Tobacco News on the Web
Archive, May, 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.
- MAYOR RICHARD RIORDAN, normally an opponent of tax increases, on Thursday joined the broad-based coalition of celebrities and politicians favoring a 50-cent-per-pack levy on cigarettes to pay for early child development programs.
- Now, a few restaurants and bars are inviting smokers back inside to light up in special lounges where they won't offend the lungs and noses of nonsmokers. "It's a win-win situation," said Paul Dunn, owner of the Iron Horse Restaurant on Maiden Lane, who converted an upstairs banquet area into a smoking room about two months ago. "People are pleased that they can repair up there for the enjoyment of a cigar or cigarette. We've had nothing but positive feedback."
- Imasco Ltd. (IMS.TO - news) on Thursday denied accusations from anti-smoking advocates that its Imperial Tobacco unit sought to boost nicotine levels in its cigarettes by spiking them with ammonia. "I find it to be a tiresome repetition of inaccuracies based on information 10 or 20 years old and a blatant manipulation of the facts," Imasco president and chief executive Brian Levitt told reporters.
- Canada's largest tobacco company conceded Thursday that it tested ammonia-laced cigarettes in the late 1980s in a bid to improve the taste of its brands, but said it was unsatisfied with the results and never sold the controversial product. Officials for IMPERIAL TOBACCO LTD. and its parent company, Imasco Ltd., rejected charges levelled this week by antismoking advocates that the ammonia experiments were aimed at developing cigarettes with enhanced nicotine delivery.
- Accusations against Imasco Ltd. (T.IMS) this week by anti-smoking groups represent "a tiresome repetition of inaccuracies based on information 10 or 20 years old, and a blatant manipulation of the facts," said BRIAN LEVITT, Imasco's chief executive.
- In a news release Wednesday, Imasco Ltd.'s IMPERIAL TOBACCO LTD. unit said it never used so-called Y-1 tobacco or ammonia in its products, nor did it ever add nicotine to any of its tobacco products.
- B.A.T Industries PLC said Friday it expects the difficult tobacco trading conditions in the U.S. seen in the first quarter to persist through the rest of 1998. The group also said its results from the Asia-Pacific region 'may still be volatile,' but trading in Latin America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, South and Central Asia remain good.
- Shares in tobacco and financial services group B.A.T Industries Plc rose on Friday after the group posted better than forecast first quarter profits and talked in positive terms about its insurance business.
- AFTER Fidel Castro gave up smoking cigars in 1985, so did the rest of the world. Stogies and self-indulgence were replaced by Perrier water and nicotine-flavoured chewing-gum. The fall in demand was followed by a plunge in output due to the withdrawal of Soviet subsidies, and thus of cheap fertiliser and seed. It looked as though the Cuban cigar industry would be stubbed out. But now it has made a comeback.
- DIANE VENORA has joined AL PACINO, CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER and RUSSELL CROWE in director MICHAEL MANN's untitled tobacco industry project. Crowe will play Wigand, whose life was nearly destroyed by a smear campaign and litigation put into play by the tobacco industry. Venora will portray Wigand's wife, a woman of excellent but overly accessorized taste, who watches her marriage crumble.
- When he took over as chairman of AUGUSTA NATIONAL GOLF CLUB, JACKSON T. STEPHENS knew he wouldn't set a record for longest tenure. . . Asked during this year's MASTERS if the tournament might one day ban smoking from the grounds, Stephens simply removed a pack of cigarettes from his green jacket and put it on the table. "I think you can take that as no," said WILL NICHOLSON, the chairman of competition.
- Whatever, executive-produced by the home-grown Circle Films, should endear itself to area filmgoers for its local connections, but charity only goes so far. . . It's not really clear what exactly Anna has learned after she returns from a trip to Manhattan with her bad-girl pal Brenda (Chad Morgan), except that sex can be lousy and that the tobacco in Marlboros sometimes smells like pot just after you light it.
- Alliance partners Northwest Airlines and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines announced today that they will adopt a smoke-free policy on all flights worldwide effective Aug. 1, 1998. The expanded policy will eliminate smoking on all Northwest and KLM flights to and from Japan. Northwest operates an extensive schedule from the United States to Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya while KLM operates service from its Amsterdam, Netherlands hub to Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya and Sapporo.
- NINO DE GUZMAN said he gave Guevara some tobacco, and the wounded guerrilla took a brown-covered booklet out of his boot and gave it to him. When Guevara's skeleton was exhumed last year from its unmarked grave in Bolivia for a hero's burial in Cuba, with Castro presiding, scraps of the tobacco were still in his jacket pocket.
- The Tobacco Institute . . . has been placed under control of a temporary receiver by a New York judge for allegedly abusing its tax-exempt status. The unusual action Friday by state Supreme Court Judge Stephen Crane was in response to a complaint by New York Attorney General Dennis Vacco that the institute and the Council for Tobacco Research USA are tobacco -funded "fronts" that serve "as propaganda arms of the industry." Vacco said both organizations have abused their tax-exempt status under New York law, where they were incorporated.
