quietly, some of his supporters are asking anti-smoking groups to go easy on Rock in the belief he can make the regulations more stringent again later in the government's mandate.
- More retailers are refusing to sell cigarettes and other tobacco products to young people below the legal age, surveys conducted for Health Canada show. Surveys of 5,013 retail stores in 25 cities in August and September showed just over 67 per cent complying with federal tobacco legislation, up from 60 per cent in 1996 and 48 per cent in 1995.
- HONG KONG sport is headed for hard times following the imminent withdrawal of tobacco sponsorship from a number of high-profile tournaments, according to officials.
- Cigarette companies are smarting over the Government's comprehensive ban, which will outlaw all forms of tobacco advertising by the end of next year. Hong Kong's Tobacco Institute last night warned the same fate may soon befall other sporting and cultural events. Organisers of the Marlboro Championships and the Salem Open, though, have expressed confidence that the tennis events can find alternative sponsors.
- To the chagrin of many Egyptian men, women have taken up the water pipe, long a tradition that was the most masculine of male habits, puffed in the thousands of cafes that serve as the hub of men's social life in the Arab world's biggest and most spirited city.
- An Italian judge on Monday scrapped a fraud trial against the president of tobacco giant Philip Morris' European branch and said a new investigation had to start all over again in Milan. Naples judge Bruno D'Urso ruled that the trial of Walter Thoma and 10 managers and officials of Italian company Intertaba, a Philip Morris affiliate, could no longer be held in Naples because Milan had territorial competence over the case.
- Grants are now available from the Farm Income Improvement Foundation (FIIF) that will help Ohio's tobacco producers with production, harvest and market preparation practices during the 1998 tobacco-growing season. Tobacco farmers may now apply for FIIF grants that will provide funding for blue mold control, leasing or purchasing tobacco harvesters and stripping wheel purchases. The Foundation was created last year with financial support from major corporations and is managed by the Kentucky Farm Bureau Federation.
- Maryland tobacco farmers have begun their annual trek to market, and state agriculture officials expect the crop to be a bumper one this season after a rainy fall and winter.
- Increased fertilizer demand from lawn services and golf courses has caused a shortage for some tobacco farmers. Distributors say supplies could fall short as much as 20 percent, which could cut into some tobacco harvests. The use of fertilizer increases the weight of tobacco leaves.
- DIMON Incorporated (NYSE: DMN - news) announced today a 36 percent decline in net income for its second quarter ended December 31, 1997, and a three percent decline in net income for its six-month period ended on the same date.
- Caribbean Cigar Company (Nasdaq: CIGR - news) has reached a settlement with its Dominican insurer, Compania Nacional De Seguros, C. Por A., in a claim for flood damage that occurred in early January at the Company's tobacco processing/warehouse facility in Jaibon, Dominican Republic.
- A BRITISH commodities dealer who called himself "The General" has been jailed for eight years in Los Angeles for swindling millions of pounds from investors worldwide. "General" Marc Debden-Moss was convicted of eight charges of wire fraud, 11 of money laundering and two of income tax evasion . . . His deals included obtaining more than £1 million for 10 container-loads of cigarettes which were never delivered to the buyer in Moscow . . .
- RONSON, the deeply troubled cigarette and luxury goods company, announced yesterday that talks with a possible buyer had collapsed. Instead, it said it was in discussions with Albion Consortium Fund Limited, a US investment company which owns 17pc of the shares, about a recapitalisation
- Tech Prep provides high school students with more technically-oriented educational backgrounds to prepare them for advanced courses in engineering, business, health/human services, and higher mathematics and science. . . It is sponsored by The R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company Foundation in cooperation with the North Carolina Community College System and Public Schools of North Carolina. "Our company supports efforts that provide adequate training and education to prepare our youth to participate in a rewarding career," said Vivian Turner, vice-president of The R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company Foundation, who presented the awards.
- A major American tobacco company is selling cigarettes made with genetically altered, high-nicotine tobacco despite assurances to the government it had stopped the practice four years ago. The genetically altered tobacco packs twice the nicotine of natural leaf. The secret use of the ingredient was disclosed by Roger Black, director of leaf blending for Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., in a Jan. 16 deposition for New York state's class-action suit . . . Tuesday afternoon, Brown & Williamson issued a statement acknowledging that genetically altered, high-nicotine tobacco was currrently being used "in small amounts in certain brands, like Raleigh, Richland, Prime and Summit." . . . The use of the genetically altered tobacco doesn't mean Americans are smoking cigarettes with higher nicotine levels. Instead, Brown & Williamson says it uses the ingredient to control nicotine content.
- Other products and their warning labels selected as "honorable mentions" included: *Cigarette lighter -- "Do not ignite in face."
- The role of face-to-face encounters between pediatricians and current and potential young smokers has proven integral and effective in delivering anti-smoking messages to help deter the more than 3,000 teenagers who become regular smokers each day, according to an article in the latest issue of Contemporary Pediatrics.
- Dentists and hygienists nationwide are getting ready for National Quit The Spit Day, a new annual event scheduled for Saturday, February 28, 1998. Developed by the Tobacco Intervention Network as a day to increase the public's awareness of the dangers of smokeless tobacco, the program is supported by many organizations including the American Dental Hygienists' Association, National Oral Cancer Awareness Progam (NOCAP), National Spit Tobacco Education Program (NSTEP), American Dental Assistants Association and the Professional Baseball Coaches Association. The program is funded by a grant from the Oregon Mint Snuff Company
- Ever since Surgeon General Luther Terry issued his famous warning about the dangers of cigarettes - which protected the tobacco industry from liability for nearly four decades - the office's occupants have occupied themselves less and less with traditional areas of public health and more and more with controversial political issues. . . But modern medicine has conquered most of the traditional concerns of the public-health community, such as plagues, tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough, polio, etc. It has also conquered the need for a surgeon general. Call it a cure for the uncommon scold.
- THE ANTI-TOBACCO bill unveiled yesterday by Vice President Al Gore and a number of Democratic senators carries with it real potential to finally reduce teenage smoking. . . The bill is the best hope yet for lessening tobacco's deadly hold on Americans.
- The Marlboro Man might appear on dollar bills and 32-cent postage stamps. Joe Camel could show up on White House billboards. If the president hopes to accomplish his goal, he might get Chelsea to start smoking, and when he is seen publicly with Hillary he could light two cigarettes and hand one to her. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright might light up a cigar during the State of the Union address . . . Clinton does not necessarily have to come out for smoking. But he will send a message to the nation that the more people puff the larger the budget surplus will be.
- As details of President Clinton's plan for a balanced budget in fiscal 1999 unravel, an expected tax on cigarettes of $1.50 per pack marks the single largest source of new revenue. This tax increase, which is expected to reduce underaged smoking and bring in over $10 billion annually, is politically popular, yet experience shows that the proposal will most likely fail on both accounts. Instead, revenues may actually drop while smoking, particularly among the young, continues to increase.
- Unanticipated multibillion-dollar fees in cases based on public suffering are bound to create a backlash. One lesson that is even clearer is that some attorneys general erred in not imposing a cap or a sliding scale that reduced the percentage on huge judgments. It is possible to guarantee that most of the money goes to the public and still leave the lawyers plenty of room to get rich.
- The machine-pushers have argued in the past that cigarette sales to adults by machine are perfectly legal, so why deny them this convenience? By that reasoning, why not set up beer vending machines all over the place? This bill should be passed unanimously; if not, those lawmakers who defend cigarette machines should have some serious explaining to do for their constituents.
- But it still is just funny to think of an executive actually getting up and saying as was printed in a 1969 R.J. Reynolds memo: "It generally is not as effective to aim at the Negro consumer, as such, as it is to aim at his decisive motivations. Quality rates as a cherished attribute. Negroes buy the best Scotch as long as the money lasts, most marketers agree." . . The tobacco memos expose the industry's top executives as so vapid about black folks we need Richard Pryor to do them justice.
- Adding ammonia to cigarettes just because it would keep smokers hooked and sales high is an outrageous, unethical business tactic and a deliberate threat to public health and safety, But so is selling cigarettes in the first place.
- "Under your leadership, an old-fashioned, genuine, honest-to-goodness, all- American dream story will go forward to lead America into the 21st century, stronger and healthier than ever," said President Clinton. He said Satcher's greatest contribution would be guiding people to live healthier lives.
- President Clinton Friday presided over the swearing-in ceremony of Dr. David Satcher as U.S. Surgeon General, a post that has been vacant for three years.
- Dr. David Satcher overcame conservative opposition on abortion and other issues and won Senate confirmation today as surgeon general. The 63-35 vote means the surgeon general's post will be filled for the first time since Dr. Joycelyn Elders was forced to resign more than three years ago. . . On the final vote, 19 Republicans joined 44 Democrats in voting for Satcher's nomination. Voting against were 35 Republcians. Satcher was also confirmed as assistant secretary for health.
- Blues guitarist Bo Diddley has settled a legal dispute in Greensboro, N.C., over advertisements by the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. which used a Diddley look-alike to promote Winston cigarettes. . . The magazine ads carried the caption: "My blues are real, just like my smokes." Attorneys for the 69-year-old bluesman said Diddley doesn't condone smoking and didn't want to be associated with cigarettes. They also complained that last summer's advertisements negatively affected Diddley's image in the music industry. Diddley's attorney, Larry Schatz, says RJR admitted a "potential for confusion" in the magazine ads. He would not disclose details of the settlement, but said they satisfied both parties.
- Dr. Victor Roggli told a Muncie jury Wednesday that contrary to claims by defense attorneys, Wiley's cancer did not spread from her pancreas to her lungs. He said, in fact, that it was the other way around. But today, Roggli admitted a diagnosis of lung cancer doesn't explain its cause and that the type of cancer from which Wiley died often spreads from other areas of the body.
- A pathologist says the tobacco industry is wrong to claim that Mildred Wiley's lung cancer was the result of pancreatic cancer. In testimony at the first second-hand smoke suit to come to trial, Victor Roggli Wednesday told a Muncie jury it appears the situation was the other way around _ that Wiley's lung cancer spread to her pancreas.
- Sponsors disagree about tighter restrictions on tobacco sales. Ms. Gard said she won't settle for a "watered down" measure, and Hasler said he won't agree to a total ban. A state Senate proposal to ban cigarette vending machines in Indiana passed out of a House committee Thursday. But a disagreement between the two main sponsors of tighter restrictions on tobacco sales threatens to jeopardize any such legislation this session.
- Legislation to ban cigarette vending machines throughout Indiana, with the exception of riverboat casinos, cleared a major hurdle Thursday. But a rift between anti-tobacco lawmakers could keep the bill from making it to the House floor for a vote. The bill won surprising approval last month in the Senate, where it passed 29-21, and it sailed out of the House Public Health Committee Thursday on an 8-2 vote. But it still must survive a House vote.
- The North Bakersfield Recreation and Park District will determine at its meeting Tuesday night whether smoking and chewing tobacco should be banned during district-sponsored events. If a policy were to be adopted, smoking and chewing tobacco would be prohibited for anyone who participates in or attends organized outdoor events like baseball, softball and flag football at the district's parks. At least 10 parks would be affected by the proposed policy, said Henry Agonia, the district's general manager. Agonia said the topic was brought to the district's attention by board member Don Martin.
- Santa Clara County's Tobacco Control Program is stepping up its efforts to reduce secondhand smoke. The program, a division of the county Department of Public Health, has contracted with the American Lung Association to centralize its anti-smoking efforts. Those include a secondhand smoke help line, which monitors violations of state and federal smoking laws.
- Another tobacco crop gets its start, but some fear program's end is near . . . "U.S. consumption of cigarettes is shrinking, but it's still growing in most of the rest of the world," Griffin said. "If we have a future, it lies overseas. "But as long as we have a program, we aren't going to be able to compete in the world market to any great extent. We will be extremely foolish if we don't use the opportunity presented by the settlement to get our house in order."
- At the supposedly smoke-free Gordon County jail in Calhoun, inmates hooked on cigarettes have been coughing up big bucks to buy smuggled smokes for $50 a pack. But the air may have cleared a bit Thursday with the arrest of Corporal Tony Reynolds, a two-year sheriff's department employee who worked at the jail. He is accused of taking bribes to let inmates bring back cigarettes from work details and resell them for exorbitant prices behind bars, said Sheriff's Capt. Dan Bramblett.
- So when alcohol and tobacco companies displaying billboards in South Side neighborhoods vowed to fight for their right to continue advertising there, residents and political leaders launched a counterattack. And they did it by fighting billboards with billboards. On Thursday, Rev. Michael Pfleger, an activist pastor at St. Sabina Catholic Church, unveiled one of 12 billboards on the South Side asking alcohol and tobacco companies to stop targeting their ads toward children. The move is part of an ongoing debate involving neighborhood leaders, and the Chicago City Council, versus alcohol and tobacco companies over the fine line between 1st Amendment Rights and actions that are harmful to children.
- The European Union on Thursday approved plans to phase out tobacco advertising within the 15-nation bloc over the next eight years. EU research ministers adopted without debate a compromise deal struck by health ministers on December 4 aimed at a phased reduction in tobacco advertising and sponsorship. That deal, opposed by Germany and Austria, would allow Formula One motor racing, one of the highest-profile sports to get substantial tobacco sponsorship, to continue receiving cigarette manufacturers' backing until 2006.
- SMOKERS are coming under renewed pressure to quit after claims that cancer is set to overtake heart disease as Northern Ireland's number one killer were repeated by campaigners yesterday. The Cancer Research Campaign said the number of cancer deaths in Northern Ireland is set to follow the British trend and overtake coronary heart disease in "the next year or two".
- The Cancer Research Campaign, which released the figures, said that cancer deaths were falling overall but not as fast as heart disease deaths. People had improved their diets, cutting back on animal fat which had an impact on heart disease deaths, but smoking remained the most important cause of preventable disease and death.
- Furthermore, the gagging order which prevented the plaintiffs from talking publicly about their cases was lifted, adding to what the solicitor Martyn Day, of Leigh, Day and Co, described as "a good day as far as justice for the ordinary British individual is concerned".
- Violet Rumsey's story is one that the tobacco manufacturers tried to keep under wraps, writes Clare Garner. But yesterday, following the lifting of the gagging order, she seized her first opportunity to describe the addiction which is killing her.
- The test case being brought by lung cancer victims against UK tobacco companies Imperial Tobacco and Gallaher is to go ahead following a landmark ruling yesterday by the Court of Appeal in London. The test case is widely seen as the most significant legal challenge yet mounted to the UK tobacco industry. It follows similar litigation in the US, which resulted in tobacco companies there agreeing to a multi-billion dollar settlement to compensate smoking victims.
- Thursday, February 12, 1998; 11:30 a.m. EST LONDON (AP) -- Several dozen lung cancer victims scored a legal victory Thursday, when three judges said their lawyers can pursue a lawsuit against two tobacco companies without worrying about paying all costs if the case fails.
- Gallaher Group and Imperial Tobacco, Britain's two leading cigarette companies, on Thursday dismissed an Appeal Court ruling as technical, saying they expected the outcome which has no bearing on the case. "The decision, which Gallaher is comfortable with, will have no effect upon the eventual outcome of the case," said Gallaher's head of corporate affairs Ian Birks. "These are matters of general principle and they do not in any way relate to the facts or merits of the litigation," he added. Earlier an English Appeal Court ruled that it is up to the court to decide whether the plaintiffs' lawyers will have to pay costs to the defendant companies.
- Lawyers acting for 43 cancer victims who are suing two of Britain's biggest tobacco companies said they would pursue the case following an appeal court ruling on Thursday freeing them of punitive liability for costs. Imperial Tobacco Plc and Gallaher Group Plc had said that lawyers Leigh Day & Co, who are representing the cancer victims on a "no-win, no-fee" basis, were the real movers behind the case and should be liable for the defendants' legal costs if they lose. The Court of Appeal ruled that lawyers acting under conditional fee agreements were not at any greater or lesser risk of paying costs personally than they would be under any other fee arrangement. "We are cleared of the cloud the defendants placed upon us in terms of costs. That cloud has been dispelled," lawyer Martyn Day said after the ruling.
- Lawyers seeking compensation for smokers who developed lung cancer said they will be taking on tobacco companies in the courts after being reassured by senior judges they will not be liable for huge legal costs if they lose. Lord Woolf, the Master of the Rolls, Lord Justice Aldous and Lord Justice Chadwick did not give the legal teams representing the 43 victims a debarring order exempting them from future legal costs estimated at up to £9 million. But the judges said that although the lawyers were acting under a no win-no fee agreement, it did not mean they needed any special protection.
- THE UNION health ministry's Central Committee on Food Standards (CCFS) has passed a resolution to ban the manufacture, sale, distribution and storage of chewing tobacco and gutka. The resolution is expected to become legally effective after the new government is in place at the Centre. The health ministry's move follows hectic lobbying by consumer societies and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and a prolonged public debate.
- THE law firm that pioneered asbestos litigation in Australia is preparing to launch a landmark damages case against the Federal Government for supplying cigarettes to Australian troops in Vietnam. Slater and Gordon, which won a multi-million dollar settlement from BHP over environmental pollution in New Guinea, is understood to be planning a law suit based on the inclusion of cigarettes in soldiers' rations.
- The Tobacco Institute of Japan will voluntarily limit tobacco advertising and free distribution of tobacco samples in Japan starting April 1, according to a press release. "Tobacco brand advertising on TV, radio, cinema, outdoor TV (boards), and the Internet shall not be conducted," say the new rules. "Distribution of sample tobacco products shall not be conducted on streets. Distribution of sample tobacco products shall be limited to the customers who are buying tobacco products at the tobacco shops and to the smokers at ...places such as pubs, restaurants and event sites."
- The judge, Charles Edward Ramos, granted summary judgment in favor of Salomon Brothers International Ltd., including the dismissal of the claim by . . . Seita, that the firm violated its fiduciary duty. The ruling did not affect Seita's claim that the London-based unit of Travelers Group Inc. (TRV) held back critical information about the investments, said Seita's New York-based attorney, Edward Brodsky.