- JUDGE STEPHEN CRANE of State Supreme Court in Manhattan appointed MILTON GOULD, 88, a partner at LeBoeuf Lamb Greene & MacRae, to take control of the Tobacco Institute, and retired State Supreme Court JUSTICE WALTER SCHACKMAN, 71, of the law firm Davis & Gilbert, to run the Council for Tobacco Research. . . Crane ordered that both groups show cause at a hearing on June 8 why they should not be dissolved -- a common response to a lawsuit -- but the appointment of receivers for not-for-profit groups is rare. "Judge Crane's order begins a process that will ensure that the tobacco industry will no longer be able to continue to finance their propaganda machine at taxpayer expense," Vacco said. . . Although the Tobacco Institute is based in Washington and has branches in five states, it was incorporated in New York State in 1958, as was the Council for Tobacco Research, based in New York, in 1971.
- A New York state judge ordered that two tobacco-funded research entities be placed in receivership pending the outcome of a motion filed by the state seeking to close them permanently. STATE JUDGE STEPHEN CRANE Friday ordered that the TOBACCO INSTITUTE INC. and the COUNCIL FOR TOBACCO RESEARCH USA, the two tax-exempt entities, be temporarily be placed in receivership, said New York Attorney General DENNIS VACCO.
- Scott Williams, a spokesman for the tobacco industry, called the allegations "broad generalizations without merit." He contended that the organizations can be shut down only if they agree to do so voluntarily. It is a violation of the industry's First Amendment free-speech rights, he said, to force its trade associations to close. "Can a political figure ... deny any industry the right to form a trade association and dictate the terms of it? I don't think you can," Mr. Williams said. But lawyers for Mr. Vacco contend that New York law permits them to seek the dissolution of a nonprofit if it misrepresents its mission to obtain nonprofit status or transacts business in a persistently fraudulent or illegal manner. They have asked a New York trial-court judge to grant a hearing on the issue.
- Attorney General DENNIS C. VACCO took legal steps today to shut down two tobacco-funded research entities that served as fronts to disguise the medical effects of smoking. In a petition filed in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, Attorney General Vacco sought to dissolve the COUNCIL FOR TOBACCO RESEARCH USA, INC. and the TOBACCO INSTITUTE, INC., two tax-exempt entities that were created ostensibly to provide the public with honest research and information, but instead served as propaganda arms of the industry.
- New York's attorney general took legal action Thursday to shut down two tobacco-funded research groups, contending they have "fed the public a pack of lies" in an "underhanded effort" to promote smoking among adults and children. In a petition filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Attorney General DENNIS VACCO alleged the COUNCIL FOR TOBACCO RESEARCH USA INC. and the TOBACCO INSTITUTE, two tax-exempt entities ostensibly created to provide the public with impartial information on smoking, had instead proven to be "propaganda arms of the industry." "This action," he continued, "will ensure that the tobacco industry will no longer be able to finance their propaganda machine at taxpayer expense."
- The tobacco industry has donated more than $900,000 to congressional candidates from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut since 1991. According to the New York Times, only seven of the 56 people who represent the three states didn't receive tobacco money in that period. Connecticut Senate hopeful GARY FRANKS, a Republican, has picked up $64,000 in campaign contributions from the industry. SEN. CHRISTOPHER DODD, who Franks is trying to unseat, has received more than $55,000.
- [CHRISTOPHER] DODD and [GARY] FRANKS represent two sides of the tobacco industry's wide-ranging efforts to influence Capitol Hill politics. Facing immense legislative stakes and suffering from a battered public image, the industry has rained contributions on almost every incumbent in Congress, dispensing special largess to proven allies like Franks, while still giving generously to occasional adversaries.
- "You can buy cigarettes at 18, but you can't buy the merchandise until you're 21. Company policy," a cashier said recently to a customer who had to show ID before buying replica license plates emblazoned with tobacco leaves and a popular local saying, "Tobacco Pays My Bills." Such is the contradiction of Winston-Salem, population 171,786.
- The members of Rolling Meadows Tomorrow's anti-smoking group, the TOBACCO INFORMATION AND PREVENTION PROGRAM, will again try to get Rolling Meadows to post signs to encourage parents not to expose their children to second-hand smoke. . . The group was recently stunned when the City Council, at the urging of the business community, turned down its proposal to post signs in restaurants urging parents not to bring their children into smoking areas. . . "TIPP is going to hold another meeting May 14, and there's a very good chance we will try to revise the sign so it includes the whole community, urging parents to keep children out of smoking areas everywhere. So, we may come out with something much better for the whole community," she said.
- More than 600 local youngsters are expected to be involved in the city's "Youth Takin' on Tobacco" project today. Activities are planned at three sites: from 9 a.m. to noon at North River Road Park, 5306 North River Road; from 1 to 3 p.m. at Recreation Park, Brooks and Maxson streets; and from 3 to 6 p.m. at the Pier Amphitheater, 300 N. The Strand. Judy Barz, city recreation supervisor, said the project was set up for 200 volunteers, but more than 600 local youngsters have signed up.
- A year after the Legislature boosted Alaska's tobacco tax to the highest in America, reported cigarette sales have dropped sharply, new state figures show. In the five months after the tax took effect last October, some 200 million fewer cigarettes were sold than in the same five months a year earlier, according to a new report.
- The Quebec government will table tobacco-control legislation in the National Assembly before May 15 and hopes to have it passed in the current session of the legislature, Health Minister Jean Rochon said yesterday. The announcement was greeted with cautious optimism by anti-tobacco activists, who had feared Premier Lucien Bouchard's cabinet had been getting cold feet on its 2-year-old promise to introduce such a law.