- Cigar makers, at about the time Reed was born, conceived a long-range plan to conquer new smokers--women, the young and the wealthy--and laid the foundation for a powerful myth that cigars are cool and sexy. In a remarkable turnaround for an industry whose customers were dying off only a generation ago, the image of cigars today has even ensnared teenagers, a taboo audience that manufacturers say they have not courted. Among the ways marketers resurrected the cigar: They hijacked the credibility of the media. News reports, they understood, were more likely to sway the public than paid advertisements. "While the consumer of the '80s may harbor built-in skepticism when he reads an advertisement in a magazine or sees a commercial on TV," said an internal memo of the Cigar Assn. of America Inc. in 1983, "he accepts and believes the public relations message because it reaches him in the form of news and information."
- This document, a 1975 report from an outside marketing consultant to an outside ad agency, was used by the media almost 20 years ago to claim that B&W was marketing to children. It became the subject of a major court case that resulted in one of the largest libel awards ever. When a CBS news reporter charged in 1981 that this document showed B&W was marketing to children, B&W sued for libel -- and won a multimillion-dollar court judgment. . . In the course of conducting any business over 30 or 40 years, plenty of ill-conceived or inappropriate ideas are bound to be suggested. It is easy to make allegations based on old documents containing such ideas.
- Two new dispatches live up to the tradition of fine reporting about one of the great public-health battles of our time.
- A Nepalese mountain villager claims he is 141, which would make him the world's oldest man. But he will not enter the Guinness Book of Records because he has no birth certificate to prove it, the British press reported on Thursday. . . The secret of the former farmer's longevity, he says, is "raw tobacco and no alcohol."
- Banish(tm) Smoke Odor Survey Shows Smelling Like an Ashtray Can Extinguish Valentine's Passion. "Love at first sight" may more accurately be "love at first smell," because scents play a crucial role in establishing romance.
- Don Hewitt, the creator and executive producer of CBS' "60 Minutes," professes to be unfazed about an upcoming theatrical film based on the relationship between tobacco company whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand and "60 Minutes" producer Lowell Bergman.
- Opponents of the bill also are suggesting the legislature authorize a study of local laws on teen smoking, rather than empowering communities to enact such laws. Death by committee, in other words. If lawmakers can't muster the gumption to buck the cigarette industry and convenience-store operators to do something for children and communities, they should at least authorize a legitimate study: Clear the way for local governments to enact teen smoking ordinances on a pilot basis. That way, there would be something to study.
- It's not enough for government's buccaneers to plunder the tobacco industry. Now they want to stiff the lawyers who made the ill-gotten gains possible.
- For a nominal fee, the tobacco industry will be allowed to continue to poison adults and children alike, both in the U.S. and abroad. Tobacco companies will continue to make money and people will continue to die prematurely, carried off by the smoky wraiths of a thousand cigarettes. Certainly, much needs to be done to prevent another generation of children from succumbing to the deadly allure of tobacco. The temptation to see some immediate progress toward that end is powerful. But before we make any deal with the devil, we best remember Faustus. If the devil is still around in 25 years, we will certainly regret having signed on the dotted line today.
- "Cigarette smoking is not addictive." - William Campbell, CEO of Philip Morris, in testimony April 14, 1994, before the House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment. "Under some definitions cigarette smoking is addictive." - Geoffrey Bible, CEO of Philip Morris, in testimony Jan. 29, 1998, before the House Commerce Committee. . . The simple truth is that secrets the executives held and lies they told encouraged people to smoke and ultimately to die. Since their first congressional appearance alone, more than 4 million Americans have started smoking. A year remains before the statute of limitations expires. If the executives committed perjury, they should be prosecuted.
- Here's what's really driving these perjury allegations: There's $370 billion on the table, in return for which tobacco companies want partial immunity from litigation. The question, then, is how does government get its hands on that loot without kowtowing to a pariah industry that government itself still subsidizes? The easiest way is to whip up public sentiment, demonize the industry, threaten tobacco executives with criminal prosecution and see if they can be intimidated into relaxing their immunity demands. After all, without the industry's consent, the global tobacco settlement simply won't fly. It's unconstitutional. Just what did tobacco executives "lie" about? For starters, they claimed that cigarettes aren't addictive. Well, 45 million people have stopped smoking - roughly the same number as still smoke.
- Negotiating a settlement with the tobacco companies is a little bit like negotiating an arms control treaty with the Evil Empire in the bad old days, except that the tobacco industry has more lawyers. The devil is in the fine print, in what you trade here for what you get there, and what gets slipped into sub-paragraph 7.3, subsection 6(c)(2), while the other side is dozing. So it's early for members of Congress to lambaste the president for not being more specific on what he wants in a global tobacco settlement. This is a high-stakes poker game in a smoke-filled room.
- We present our collective views on policy questions, programmatic issues, and resource requirements as an Independent Budget (IB). . . The IB strongly opposes the legislative proposal in the Administration's budget to preclude service connection for disabilities resulting from tobacco use during military service. This might unfortunately be an attractive proposal to those who do not fully understand its implications, background, and an apparent ulterior motive to divert funding away from veterans' programs to other areas.
- A ruling by a tribal judge in Oklahoma could open the door to a rush of lawsuits by Indian tribes against cigarette manufacturers even as Congress works on a settlement with the industry. Tribes in South Dakota and Montana, as well as Oklahoma, have filed suit, and the lawyer representing them says he expects at least 20 more to head for court too.
- One of the ironies in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation's lawsuit against the tobacco industry is that the tribe makes a lot of money from the sale of tobacco products, an industry lawyer said Friday. "The Muscogee tribe is heavily dependent on the economy in tobacco for its livelihood," John Phillips, a lawyer representing Philip Morris, said in a telephone interview. "It is the regulatory monopolist for tobacco within the Indian nation. If you want to sell tobacco, it has to be done within the tribe. It's an enormous source of income."
- A Muscogee (Creek) Nation judge in Oklahoma opened the door Thursday for tribes taking the nation's major tobacco companies to tribal court to recover millions of dollars spent on health-care costs related to smoking. Issued by Judge Patrick E. Moore in the tribe's Okmulgee District, the order came on a case patterned after those filed against the tobacco industry by state attorneys general across the nation. Mark Hutton of Wichita, Kan., the lead attorney in the case, said the judge's order will lead to numerous other cases filed in tribal courts in Oklahoma and in other states. "There is not a precedent from a tribal court on a tribe suing a major manufacturer of a defective product," Hutton said. "This is the precedent that will be used in these tribal cases."
- The House Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to spend only the interest on millions of dollars collected from cigarette manufacturers and to focus those dollars on health needs in coming years. Longtime lawmakers characterized the creation of the Mississippi Health Care Trust Fund as something as momentous for health issues as was the 1987 four-lane highway program or the 1982 school reforms were for education. Senators must still approve House Bill 1241 before it would go to the governor's desk, but during the debate House members made clear that Atty. Gen. Mike Moore's hope that the money be used for health needs would be heeded.
- But Richmond Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court Judge Richard D. Taylor decided that Campbell had reason enough to believe that the undercover youth was old enough to buy cigarettes. "The [clerk] did what she was supposed to do . . . She made a reasonable assumption of whether the buyer was over 18," said George E. Leedom, a Richmond lawyer who represented Campbell for free. Vicki Harris, an assistant commonwealth's attorney who prosecuted the case, said the law is ambiguous in its standard for requiring a photo identification. That makes winning a judgment subjective. "You have the judge looking at the person," she said.
- A City Council committee decided Thursday night to leave it up to the whole council to decide whether to impose a citywide ban on smoking in restaurants. The Health and Human Services Committee forwarded the measure to the City Council but chose not to endorse or disapprove of the smoke-free ordinance. It chose to do so because only two of the three committee members attended the meeting and they hadn't heard from all those who might be affected by the measure. The proposed ordinance would prohibit smoking in all of the city's 200-plus restaurants, except for those that could provide enclosed, ventilated smoking areas.
- Fewer teens are having babies, killing themselves and engaging in unprotected sex, says a report from the Colorado Advisory Council on Adolescent Health. . . Tobacco use has increased -- 35 percent of 10th-graders in 1995 said they'd smoked a cigarette in the previous month, compared to just 11 percent in 1993. Of those who said they smoked in 1995, 22 percent had smoked two or more cigarettes a day. Smokeless tobacco use also is up, and cigar smoking, a chic trend among adults, is moving into the teenage crowd.
- Quebecers will pay an extra 17 cents for a pack of cigarettes starting today as part of a joint federal-provincial hike in the tobacco sales tax, Quebec Finance Minister Bernard Landry said yesterday. The average price of a carton of 200 cigarettes - contained in eight packages - will increase to $30.35 from $28.97.
- Finance Minister Paul Martin today tabled in the House of Commons a Notice of Ways and Means Motion to amend the Excise Tax Act, effective February 14, 1998, to increase excise taxes on cigarettes and tobacco sticks.
- Tobacco taxes are going up in Eastern Canada, the federal government announced Friday in a reversal of its 1994 decision to lower the taxes to combat smuggling. The change means the price of a carton of 200 cigarettes in Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island will rise by 84 cents. A carton in New Brunswick will cost 56 cents more. The increase will generate $49 million a year for the federal treasury, but the government said its main goal was to discourage smoking.
- Canadian Finance Minister Paul Martin said on Friday he was proposing a tax increase on cigarettes in most of eastern Canada and a tax rise on tobacco sticks across Canada. The proposed increases, virtually certain to pass Parliament, would take effect on February 14 and generate an additional C$70 million annually in federal revenue. Many provinces would also earn new revenue. The federal tax will go up by C$0.60 per carton of 200 cigarettes in Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island and C$0.40 in New Brunswick. A statement said comparable increases in provincial tax rates on cigarettes would be implemented concurrently by the five provinces. Ottawa has pledged to work in harmony with the provinces on those taxes.
- THE Department of Justice (DOJ) yesterday finally subpoenaed tycoon Lucio Tan and eight others to answer a P25.6-billion tax fraud suit slapped on them by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR). . . Tan and his Fortune Tobacco Corp., along with 11 conduit marketing firms, were charged with shortchanging the government of a total of P25.6 billion in taxes for the years 1990, 1991 and 1992.
- The Philippine Department of Justice has subpoenaed tobacco magnate Lucio Tan and a number of his associates to answer a 25.6-billion-peso (US$1=PHP41.22) tax fraud suit filed against them by the Bureau of Internal Revenue.
- Although its annual revenue more than doubled and it has just entered a potentially lucrative deal with the toy company that makes Beanie Babies, Gloucester-based Cyrk Inc. said yesterday it will cut 450 jobs from its worldwide work force of 1,500 as part of a company restructuring. . . Under the partnership, Cyrk is to create a Beanie Babies Official Club for collectors of the wildly successful line of plush toys.. . By 1994, Philip Morris accounted for nearly 90 percent of Cyrk's revenues of $401.9 million. . . Over the last two years, it has bought seven companies, Shlopak said. One company devises "Happy Meals" and other promotions for McDonald's.
- GEORGE SELDES and the American Press If you hear that "smoking shortens life," and that "between the ages of 30 and 60, 61 percent more heavy smokers die than non-smokers," you'll hardly think it's news. But George Seldes wrote that when it was news, in 1942, when the information from scientific studies was so new that most of the nation's press ignored it. Tobacco companies were widely praised for sending free smokes to American troops overseas, but Seldes' story on the subject was headlined "SENDING POISON TO OUR ARMED FORCES?"
- Sir Richard Doll, the eminent British doctor who helped alert the world to the dangers of tobacco, has a few tips for those aspiring to a long, healthy life. Sir Richard, 85, and still engaged in full-time research, credits his own longevity to his decision to quit smoking 50 years ago, his regular enjoyment of a tipple and a brisk walk to work each day. . . But by 1949 the evidence was strong enough to persuade him to quit, at a time when 85 per cent of English men smoked and when "people smoked to clear their lungs". . . He said it was not until the early 1970s that the general public began to change smoking habits, and that the crucial factor was the media beginning to report the dangers as proved rather than controversial.
- The thinness of Clinton's cigarette proposal - the lack of legislation or recommendations - has made Congress suspicious. The budget looks like it is intended less for Congress than for voters this fall.
- In supporting the goals of the Conrad bill but calling for a more bipartisan rendering, the White House is said to be forcing Republicans to choose between signing on or posturing themselves anew as tobacco apologists. But the time for such maneuvering is past. Two weeks ago, Congress-watchers were saying comprehensive tobacco legislation wasn't even on the horizon. Now it has arrived, in a form that merits the wholehearted backing of all who wish to see the nation's No. 1 health menace attacked with wisdom, efficacy and resolve.
- Of course the public and its representatives have an interest in determining how the lawsuit proceeds are spent, and in making sure that lawyers don't make off with too large a share. But the time for debating those issues is when the case is over and the money in hand. Trumpeting them now merely creates a distraction, and purposefully so.
- The importance of the position is not so much what a surgeon general says as what might go unsaid without one. Surgeons general often are lone, courageous voices willing to stand up against even the presidents who appoint them. It was a surgeon general who first told Americans in wartime that they had a venereal disease epidemic. It was a surgeon general who tried to stop a deadly plague in San Francisco, against the wishes of city officials trying to keep it quiet. It was a surgeon general who told the truth about tobacco and lung disease, who told Americans not to ignore AIDS. Surgeons general go unnoticed in their own time. But not by history.
- Norman Stone, legendary academic chain smoker, expected to die with a cigarette in his lips, but finally found a way of giving up.
- The United States long ago made a narrow, "necessary evil" exception to the general proscription of contingency fees in order to help give poor people access to the courts. And the American Bar Association's Code of Professional Responsibility stated that "a lawyer generally should decline to accept employment on a contingent-fee basis by one who is able to pay a reasonable fixed fee." State government can pay such a fee. The states' tobacco lawyers demand, with more brass than plausibility, that their fees be treated as an island immune from Congress' general jurisdiction over the settlement. Not that there is a settlement.
- Minutes after Dwain Eckberg stepped off the second floor elevator into a cloud of tobacco smoke at the John Marshall Courts building, he felt a familiar tightening in his lungs. His throat constricted and he began to gasp. It was an asthma attack. Eckberg's latest anti-smoking crusade had begun.
- Houston teenagers are apparently ignoring the state law against teen smoking that went into effect last month. The law carries a $250 fine and in the case of teens with driver's licenses, they could have them suspended or revoked. Nevertheless, many teens interviewed say the law has not had an effect on their smoking habits. The fine can be suspended if the smoker attends a tobacco awareness program.
- Tobacco: The lawsuit brought by candidate and Attorney General Hubert Humphrey III against the national tobacco companies is more than a sideshow. Humphrey, by all accounts, is reaping more political benefit than was expected from the state and national publicity, and the trial's outcome may be a critical factor in the November result. Republicans have been issuing almost weekly attacks on his motives and his strategy in the lawsuit.
- As the 1998 election season gets under way, Assembly Speaker-elect Antonio Villaraigosa wrestles with the question of whether to tap a potentially important source of campaign cash: big tobacco. Sources close to Villaraigosa, a liberal Democrat from Los Angeles, say he knows taking tobacco money could hurt him in the future if he runs for another office. But at the same time, part of the speaker's job is raising enough campaign cash to preserve the Democrats' slim majority in the lower house, whatever it takes.
- Boston restaurateurs yesterday balked at Mayor Thomas M. Menino's proposed ban on smoking in city dining establishments yesterday. "The Massachusetts Restaurant Association absolutely opposes a complete ban," said Peter Christie, the MRA's executive president.
- Standing in one of Boston's most popular watering holes yesterday, Mayor Thomas M. Menino formally announced plans to ban smoking in many of the city's dining establishments.
- The mayor is set to make the announcement today, according to city officials. . . The proposed ordinance would require passage by the City Council after public hearings. The restaurant industry is sure to have major concerns about the economic impact of a ban as well as fairness issues - whether smoking will still be allowed in bars, pubs, and taverns, for example.
- In a first-in-the-nation approach to controlling teenage smoking, Attorney General Scott HARSHBARGER wants to use state consumer protection laws to crack down on cigarette sales to minors. According to a confidential draft of the regulations, Harshbarger intends to use the laws to regulate sales and ban tobacco billboards and store ads at retail outlets near schools.
- THE discovery of files in which a leading tobacco company admits that nicotine is addictive was welcomed by anti-smoking campaigners yesterday. Papers belonging to British American Tobacco allegedly show that the company admitted 20 years ago that cigarettes were highly addictive.
- HEALTH watchdogs are preparing to "name and shame" Hollywood superstars whose films have been deemed to encourage young people to smoke. . . This week the Health Education Authority (HEA) will appeal to film directors to cut back on smoking scenes. It will also point the finger at actors with teen appeal, such as the cigar-toting Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose films or lifestyle may appear to make smoking glamorous.
- Agriculture, with tobacco the main cash crop, accounts for 44 percent of foreign exchange earnings, 18 percent of the gross domestic product and 31 percent of employment in this nation of 12 million people. But Mugabe's announcement seemed to suggest that political promises of the liberation era, when land reform was the center of the campaign for black-majority rule and independence, is more important than the economy, said David Hasluck, director of the Commercial Farmers Union.
- On the downside, Dimon, the world's second-largest tobacco leaf dealer and a leading distributor of fresh flowers, saw its stock fall $3.25 during the week, to close at $17.68 3/4. The decline largely stemmed from a 36 percent drop in second-quarter net income, which the company reported Thursday. Dimon of Danville, Va., said its tobacco business was hurt by an expected settlement involving the major tobacco companies.
- Then, too, remember that premium cigars are generally not addictive, so their erstwhile fans can toss them aside quickly, much the way they did a year or two back with microbrew beers -- and the associated stocks. Maybe the best move for Wall Street's trend surfers is to look for the next craze. Premium vodka, anyone?
- Tobacco farmers across eastern North Carolina have been gathering to discuss changes looming in their industry. At annual production meetings, scientists and economists from N.C. State University are giving their best guesses as to what will happen. About 40 farmers from Hoke and Cumberland counties attended one of these meetings on Wednesday in Fayetteville.
- Giuliani polished off a sirloin and automatically brought out a cigar. Even as someone lit a match for him, a waiter rushed to the table to say smoking was banned in the main dining room.
- One of the things that has gotten me so hot and heavy on this is that in 1993 here in Arizona, the department of health and human services put out a sheet and one of the statistics on it was just appalling -- 9.8 percent of third- to sixth-graders were reported spit tobacco users. Third- to sixth-graders. And it's just hidden.