- The rescue's fate appeared in doubt this week because of an apparent attempt by Indonesian authorities to protect a monopoly on cloves, controlled by Suharto's son Tommy, that Jakarta had promised to eliminate. The monopoly, though legally shut down, had opened under a new guise, arousing anger in Washington about yet another example of Indonesian resistance to ending the country's "crony capitalism." But Stanley Fischer, the IMF's deputy managing director, said yesterday, "We believe the clove problem is being dealt with." Other IMF officials cited a statement on Wednesday in which cabinet ministers formally promised to allow free trade for clove growers, traders and companies that use them.
- A nine year campaign to ban tobacco advertising and sponsorship within the European Union is nearing its end. The necessary legislation, which will start to come into force in June 2001, is due to be approved by the European parliament on 12 May. Britain's health secretary, Frank Dobson, welcomed the move. The text has already won the support of EU governments despite heavy lobbying against the move by the tobacco industry and doubts in some quarters over the union's legal right to impose such a ban.
- From the 1930s to the '50s, a new craft that used discarded cigarette packs became popular. The empty packages were carefully folded into small strips, and each strip was folded so that the identical part of the pattern would show. The strips were then woven together. The graphic designs on the package made it possible to show a camel's head on each link, a green line from a Kool package or a red design from Winston. Today, the picture frames, purses, baskets, belts and other folded-cigarette-pack pieces are called "prisoner art."
- To take in the Kentucky Derby simulcaston a television setalongside people in leather jackets and stocking caps who just bet their last dollar on a 60-to-1 shot. This is what I took in: Smoke. Lots of it. My lungs are ashen, and my contact lenses are seared to my eyes. You see, at the track, smoking is not banned. I think it is encouraged. I think representatives from tobacco companies stand at the doorway and hand out unfiltered cigarettes.
- Lindsey Novak, Chicago Tribune Q--Several people were caught smoking at the wrong entrance, so instead of reprimanding each one of them, management spammed a warning memo (three times) to all 3,000 employees. That equals at least 3,000 minutes of time to read e-mail that pertains to only a few. Is it because they don't have the guts to address issues directly?
- Only one of the corporate-sponsored craft eschewed that floating billboard look: the yacht sponsored by Swedish Match, a global tobacco products company based in Stockholm. The company does plenty of advertising in the markets for its principal products, which include the familiar Red Man chewing tobacco and Half and Half pipe tobacco, as well as moist snuff products and several major European cigarette brands. But those logos aren't on the boat. Instead the company has adopted a more difficult, untested rationale for pitching more than $10 million into an eight-month sailing race conducted over distant oceans before an indifferent audience of whales, flying fish and stormy petrels. Facing an anti-smoking backlash in key U.S. and European markets, Swedish Match has tried to raise the global image of its corporate name among investors and consumers -- and perhaps regulators
- Questions about Mr. Schilling's brush with catastrophe evoked a chilling response from Alan Hilburg, a spokesman for the Smokeless Tobacco Council in Washington. Mr. Curry quoted him as follows: "It has not been scientifically established that smokeless tobacco causes adverse medical effects." . . They all have to be replaced with new customers, eager and young. This is not a task for sensitive souls. It's a job for someone who can look at the family of a smokeless tobacco victim who has lost part of his face and say: "It has not been scientifically established . . ."
- Behind closed doors last week, Gingrich stiffed two of his fellow Republicans - TOM BLILEY of Virginia and JIM HANSEN of Utah - who had the effrontery to talk to Democrats in order to see if bipartisan legislation protecting kids, regulating nicotine, raising prices, and even limiting legal liability can be negotiated. . . But on behalf of his devoutly pro-tobacco company leadership, Gingrich blocked both efforts . . . What is happening here, in terms of legislative and national politics, is almost exactly what happened in Gingrich's earlier House fiasco on campaign finance reform: A majority of the place . . . is prepared to work its will on a major issue, but it cannot move because the Gingrich leadership controls the machinery, if not the membership.
- As Stanton Glantz, author of "Cigarette Papers," wrote: "The tobacco companies know how to get kids smoking and, given proper economic motivation, they will know how to stop kids from smoking." But the issue is bigger than tobacco companies. . . Teenaged smoking is a much bigger societal issue than legislators realize, and the proposed tobacco legislation does nothing to countenance it. The magic of cigarettes is not in the ads, but in the fact that they sell a mild legal drug that has become imbued with the "spirit power" of possible self-destruction and great societal controversy. Our real job is not to eradicate smoking but, to reduce the environmental conditions that help it grow - essentially, reducing the deep attraction of the forbidden and the implied psychological palliatives that give smoking its siren appeal to teens.
- Through TV and newspaper ads, Bozell Sawyer Miller Group (BSMG Worldwide) will be spending millions of dollars defending the indefensible and building a case for big tobacco -- an industry that we now know tried, often successfully, to turn 14-year-olds into lifelong addicts. Adding to the Mad Hatter element in the situation is the fact that BSMG Worldwide also represents the World Wildlife Fund, the League of Conservation Voters, the National Audubon Society and -- attention, irony connoisseurs -- the Air Quality Standards Coalition. . . . The sublime heights of linguistic artistry reached by tobacco lobbyists are such that you can hear the echoes of that powerful lament by a pastor in Nazi Germany, "First, they came for tobacco, and I was silent." . . . If the tobacco campaign succeeds, it will be a really chilling reminder of just how pliable public opinion is. Given enough money and enough chutzpah, is there anything we cannot convince people of? In this instance, success will be measured by shifting public opinion just enough so that Republican members don't have to kiss their tobacco money goodbye.
- Newt Gingrich has had a lot to say lately. (They don't call him speaker for nothing.) And the president of the United States didn't really care to respond to most of it Thursday at his first formal news conference of 1998, at one point saying, "I'm not responsible for the speaker's behavior." However. . . .
- During the tour we each gleefully received a pack of cigarettes. Since the field trip was school-sponsored, we reasoned that it would be O.K. to smoke them. However, smoking was forbidden, and each girl had to surrender her unopened pack to one of the escorting teachers before entering the bus back to school. . . I never did figure out why, with the antismoking rule strictly enforced, the school persisted in taking students to tour the Reynolds factory -- unless it was to garner free cigarettes for the faculty lounge.
- Cigarette maker Liggett Group's decision to cooperate with a Justice Department investigation of the tobacco industry not only is accelerating the inquiry but also is changing the politics of tobacco legislation.
- King County Superior Court Judge, George A. Finkle, today denied Washington state's request to compel the tobacco industry to turn over the 39,000 industry documents recently released to Congress and the State of Minnesota. . . Judge Finkle found that the defendants took "all reasonable step to protect their claims for privilege." The Judge ruled that releasing the documents to Rep. Bliley was "not voluntary," and therefore, did not waive attorney client privilege.
- "We know that the tobacco companies have targeted children, so it's time that they do something to help children. "All that money shouldn't go to highways, bridges and old people. Some of it should go to the children," Edelman said before the start of the child advocacy group's two-day conference on child poverty. More than 200 community and political leaders across the South are meeting at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis to discuss ways to combat child poverty. The conference ends today.
- The tobacco industry's main lobbying and public relations arm and another trade group that counters negative information about smoking can no longer run their daily operations after questions were raised about their goals and methods.
- In a news conference Thursday, Vacco charged that the Tobacco Institute "was established specifically to create controversy and doubt about health claims associated with smoking and to design public relations campaigns to mislead and deflect criticism about the tobacco industry." . . . "We believe that every citizen, every interest group, has a right to form a trade association and to address public policy issues in a public forum," said Lauria. As for Vacco's charges that the institute was a sham, Lauria said: "As a trade association, we have always reflected the industry point of view. Every trade association does that."
- CHRISTINE MACINTIRE of the American Lung Association shows a package of cheery-flavored cigars she says are designed to look like candy cigars. . . MacIntire says the trendy new image isn't all that worries her. It's also a bill in the Alaska Legislature that would repeal the tax on pipe and cigar tobacco, making some packs of cigars cheaper than cigarettes.
- The Democratic governor, and key Republican legislative leaders as well, wanted to let communities set stricter rules than the state's on smoking in public -- barring it in restaurants, if they choose. But an alliance of lobbies for the tobacco and restaurant industries prevailed once again.
- The Oklahoma City Council on Tuesday will consider an ordinance that adds prohibitions and penalties for selling tobacco to minors, and for minors in possession of tobacco. The ordinance, proposed by COUNCILMAN FROSTY PEAK, would also allow municipal court judges to sentence minors to tobacco education programs.
- "At one point cigarette smoking was dropping in California faster than anywhere else in the world, but since they watered down the program, that's stopped," said Dr. Stan Glantz, a UC-San Francisco professor of medicine and a member of the state's Tobacco Education and Research Oversight Committee. Glantz was to testify Monday afternoon before the state Senate Budget Committee.
- Romania's President Emil Constantinescu named a police general on Monday to head one of the country's security services, which has been tainted by accusations of links with a major cigarette contraband ring. Constantinescu appointed Anghel Andreescu as director of the Special Security Forces (SPP), with a 15-day brief to overhaul the agency, the president's press office said.
- A scandal over the mysterious delivery of 60 million contraband cigarettes to Bucharest airport claimed its first big victim when the chief of one of Romania's security services resigned on Wednesday. Nicu Anghel quit as director of the Special Security Forces (SPP) following accusations that one of his deputies, currently on the run, was the "kingpin" of a multi-million dollar cigarette smuggling ring.
- The government's proposal to ban production and sale of gutka and pan masala on the plea that they cause oral cancer has raised the hackles of pan masala and tobacco manufacturers. The latter have urged the Centre to conduct a comprehensive study to conclusively prove that these products were directly responsible for causing oral cancer before taking any steps towards prohibiting their consumption. All India pan masala and tobacco manufacturers association (AIPMTMA) coordinator Bharat Thakkar told PTI here that till the finding of the study was made available, the government should not impose any ban on manufacture and sale of gutka, pan masala or chewing tobacco products, reports PTI.
- Sylvia Sparrow, 60, who has chronic asthma, is suing St Andrews Homes for injury and loss of earnings in the first passive-smoking case in a British court.
- Here is Mr. Lehmann's plan, in his words: "My idea is simple, and it is this: "Pick a date in the near future. Say, Jan. 1, 1999. It can be any date--Aug. 12, 1998. Sept. 2, 2002. Pick a date. "Now, pass a law that says, simply: Anyone born before that date is allowed to smoke. Anyone born after that date is not allowed to smoke. Ever. No matter what.
- Spanish tobacco company Tabacalera SA (E.TAB) said Tuesday its consolidated net profit rose 42% in the first quarter of 1998 to 5.75 billion pesetas (ESP) ($1=ESP150.31) from ESP4.06 billion the same period the previous year.