- Ian Phillips is not much of an advert for cigarette sponsorship, for the commercial director of Jordan was a 60-a-day man who has given up the weed. . . Phillips believes replacement sponsors could be found, such as in the burgeoning finance industry increasingly showing interest in having their names advertised globally. Whatever happens, it will be Phillips's job to replace any cigarette financing which goes missing. "We might be looking at taking a 20 per cent knock in financing," he says. "We just have to find what the next big business is that wants global branding on a sport with this sort of television coverage."
- The Simpsons' place on the Net illustrates the kind of microscopic treatment the tobacco industry is getting these days. If you scan "The Smoker's Surfboard" at www.smokers.com, you'll find 161 links of every size, shapes (and we do mean shapes) and political persuasions. . . Now, if all this smoking talk is giving you a headache, an antidote is www.tobacco.org
- The promise was unequivocal and plainspoken: "We will never produce and market a product shown to be the cause of any serious human ailment," vowed the Tobacco Industry Research Committee advertisement. "We always have and always will cooperate closely with the Governmental authorities whose task it is to safeguard the public health." The ad -- a product of public relations "spin doctoring" long before the term came into vogue -- was to run Jan. 4, 1954, in hundreds of American newspapers, including the Pioneer Press. Under the bold headline "A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers," it announced the creation of the TIRC to conduct scientific research and calm fears that smoking was harmful. Until recently, however, the 44-year-old promise never saw the light of day. According to an edited draft of the ad in the archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society, eight days before the ad ran, the tobacco executives who formed the TIRC, along with their lawyers, excised the vow about never producing and marketing an injurious product. They also cut the part about cooperating closely with the government.
- "Direct-to-consumer drug advertising is a First Amendment right," said Jeffrey Trewhitt, an official of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a trade group in Washington.
- Using technology in a new way to market drugs, CVS Corp. and Giant Food Inc. are sending confidential prescription information to a Massachusetts company that tracks customers who don't refill prescriptions, a practice that some experts say raises new questions about medical privacy. . . "Our records indicate that you have tried to stop smoking using a prescription nicotine replacement product," said one such letter, recently received by a customer, touting a new drug called ZYBAN. "We hope you successfully quit smoking but if you, like many others who have tried to quit, are still smoking, we have good news for you."
- Volenti non fit injuria - "To one who is willing, no wrong is done." . . . Robert Levy, senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, says to override the assumption-of-risk defense, a plaintiff must show that he or she "relied on the misinformation." Even though the industry may have withheld or concealed data, if a plaintiff had "access to correct information from other sources, he may not have altered his behavior" anyway. . . The citizens of Minnesota, and the nation for that matter, shouldn't delude themselves into thinking they can jeopardize the rights of one industry without threatening others. Today we target Joe Camel for marketing to kids; tomorrow the Budweiser frogs. But then again, why let the First Amendment get in the way of a perfectly good lawsuit? To retroactively impose a system of liability that no one could have foreseen is an egregious abuse of state power.
- From the Journal Sentinel February 16, 1998 The belated confirmation of David Satcher as surgeon general provides a chance to give this country what it has not had for many years: an authoritative, widely respected, influential champion of public health.
- Texas taxpayers are about to get a multibillion-dollar pound of flesh from Big Tobacco. That's good, but Texas could get more - and should - when the Legislature meets next year. Raise the cigarette tax at least 50 percent.
- Congress must let the Food and Drug Administration regulate nicotine as a drug. And sales pitches - such as Joe Camel - with a clear appeal to kids should be made a federal crime. In the tobacco tug-of-war, government shouldn't be gentle. In pursuit of profits, the other side uses its persuasive power to lure kids to a life of smoking - and good odds of a premature death.
- WE ARE TAKING them down. . . When I say "we," I mean the predominantly African American and Latino communities where the tobacco and alcohol industries use billboards to push their drugs. The industries would not dare install in suburban areas the ads with which they paper the inner cities, because they know it would not be tolerated. The underlying racist assumption that this is somehow all right is an insult to the integrity of our communities and the fabric of our nation.
- Henderson's remarks reveal the dishonesty of the anti-smoking lobby. Indeed, its secret ambition is to outlaw the manufacture, sale and use of tobacco products. . . If that is not insidious enough, the anti-smoking lobby also enlists a stable of scientist sympathizers who distort smoking research to provide justification for government crackdowns on smoking. Indeed, that is precisely what occurred when the Environmental Protection Agency ginned up a scientific review of research on secondhand smoke.
- 4. Theory: Mickey Kantor, Vernon Jordan, and Kenneth Starr are all blackmailing Clinton to win immunity for tobacco companies. Source: Jack Cannon, anti-smoking advocate. V.Q. = 1/10. Kantor, the recently returned advisor to the president; Jordan, the Clinton confidante and Lewinsky career counselor; and Starr, the independent prosecutor, have all represented tobacco companies or sat on tobacco company boards‹and are therefore blackmailing the president in order to win immunity for Big Tobacco. Hmmm. It took some good sleuthing to piece all these elements together. The administration's recent announcement that it is open to the idea of giving tobacco companies some form of immunity also speaks to the plan. But overall, it's insane.
- Four Utah residents have filed a lawsuit accusing cigarette manufacturers of selling a defective product and conspiring to conceal the addictive power of nicotine. A trio of Salt Lake law firms filed the lawsuit Friday in District Court on behalf of four individuals. They are asking the judge to give the lawsuit class action status. . . The Utah complaint contends the tobacco industry should establish a medical monitoring fund for smokers, finance smoking-cessation programs and give up at least five years of gross revenues from cigarettes sales in Utah.
- President Vaclav Havel on Tuesday turned down the minister of the environment's resignation and urged him to shed more light on a dubious sponsorship affair that has tarnished his party's image.
- The leader of the Civic Democratic Alliance offered to resign Monday from the post of environmental minister because of a party financing scandal. . . Skalicky offered his resignation only days after he announced two Czech firms and the U.S. tobacco company Philip Morris had donated nearly 6 million koruna ($176,000) his party received through a fictitious firm three years ago. Prior to that, Skalicky refused to say who the donors were, saying only that they were 'respectable firms that are in no way related to privatization.' . . All three companies denied that they had sent any donations to Skalicky's party.
- She is a 30-something single Londoner with a messy life who dates losers, can't quit smoking and drinks too much but still managed to lose 72 pounds last year. The same year she gained 74. . . Her name, Bridget Jones, has become shorthand for the compulsive conduct of young women braving continually collapsing bridges to self-improvement yet trying to maintain an amused perspective on that fraught space between bounding hope and tumbling defeat. "Bridget Jones's Diary" has been the best-selling novel in Britain for six months and has just won the British Book Award, the publishing industry's Oscar, for Book of the Year.
- From now on, according to the directive, tobacco will be treated as a danger to health. The government will continue to oppose trade policies abroad that favor local tobacco products over those made in the United States, but will support efforts in other countries to restrain smoking. The directive will be sent on Tuesday to all U.S. embassies and commercial offices abroad. The White House gave a copy of it to The New York Times Sunday. "Given that tobacco use will be the leading global cause of premature death and preventable illness early in the 21st century," the directive states, "the U.S. government will not promote the sale or export of tobacco or tobacco products or seek the reduction or removal by any foreign country of nondiscriminatory restrictions on the marketing of tobacco or tobacco products."
- A Knox County Commission committee on Tuesday unanimously approved a resolution supporting state legislation to return the control of smoking in public areas to local governments. Members of the Intergovernmental Committee voted 9-0 in favor of the resolution proposed by Chairman John Griess. The resolution only supports proposed legislation and does not impose restrictions on smoking in public areas, such as restaurants. State Sens. Bud Gilbert, R-Knoxville, and Steve Cohen, D-Memphis, have similar bills pending in Nashville that would return that authority to local governments. Commissioner Bee DeSelm said Tuesday that authority was taken away in 1994 when the tobacco lobby attached an amendment to legislation aimed at curbing tobacco access for youth.
- A resolution approved by a Senate panel calls for a vote of the people on a proposed $1-a-pack increase in the tax on cigarettes. . . The Senate Finance Committee gave a favorable recommendation to the proposal by Sen. Ben Brown, D-Oklahoma City. It calls for a vote of the people on a proposed $1-a-pack increase in the tax on cigarettes. That would raise the total tax to $1.23 a pack, giving Oklahoma the highest cigarette tax in the nation. The measure advanced to the Senate by a 6-4 vote.
- Disregarding a last-minute plea from Attorney General Christine Gregoire, the Senate voted yesterday to split any tobacco lawsuit money the state may get between health programs and state schools. Gregoire had warned Senate leaders of both parties Monday that the bill would jeopardize Washington's case against the tobacco industry as well as the nationwide settlement of states' tobacco claims now pending in Congress. Republicans said Gregoire was being alarmist and that they were just trying to head off what Senate Ways and Means Chairman James West called the "feeding frenzy" that would commence when the state got its first $150 million payment.
- Cigarette sales in New Jersey have gone up in smoke since the state doubled the tax on a pack, according to tax revenue figures released yesterday by the state. While the new tax brought in $26.8 million in January, an increase of $7.1 million over the same period last year, overall sales in the state fell by nearly 32 percent -- confirming what a lot of convenience store owners have been complaining about for weeks on this side of the Delaware. At the same time, there was also a big spike in sales just before the tax hike on Jan. 1, indicating a lot of people were stocking up on cigarettes in December before the higher taxes took effect.
- Ironically, proponents of the measure that received the most support -- a proposal to increase the tax on cigarettes by 20 cents per pack -- no longer are pushing it for the November ballot because of uncertainties about being able to collect enough voter signatures. Instead, they will seek to place it on the ballot in June 2000.
- California voters--81 percent of whom do not smoke--overwhelmingly embrace increasing taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products by 20 cents, 50 cents, even $1, according to a new Field Poll. The tax increases are contained in three initiatives, which backers hope to place on the November ballot.
- Members of the New York City Council are meeting today to discuss giving cigarette makers an additional 120 days to comply with the Youth Tobacco Protection Action. The Council's Committee on Health will decide whether to postpone the effective date of the bill from 60 days after enactment to 180 days. If the extension is approved, tobacco companies would have until July 13 to comply.
- Crandon Mining Co. led the list with $1.07 million spent, followed by tobacco giant Philip Morris with $704,511 and the Wisconsin Counties Association with $677,749, an AP review of lobbying reports filed this month with the state Ethics Board found. . . Philip Morris fought proposed increases in the state's cigarette tax, spokesman Brendan McCormick said. "Our position is that we don't think its fair to single out smokers," McCormick said.
- Lawmakers want to make it more difficult for minors to buy tobacco, even if the state Department of Health and Welfare has to scrounge for money. The Senate State Affairs Committee on a 6-1 vote passed a bill that would require retailers to have a permit to sell tobacco and to keep all products behind the sales counter. After compromising with retailers, the measure no longer generates money to pay enforcement costs. However, lawmakers said preventing kids from becoming addicted to tobacco takes precedence over costs.
- Shares rose Wednesday, led by the rise in tobacco stocks on cautious trade amid uncertainties over the government's plan to implement a currency board system. Buying enthusiasm Wednesday was also spurred by the strengthening of the rupiah against the U.S. dollar.
- THE 15-member gang that kidnapped Mpumalanga businessman Ahmed Alli Hassen Vali last month, demanding a R2-million ransom, has been linked by police to a huge cigarette smuggling racket, African Eye News Service reports. The racket pretends to export cigarettes, thus dodging tax and excise duties. Vali worked for the racket until a deal soured when he was relieved of R5-million by hijackers, or so he said. His kidnappers included five Palestinians, Mozambicans, an Iraqi, and Captain Johan Malan and Sergeant Dirk Venter of the Gauteng police.
- SOUTH Africans would rather attend church than watch a movie, Market Research Africa's latest leisure survey, released on Tuesday, reveals. . . The survey also reveals that while 50% of urban males smoke, the figure for women is lower at one in seven. In terms of race, the coloured population tops the heavy-smoking list with 41% of coloureds classifying themselves as smokers.
- FORTY-six children with asthma are admitted to hospitals every day because of passive smoking, the National Asthma Campaign says in a report today.
- SMOKING should be banned in all public places to protect the 17,000 children admitted each year to hospital because of the effects of other people's tobacco smoke, the National Asthma Campaign says today. Eight out of ten asthma sufferers are affected by passive smoking and in many the symptoms can be severe. In a new policy paper, the campaign says smoking should be banned not only in pubs and restaurants but anywhere where the public, especially children, may congregate including parks, open spaces and shopping centres as well as offices and buildings.
- Britain is powerless to prevent more than £700 million a year in taxpayers' money subsidising Europe's tobacco growers, agriculture minister Jack Cunningham said. A majority of member states who benefit from the huge handouts will carry on backing the controversial system "whether we like it or not", he said. The latest plan to finance 200,000 growers in eight member states for another four years was discussed by EU agriculture ministers meeting in Brussels.
- Most European Union agriculture ministers Monday endorsed a proposal to reform the E.U. tobacco market, E.U. farm officials said. But several farm ministers said the proposal by the E.U. Commission, the E.U. executive branch, would undermine E.U. health policy and credibility, the officials said. The remarks came during a closed monthly meeting of farm ministers from the 15-member E.U. They concerned a Jan. 28 Commission proposal to encourage the production of higher-quality tobacco, reduce environmental damage from tobacco farming and facilitate the transfer of tobacco production quotas.
- European Union tobacco growers on Monday gave guarded support to reforming a sector which receives a billion dollars a year in subsidies amid opposition from some members on health grounds. The European Commission has proposed a mild reform of the subsidy regime, encouraging the production of higher quality tobacco and for farmers to switch out of production over time. . . The proposal brought the strongest reaction from Sweden, which said it could not support it.
- Agriculture ministers are meeting in Brussels to consider plans to go on subsidising tobacco production in the European Union by about £700m a year until 2003. Britain, which holds the EU presidency, has reservations because of the health risks posed by tobacco. But is signalling that it will accept the proposals. Eight countries in the union are growing tobacco with EU funding. Greece and Italy benefit the most from the generous subsidies to tobacco producers.
- Responding to the study yesterday, anti-smoking groups said that . . . the rate of decline had stalled since the early 1990s. This was partly to do with agressive marketing by tobacco companies, but also a result of a per capita decline in the level of federal funding for anti-smoking campaigns . . . According to data provided by a consultant to the Australian Cancer Society, Ms Michelle Scollo, government funding for anti-smoking campaigns has fallen from 70 cents per capita in 1989-90 to just 25 cents in 1995-96 (in 1989 dollar terms.) This represents only 0.14 per cent of the $4.5 billion raised from tobacco taxes last financial year.
- People living in high-income households are smoking only half as much as their counterparts a generation ago, a new study has found. But those in the poorest 10 per cent of households are smoking as much as ever. The study, released yesterday by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling, uses data on household spending to show that high-income earners have led the sharp decline in smoking rates.
- Progressive Farmer magazine has named C. Wayne Ashworth the 1998 Man of the Year in Service to Virginia Agriculture. Ashworth is president of the Virginia Farm Bureau and a tobacco farmer. Progressive Farmer established the Men and Women of the Year awards program in the 1940s to recognize individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the profession of agriculture.
- Emergency tax relief is available to business and property owners who suffered losses during the latest storms and severe flooding which affected a number of counties in Northern and Central California, announced Dean Andal, Chairman, Board of Equalization. Special tax relief is available through three measures: -- A one-month extension of the due date for sales and use taxes, gasoline taxes, use fuel taxes, alcoholic beverage taxes, cigarette and tobacco products taxes . . .
- Tobacco group British American Tobacco SA has reported a subdued performance for the second half of 1997, compared with the spectacular growth during the first half. Second-half earnings a share rose only a pedestrian 4% to 237c (228c). But 153% growth in the first half helped BTSA post a healthy 54% rise in earnings for the year to 531c versus 344c. A total dividend of 266c (172c) is being paid. Directors said the second-half performance was subdued by "a number of key strategic initiatives rolled out during the second half of 1997, including brand support initiatives and a change management programme". Annual sales rose 13.9% to R453-million from R398-million, while margins improved to 8.8% from 7.1%.
- The European Union Commission Tuesday gave the all-clear to Zurich Insurance Co. (ZURRY) and B.A.T Industries PLC (U.BTI) to merge their insurance and financial services businesses into a new company called Zurich Financial Services Group.
- Dry statistics on death from cigarettes drew little reaction from the room full of young girls. But once pictures of babies born to mothers who smoked while pregnant came up on the slide screen, the doctor could see she hit a nerve. "Eeeew," said several of the Roosevelt Middle School seventh- and eighth-grade girls, who attended an assembly in the school's auditorium on the effects of smoking Tuesday.
- The $15.3 billion settlement reached between the attorney general's office and the tobacco industry gives Texas an unprecedented opportunity to chart a new course in health-care initiatives.
- Conrad's bill, introduced last Wednesday, is said to embody an approach that could be acceptable to Democrats of all stripes, even the most voracious anti-tobacco members. The bill would continue the tobacco program for five years, and offer a $10 billion transition fund to help tobacco farmers move into other crops. That means it is the first of a dozen proposals to offer a break for tobacco farmers linking bailout money with a guarantee for the support program, at least for 60 months.
- 14. Could it be a coincidence that a model in an ad for the MERIT line of cigarettes sold by PHILIP MORRIS Cos. resembles Brad Pitt crossed with Jon Bon Jovi? . . .16. Did the LORILLARD division of Loews Corp. add the line "Fire it up!" to print ads for NEWPORT cigarettes because research determined that consumers were unaware they had to light them to smoke them?
- But some observers question whether the three-judge panel that heard the appeal is capable of producing the kind of well-reasoned decision the complex and controversial case requires. One of the lawyers who argued in favor of FDA jurisdiction, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the judges on the panel appeared ill-prepared for oral argument, and that the quality of their questions was "shocking--unbelievably bad." In addition, the three judges, all at least 79 years old, are carrying reduced caseloads for health or other reasons.
- Smoking is banned in most other government buildings, but it's welcome on Capitol Hill. The same Congress that is considering a sweeping anti-tobacco law has some of the most lenient smoking rules in the nation. "I find it odd," said Jason Bauman, an intern who was smoking in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, "that with all the regulations, the one place where you can smoke is the place where they make the laws."
- The report, Sweethearts of Big Tobacco, compares tobacco PAC contributions with 1997 votes on tobacco bills. It shows that the industry, in seeking special favors from Congress in return for its gifts, contributed nearly $3 million to current members in recent years. This figure includes $1.67 million in contributions to House members in the 1995-96 election cycle and $1.32 million to senators over the last three cycles.
- After weeks of criticism, state Attorney General Charlie Condon says he will ask for legislation to change the way private lawyers are chosen to work for the state. . . Condon's proposal would allow contingency-fee contracts with private lawyers only with the State Budget and Control Board's approval. Condon also will ask the board to try to get the best- qualified person at the lowest possible fee, spokesman Tom Landess said. . . Condon said he would submit all past contingency-fee contracts to the Budget and Control Board for review
- A class-action lawsuit filed last week against cigarette makers on behalf of four Utahns might be superseded by one filed last month ‹ at least for smokers younger than 19. Provo attorney B. Seth Bailey filed the suit last month on behalf of two 18-year-olds and another juvenile, all of whom live in Utah County. The suit seeks class-action certification and could include 30,000 underage smokers throughout the state. The suit, which was assigned to 4th District Judge Ray M. Harding Jr., asks for damages of up to $75,000 per plaintiff. In all, attorneys said, the suit could involve a judgment of more than $2 billion against 19 tobacco companies.
- TSNA-free tobacco is conventional tobacco which has been processed to eliminate tobacco-specific nitrosamines . . . Star also announced that it has acquired an exclusive United States license to manufacture and market GUMSMOKE RX(TM), a chewing gum containing TSNA-free tobacco designed to treat patients trying to quit cigarettes or smokeless tobacco products.
- The Board of Directors of UST today declared a regular quarterly dividend of 40-1/2 cents per common share, payable March 16, 1998 to stockholders of record at the close of business March 4, 1998. The Board did not increase the dividend for 1998 in view of the proposed resolution of litigation and regulatory matters affecting the domestic tobacco industry.
- Caribbean Cigar Company announced the results for its third quarter ended December 31, 1997. Sales for the three months ended December 31, 1997 were $1,442,864 compared to sales of $2,580,745 for the three months ended December 31, 1996. This decrease is due to increased competition in the premium cigar market and shortages of product due primarily to interruption of supply from Indonesia.
- Tobacco advertising and promotions and not peer pressure lure a significant proportion of teenagers into taking up smoking, a study said on Tuesday. About half of 12- to 17-year-olds who expressed no desire to take up smoking when asked in 1993 had "progressed" toward smoking when polled three years later, it said.
- A survey of adolescents, aged 12 to 17, who said they had no intention of trying a cigarette found that those who had a favorite cigarette advertisement at the time were nearly twice as likely as their peers to begin smoking over the next two years. What's more, those youngsters who possessed or were willing to use a promotional item (such as a hat, T-shirt, or other item with a cigarette logo) were 2.89 times as likely to start smoking, according to a report in the February 18th issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.
- Cigarette smokers who want to quit will get more help from Minnesota's three largest health plans. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota and HealthPartners announced Wednesday that they will start covering the cost of nicotine patches and nicotine gum . . . They'll also cover Zyban . . . Medica announced a similar policy change last December. Although many health plan members won't be eligible for the stop-smoking benefits for at least a year, the change means that about 1.5 million Minnesotans will be able to use their health insurance for the treatments.
- Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota announced today that it will expand its coverage of tobacco cessation services. "We want to reduce the financial barriers and provide encouragement for our members who are ready to quit smoking," said Sanne Magnan, M.D., associate medical director for Blue Cross' HMO affiliate Blue Plus.
- "FIA has noted with satisfaction the efforts made by the government and parliament of the Walloon region to keep the Belgian Grand Prix on the calendar of the 1998 F1 world championship," the statement quoted Mosley as saying. "FIA confirms the placing of the Belgian Grand Prix on the 1998 Formula One World Championships on August 30 at Francorchamps." Immediately following the vote on the new law, race organisers, the Walloon government and local businesses launched a concerted campaign to save the race and water down the legislation which is much tougher than European Union rules.
- This year's Belgian Grand Prix will go ahead this summer at the Spa-Francorchamps, Formula One's governing body FIA has decided, organisers announced on Wednesday. FIA had previously threatened to withdraw the race from Belgium because of Belgium's plans to introduce a strict ban on tobacco sponsorship from next year.
- Robert Collignon, president of the Walloon region in southern Belgium where the track is located, said in a statement he welcomed the reprieve. He said FIA president Max Mosley had sent a fax on Wednesday informing him of the decision. "FIA has noted with satisfaction the efforts made by the government and parliament of the Walloon region to keep the Belgian Grand Prix on the calendar of the 1998 F1 world championship," the statement quoted Mosley as saying. "FIA confirms the placing of the Belgian Grand Prix on the 1998 Formula One World Championships on August 30 at Francorchamps."
- CVS Corp. yesterday cut its ties to a Massachusetts marketing firm that reminds customers to refill prescriptions, saying customers complained that the arrangement might erode the confidentiality of their medical information. The announcement followed Giant Food Inc.'s announcement it would no longer send customer information to Elensys Inc. of Woburn, Mass., a computer database specialist that also mails out drug information on behalf of pharmacies and pharmaceutical manufacturers.
- ELENSYS has done mailings to about 200,000 CVS customers concerning six different drugs: Posicor, which treats hypertension; Zyban, a smoking deterrent; Zocor, which treats high cholesterol; Avonex, which treats symptoms of multiple sclerosis; Cardizem, a heart medication; and Rezulin, a new diabetes medication.
- If 40 years ago I had known what Steve Adams and Mike Kleven are telling today's schoolchildren, I would have warned my father for his own good and mine. Adams and Kleven, both medical students at Midwestern University in Glendale, have started a tobacco-prevention program in the Peoria School District, visiting sixth-grade classes to graphically explain the physical decimation that smoking can cause. Their message is too late for my father . . .
- Co-workers of an Indiana Veterans Administration Hospital nurse who died of lung cancer but never smoked testified Tuesday that she often worked in a haze of blue tobacco smoke.
- A former tobacco industry chemist is expected to back up claims Mildred Wiley's fatal lung cancer was the result of inhaling secondhand smoke. Former Brown & Williamson chemist Jeff Wigand is expected to testify this week . . . Dr. Philip Cagle, who also is expected to testify, told the Muncie (Ind.) Star Press the Indiana case is the first to use a mutation of the p53 gene as evidence.
- Dr. Philip Cagle told the Muncie Star Press that the Indiana tobacco trial is the first to try to prove the tobacco industry is responsible for a case of cancer induced by other's smoking habits, and the first to use a mutation of the p53 gene as evidence. Cagle, who ran tests on Mildred Wiley's lung cancer, is scheduled to testify on his findings. Cagle said, "The technology is not new. But the application of it to link a particular cancer to a particular agent--this is the first time that has been done."
- The Smokebusters are taking their anti-smoking message to Merced County elementary and junior high school students this month. The troupe of 10 Golden Valley High School students perform a series of fun and informative skits warning about the dangers of smoking. Now in its second year, the program is sponsored by the Merced County Health Department tobacco control office. Rob Jarvis, Tobacco Control Programs director, said the focus on pre-teens is deliberate, because most kids start smoking around age 11.
- Carnival is offering 579 Caribbean cruises on 11 ships -- including the 2,040-passenger Paradise, its second new ship set for this year, and the first cruise ship to ban smoking throughout. To ensure that not even one whiff of tobacco will sully the ship, Carnival insists that none of the workers constructing the ship smoke on the job. Crew members also will be prohibited from smoking. As for passengers who have insatiable nicotine habits, Carnival president Bob Dickinson says, "We have 12 other ships."
- Once an accepted part of baseball culture, smokeless tobacco (the p.r. name for the habit) has almost gone the way of the four-fingered glove and plus-fours. And good riddance. "Ten years ago it seemed everyone was doing it but hardly anybody does any more," Detroit Tigers manager Buddy Bell said
- Restrictions on billboards that advertise tobacco appear likely to win approval from a Common Council committee next week, an alderman said Thursday after a public hearing on the issue. Common Council President John Kalwitz said he expects the Zoning, Neighborhoods and Development Committee to approve the proposal next week and send it to the full council for consideration March 3.
- The director of leaf blending at Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co. said he anticipates being subpoenaed by a federal grand jury in Washington that is investigating the company's use of a genetically engineered tobacco with twice the normal nicotine kick. "I think it's likely yes," said Roger R. Black, when asked in a deposition last month if he had any reason to believe he might be subpoenaed by the grand jury.
- American cigarettes packing genetically altered, high-nicotine tobacco are being exported to Asia, the Middle East and Western Europe, according to a deposition by an official of the third-largest U.S. cigarette maker. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. adds twice as much of the nicotine-rich leaf to cigarettes sold overseas as it does to brands marketed in the United States, said Roger Black, the company's director of leaf blending, in a deposition for New York state's class-action lawsuit against the major tobacco companies. The Jan. 16 deposition was conducted in private, and tobacco industry lawyers requested it remain confidential. However, a state Supreme Court judge unsealed the transcript Thursday.
- "They are no longer authorized to incur costs or work on our behalf, but it wouldn't be fair to say they've been fired," Condon said. In-house attorneys in Condon's office will now handle the case. Condon also said he would examine similar "contingency" agreements with private lawyers.
- Three Maryland women have filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt in an attempt to force the Red Lobster and Ruby Tuesday chains to ban smoking in their restaurants in the Free State. The lawsuit alleges that by allowing smoking in some of their restaurants, the two chains are discriminating against people with asthma and therefore violating the federal Americans With Disabilities Act. . . The lawsuit was filed originally in Montgomery Circuit Court in November. It was moved to U.S. District Court at the defendants' request in late December. The suit was filed on behalf of Ellender Edwards, of Anne Arundel County, Sharon Breedlove, of Howard County, and Charleen Evans-Thomas, of Garrett County in Western Maryland.
- Ten residents of the nation's top tobacco-producing state have asked a federal court to restore to the state treasury "billions of dollars" spent on tobacco-related illnesses of Medicaid clients and on tobacco-cessation programs. In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Greensboro Feb. 13, the residents said their lawsuit against the major tobacco companies represents taxpayers footing the bills since North Carolina Attorney General Mike Easley has refused to sue the industry. The plaintiffs -- smokers and non-smokers, children and adults from across the state -- also seek a halt to tobacco marketing aimed at children. The residents are seeking class-action status in the lawsuit.
- The N.C. attorney general still wants no part of it, but 10 North Carolinians have asked a federal court in Greensboro to add the Tar Heel state to the list of states who have sued the tobacco industry. The class action suit, filed Feb. 13 in U.S. District Court in Greensboro, seeks compensation for the billions of dollars in Medicaid costs spent by the state treating smoking-related illnesses. It is essentially is an amended version of a suit filed in July in Wake County Superior Court by Raleigh resident Delisa Wood, who remains a plaintiff in the new suit. The Wake County suit has been dismissed at Woods' request. The nine new plaintiffs represent different geographic sections of the state, ranging from Asheboro to Asheville, and include nonsmokers and smokers alike.
- Mattie Blevins remembers cigarette smoke residue so thick on the walls and ceilings of the veterans' hospital where she worked that normal cleaning supplies couldn't remove it. So many patients smoked that the hospital purchased 12 "smoking robots" -- ashtrays with a cigarette holder and a three-foot tube that fed the smoke into a patient's mouth.
- MUNCIE, Ind., Feb. 19 (UPI) _ A nurse who worked with the late Mildred Wiley has testified that nurses at the Vetarns Administration Hospital in Marion, Ind., routinely distributed cigarettes to psychotic patients in an effort to keep them calm. Marilyn Bardsley testified Wednesday, "It really helped to keep the patients quiet, so we'd pass out more cigarettes."
- "I would move heaven and earth for us to have the same reaction towards teen smoking as is being directed toward teen drug abuse," Lungren said. He said he would support a settlement in the multi-state lawsuit against tobacco companies that would allow states, and not the federal government, to keep the damage award. Lungren said President Clinton wanted the federal government to keep the money. Referring to both the statewide ban on smoking cigarettes in bars and the recently passed initiative supporting medicinal use of marijuana, Lungren said, "We have an anomaly going around in Sacramento: If you can get a doctor's prescription, you can smoke in a bar ~ as long as it's not tobacco."
- After hearing pleas from local students about the dangers of cigarette advertising, the City Council has asked its Planning Commission to review the city's billboard ordinance, officials said. Eight students from Sierra Vista Intermediate School made a presentation to the council Tuesday on the four billboards that advertise tobacco products. The students want the city to follow Compton's example and ban tobacco advertising on billboards. "I was very impressed with the presentation," said Mayor Thomas O'Leary. "Each student tackled an issue related to the ban such as 1st Amendment issues."
- SACRAMENTO - The next assault on California smokers may come in the form of "fire-safe" cigarettes that extinguish themselves in less than a minute - an innovation the tobacco industry has resisted for nearly seven decades.
- An effort is under way in the California Legislature to outlaw the sale of cigarettes that aren't "fire-safe." A bill introduced today by Assemblywoman Carole Migden, D-San Francisco, would require tobacco companies to sell only the cooler- burning cigarette that she says has been available since 1987.
- Californians would pay an extra 50-cent state tax on a pack of cigarettes under legislation introduced in the Assembly. The bill by Assemblywoman Debra Bowen, D-Marina del Rey, would raise the state tax from 37 cents to 87 cents.
- The California Public Employees' Retirement Systems (CalPERS) voted yesterday to oppose three state legislative bills that would require CalPERS to begin divesting its tobacco investments over the next few years. If passed, the three bills -- introduced by Assemblyman Don Perata (AB 1679), Assemblyman Wally Knox (AB 1744), and Senator Tom Hayden (SB 1433), would also prohibit CalPERS from making new or additional investments in any tobacco companies on or after January 1, 1999. However, the CalPERS Board believes that this move is not in the best financial interests of the System's members. "This is not about tobacco," said Charles P. Valdes, Chairman of CalPERS Investment Committee. "Any form of divestment contradicts our passively managed long-term index strategy that is the foundation of the fund's success."
- The nation's largest public pension fund voted Tuesday to oppose moves aimed at forcing state pension plans to divest themselves of tobacco industry holdings.
- Arizona's tobacco tax is beginning to choke on its own success. A million smokers have been paying 40 cents a pack since voters approved Proposition 200 in 1994. The money has been used for doctor visits for thousands of the working poor and for commercials that condemn the "smelly, puking habit." Annual tax revenue has leveled off at $127 million and could decline as communities rev up anti-smoking campaigns statewide.
- Slap a 40-cent tax on a pack of cigarettes, let a million people puff a pack a day for three years, and you'll be surprised when the smoke clears. . . Since Proposition 200 was passed in 1994, the tobacco tax has been an annoyance to conservative lawmakers who think all funding decisions should be left in their hands instead of the voters'. But the tax revenues clearly have affected people's lives - as well as led to some eye-opening projects.
- A law keeping tobacco products out of public reach in Gilbert has been unanimously endorsed by the Town Council. But teenagers grabbed the spotlight at Tuesday's meeting when they gave officials some eye-opening insight into how easy it is for them to get their hands on cigarettes.
- The percentages of young people in Loudoun County who say they have sex, drink alcohol and use tobacco have dropped slightly over the last two years, according to a report [the The Youth Risk Behavior Survey] released yesterday that urges the use of more preventive measures. . . Tobacco: Used at some time 1997: 63%; 1995: 66%; Used in last month at school 1997: 12% 1995: 15%
- A landmark local ban of tobacco and liquor advertising billboards has been in place for four years. Number of billboards affected so far: 0. . . But with appeals, exemptions and mobile billboards, the tobacco and alcohol industries are finding ways to beat the ban, Scheg said.
- Cleveland is poised to join other major U.S. cities that have restricted alcohol and tobacco advertising, as it considers a ban on billboards featuring the products from residential neighborhoods. The City Council is likely to vote Monday on two ordinances that would permit alcohol and tobacco billboards only in downtown, the Flats entertainment district and along five superhighways that run through the city.
- A recent poll conducted for the Ohio Restaurant Association indicates broad support for restaurants to accommodate both smokers and non-smokers. The survey, conducted in December, shows Ohioans favor allowing business owners to set smoking policies for their establishments that best suit the needs of customers.
- The survey results clearly indicate broad support for a reasonable, common-sense approach to the establishment of smoking policies," said Joan Hendricks, ORA chairwoman and owner of The Plaza Inn in Mount Victory, Ohio. . . . The association conducted the survey, which was funded with a grant from The Accommodation Program, courtesy of Philip Morris USA
- "Smoking bans will hurt their businesses -- as well as West Virginia's economy," said MaryLou Clark of the Club Association of West Virginia. "We believe Senate Bill 454, currently under consideration in West Virginia, is a move in the right direction because it places these decisions in the hands of elected officials. We support Senate Bill 454, but will continue to encourage West Virginia legislators to adopt reasonable, uniform statewide legislation that gives hospitality establishments the flexibility to set policies based on customer preferences," Clark said. . . The survey was funded with a grant from The Accommodation Program, courtesy of Philip Morris incorporated
- After the governor spoke to members of the state's largest business group and got a standing ovation, its president asked for another round of applause, this time for the group's lobbyists. . . About 450 people, mostly middle-aged men in dark business suits, showed up at the event. . . Several executives of the companies represented, such as tobacco giant Philip Morris, contributed to Thompson's campaign fund.
- SMOKERS, drinkers and drivers will be digging deeper into their pockets as a result of a 6 per cent increase in duty on cigarettes, alcohol and fuel in the Budget. Financial Secretary Sir Donald Tsang Yam-kuen cited the need "to maintain the real value of the duty charged on fuel, tobacco and alcohol" as the reason for the increase, which he said was in line with inflation.
- There was an estimated 20% decline in cigarette consumption between 1994 and last year because of higher taxes and more stringent advertising controls, University of Cape Town economist Rowena van der Merwe said yesterday. Despite this, there was still scope for a further rise in excise duty, Van der Merwe said at a conference on the economics of tobacco control.
- Czech Deputy Prime Minister Jiri Skalicky will quit as chairman of the Civic Democratic Alliance (ODA) party due to a controversy over secret party donations, CTK news agency reported on Thursday.
- Epitope, Inc. today announced that its OraSure oral specimen collection device has been approved for cotinine testing of life insurance applicants in Japan. Epitope also announced that it had received its first order for OraSure devices to be used in Japan for cotinine testing. Cotinine is a nicotine derivative that indicates whether the subject is a smoker. The Finance Ministry of Japan announced last week that it would permit life insurance companies to charge lower premiums for nonsmokers and approved the use of the OraSure device to test applicants for cotinine. The Finance Ministry also stated that it had approved applications by two life insurance companies to reduce premiums for new nonsmoker policies by as much as 30 percent.