- The Board of Directors of UST Inc. today declared a regular quarterly dividend of 40-1/2 cents per common share, payable June 15, 1998 to stockholders of record at the close of business June 3, 1998.
- About one-third of all exported cigarettes end up being smuggled every year and questions about the rampant trade in contraband are increasingly being directed at the source of the product. Although manufacturers say smuggling damages legitimate trade, research from inside and outside the industry shows that smuggled cigarettes help the companies establish a competitive edge in new markets. Recent court cases that link tobacco industry executives with smuggling syndicates have added to the suspicion that tobacco companies not only benefit from smuggling, but that in some cases, there may be complicity with the illegal trade.
- Brazil's main tobacco company Souza Cruz SA (E.SZC), controlled by Britain's BAT Industries PLC (BTI), said Monday that higher taxes, black market sales and a slower economy hurt the company's first quarter results. Souza Cruz reported a net profit in the first quarter of 70 million reals (BRL) ($1=BRL1.14), up 1.3% from the BRL69 million posted in the same period of 1997.
- Here are the business leaders we've picked as among the most exciting of the new corps, not just stand-outs of the current scene, but up-and-comers who will lead the top European companies of tomorrow. . . MARTIN BROUGHTON, chairman of B.A.T INDUSTRIES PLC The tough-talking tobacco executive played a key role in tobacco-liability settlement talks in the U.S., and will take over the cigarette company when B.A.T Industries splits its tobacco and financial-services unit later this year. He'll have his hands full as the antismoking crusade gains stride on this side of the Atlantic.
- The awards, presented by the Entertainment Industries Council Inc. (EIC) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, went to: . . The "No Smoking" episode of NBC's "HANG TIME," which deals with youth nicotine addiction, received the award in the Children's Television category.
- The results were published in the March issue of the Journal of Psychological Science. . . Catastrophizing can also "be hazardous because of its link to poor problem solving, social estrangement and risky decision making across diverse settings," the researchers say. Martin E.P. Seligman, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who co-authored the study, says the link between a catastrophic world view and early death probably isn't deliberate thrill-seeking behavior. . . Seligman and Peterson have also studied smokers' behavior after then-Surgeon Gen. C. Everett Koop declared nicotine addictive, and found that many optimists gave up cigarettes while pessimists did not. "They didn't think it mattered," says Seligman. Some examples of catastrophic thinking offered by the researchers are blatant. "I can't find a parking place because I'm a loser," was one.
- Another explanation he offers is the tendency of churches to celebrate with lots of food, especially sweets. "Some people have said to me, 'What do you expect? They stopped smoking. They gave up alcohol. The one sensual pleasure that's left, and it's legal, too, is eating.' There's something to that," Ferraro said.
- Radio talk show hosts, Ruth Harris-Shaw and Ed Shaw of "The Ruth & Ed Shaw Show," are on a media awareness tour targeting smoking, which they say killed 2O million Americans in the last 5O years. The radio show is sponsored by the national non-profit, Hugs Not Drugs, of which Harris-Shaw is Founder/President.
- With any luck, times will get more truly worse for Oliphant and his pen. "I'll do the tobacco thing tomorrow," he vowed at the notion of the death's-head tobacco merchants he mercilessly draws. "All humor and malice," he added, brightening.
- The plane from New Orleans to New York was airborne. Like most of the passengers, Alison Schiff settled back, scarcely listening to the cautions and instructions. That is, until the steward's announcement cut through the usual boredom. "This is a nonsmoking flight," he said. "Tampering with the anti-smoking device in the lavatory is a federal offense. Anyone needing to smoke should step outside."
- THE Health Police, not content with eliminating smoking from the nation's restaurants, will next move to control what we eat, drink and wear when out on the town. According to a very scary piece in the trade magazine NATION'S RESTAURANT NEWS, it's only a matter of time before pressure groups make their next moves to limit personal freedoms. . . "For virtually every choice we can make in a restaurant - whether involving alcohol, meat, lobster, tobacco, caffeine, dairy products, even perfume - there is a special-interest group dedicated to eliminating that option in the name of the public good," it adds. "And the movement to limit choice is gaining ground."
- [AMY WESSON] and her boyfriend were on an American Airlines flight en route to Costa Rica last week when a flight attendant saw some suspicious wisps of smoke. The excitable crew brought the plane down post haste in Puerto Rico, and officials boarded and searched everyone on board for illegal smokeables. Wesson and friend managed to make it on to Costa Rica but have been banned from the airline. "Tobacco is banned on every major airline," says Wesson's rep. "And since they're banned from American Airlines, they're now swimming back to New York."
- So boards of county commissioners that vote against taxing allotments, or which tax them at a lower rate out of sympathy for farm families, in fact might be benefiting a Roxboro banker or a Baltimore podiatrist. Other property owners in the county, meanwhile, have to make up the lost revenue. Furthermore, those commissioners are breaking state law, which says that allotments must be taxed. The state cannot afford for each county to decide which tax laws it will enforce. For the sake of evenhanded treatment of taxpayers, among other reasons, county commissioners must collect tax on these valuable holdings.
- Congress should enact a tax that will have the requisite deterrent effect on smoking. Then it can worry about what to do with whatever money the tax may raise. . . The Senate as part of its budget resolution voted for a kind of compromise or fiscal truce. It would set aside any increase in the tobacco tax to pay future Medicare costs, meaning use it for now to pay down the debt rather than to finance either a spending increase or tax cut. That's not the worst idea we've heard all year.