- A POWERFUL alliance between Germany and the tobacco industry is threatening to wreck the European Union ban on cigarette advertising that Britain negotiated in December. . . "We know that the tobacco companies are pushing MEPs to table pro-health amendments," a ministerial source said. Ministers and anti-smoking organisations are worried about "high-level " connections between the tobacco lobby and the German Government, which is adamantly opposed to the directive and has tried to block it on two occasions.
- SIGHTINGS of cigarettes in the hands and between the lips of film actors have increased four-fold in five years, research has found. A comparison of 10 hit films in 1990 and in 1995 found that smoking scenes rose from 83 to 298. The film Waterworld, with Kevin Costner showed a record 121 instances in the film survey, followed by Muriel's Wedding with 62. The researchers found that smoking was most commonly seen in "macho", tense sequences when the male hero was about to do something dangerous. When female film stars were seen smoking, they were portrayed as vulnerable and suffering from stress.
- But tobacco firms were yesterday accused of targeting the film industry in an attempt to get round a future advertising ban. The Health Education Authority has raised the concerns after finding the number of smoking scenes in hit films increased four-fold between 1990 and 1995. New research by the HEA found that the number of smoking scenes had risen dramatically since the beginning of the decade. In 1997, 40 per cent of the top 10 box-office hits had more than 10 smoking scenes compared with 10 per cent in 1990 films.
- John Travolta does it in almost every film he is in. There was a lot of it in Kevin Costner's Waterworld, and Arnold Schwarzenegger did it in True Lies. Sharon Stone did it in Basic Instinct and for Mel Gibson Braveheart was a rare exception.
- The number of smoking scenes featured in box-office hit films has increased four-fold according to a report called Smoking in Films published by the Health Education Authority. The authority has teamed up with the British Lung Foundation to produce a 30-second advertisement warning young cinemagoers about the dangers of smoking. The advertisement will be screened in Warner cinemas from March.
- [B]y 2006 all tobacco sponsorship deals will be outlawed. Advertising, old style.But there are loopholes, and the tobacco industry is benefiting from them. One example are films, both in cinemas and on television. The number of film stars seen smoking on the screen is the highest in years. According to Britain's Health Education Authority (HEA), between 1990 and 1995 the instances of smoking in films increased four-fold, while the appearence of cigarette brands has gone up by 600%.
- Is this man telling your children to smoke? Does the sight of film stars sucking at cigarettes prompt young people to smoke? Britain's Health Education Authority (HEA) certainly thinks so, and is calling on the film industry to cut the number of smoking scenes in films.
- Scholz, which opened its London office last month, became the first German advertising agency network to come to the UK because of the needs of its major client REEMTSMA, the privately-owned tobacco and coffee conglomerate, Robertson said. "Reemtsma is a very rapidly growing multinational that needs its agency to grow with it," she said. "It's like the period after the Second World War when American multinationals such as Unilever expanded their overseas operations and took McCanns and Leo Burnett with them. A similar thing is happening with Reemtsma and Scholz."
- Loews Corp. said fourth-quarter net income rose 18%, driven in part by investment gains in the recent period and investment losses a year earlier. . . Loews said results for the recent period also include a charge of $54.9 million, or 48 cents a share, at its Lorillard Tobacco unit, related to settlement of litigation in Mississippi, Florida and Texas.
- A First, wash an inconspicuous area to determine the washability of the surface. . .
- This reminder of just how complex altering people's health-related behavior can be comes in a study by William DeJong and Jay A. Winsten of the Harvard School of Public Health. It is much easier to change people's brand preferences than their health habits. Their study, "The Media and the Message: Lessons Learned from Past Public Service Campaigns," was commissioned by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, the private sector initiative founded in 1996. Their conclusions are particularly salient to campaigns to reduce teen pregnancy and to the effort to prevent teen smoking, which is expected to be part of the tobacco settlement legislation. Public service media campaigns, they conclude, can have a major impact on changing public attitudes and individual behavior, but they work best when given ample time to register and when supplemented by community programs.
- The time had come to change society's relatively benign tolerance of tobacco and to correct mistaken impressions about the importance of tobacco to the economy, Health Minister Dr Nkosazana Zuma said on Wednesday. The seriousness of the health problems caused by tobacco warranted urgent attention, she said at the opening of a conference of international tobacco control experts in Sea Point, Cape Town. The three-day conference - titled Economics of Tobacco Control - is being hosted by the University of Cape Town and the Medical Research Council, and has drawn delegates from 17 countries.
- Smoking in South Africa should be relegated to the privacy of the home or to the great outdoors, Health Minister Nkosazana Zuma said Wednesday. She told an anti-smoking conference that developing countries like South Africa were increasingly at risk from aggressive international cigarette makers, which were being squeezed out of traditional industrialized markets. "In many respects tobacco companies are on the retreat but this has only fueled their determination to expand into new markets. They are on the offensive in developing countries," she told the Economics of Tobacco Control conference.
- But the proposed settlement now before Congress is fundamentally flawed. . . Congress should not seal the deal until completion of the Justice Department's criminal investigation of the industry and the conclusion of a lawsuit by Minnesota against tobacco firms. . . Such an agreement should provide limited -- not blanket -- legal immunity for the tobacco industry.
- Lawmakers who doubt the need to be wary of cutting a generous deal with the tobacco industry should review the most recent UCSD study underscoring how tobacco promotions prompt unsuspecting teens to smoke. . . UCSD researchers have provided a valuable public service with another reminder of the reckless lengths to which the tobacco industry has gone to turn a profit. The latest study should serve as a wake-up call to Congress as it considers the tobacco settlement.
- You have already had that experience, have you not? You have traveled to another country and tried to eat a nice meal and said, "Land o' Goshen, it's too smoky in here!" Or you have been in a large Asian capital and have had to retreat indoors because the ambient noise has been too great. Oh, and greasy countertops! You have refused to eat in places with greasy countertops. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is inhaling germs at a furious rate, building up immunities we can only dream about. They are strong and we are weak. You have heard: "That which does not kill me makes me stronger." It follows that "If nothing is trying to kill me, I am very weak." We have eliminated the danger so necessary to our species. We have saved our mucous membranes, but we have lost our souls.
- Big Tobacco is running out of ways to explain itself to a judge and a jury, so it is turning to a talk show host to explain through a newspaper commentary the inexplicable actions of the tobacco companies. That appears to be the essence of a Feb. 16 News With a View article ("Trampling on the law") by Jason Lewis, KSTP radio talk show host. The defense Lewis provides reads as if he sat down with the tobacco attorneys who are arguing the lawsuit brought by Blue Cross and the state of Minnesota. But that defense is contrary to the judge's rulings in the case, to the information being provided during the trial and the internal documents from the tobacco companies.
- One thing is for sure. The law firm he works for [Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz] deals with tobacco clients similar to those of Ken Starr's firm from which Starr still earns million . . . Some have drawn the conclusion that they must be in cahoots because Starr and Conway work for the same clients - Big Tobacco . . . We can't draw that conclusion. Tobacco companies hire a lot of lawyers. Just because they share clients doesn't mean Starr and Conway were plotting together. . . The Observer also claims that it was Conway who gave Drudge his "exclusive" on the "presidential privates" claim that Paula Jones made and later dropped.
- "This is a devastating bill for tobacco-growing states," North Carolina lawyer J. Phil Carlton . . . Conrad's bill would raise the cigarette excise tax by $1.50 a pack over three years, a rapid boost that Carlton predicted would slash tobacco consumption by 40 percent to 50 percent and cause widespread economic losses. . . "What they [manufacturers] are concerned about is having a gargantuan tax increase and nothing else," said a source close to the industry.
- The proposed tobacco legislation recently announced by Senator Conrad is a punitive tax that will cause the price of a pack of cigarettes to skyrocket and will inflict severe economic hardship upon tobacco communities. The bill is not a comprehensive approach to tobacco issues. In fact, experience has shown excessive tax increases are not the solution to the problem of underage tobacco use.
- Alaska officials have filed a lawsuit in an effort to stop sales by two vendors who are charged with trying to circumvent the state's new $1-a-pack tobacco tax, the nation's highest. The lawsuits -- the first such action since the tax was raised in October -- were filed Tuesday in Alaska Superior Court in Palmer, state officials said Friday.
- Some win vindication, money, even fame. Tobacco industry whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand will be the subject of a Disney movie. But most have their lawsuits silently settled or simply dismissed. Regardless of the outcome, legal experts agree that whistle-blower suits taint reputations and scar psyches.
- We smoke too much. We eat the wrong foods. Our exercise rates are the worst in the country. "This is exactly what people of this state need to know," said former state health director Dr. Ron Levine. "For too long many of us have chosen to live in ways that shorten our lives." Levine was among more than 100 people who met Friday to hear the bad news about North Carolina's health habits and to launch N.C. Prevention Partners, a group devoted to improving them. . . More than a quarter of this state's residents smoke cigarettes, despite the fact that 12,000 people die here each year from smoking-related illness. And smoking among teenagers is on the rise.
- Contra Costa Supervisors Mark DeSaulnier and Donna Gerber will ask the rest of the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to oppose the repeal of the California law banning smoking in bars and cardrooms.
- White Bear Lake police arrested two young brothers for assault, burglary and possession of tobacco Monday. One allegedly had pulled a knife on a homeowner who found them in an upstairs bedroom of his house on Ninth Street near Bald Eagle Avenue.
- The tobacco wars spilled into the Massachusetts gubernatorial battle yesterday with some tough talk and charges hurled between Acting Governor Paul Cellucci and Attorney General Scott Harshbarger. . . But Cellucci yesterday accused the attorneys - who could reap a $1.25 billion payday - of "padding their wallets" with "obscene" fees and draining away money that could go to cancer research and antismoking campaigns. He asked the Legislature to cap the attorneys' fees at 1 percent in any settlement over $100 million.
- Almost 35 percent of Farmington Hills businesses visited by police decoys Thursday sold cigarettes to underage customers without asking for proof the teen buyers were at least 18. Clerks were ticketed on a misdemeanor charge punishable by up to 90 days in jail and a $500 fine.
- The New York City Department of Consumer Affairs has completed its "Three Puffs and You're Out" sweep and the results are nothing to cough at. Inspectors found 42 percent of the 76 stores surveyed sold cigarettes to minors. In addition, five stores sold individual, loose cigarettes and 26 shops failed to post the red- lettered signs stating that the selling tobacco to underage teens is illegal. Twenty-eight high school students, ages 14 to 17, posed as customers.
- A committee of the SEPTA board has decided that while its budget may be tighter than the fit on a rush-hour northbound El train, the company no longer wants cigarette and alcohol advertising. . . . Leading the charge at SEPTA was Jettie Newkirk, a board member who has represented the city on the regional board since 1992. "We have a tremendous number of kids who ride the buses, trolleys and subways. The advertising sends a bad message," she said.
- Mayor Thomas M. Menino's plan to ban smoking in restaurants took another step forward yesterday when the Boston Tobacco Control Program formally presented a draft of new regulations to the Public Health Commission Board. . . A public hearing on the ban will be held Feb. 26 at 6 p.m. in the auditorium of Carney Hospital in Dorchester.
- It was just the day before Christmas, you may recall, that Feinstein filed papers to begin a statewide initiative effort that would impose a $1-a-pack cigarette tax to pay for educational improvements and tougher standards for students and teachers. As it turned out, however, the senator's lawyers had made a technical goof in drafting the initiative -- and it was back to the drawing board.
- Spain's government said Friday Spanish banks Argentaria Corp. Bancaria de Espana SA, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya SA, Banco Central Hispanoamericano SA and Merrill Lynch SA will be the global coordinators for its sale of tobacco company Tabacalera SA.
- Cigarettes sold in Hong Kong, Asia and the Middle East contained about twice as much high-nicotine tobacco as those made for sale in the United States, said Roger Black of Brown and Williamson Tobacco Corporation. . . But British-American Tobacco in Hong Kong, whose parent company controls Brown and Williamson, has "categorically denied" using genetically altered tobacco in its products. Its consumer and regulatory affairs manager, Laura Knight, said: "All Viceroy products sold in Hong Kong are blended and manufactured in Hong Kong under the licence of the US owner of the brand. We do not import Viceroy or Viceroy Lights for sale in the Hong Kong market."
- By Ceri Williams INTERNET tobacco advertising and selling cigarettes in vending machines will be banned under new anti-smoking measures set to be launched in the spring and summer. Meanwhile Western tobacco companies are increasing their marketing efforts in Asia-Pacific nations, threatening to create major public health problems in the future, academics. The Hong Kong government announced the series of measures on Friday to take place from 1 April and 1 July under new smoking laws.
- As of April 1, vending machines selling tobacco products will be banned under the Smoking (Public Health) (Amendment) Ordinance of 1997, the Health and Welfare Bureau announced yesterday. On the same day, it will also be illegal to place a tobacco advert on the Internet . . . public indoor areas in supermarkets, banks, department stores and shopping malls - except for restaurants within these - will become designated non-smoking areas.
- Cuba's state-run cigar company brought in $310,000 on Saturday with a lavish introduction of three new cigar brands. The company threw a capitalist-style party in a smoke-filled ballroom to bring the three brands to the market. The main event included the auctioning of five hand-carved, cigar-filled humidors signed by Cuban President Fidel Castro.
- Joe Camel and the Marlboro Man would be banned from cigarette ads under the proposed tobacco-liability settlement now being mulled in Congress. But what about two red chili peppers? "It's not what you expect," says a cheeky ad for RJR Nabisco Holdings' Salem brand, in which the peppers curl together to look like a pair of lips, with a cigarette dangling from them. In what may be a preview of cigarette advertising's future, magazines from Alternative Press to GQ and Automobile are already sprouting ads that would comply with stricter advertising rules in the proposed tobacco settlement.
- TAMBORIL CIGAR COMPANY today announced that, in conjunction with the recent launch of its FORE! cigar to the golf market, the Company has become an official sponsor of GOLF DIGEST's National Amateur Challenge, a nationwide event involving more than 2000 golf courses. Other listed sponsors are Spaulding's Topflite/Etonic, BMW, America West, Heineken and other national marketers. . . The president of Tamboril, Mr. Anthony Markofsky, commented, . . "The most significant interest is coming from corporations who see the value of presenting their name in conjunction with a widely appealing high-quality cigar product."
- The Winston cigarette advertisement shows a man in a contorted position, with his head stuck in his rear end. "Still smoking additives?" the advertisement asks. The computer-enhanced image is another in-your-face message from R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.'s "No Bull" campaign, which was introduced last summer to tout Winston's new, no-additive formula. But is the posterior pitch any way to sell cigarettes?
- Five years ago, Michael Fiori issued a mandate to his 17 Downeast drugstores: Get rid of the cigarettes, get rid of the booze, even get rid of the toy guns and daggers. He was hoping that a commitment to old-fashioned values would help his small, downtown stores stave off competition in an industry about to be swamped with national chains. But within months the trickle of customers leaving became a flow. And Downeast became one of three Maine-based pharmacies that have closed down, scaled back, or sold out since the national chains moved into the state in the early 1990s. The reason, the chains say, is simple. While Fiori gave the people what he thought they needed, the chains gave them what they want. "We're basically looking at what customers are telling us is the most valuable thing in their life, which is time," said Suzanne Mead, spokeswoman for Rite-Aid . . . Shop 'N Save and Shaw's, the state's largest grocery store chains, have started full-service pharmacies in several stores. The chains sell tobacco products and alcohol and have added item after item to their shelves.
- Feeley of the Port Authority cited as an example . . . the night some time ago, when a man and a woman, waiting together for a PATH train in Hoboken at about 2 a.m, thought they were alone. They were doing nothing intimate, he said, but the man was smoking, which is forbidden. Port Authority police were watching, on television monitors in a command center in Manhattan. Suddenly, on the quiet train platform, a gruff voice came over a loudspeaker: "Put out the cigarette!" The man looked around. "Yeah, you," the voice barked. The man put out his cigarette. "And get your feet off the bench," the voice ordered.
- The mother had been divorced for three years when she received court papers filed by her husband last month attempting to withdraw her right to see her two children because they were being exposed to "second-hand" smoke. . . . The National Smokers' Alliance, a body partly funded by the tobacco industry, is taking it up as a classic example of anti-smoking fanaticism. . . Gary Auxier, of the National Smokers' Alliance, said the organisation was already fighting a number of extraordinary cases.
- "There is absolutely no relationship between fund-raising and votes," says Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, "and I feel very strongly about that." Wow. Thanks, Antonio, for clearing that up.
- It now seems likely that the Health Education Authority will become increasingly influential in the film industry and will devote its huge resources to more than just counting cigarettes. There are so many more health issues in the modern cinema. I have, for example, just drawn the HEA's attention to the disappointing shortage of fresh fruit on display in Titanic. And there are also too many examples of gratuitous white bread in modern films.
- egulating human nature is a tricky business, but Mayor Menino's proposed ban on smoking in Boston restaurants appears to take that into consideration. . . Reports on the dangers of secondhand smoke support the trend. Restaurant employees are most at risk, particularly for lung cancer: Bartenders inhale the equivalent of two packs of cigarettes in an eight-hour shift. These employees, like the public they serve, deserve a smoke-free option.
- The world's top-ranked tennis player made a public service announcement this week for the American Cancer Society and the Florida Department of Citrus. In the television spot, which will be unveiled at the Lipton Championships in March, Sampras emphasizes how important diet is to fighting cancer. "While most people realize smoking is the No. 1 cause of cancer, many fail to understand that what they eat is the second-leading cause of cancer," the Society said in a statement. "Sampras' involvement with this program is a natural ... because of his on-going commitment to fighting cancer and his personal experience."
- It's state-sponsored guerrilla warfare: Kids in a rage, wearing ski masks, making prank phone calls, using gross humor and breaking the rules. The exact pitch is not yet in stone, but Florida's new anti-smoking ad campaign directed at and run by youngsters is meant to be in-your-face stuff -- aggressive, irreverent and outrageous. In other words, adults probably won't like it much, or understand it. At least they won't if the state gets its money's worth out of Crispin Porter & Bogusky, the Coconut Grove advertising firm that earlier this month landed the state's multimillion-dollar ad campaign aimed at curbing tobacco use among Florida's 12- to 17-year-olds.