- The board of directors of the nation's largest veterans organization today unanimously charged the Clinton administration, Congress and the Department of Veterans Affairs not to deny health care and other compensation for veterans suffering from tobacco-related illnesses connected to their military service. The American Legion National Executive Committee reacted to the Senate Budget Committee's plan to eliminate compensation for tobacco-related illnesses for veterans
- A Harris poll finds House Republican leader Newt Gingrich, Senate Republican leader Trent Lott and the Republicans in Congress have all lost public approval, while Democrats in Congress have held steady. Pollster Humphrey Taylor says President Clinton's ratings have actually improved in the wake of recent battles over campaign finance, the tobacco industry, special prosecutor Kenneth Starr and accusations of presidential wrongdoing.
- On Tuesday, Ramsey County Board members asked the health director to explore reimbursement for county taxpayers' contributions in treating uninsured and medical assistance patients afflicted with smoking-related illnesses. This could be done in two ways. The county could file its own lawsuit or join one filed recently by HealthPartners and Medica, Minnesota's two largest managed care organizations. Hennepin County commissioners also are considering a lawsuit, and the two counties could file jointly.
- A California U.S. District Court Judge has upheld the major causes of action filed by a union sponsored health care fund in a class action lawsuit against the tobacco industry. Judge D. Lowell Jensen has ruled that the funds can amend their complaint to assert "fraud and misrepresentation" and has also sustained the fund's "negligent breach of special duty" cause of action alleged by the fund in its complaint. These two claims were the heart of the action filed last February by The Stationary Engineers Local 39 Health & Welfare Trust Fund as a class action on behalf of all similarly situated union sponsored health care funds in California.
- Major U.S. tobacco companies said on Tuesday they were pleased with a federal judge's order that guts a racketeering lawsuit brought against them by union welfare funds in California.
- Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation released the following statement regarding a decision by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, which has essentially gutted a suit brought by union welfare funds in California. The tobacco industry has won another victory in the union welfare cases with a decision by a federal court in Oakland. U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE D. LOWELL JENSEN dismissed all but one claim brought by the Stationary Engineers Local 39 Health & Welfare Trust Fund and Carpenters Health & Welfare Trust Fund for California. The claims dismissed include RICO, antitrust, intentional breach of special duty, unfair business practices, restitution and unjust enrichment. The one and only count not dismissed by the court is a claim of negligent breach of special duty.
- On Sunday, the New York Times ran a page one story by its science writer, Gina Kolata, extolling two new cancer drugs "that can eradicate any type of cancer, with no obvious side effects and no drug resistance -- in mice." . . The story is not new. The same information has appeared in other publications, although in more toned-down writing. . . . David Pearlman, of the San Francisco Chronicle, one of the most highly-regarded science writers in the country -- and one of the most cautious -- said he was "furious" when he read Kolata's story. "Another case of the Times overblowing a science story," he said. "Kolanta found someone to give a good quote -- like the Watson quote -- and the Times fell for it again."
- If the initial studies of this "cancer gene therapy" in about a hundred patients hold up, one of the companies, closely held INTROGEN THERAPEUTICS Inc. of Austin, Texas, believes its technique may be available to doctors in two years. . . Introgen and the others are exploiting a discovery made in the late 1980s about a "suicide gene" called p53. It plays a critical role in controlling normal cell growth. When cells divide, p53 makes certain that all the genes are reproduced accurately. If there are errors in the genes' structure, p53 literally halts the cell-dividing process until the mistakes can be fixed--or forces the flawed cell to kill itself off. But if p53 itself is damaged -- perhaps by smoking, excessive sunlight or toxic-chemical exposure -- the errant cells divide furiously until they become a tumor.
- All THOMAS WAUGH ever wanted was a little help kicking his 21-year cigarette habit. Yesterday, in what his attorneys describe as a historic settlement, the Florida Department of Corrections agreed to give it to him, in the form of nicotine patches and medication. ". . . It's the first time that institution has admitted nicotine addiction is a medical condition that needs to be treated," said Scott Makar, one of Waugh's lawyers.
- "It's the first time that institution has admitted nicotine addiction is a medical condition that needs to be treated," said Scott Makar, one of Waugh's lawyers.
- Overturning a recommendation made by the Planning Commission last month, the City Council has unanimously approved an ordinance banning all alcohol and tobacco advertisements on billboards within the city limits.
- An anti-smoking group asked Gov. Patton and Atty. Gen. Ben Chandler to review a state law that allows smoking in designated areas at the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport. Kentucky Action says the law discriminates against people with breathing disorders.
- AN INKATHA Freedom Party (IFP) MP caused an uproar in the National Assembly yesterday when he gave the impression that he had brought a matchbox of dagga to the speaker's podium during the agriculture budget debate. . . JURIE MENTZ complained that government policies and taxes made it cheaper to smoke dagga and encouraged its production. Amid a barrage of interjections from African National Congress benches, he said: "Get the police to arrest me I do not care, because I am speaking the truth I can spend time in jail like President Mandela."
- Tower, Emily Louise, passed away Monday morning at 1:40 a.m. as a result of lung cancer at the mere age of 46. . . . Her passing was met with great sorrow and she died quickly from lung cancer. The family asks that in remembrance of Emily Tower you quit smoking and donate money to the American Cancer Society in her memory.