- Attorney General Christine Gregoire sees a familiar shadow lurking behind the mom-and-pop convenience stores lobbying for a bill that would punish teens caught with cigarettes. As one of the attorneys general who negotiated the proposed nationwide settlement with tobacco companies, she says it's clear the industry is using convenience stores to push for broad changes that would curb Washington state's aggressive enforcement program that tracks sales to minors.
- GOODBYE, Joe Camel. Hello, healthier billboards. Commuters throughout King, Pierce and Snohomish counties soon will see informative signs that raise community awareness of cancer, rather than provocative cigarette ads that lower resistance to cancer-causing tobacco products. Thanks to a novel education campaign supported by AK Media, the Seattle-based company that once reaped lucrative business from tobacco billboard advertising, three local cancer-support groups will get high-profile exposure on the roads.
- AUSTRALIAN hit film Muriel's Wedding has been named as one of the worst offenders in cinema's Smoking Hall of Shame. The 1995 story of a dowdy Queenslander's search for acceptance contained 62 smoking references making it that year's second-worst offender after Waterworld which had 121 references. And according to a five-year British study, films such as Muriel's Wedding have been at the forefront of a massive jump in scenes involving cigarettes between 1990 and 1995.
- Mr Naughton, president of the Melbourne branch of the Vietnam Veterans Association, said he lasted only one day in Vietnam before taking up the habit a habit which he insists was prolific among Aussie soldiers. "Because of the stress involved in the war, you looked for something to calm you down," he explained. "We didn't have any grog for the first couple of months, so we took to cigarettes." It was revealed yesterday in The Australian that high-profile law firm Slater & Gordon was preparing to launch a landmark damages case against the Federal Government for supplying cigarettes to Australian troops in Vietnam in their rations.
- But this time, unlike previous occasions when he has gone off half-cocked, Polevoy has scored a direct bull's eye. His targets are Kitchener officialswho served up three public transit buses to flog cigarettes--and they deserve the full force of his fury. Polevoy went straight for the jugular, slamming city bureaucrats and politicians for "greed and moral corruption." It was a bit heavy on hyperbole, perhaps, but justified all the same.
- For years, Eye Technology Inc. struggled along as a quintessential penny stock. In its best year, the St. Paul-based company generated at most $5.5 million in sales of intraocular lenses, which are implanted in eyes after cataract surgery. Then Eye Technology -- figuratively -- took up smoking. On Feb. 9, the company announced an agreement to sell itself to Star Tobacco and Pharmaceuticals Inc., a Petersburg, Va.-based manufacturer of inexpensive, off-brand cigarettes. The structure of the deal -- essentially a shell transaction -- enabled Star to become a public company by acquiring 90 percent of Eye Technology's stock.
- Amish farmers aren't given to anger, but the topic of tobacco evokes hard stares and strong words from the peaceful people of southeastern Pennsylvania. . . These Plain farmers, as they're known because of their plain, old-fashioned ways, are upset because they haven't been able to sell about half of their annual crop. . . The plight of the Plain people has drawn the attention of Justice Department lawyers investigating whether some buyers of Pennsylvania tobacco may have violated antitrust laws. By not purchasing the Amish and Mennonite crop during the normal December-January market, local growers say, some tobacco buyers have positioned themselves to buy the leaf at depressed prices later.
- In 1753 at age 20, George found himself the owner of a Potomac plantation growing tobacco. . . But tobacco ruined more than the economy. Thomas Jefferson wrote in "Notes on Virginia" that tobacco plantations destroyed the morals and industry of everyone on them: masters, slaves and especially the children. . . Tobacco plantations, [Washington] knew, were at the root of the slavery problem. He believed that grain farming would eventually help end the embarrassment of slavery in Virginia.
- Time is running out for the U.S. tobacco program, the chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee said Monday, in urging tobacco growers to embrace his plan for a $15 billion "buyout." "I think we are coming to a time...when the program will be voted out by Congress," chairman Richard Lugar, Indiana Republican, said. "This is probably a good time" for growers to take the best deal possible, he said -- his buyout plan.
- When the NEW HAMPSHIRE DENTAL SOCIETY hired a new lobbyist recently, it was assured it had found someone with no links to tobacco. Now, the group's president is trying to figure out how one of the state's top tobacco lobbyists got the job. "I've got to say that's total news to me," Dr. Gerald Smith said after a Concord Monitor reporter told him George Roberts lobbies for U.S. Tobacco, the company that makes Skoal and Copenhagen chewing tobacco.
- No-smoking policies are strictly enforced. Offenders must complete a hospital program or face court.
- Going smoke free has boosted family restaurant's business When the regular customers of Eaton Place began complaining about excessive smoke, owner Chuck Stockton decided to listen. In 1992, the family restaurant, 125 Lewisburg Road, Eaton, went smoke free and since then, sales have been booming. "Operators are afraid it's going to adversely affect business," Stockton said. "Our business increased every year."
- The Government health warnings on cigarette packets are clear enough: Smoking Kills. According to twice Australian Ladies Masters champion Jane Crafter it did in the case of her father, Brian, the highly respected golf teacher and ABC television golf commentator, who died of lung cancer in 1994. Yet here she is on the Gold Coast this week to again play the Ladies Masters, which is sponsored by a tobacco company. And, therein lies her dilemma.
- Tobacco companies insist that they do not market to children and that youngsters are not influenced by tobacco advertising. But two new studies indicate that young people's decisions to begin smoking are influenced by advertising -- and that ads for tobacco brands popular among 12- to 17-year-olds are concentrated in magazines that attract those readers.
- Two years ago, a 35-year-old Boston woman we'll call Linda, because she insists we not use her real name, decided she needed to make some changes in her life and hired Ingrid Joy Wolfson of Watertown . . . As Linda began feeling more confident about her professional goals, she started working on her personal issues. Off came the weight, she quit smoking, she tackled those closets.
- The Extinguisher and his mentor and creator, Dr. Nola Know, two champions for America's kids in the fight against tobacco, visited several Arizona elementary schools in February. . . The characters were developed last year by the American Medical Association.
- Governments should impose higher taxes on cigarettes to push up prices and reduce consumption, an international conference of about 120 tobacco control experts from 26 countries resolved at the weekend. Furthermore, all direct and indirect advertising, the promotion of tobacco products, trademarks, brand names and logos should be banned "so that the world's children can grow up free from commercial pressures to smoke". There was unanimity that one of the most effective ways of deterring smoking among the youth was to raise taxes.
- And Franklin's first new album in seven years -- "A Rose Is Still a Rose" -- is scheduled to be released March 10. Reviews say her voice sounds better than it has in years. The reason? "I stopped smoking in 1991," she said. "It helped my voice tremendously. The clarity and everything. The range even increased."
- Holding his thumb over the breathing hole in his throat, Dave Horowitz speaks with conviction as he addresses the dangers of smoking.
- After all, Lott is the same Mississippi Republican who last year told a group of six-figure campaign contributors that unlimited political donations are "the American way." However, Lott has agreed to allow Senators John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russell Feingold, D-Wis., to offer their much-scrutinized bill as a substitute. . . The major parties are essentially running political money-laundering operations for candidates. Special interests -- whether their cause is labor, guns, abortion, tobacco or whatever -- are injecting themselves into campaigns to an unprecedented degree. So the fight resumes this week, with the forces against reform ready to use diversions -- such as Lott's insistence on controls on the use of union dues for political purposes -- and stall tactics.
- HEALTH Minister Nkosazana Zuma shows no sign of weakening in her determination to restrict tobacco advertising and to prevent smoking in shops, offices and public places. . . There will be plenty of vocal opposition, but the minister may find she has more support than she imagines. . . None of this should deter Zuma. She should guard against sloppy legal drafting caused by smugness, overenthusiasm or assumption of the high moral ground. This is not a moral issue but one of public policy, and should be fought on that basis.
- TOGO WEST, picked by President Clinton to head the Department of Veterans Affairs, appeared headed toward Senate confirmation Tuesday after he pledged to provide veterans "world-class" health care. . . In a series of questions, Specter focused on the Clinton administration's proposal to save $17-billion by refusing to pay claims submitted by veterans who say they started smoking while in the service. The administration argues that smoking is a voluntary decision that was not encouraged by cheap military cigarettes. It is asking for Congress' approval to deny the benefits. If Congress goes along, Specter urged West to make sure the VA keeps the $17-billion the administration set aside for smokers' claims. But West refused to be pinned down during Tuesday's hearing.
- ARMY SECRETARY TOGO D. WEST JR., nominated to become veterans affairs secretary, faced no opposition at his Senate confirmation hearing yesterday . . . Specter pushed West to fight for funds that might be freed up if legislation is enacted to protect the government from medical claims filed by veterans for service-related disabilities they developed as a result of smoking. The committee chairman said the $17 billion the administration has estimated such claims could cost over the next five years should go to the VA to improve its medical system. West said the VA budget doesn't count on those funds, but he would argue for them if they become available.
- The principal difference between the two budgets -- the one submitted, the other still just a sketch, and tentative -- has to do with the tobacco tax. The president would raise the tax or impose another levy to force up the price of cigarettes and help deter smoking. He would use the proceeds to help finance the increased child care subsidies and other new programs he proposes. The Senate Republicans, leery of the expansions of federal activity, would put all or most of the proceeds of the tax, if one is enacted, in reserve to pay future Medicare costs. In the interim, that would presumably mean using them, too, to pay down the debt. They would have a modest tax cut, paid for offsetting tax increases or spending cuts. The president would do that as well.
- Anyone can sue the corner grocery store or gas station for selling cigarettes to minors, the state Supreme Court ruled yesterday, saying California's broad unfair-competition law allows any citizen to challenge illegal business practices. In a 6-to-1 ruling, the court rejected arguments by Lucky Stores --backed by business groups and Attorney General Dan Lungren -- that only state and local prosecutors could act against retailers who broke a criminal law, such as the ban on cigarette sales to minors. Lucky Stores was sued by Oakland attorney Donald Driscoll on behalf of a group called Stop Youth Addiction, headed by Driscoll's mother.
- The case, however, could have impact beyond tobacco by keeping alive a body of lawsuits in which citizens or private commercial corporations have been filing consumer suits over alleged legal violations by businesses. Such suits have rapidly multiplied during the past decade, and business lawyers until now had been able to persuade some trial judges to limit them.
- New nasal spray nicotine replacement therapies work faster than nicotine patches to reduce the urge to smoke, researchers say. But they say the sprays, which have not yet gained Food and Drug Administration approval, can produce irritating, though transitory, side effects among many users. "Nicotine nasal spray seems to be safe and effective," conclude researchers led by Dr. Richard Hurt of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Their study, published in the current issue of the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings, focused on the experience of 50 adult smokers whose pre-treatment cigarette consumption averaged more than a pack per day.
- There are no long-term studies comparing nicotine gum and smoking in terms of risk to the heart. However, it's very likely that most people who use some form of nicotine substitute get less of the substance in their body than they would from smoking.
- Research collected for the soon-to-be-published NCI cigar and health monograph indicates that cigar smoking indeed may be safer than cigarettes in some circumstances, but overall the health risks are the same or worse. "We are convinced that cigar smoking causes cancer of the lung, oral cavity, larynx, esophagus, pancreas and tongue," says Thomas Shanks, a cancer researcher at the University of California, San Diego. "Heavy cigar smokers and those who inhale at all are at increased risk of coronary heart disease and chronic (lung) disease."
- San Diego high school students say they feel safer at school than in previous years, but they are also more likely to smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol. That's part of the good news-bad news coming out of the 1997 San Diego Youth Risk Behavior survey, a detailed study that officials yesterday found heartening -- and dismaying. In a survey of nearly 2,500 high school students citywide, nearly one out of four teen-agers reported that they smoke cigarettes, up slightly from the previous questionnaire, in 1995.
- The release, which was exhibit A against Stepanek in the proceedings Sunday, states that Stepanek decided to break ranks with Dole because he felt the Republican party was pressuring him to seek campaign funds from the tobacco industry. "I will not be pressured into taking large sums of tobacco special interest dollars, and I will not be a part of pushing tobacco on our children," Stepanek said in the release.
- Dear Dr. Gridlock: We know Metro prohibits smoking, eating, drinking, etc., on its trains and in its stations, but where do those rules begin? . . . The area where these rules go into effect is at the base of the escalator or stairs when a person steps into a Metro station, according to Metro spokeswoman Cheryl Y. Johnson.
- About seven out of 10 Illinois tobacco retailers refused to sell cigarettes to minors in 1997 during spot checks by a state commission, the highest compliance with state law in four years. Illinois' Liquor Control Commission recently released a statewide survey of tobacco merchants showing that, when the commission sent in buyers under age 18, 73.9 percent of 278 randomly selected stores did not sell them cigarettes.
- State health officials Tuesday unveiled an anti-smoking campaign that warns teen-agers that tobacco not only can harm their health, but it also may cramp their lifestyles. The media campaign is designed to spread the word that, under a new state law, people younger than 18 caught smoking or possessing a tobacco product can be fined as much as $250 and, in some cases, have their driver's licenses suspended. One public service announcement for television shows a judge's gavel shattering a teen-ager's driver's license. Another features the brother of the actor who portrayed the Marlboro Man in cigarette ads and later died of cancer.
- The ad campaign -- "Tobacco is a Dead End" -- includes a radio spot warning teen-agers of the new law's penalties; a poster including a photograph of a teen-ager's driver's license stamped "suspended"; and a television spot showing a gavel breaking a driver's license into pieces. "The prospect of losing their driver's license is the single most compelling factor" in making teens take notice, said Dr. Philip Huang, chief of the Health Department's Bureau of Chronic Disease Prevention and Control.
- Its sponsor, Rep. Phyllis Kahn, DFL-Minneapolis, said that while she does not expect a smoking ban in bars to become law this year, she wants to start a debate on the issue because Minnesota is lagging in protecting nonsmokers.
- Faced with reports of drinking and smoking by students - including athletes and student leaders - school officials in the Parkway School District have opted for a get-tough approach. Starting next fall, any Parkway high school student who takes part in athletics and activities such as cheerleading or pompons must sign a pledge to abstain from the use and possession of alcohol and other illegal drugs, and cigarettes.
- North Carolina is preparing to crack down on the sale of cigarettes to youths, using money from a federal program the tobacco industry has challenged in court. Under a contract it signed with the Food and Drug Administration last week, North Carolina became the first state to tap $34 million the FDA has earmarked this year for targeting stores, restaurants, bars, gas stations and other businesses that sell cigarettes to young people.
- In theory, you could be fined or even jailed for selling cigarettes to someone under 18 in North Carolina. You probably have little to worry about, though, unless you do it in Cary. As North Carolina gears up for a statewide crackdown on sales of tobacco to underage buyers, here is a community where the crackdown is well under way. While many police forces lack the resources to enforce the law against selling cigarettes or smokeless tobacco to young people, the 90-officer Cary force has built a statewide reputation for doing so. The central element in its crackdown is the undercover sting, using 15- and 16-year-old buyers.
- "What? They want to arrest us for smoking? But this country was founded on tobacco!" said Ben, 17, who estimates that he's been smoking for five years. "What are we supposed to do if we can't smoke? Most of us are addicted to it." Ben was standing in the middle of about 50 students outside Cuyahoga Falls High School after school. Most of the students, like Ben, were smoking.
- The Senate passed a bill 30-5 Monday that makes it more difficult for minors to buy or steal tobacco products. The measure, sponsored by the Idaho Parent Teacher Association, would require stores to keep all tobacco products behind the counter and ban vending machines. The proposed law also would require retailers to have a permit.
- The convenience store chain is adopting a "We Card" campaign developed by the Coalition for Responsible Tobacco Retailing, a group representing tobacco, retailing and law-enforcement interests. Managers of the Valley's 350 Circle K stores will get training from the coalition on how to better identify customers under 18 who try to buy cigarettes or chewing tobacco. Managers are supposed to pass the information to store clerks, and Circle K said the program eventually will spread to all of its 2,500 stores.
- If you're a smoker, you ought to congratulate Dr. Lee Fairbanks. And thank him. That's what a lot of people did Friday evening when the physician was honored by the Arizona Academy of Family Physicians and Arizona Gov. Jane Hull as Arizona Family Physician of the Year. More specifically, Dr. Fairbanks was recognized for helping make the places in which we work, relax, entertain ourselves and feed our faces, healthier. . . Many smokers also respect Dr. Fairbanks because what he did in Mesa also helps them do what more than 70 percent of all smokers would like to do -- quit smoking. "The biggest incentive for a smoker to stop smoking is a smoke-free workplace," Dr. Fairbanks said.
- The American Academy of Ophthalmology said today that it opposes the effort in the California General Assembly to repeal the ban on smoking in bars. "Any reduction of employees' or the public's exposure to tobacco smoke will help reduce the risk of diseases of the eye," said Dr. Elliot Finkelstein, President of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
- HONG KONG sports chiefs were on Monday united in calling for a share of revenue from the recent tobacco tax hike to be allocated to funding sport. Cash-strapped sports officials, struggling with tobacco sponsors withdrawing over the government's tough stance on tobacco advertising, are looking to the authorities for support.
- Anti-tobacco sponsorship legislation passed in the dying days of Hong Kong's colonial administration has sparked a campaign by the big tobacco companies to try to force a funding crisis in the territory's sport. Although the tobacco companies can still sponsor events until the end of 1999, Philip Morris has abruptly pulled its sponsorship of one of the region's major tennis tournaments. At the same time British American Tobacco (BAT) has cancelled its sponsorship of a beach volleyball tournament in what a spokeswoman admits is an attempt "to show the Government we are not happy". Two other big events which attract major media coverage, the Viceroy Cup soccer tournament sponsored by BAT and the Salem Open tennis tournament sponsored by RJR Reynolds, are also under threat.
- Failure of $70 Billion Deal Drives Shares Down, Tarnishes Reputations of Firms' Executives
- SmithKline Beecham Plc's sudden accusatory tone towards Glaxo Wellcome Plc hinted that a power struggle between top executives of the companies sank the merger talks, Wall Street analysts said. In a prepared statement issued late on Monday, SmithKline said Glaxo indicated on Friday it was not prepared to proceed with negotiations on a previously agreed basis.