- After years of chain-smoking, hard drinking and doggedly pursuing riches from the misfortune of Spanish sea captains of the 1700s, MEL FISHER at 75 is slower than he used to be. But he's as game as ever for a tangle with the government. The swashbuckling treasure hunter is under investigation, suspected of selling counterfeit gold coins. . . Ailing from months of chemotherapy to treat lymphoma, he said he suffers from forms of cancer he can't even pronounce. "Smoking and drinking and looking at lots of wild women" are part of his life nowadays, he said. "Romance, fun and adventure gives you something to live for."
- THE anti-tobacco jihad turned violent at a charity horse show in Greenwich Saturday night when a cigar-chomping Wall Streeter was roughed up by an anti-smoking vigilante. The smoker was PETER KIERNAN, an investment banker at Goldman Sachs who specializes in media companies. He was enjoying a cigar at JUMP FOR JOY, an exhibition to raise money for PEGASUS, which sponsors riding for disabled children, and HOLE IN THE WALL GANG . . . at LIONSHARE FARM.
- Baseball officials have taken a stick to Ramon Hernandez, and they insist on beating him with it until he succumbs to their desire -- to pay a $150 fine by Friday or face double the fine and suspension from his job as catcher for the Huntsville Stars of the Class AA Southern League. Hernandez, a Venezuelan native who will be 22 years old in two weeks, is a highly rated prospect in the Oakland Athletics' organization.
- In fact, the only bill of consequence the Republicans have passed this year calls for a large increase in domestic spending. That's the highway bill. . . Tobacco legislation has also become entangled in the tax-and-spending debate. Republicans want to be seen as supporting a bill that will reduce smoking, but such a bill requires a tax increase to force up the price, and they're opposed to that.
- It's time for the Supreme Court to relegate its decision that money has absolute First Amendment rights (Buckley v. Valeo, 1976) to the . . . dustbin . . . The court's action in Buckley is as responsible as any political party for the campaign finance scandals that have spawned a steady rise in corruption and a decline in trust in government over the past quarter-century. . . Indeed all the players -- Big Tobacco, the alcohol, bar and restaurant industries, the arms and high-tech merchants, Republican leaders in Congress and the president -- are doing exactly what our system of campaign financing encourages them to do. . . We have made it very much in the interest of businessmen seeking profits and labor unions seeking power to pay what it takes to elect politicians who promise to help them. We have put enormous pressure on our elected officials to pander to moneyed interests. The Supreme Court has the power to ease that pressure.
- [N]obody is willing to negotiate a final deal until it is the last possible negotiation - the conference committee. Here's the choreography: The House passes a very limited bill. The White House threatens a veto. The Senate waters down the McCain bill. The White House renews its threat. Everybody goes into the conference committee. A six-way negotiation ensues. Two in the room: House and Senate. One in the wings: the administration. Three in the background: the state attorneys general, the public health community, and the tobacco companies. . . The conference committee result is predictable: a significant increase in the cigarette tax, a partial rebate through a tax cut, Federal Drug Administration (FDA) jurisdiction, advertising restrictions, an annual cap on damage awards (if the tobacco companies adopt the restrictions), and a penalty for missing teen smoking targets. The tobacco companies will moan and groan, but will opt in and voluntarily accept the ad restrictions. When they see the nature, diversity and strength of the class-action suits coming at them for second-hand smoke and for addicting children - as children - to cigarettes, they will have to cave in.
- That money is not a windfall for the state. The purpose of Minnesota' s lawsuit against the tobacco industry was to recoup the costs of tobacco addiction to the people of Minnesota. Any settlement or jury award should be spent on tobacco-related health care and education to prevent smoking in the future.
- One tobacco executive said candidates have started asking companies to be stealthier about their giving, directing checks to state parties or the House and Senate campaign committees -- organizations that deprive the politicians of direct control over the funds, but that can work to their benefit while providing deniability. Some candidates vow not to take tobacco money, but then accept checks from the political action committees of tobacco subsidiaries -- even though almost all that money comes directly from the tobacco parent's PAC. Others swear off tobacco money but solicit it for their state parties or pet projects. And some who refuse contributions supplied by company executives through a tobacco PAC nevertheless accept private checks from the very same individuals. . . Yet when Pryce and Dunn were hosts to 700 people for the Republican Women's Leadership Forum here last week, they relied on tobacco to help foot the bill. KRAFT donated $25,000, UST Inc. -- which owns the U.S. Tobacco Co. -- gave $5,000 and its subsidiary CHATEAU STE. MICHELE, a Washington state winery, donated $5,000 worth of wine.
- Politicians call it "soft money" but they count in hard cash. Although soft money contributions to political parties must be reported under federal law, the checks may arrive in unlimited amountssometimes well over $100,000 at a time. . . A review of soft money contributions from the tobacco industry shows most of it going to Republicans.
- Those hoping for congressional approval of comprehensive anti-smoking legislation this year have one mighty obstacle in their way: the influence of money in politics.
- In addition to campaign contributions and soft money, industries can try to buy their agendas in Congress by giving money to "leadership Political Action Committees." . . This chart shows tobacco industry contributions to the leadership PACs of current members of Congress from Jan. 1, 1987 through Dec. 31, 1997.
- Wondering why President Clinton seems doubtful that Congress will pass any meaningful tobacco legislation this session? Consider this: The tobacco industry is proving once again it has some of the deepest pockets in the Washington money game, and it isn't afraid to keep its checkbook open.