- ATLANTA, Feb. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture Tommy Irvin announced today that farmers in Georgia have been temporarily cleared to use the fungicide Acrobat MZ (dimethomorph) to control blue mold in tobacco. Acrobat MZ, an unregistered fungicide, has also been temporarily cleared to control Crown Rot on squash, cucumbers, watermelons and cantaloupes.
- I travel to Asia frequently, and have been surprised at the speed with which the region has developed into a significant new market, largely thanks to the efforts of the Pacific Cigar Co (PCC) in Hong Kong, jointly owned by Habano S.A. and David Tang, the entrepreneurial retailer. Its key bailiwick is the Cohiba Cigar Divan in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Last September, the divan marked its fifth anniversary. With the best cigar supplies in Asia, it is well established as a home-from-home for visiting enthusiasts. At the end of last year, a second such divan opened in the Sheraton Kowloon Hotel.
- SCREENWRITER and New York mag wine critic Tony Hendra wants to smoke a cigar "without being bothered by a woman." In a missive to a female neighbor who had the audacity to complain about the aroma of his cigar, Hendra fumed, "Your accusation that I smoke in the hallway is malicious nonsense. If you're smelling something it's in your head." Then Hendra turned his eloquence on the neighbor's dog: "I happen to have strong feelings about the sadistic and unhygienic practice of keeping disease-bearing animals in small New York apartments... ^I don't_ demand my neighbors give up their pets. Unlike you, I wouldn't dream of inflicting my preferences on other people."
- "There were companies in Milwaukee and Boston that were making candy cigarettes that were virtually identical to the real thing," says Blum, who favors Circus Peanuts himself. "There were bubblegum cigarettes called Marlblo." Nowadays, candy cigarettes are marketed as candy sticks or stix, and the white ones don't have a red tip anymore. Edward Fenimore, who founded and still owns the Philadelphia Chewing Gum Co. in Havertown, stopped making bubblegum cigarettes eight or nine years ago. "It's not moral to produce those kinds of things anymore," Fenimore says.
- AN airline is to ban the pop group Oasis unless it receives guarantees of "adult behaviour" after the group turned an eight-hour flight into what one passenger called "an obscenity-filled hell". Liam and Noel Gallagher were accompanied by the other three band members and 25 of their road crew on the Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong to Perth on Monday night. They were accused of abusing fellow business-class passengers and cabin crew, excessive drinking, swearing, smoking despite a strict no-smoking ban and refusing to wear seat belts.
- The captain of a Cathay Pacific flight to Perth, where Oasis is due to begin an Australian tour, threatened to divert the plane and kick off the band and their 30-member entourage unless they behaved, airline spokesman Ken Morton said today. The band and their entourage abused crew and other passengers, lit cigarettes on a no-smoking flight, yelled obscenities and behaved offensively Monday during the 7 1/2-hour flight to Perth, Morton said.
- The industry is offering the advertising restrictions as bait for immunity, arguing that Congress cannot constitutionally impose the restrictions by law. But without raising any First Amendment issues at all, Congress can properly agree to settle the suits by the state attorneys general in exchange for voluntary advertising controls. It need not give the industry any concessions on immunity that would dangerously undermine public health goals.
- Besides, tobacco companies have already agreed to ban all billboard advertising as part of their proposed national settlement of lawsuits filed by a number of states, including Wisconsin. By itself, that almost makes the advertisers' argument moot. Not surprisingly, public health advocates believe that tobacco billboards do make a difference in luring young smokers. Considering the major health problems that smoking causes, why take the risk?
- A physician who cared for a dying lung cancer patient said she may have encouraged the woman's widower to file a lawsuit over his wife's death. Nicki Turner, a critical care physician at Ball Memorial Hospital and a longtime anti-smoking activist, testified Tuesday in a wrongful death lawsuit against the tobacco industry. Philip Wiley filed the suit in 1993 over the death of his wife Mildred, a non-smoker, in 1991. The trial resumes Wednesday. Turner said, "I felt second-hand smoke was the cause of her lung cancer and he should consider doing something about that."
- Attorneys trying to convince a jury that secondhand cigarette smoke caused the lung-cancer death of a nonsmoker called maverick tobacco executive Bennett LeBow to testify in the trial in which his company is on the defense. LeBow, the owner of Liggett Group, based in Durham, reiterated his belief that smoking causes cancer and also testified that he was proud that he has bucked the industry line and warned consumers of his tobacco products that nicotine was addictive.
- LeBow, the owner of the Durham, N.C.-based Liggett Group, reiterated his belief that smoking causes cancer and also testified he was proud that he had bucked the industry line and began warning consumers of his tobacco products that nicotine was addictive.
- Former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Julius Richmond says the tobacco industry's Tobacco Institute refused to cooperate with a 1979 government report on smoking. . . Richmond said regulators at the time were becoming aware of the dangers of secondhand smoke. However, he said, "We needed more research on that issue." . . . The 81-year-old former official said he sought input from the Tobacco Institute for his report but the organization would not cooperate.
- Oh, and there's that trial involving a lawsuit against several major tobacco companies, a trial getting plenty of media attention, a trial whose verdict could have national implications. It might be weeks before that verdict is in. But already, the trial has made a splash around here.
- Zyban takes the edge off, though you've got to have willpower, too Experts on kicking the smoking habit say, if you miss having something in your mouth, try toothpicks, cinnamon sticks or celery. By Lynn Van Dine / Special to The Detroit News It sounds like a dream come true for smokers who want to quit: Take a pill and you lose your craving for cigarettes. As a bonus, it might take the edge off your appetite, too. And Zyban works, if you work with it, say people who have used the new prescription drug to quit smoking.
- The American Association of Health Plans (AAHP) Board of Directors voted this week to support a core set of principles for reducing tobacco use and protecting public health. The Board's announcement comes on the heels of a major industry-wide initiative to improve smoking prevention and cessation programs in health plans across the country as part of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's program, "Addressing Tobacco in Managed Care." "AAHP strongly believes that tobacco cessation and prevention programs could produce significant and measurable reductions in both adult and youth smoking rates," stated AAHP President and CEO Karen Ignagni.
- Pennsylvania Attorney General Mike Fisher today applauded the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) on reaching a five-year advertising contract that will not accept tobacco advertisements for SEPTA buses and trains.
- In a written statement citing health, economic and social science studies, State Treasurer Barbara Hafer asked the SEPTA Board to ban tobacco advertising to spare the health and well-being of its riders. . . According to Hafer, SEPTA's role as a major means of transportation for Philadelphia's public schools makes the case against tobacco ads especially compelling.
- The U.S. Justice Department is reportedly investigating anti-competitive practices among buyers of local tobacco. Paul Smucker, co-owner of the Paradise Tobacco Auction, said he has met with Justice Department investigators three or four times, including a three-hour session on Wednesday.
- MINNEAPOLIS, Feb. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Allina Health System physician Robert Jeddeloh testified today before the House Tax Committee in support of a proposal to increase the state cigarette tax by 27 cents. Jeddeloh told the committee that Allina's research showed that higher cigarette prices should reduce the number of children who start smoking.
- Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell gave tobacco farmers a blunt warning yesterday, saying that the end of the crop's federal price-support program is inevitable and that they should "keep the faith, and keep on diversifying." Speaking to about 250 Kentucky Farm Bureau Federation members at a breakfast in Washington, McConnell said he would continue to work with Sen. Wendell Ford to protect the tobacco program as part of broader discussions about the proposed national tobacco settlement. But in a political climate where tobacco is "radioactive," and where other farm programs are being phased out, that might not be a realistic solution, McConnell said.
- The Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation could face as much as a $1 million fine after this week's seizure of 10,170 cartons of contraband cigarettes.
- Sen. Pete Knight (R-Palmdale) introduced Senate Bill 1928 last week to establish a Tobacco Trust Fund for money received by California from state and federal litigation or settlement with tobacco companies. The proposed legislation would return the money to California taxpayers in the form of a $130 per family tax cut annually by creating a pool of "surplus" funding that Knight says would be better given to Californians than bigger government.
- Bar owners throughout the state joined together today to voice their outrage about the negative effects of the statewide smoking ban on their businesses. Faced with lost revenues, customer dissatisfaction and costly enforcement policies, many bar owners are struggling just to stay afloat, but vow to continue to fight. . . The National Smokers Alliance is working with bar owners in an effort to assist them in voicing their concerns to the public.
- "It's back to square one in the war against cigarette smuggling," the Bangkok Post said. The importers fear a "major resurgence" of cigarette smuggling into Thailand following the doubling of the excise tax on the product from 30 to 60 percent. Traders will be forced to raise their prices, widening the gap between illegal and legal cigarette imports, and putting the advantage firmly in the hands of smugglers, a source said. Thailand opened its market to foreign cigarette brands seven years ago, causing a sharp decine in the sales of smuggled cigarettes while the government earned hundreds of millions of baht annually in revenue. "The latest tax increase would be seen as a return to the dark days of seven years ago," the newspaper warned.
- The Government here raised taxes today on products including gasoline, cigarettes and beer, as it struggles to close a budget deficit while the economy creeps along at the slowest rate since the 1960's. The tax increases came with Cabinet approval of some revisions to the International Monetary Fund's $17.2 billion bailout package, which allow Thailand to run a deficit. . . Thailand also doubled, to 60 percent, the tariff on imported cigarettes, which account for less than 2 percent of the market. The beer tax was raised to 53 percent from 50 percent. Tax on wine rose to 55 percent from 50 percent.
- Philip Morris USA wants to entice up to 1,300 of its Richmond employees into early retirement as part of an efficiency and productivity push, company officials said yesterday. The exit incentives for white-collar and blue-collar workers alike were approved in New York by the board of directors of parent company Philip Morris Cos. Inc.
- Philip Morris has announced plans to trim 1,900 jobs through voluntary early retirement and separation programs. The company's statement today said the program will primarily affect workers at tobacco plants in Richmond, Va., and Louisville, Ky. Philip Morris and its subsidiaries, including Kraft Foods and Miller Brewing Co., currently employ 152,000 people. Employees in beer and food operations will not be affected by the programs.
- Philip Morris Companies Inc. today announced voluntary early retirement and separation programs for salaried and hourly employees, primarily at domestic tobacco manufacturing facilities in Richmond, VA, and Louisville, KY. It is estimated that approximately 1,900 of the 152,000 employees of Philip Morris and its subsidiaries are likely to be affected by the programs, which do not apply to the company's food or beer operations.
- The story of that seismic shift is recounted in The People vs. Big Tobacco: How the States Took on the Cigarette Giants, a new book by Carrick Mollenkamp, Adam Levy, Joseph Menn and Jeffrey Rothfeder, reporters for Bloomberg News, a business information service. Big Tobacco is the first book about the forces that converged to prompt Mississippi's pioneering lawsuit against the tobacco companies and the year-long talks that produced the settlement.
- It won't impose a tax hike large enough to discourage smoking in a serious way. President Clinton has suggested phasing in a $1.50-a-pack hike over five years. He couldn't have come up with a better plan if his real goal was to desensitize smokers to higher prices in order to keep government revenues up. For anybody truly interested in doing something novel and creative about smoking, that leaves the issues of liability and advertising. . . People smoke because they enjoy nicotine and become addicted to it. Call it a "drug"; nicotine long ago escaped regulation because it does not impair judgment or behavior, and the risks of smoking are cumulative over time. Nothing has really changed. Are the public health advocates prepared to leave people the freedom to become nicotine addicts, a freedom that humans are long used to? . . . But there is also a saying that the most damaging lie is a problem poorly stated. Ninety years ago, Congress enacted Prohibition knowing the folly of it but unable to resist a cause of invidious political correctness. Now that the cigarette industry has admitted the deficiencies of its product, the legislature could do worse than to sit back and let nature take its course.
- A minority of senators today turned their backs on the American people and used an obstructionist filibuster to thwart the will of the majority of senators who stand ready to pass campaign finance reform. By voting to protect the corrupt status quo, Sens. LOTT and MCCONNELL and the other obstructionist senators have put their stamps of approval on the scandals and abuses of the 1996 election, and have personally endorsed unlimited, unregulated soft money contributions from tobacco companies, corporate polluters, and other special interests.
- The long-awaited decision by a federal appeals court considering whether the Food and Drug Administration can regulate nicotine was thrown into further question by the death of the senior judge of the panel that is to decide the case. U.S. Circuit Judge Donald S. Russell, who died of natural causes Sunday at the age of 92 at his home in Spartanburg, S.C., was the most openly skeptical of the FDA's authority to regulate tobacco when a three-judge panel of the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in August. Senior U.S. District Judge James H. Michael, sitting on the appeals court for the case, also appeared skeptical of the FDA's authority. Only U.S. Circuit Judge K.K. Hall, of Charleston, W.Va., seemed receptive.
- A lawsuit at the center of the tobacco industry's battle over federal regulation of cigarettes was thrown into limbo by the death of an appeals court judge in the case, court officials said on Wednesday. U.S. Circuit Judge Donald Stuart Russell, who died on his 92nd birthday Sunday at his Spartanburg, S.C. home, was one of three judges on a federal appeals court panel considering whether the U.S. Food and Drug Administration could regulate tobacco products. "When a judge dies, the case will proceed as directed by the two remaining panel members acting as a quorum under (federal law), or it may be reargued," said Scott Richie, counsel for the clerk of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va.
- A leading anti-tobacco lawmaker in the House said Thursday reports of a possible plea bargain with Liggett Group in the Justice Department's probe of tobacco companies could break the criminal investigation of big tobacco "wide open." "If they're able to work out a deal and get Liggett to testify it could break this criminal investigation wide open," Rep. Martin Meehan, a Massachusetts Democrat, said on ABC's "Good Morning America."
- Liggett Group, is seeking a plea bargain in the Justice Department's probe of tobacco companies, sources familiar with the negotiations say. The sources cautioned that discussions between Liggett, a unit of Brooke Group Ltd, and Justice Department officials were still under way, and a possible agreement could be "far down the road."
- Liggett Group Inc. is reportedly negotiating with the Justice Department to aid its criminal investigation of the tobacco industry in exchange for a grant of immunity. Sources familiar with the talks were quoted Wednesday by ABC News and in Thursday's editions of The New York Times and The Washington Post as saying Liggett has offered to provide the government with industry information on nicotine's addictive qualities and efforts to hide health risks.
- Liggett Group Inc., the tobacco company that broke ranks with the rest of the industry, is negotiating with the Justice Department to possibly cooperate with the government's criminal investigation of the tobacco industry . . .
- In a strongly-worded letter sent today to all members of Congress, Kenneth C. Huber, national president of the Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA), expressed outrage over attempts to restrict payment of certain currently allowed tobacco-related disability benefits for service-connected veterans benefits and use of this money for non-veterans programs.
- INFACT, the national corporate watchdog organization, announced support today for an international tobacco control legislative package to limit the tobacco industry's aggressive international marketing. The proposed legislation will be presented at a 1:00 p.m. press conference in the Dirksen Senate Office Building.
- A race is shaping up between the states and the federal government as they rush to impose higher cigarette taxes, according to CCH INCORPORATED (CCH), a leading provider of tax and business law information. In the past 12 months, 10 states have passed substantial cigarette tax increases and four more states are gearing up for possible increases in the near future. The states' actions are occurring during a period when Congress and the Administration also are looking at this tax base and possible phased-in increases of as much as $1.65 per pack, beginning in the year 2000.
- A Superior Court judge has ruled that the state can use a controversial batch of documents in its lawsuit against the tobacco industry. Judge Martha Sosman said the state could use the 800 documents that had been released to U.S. Rep. Thomas Bliley, R-Va. "These documents represent a key cache of the damaging evidence that we need to prove our case and bring Big Tobacco to justice," Attorney General Scott Harshbarger said Thursday.
- Advanced Therapeutic Products, Inc. announced today that McNeil Consumer Products, a Johnson & Johnson company, launched the Nicotrol(R) Inhaler as a prescription product into its first U.S. market this week. Debuting in Houston, the innovative Nicotrol(R) Inhaler is the first and only form of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) designed to help control a smoker's cravings for cigarettes while providing a key behavioral component of smoking -- the hand-to-mouth ritual.
- Two days. Most of the class had made it two days. Not easy. Dizzy, sleeping poorly, crabby, whiney, talking in stops and starts. . . The "Freedom from Smoking" class was at Mercy Hospital in Coon Rapids. It's a six-week program, once a week usually, twice a week at the critical point when the group tries to quit smoking. Hawk -- herself a smoker until midnight of Jan. 1, 1971 -- has taught similar classes since 1978.
- Doctors are missing many opportunities to help patients quit smoking, according to a report published in the current issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association. Dr. Anne N. Thorndike, of Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, and colleagues found that in one third of the office visits they studied, doctors did not inquire whether the patient was a smoker. "This proportion did not change when the analysis was limited to new patient visits or visits for a general medical examination," they report.
- American physicians are missing many opportunities to help their patients quit smoking, according to a report in the February 25 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study by researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School found that physicians reported counseling patients about smoking or prescribing nicotine replacement far less than called for by current practice guidelines.
- Of the almost 200 people who filled the Carney Hospital auditorium in Dorchester - and the more than 50 who spoke - most had strong opinions on an issue that raises concerns about public health, personal choice, and the economic impact of public policy decisions. But the proposal before the health commission takes a somewhat moderate approach in calling for a smoking ban only in restaurants of 20 or more seats. It would allow smoking to continue in bars and even in bars attached to restaurants as long as they are separated by a partition or at least 6 feet. The philosophy: To start with a tough but moderate policy and revisit it in about two years, said chairman David H. Mulligan. . . A more sweeping plan, pitched this week by City Councilors Daniel F. Conley (Hyde Park), and Thomas M. Keane Jr. (Back Bay), would restrict smoking in all city bars and restaurants.
- Philip Morris Co., the nation's biggest cigarette maker, reportedly has deployed a Boston-based public relations consultant in the battle against proposals for smoking bans in the city's restaurants, bars, and nightclubs. Sources familiar with the situation say the consultant, Ken Berk, who works under contract with Philip Morris, has been asked to advise the Massachusetts Restaurant Association, which is rallying restaurant and bar owners against Mayor Thomas M. Menino's smoking-ban proposal. Berk, however, denied yesterday that he has been involved in the restaurant-led campaign to defeat Menino's plan to ban smoking in restaurants with 20 seats or more. . . "I have not been asked to get involved by Philip Morris or the restaurant association," Berk said. "I wouldn't mind helping because I believe it's an issue of economics."
- Anti-smoking activists are demanding a ban on smoking at Greater Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport and Delta Air Lines' facilities at the airport. Allowing smoking even by restricting it to certain areas still exposes airport passengers and employees and airline employees to second-hand tobacco smoke, which the government said can cause cancer in non-smokers, Ahron Leichtman, executive director of Citizens for a Tobacco-Free Society, said Thursday.
- The largest airport in one of the largest tobacco-growing states is under attack for allowing smoking. Anti-smoking activists Thursday demanded a ban on smoking at Greater Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport.
- A proposal to hike the price of cigarettes, a move smoking opponents and the medical community believe will help decrease the number of children who begin to smoke, was tabled in the House Tax Committee on Thursday and is unlikely to pass. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Phyllis Kahn, DFL-Minneapolis, would increase the tax from 48 cents to 75 cents a pack, placing Minnesota in the top 10 among states in the amount of taxes on cigarettes.
- A bill sponsored by Rep. Phyllis Kahn, DFL-Minneapolis, would raise the state tax from 48 cents to 75 cents a pack and use the windfall to finance MinnesotaCare, the subsidized state health plan. It would add an estimated $95 million to the $188 million the state now collects each year in tobacco taxes.
- Senate Republicans aimed from every direction. First, they wanted to cut money from DFL Attorney General Hubert Humphrey III' s budget. Then they wanted to take away some of Humphrey' s authority in the state' s tobacco lawsuit. And finally, they wanted Humphrey' s face and name out of state-paid ads.
- So far, the venom extract has proven successful in treating mice bred to grow human breast cancers. So how do the cigarettes factor in? The tax imposed on tobacco in California that is designed to discourage smokers is also used to fund research projects. "If everyone were to quit smoking tomorrow, the funding would sort of dry up," said researcher Francis Markland. "I don't think that's very likely, but in the long term future that's what the goal of the program is."
- Law: Business has been hurt and enforcement is tricky, participants say. Critics point out that tobacco industry is backing the media blitzes. . . Since December, one month before the law's Jan. 1 enactment, the alliance has used mail, telemarketing and public relations specialists, as well as a slick World Wide Web site, to reach thousands of California bar owners. They have heard back from about 2,300, Auxier said. "Our pitch was, 'If you're interested in fighting back, we're here to help,' " he said. "And we've followed through with signage for their bars, postcards to send to their representatives in the state Legislature that say 'I'm a constituent, not a criminal.' " . . . Los Angeles City Fire Capt. John Kitchens, the smoking enforcement officer for the city of Los Angeles, acknowledged that the new law is confusing, especially when it comes to a citizen reporting a bar violation. Kitchens complained that the city attorney's office has shown insufficient aggressiveness in response to complaints. A spokeswoman for the agency did not return a reporter's phone calls.
- Indonesia's minister of cooperatives, Soebiakto Tjakrawerdaya, said Thursday that the clove marketing board scrapped under the International Monetary Fund reform package will continue to buy cloves from farmers, according to state Antara news agency. 'The partnership among farmers, BPPC (Indonesia's clove marketing board), regional cooperatives and cigarette makers in buying cloves from the farmer is only aimed at improving the farmers' welfare,' the minister said, according to Antara.
- Irish health authorities are preparing a novel drive to help building site workers kick the smoking habit. Despairing of conventional methods like smoking bans, which scarcely deter those who work in the open air, campaign organizers are tempting site workers with a two-week holiday in Mexico if they stop smoking. "The fact that a worker is outside in the open air does not lessen ... the detrimental effects which tobacco has upon the individual smoker," Health Minister Brian Cowen said on Wednesday as he launched the drive. Half of all Irish construction workers are regular smokers, compared with a national average of 29 percent.
- Indonesia's reluctance to grasp the nettle of economic reform is hurting the rupiah and analysts doubt the IMF team currently in town to review progress will be too pleased with what they see. . . The thorny issue of doing away with Indonesia's monopolies is bound to be worrying the IMF. For example, it has been announced that Suharto's son Hutomo (Tommy) Mandala Putra will now continue to operate the monopoly which controls the market for cloves, an important ingredient in Indonesia's lucrative market for traditional cigarettes, until June.
- The Nagoya District Court rejected a lawsuit filed by anti-smokers demanding HASHIMOTO stop smoking and to pay 50,000 yen ($400) in damages for remarks encouraging smoking. The five plaintiffs had asked that Hashimoto, a self-confessed heavy smoker, stop puffing during his term as prime minister and also sought 500,000 ($4,000) yen from the government on claims that its laws on tobacco operations were unconstitutional. Presiding Judge Tatsuki Inada ("Tah-TSOO-kee Ee-NAH-dah") said in his ruling today that smoking is known to be bad for the health of smokers and those around them. But, said the judge, smoking by adults is permitted by law, and even a person in the position of prime minister is not obliged to stop smoking.
- A group of 20 anti-smoking activists and nicotine addicts filed a class action suit Wednesday against a Japanese affiliate of the U.S. tobacco giant Philip Morris Cos. (MO), demanding it stop sales in Japan. The legal challenge is the first in Japan for Philip Morris, which has a 13% share of Japan's lucrative cigarette market, according to a spokeswoman for Philip Morris KK, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
- Japan Tobacco Inc. . . submitted Friday to Finance Minister Hikaru Matsunaga, its business plan for the 1998 fiscal year that foresees a 11.1% decrease in profit. The Japan's tobacco giant expects sales of 253.5 billion cigarettes in the new fiscal year starting April 1, down 0.6% from the expected total sales of cigarettes of the current year. The scheduled introduction of a new tobacco tax in October which pushes up sales prices by Y20 a package will inevitably induce a small decline in total volumes of sales, the company said.
- There has been a significant drop in the use of woodfuel for curing tobacco, new research from the International Tobacco Growers' Association (ITGA) has found. Its latest report The Use of Woodfuel for Curing Tobacco shows tobacco growers are aiding conservation by planting more trees, turning to alternative fuels, and implementing increasingly fuel-efficient curing processes. ITGA chief executive David Walder says data from the survey is the most up-to-date available and replaces information dating from the mid 1980s. "In many tobacco-growing countries, woodfuel is being used less and with greater efficiency. Tobacco growers are leading the way on reforestation projects, improvements in fuel efficiency, and the use of agricultural wastes as fuel sources."
- Shareholders of London and Luxembourg listed Vendome Luxury Group Plc and Vendome SA on Thursday approved a buyout offer allowing a delisting on both exchanges, a statement from the luxury goods company said Friday.
- VICTOR Kiam, the man said to have liked his Remington electric shaver so much that he bought the company, is believed to be about to take over as chairman at Ronson, the cigarette lighter company. Mr Kiam, a flamboyant 70-year-old businessman based in New York, is said to be in talks over a rescue package.
- The company stated that the 1997 fourth quarter net loss of $6.6 million in comparison with a net loss of $2.2 million in the same quarter of 1996 was attributable primarily to four factors. First, selling and administrative expenses increased by $2.5 million due to high legal costs emanating from the company's defense against claims brought by former shareholders of DNA Plant Technology and DNA Plant Technology's negotiations with the Department of Justice that led to that company's agreement to cooperate in the Department's investigation of the tobacco industry, provisions to settle employee contracts, and a general increase in overhead costs associated with the new organization.
- Rental cars may be the smoker's last refuge. Airplanes and hotels may be increasingly smoke-free, but with rental cars, it's a different story. Some rental-car companies don't offer smoke-free cars at all. "There may be some if they're new," says a spokeswoman for Dollar Rent-a-Car. "But it's not policy to have any."
- Look out, Cohiba, there's a new cigar in town, and it's already on the set of Seinfeld. In this week's episode, Kramer hands Jerry and George each a cigar, but instead of giving them one of the mega-brands, he gives them a relatively new Nicaraguan brand: Big Butt. Kramer is always on a quest for a great cigar, and now maybe he can forget about trying to smuggle Cubans, whether cigars or cigar rollers. Big Butt Cigars are premium, hand-rolled Nicaraguan cigars with a fun name, made by Big Butt Cigar Co. of Redwood City, California. Getting onto the Seinfeld set was a real breakthrough for Big Butt Cigar Co., and was orchestrated by Marcia Levine, President of A-List Placements of Santa Monica, California.
- It's not easy to get excited about campaign-finance reform. But as Sen. Paul Wellstone observes, all the hot domestic issues before Congress today -- tobacco, tax reform, health insurance, telecommunications -- are framed and influenced by companies and lobbying groups that generate gigantic campaign contributions. The opponents of this bill say that cash is speech and they support free speech. That's a bad misreading of Supreme Court rulings on previous fund-raising rules. More to the point, if they believe in free speech, they should let it occur today on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
- Now, we have the poisoned lungs, deception, and profiteering as evidence against the tobacco companies. But we lack the courage and sensible laws to put these hucksters out of business. In the 1800s state courts had the courage and laws to dissolve banks, insurance companies, and all sorts of corporations for far less collusion, harm, and mischief. That is, until corporate America went scampering to buy off "legal" protection from a gullible US Supreme Court. Perhaps we should turn to our neighbors to the north and borrow their backbone for a spell to do what must be done.
- The Globe criticizes the town of Brookline for coming "down with both feet by prohibiting smoking in most bars and restaurants. " But then it makes the case for Brookline's strong smoking ban as well as it can be made, stating that "reports on the dangers of secondhand smoke support the trend" (toward cleaner interior air), and that, "Restaurant employees are most at risk, particularly for lung cancer: Bartenders inhale the equivalent of two packs of cigarettes in an eight-hour shift." What more need be said to set in motion strong and effective public health protection?
- The smoking debate consists heavily of fictions. Awkward facts are ignored or minimized; dubious assumptions are advanced as solid truths. . . What it's actually about is means and ends. Debating this candidly, we might come to a discomforting conclusion: that the ends are desirable but unachievable; and the means are achievable but undesirable. A candid debate, however, is nowhere in sight.
- SHILEDS: What we saw with the soft money is the soft money from the tobacco industry going directly to the Republican Party in 1997, and what happened? In the middle of the conference work, Jim, on the tax bill, on the balanced budget, out of nowhere, no fingerprints, no pride of authorship comes the $50 million gift [sic--it was $50 Billion]--gift--right off to the tobacco industry, put in there by the Republican leadership, put in there by Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich but with no fingerprints. Now, if you want to see something direct, that certainly contributes to cynicism. That's cynicism--
- The ads underscore the federal ban on selling tobacco to anyone under 18 and of the requirement that retailers seek photo identification of anyone under 27. Retailers who sell to minors face fines of at least $250. "It is the store counter where too much teen smoking starts," Gore said.
- 40% of stores fail to comply with legal prohibitions, survey shows. Gore unveils ad campaign to remind retailers of fines.
- In the typical state, four out of 10 teen-agers successfully left convenience stores, gas stations and groceries with cigarettes. Half the states did better than that and half did worse. . . So far, four states -- Florida, Maine, New Hampshire and Washington -- have met the 20 percent target.
- Vice President Gore and Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala will announce new efforts to reduce tobacco sales to children. This event falls on the eve of the one year anniversary of the FDA rule which is designed to reduce youth smoking.
- Retailers throughout Florida are succeeding in their efforts to curb the sale of tobacco to minors. Vice President Al Gore announced today that Florida was one of only four states that meet the minimum federal mandate that less than 20 percent of underage customers who try to buy cigarettes at stores are able to make the purchase. The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulations indicate a 93 percent compliance rate for Florida.
- If you're 16 and want to buy cigarettes, there's no tougher state than Florida.
- Cigarette makers may be facing an unusual rival as long-term suppliers of nicotine fixes: the pharmaceutical industry. . . With new research revealing that nicotine is more benign than previously thought, some executives envision sustaining cigarette addicts with pharmaceutical nicotine for years, even decades. "Nicotine, caffeine and alcohol are cultural drugs, and I don't think we can get rid of them," says Karl Fagerstrom, former director of scientific information for Pharmacia & Upjohn Inc., which makes smoking-cessation products, including Nicorette nicotine gum. "If it's the nicotine people want, why not give it to them?"
- That green, uncured tobacco still hanging in barns throughout Central Kentucky is an ominous sign for both burley growers and their lenders. As loans taken out last spring come due, many growers are finding their payments tied up in tons of burley that stubbornly refuse to dry. The condition of the bedraggled leaf has lenders worried about what happens when Kentucky's biggest cash crop doesn't produce much cash. "The big problem is we don't know whether it's a marketable crop," said Butch Dunsmore, agriculture credit director for the Farm Service Agency in Kentucky.
- "Why, I've never been in a restaurant where you couldn't smoke," said an amazed Tinsley Whitehead, 68, of Hoskinston. Two recent studies show that Kentucky is the "smokingest" state in the union. And research shows that the mountains are the smokingest place in the smokingest state.
- Brown is not "the new black," because the new black is the old black. Brown is still almost as exotic as green or blue. If an item of clothing actually looked brown, it would certainly never be called "brown." People wouldn't use such a silly word. They would say "tobacco."
- "I was tired of checking into smelly hotel rooms that either were never aired out or smelled of cigarette smoke,' complains tipster Debbie Moon of Laurel. Then she discovered portable, packable, scented travel candles, available at the Body Shop, Better Botanicals and other stores. "The candles are the size of votives but have a small cover and are scented. Now I check into my room and light a candle. In no time, the room smells wonderful!"
- On the field, there are a couple of changes. A 12-run mercy rule is being used by some conferences. There will be no mercy, though, for players and coaches caught using tobacco -- the stuff is banned, and offenders will be ejected.
- Stroke-victim Princess Margaret is getting precious little in the way of sympathetic hand-patting from the British tabloid press, which blamed her illness on a lifetime of heavy smoking and drinking. "The Fags (cigarettes) Catch Up With Mags," headlined the Star. "We Told Her to Give Up," screamed the Daily Mirror, adding that "Princess Margaret is paying for decades of wild living" and noting for good measure that she "swears like a trooper." The DM quoted her saying once: "My vices are cigarettes and drink. I don't see myself giving these up."
- He has become a 'militant smoker', writing letters and arguing for the right to light up. . . 'They are basing their argument on fear of death and making people think they are victims of everything,' he says. I remind him that his father was vehemently anti-smoking, handing out badges to one and all, saying, 'Don't smoke'. Hockney chuckles . . . and says in his dry Northern tones 'and every one of his children smoked'.
- With tobacco lawsuits all over the front page it was no surprise that a good chunk of the letters I received have dealt with the issue of smoking in clubs, with several people praising California's recent law making smoking in bars illegal.
- [F]ew now even remember Tuesday's revelation: the private eye TERRY LENZNER's admission that he was working for Mr. Clinton's lawyers in the Paula Jones case, despite previous White House denials. Nor -- again thanks to Mr. Starr -- has anyone, the press included, noticed that the President's alliance with Mr. Lenzner, of all private eyes, is an act of particularly rank hypocrisy. Mr. Lenzner was one of the most ruthless mercenaries for the cigarette industry in the tobacco wars. . . Now we learn that Mr. Clinton is in bed with the creep who tried to bring down Mr. Wigand . . Clinton defenders who decry Ken Starr's moral turpitude for working as a Brown & Williamson lawyer must now explain the President's tie to a B.&W. snoop whose tactics make Mr. Starr's money-grubbing for Big Tobacco look benign.
- The industry obviously wields enormous influence here. That makes it even more laudable that the state has been so prompt to take the federal money and to step up the pressure against youth smoking.
- An editorial on Thursday wrongly stated that store clerks in North Carolina can be prosecuted for selling tobacco products to minors only if the sale to an underage person allegedly took place "knowingly." The "knowingly" language was removed from the law by the 1997 General Assembly.
- Who's to blame that San Diego high school students are drinking more alcohol and smoking more cigarettes and marijuana? We all are. Consider the mixed messages we send to impressionable teens: . . We tell them smoking cigarettes is bad, but then they see Joe Camel and the Marlboro Man at every turn. Kids are adept at seeing through hypocrisy. They never buy the adage: Do as I say, not as I do. They look around and see a thousand messages screaming at them from television, billboards, magazines and newspapers that tobacco, alcohol and drugs are OK. And they act accordingly.
- The days of having a relaxing cup of tea in a restaurant after a meal are gone. Also gone are the days of being able to stay in a nice, clean-smelling hotel room. . . And what about spouses like me? Must I be made uncomfortable simply because I love a smoker? I propose we eliminate rudeness, which is really behind the smoker/nonsmoker conflict. --June Cerza Kolf Lives in Quartz Hill. She Serves on the Board of Directors of the American Cancer Society in Lancaster
- On Friday, attorneys for the tobacco companies filed a notice of removal from state court to U.S. District Court. They said the lawsuit belongs in federal court based on diversity of jurisdiction and the amount of damages being sought. According to the tobacco firms, the Baileys' lawsuit "tried to defeat federal jurisdiction" by disclaiming any damages in excess of $75,000 per plaintiff. They said the "disingenuousness of the purported limit" on the damages was revealed in a Feb. 18 article in the Deseret News in which the attorneys said the suit could involve a judgment of more than $2 billion.
- A blunder by defense attorneys yesterday opened the door for a tobacco-industry whistleblower to talk about a criminal investigation against his former employer. . . Before Wigand took the stand, attorneys for both sides agreed not to bring up a grand-jury investigation into possible criminal conduct by Brown & Williamson. But during cross-examination, lead defense attorney Bill Ohlemeyer inadvertently asked Wigand about his knowledge of any fraudulent or criminal activities by his former employer.
- Former tobacco company researcher Jeffrey Wigand said his company, Brown & Williamson, once considered acquiring a nicotine patch manufacturer so it would have another way of supplying nicotine to customers.
- Sponsored by Camel cigarettes, the party is one of the many promotions by Western tobacco companies that are aggressively marketing their products in one of the world's most smoker-friendly nations. . . Almost anything goes. In the hinterlands, where entertainment is scarce, Western tobacco companies offer young Russians free admission to parties if they buy a pack of cigarettes. Billboards all over Russia feature pictures of skyscrapers and white sandy beaches and slogans like "Total Freedom" or "Rendezvous with America." They aren't advertising foreign travel -- but American cigarette brands like Camel, Winston and Marlboro. At shows and presentations, young women with trays of cigarettes walk around the audience offering free smokes.
***********************
***********************
Go To: Tobacco BBS HomePage / Resources Page / Health Page / Documents Page / Culture Page / Activism Page
***********************
END OF DOCUMENT