- But the new cigarette stamp is key to the state's plan to stop millions of dollars in cigarette smuggling from other states where cigarette taxes are lower. Stamped cigarette packs started hitting store shelves last Friday, and by this September, every pack of cigarettes sold in Michigan must have one.
- The Colorado Executive Director of the anti-tobacco group that ran newspaper advertisements critical of SEN. BEN NIGHTHORSE CAMPBELL (R-Colo.) was a consultant to Campbell's Democrat opponent, according to documents released today by REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN JIM NICHOLSON. . . . "It's a conflict of interest for the CAMPAIGN FOR TOBACCO-FREE KIDS to have its Colorado Executive Director on the payroll of a Democrat candidate for the Senate, and I call on DOTTIE LAMM and Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids to immediately withdraw these misleading and highly partisan advertisements before their organization's credibility is gone completely," NICHOLSON said. "The goal of reducing teenage smoking is too important to be used by cynical politicians as a political pawn."
- An employee gives $100 to the United Way. The United Way distributes $5 of that money to an environmental group that spends money on park bond initiatives, $3 to a health group that spends money on anti-smoking initiatives, and so on. Proposition 226 might require the employer to figure out how much of the worker's $100 is going to park bond initiatives, anti- smoking initiatives, etc., and then get written consent for it. Some nonprofit groups worry that this kind of paperwork will make employers put their workplace giving programs on hold -- either permanently, or until the expected lawsuits over Proposition 226 are resolved.
- Richmond's City Jail will ban smoking starting July 1, and Sheriff Michelle M. Mitchell is making sure the word gets around. . . Chesterfield County banned smoking in its jail in 1992, and the sheriffs in Henrico and Hanover counties followed with jail smoking bans in 1995.
- Montgomery County officials today predicted easy passage for a proposed tax on smokeless tobacco and cigars that could mean higher prices for users and, they hope, lower use among minors.
- MONTGOMERY COUNTY Executive DOUGLAS M. DUNCAN will launch a new county campaign against tobacco today with a proposal to tax the sale of cigars and smokeless tobacco products, attempting to enact locally a plan the Maryland General Assembly refused to adopt statewide.
- Gilmore also used the speech to reiterate his support for the state's $5 billion-a-year tobacco industry. "I will not help destroy an industry that sustains thousands of family farmers, including a majority of Virginia's minority farmers," he said. "I am not going to forget these people and leave them in the lurch. I'm just not going to."
- The chasm between those who desire a smoking ban and those who don't for restaurants in the City of Beloit remains wide. . . Nevertheless, members of the newly formed Smoking Compromise Committee met Thursday at City Hall and engaged in healthy debate as they began hashing out opinions and concerns. The nine-member committee includes: Marion Fass, Betty Johnson and Walter Scholten, M.D., representing the Board of Health; Jim Degan, Chuck Loft and Darlene Rath representing restaurant owners and Tom Hankins, Thomas Jones, M.D., and Bill Kalt from the community-at-large.
- CITY ATTY. JAMES K. HAHN protested the mayor's proposal to shift $1.5 million from a court settlement with R.J. Reynolds to the anti-drug program DARE. DARE officials acknowledged that anti-smoking messages are a small component of their program, which focuses mainly on drugs and alcohol.
- The other, a phased extension of the TV ban on cigarette advertising to other media and to sponsorship, has finally emerged, substantially intact, from the Council of Ministers. Since 1990 it has largely languished in the drawer of the Commissioner for Health, one Padraig Flynn, unable to muster a qualified majority in its 15 sorties to ministers. . . Should MEPs agree it unamended, ministers will then give their formal approval and the Germans, the EU's largest manufacturers, will not get another crack at blocking the proposals although they have served notice of a possible court challenge.
- "We are a bit worried about the behavior of certain multinationals," Birgitta Gunnarsson, spokeswoman for the EU's anti-fraud Commissioner Anita Gradin said today.
- European governments, increasingly frustrated by the rising volume of American cigarettes smuggled into Europe, have decided to turn to Washington for help in investigating the suspected involvement of American tobacco companies, starting with R.J. REYNOLDS TOBACCO CO., a senior European Union official said Thursday.
- The once roaring cross-channel beer trade between Britain and mainland Europe is slowing, while sales of wine and cigarettes are booming, said Dave West, owner of the EastEnders Cash & Carry chain in Calais, France. . . "The fags are going out of the sky. They took off in December last year, when the government wacked two pound on a carton of 200. That's a difference of 15 pound on a carton between the UK and Belgium," said West.
- The group, which said it has 70 percent of the local market through its local subsidiary, joined forces with the Kazakh Education, Culture and Health Ministry to send its message, contained in a series of posters aimed at schoolchildren. . . "Children should study, not smoke," runs a poster featuring a girl playing on a computer. "Childhood curiosity should not extend to smoking," says another with a boy and a model boat.
- Sylvia Sparrow, aged 60, claims she was left with asthma and severe chest problems after three years of working in the Worsley Lodge elderly people's home in Swinton, Greater Manchester. . . Mrs Sparrow's action, being funded by the Royal College of Nursing, alleges that the company failed to provide a safe environment for her to work.
- our mail contained the "Good Life Catalog" from Thompson & Co. of Tampa. Fla. It's a cigar catalog and inside was an ad for -- GEORGE BURNS' stogies, four different kinds. . . The deal was made by Burns' son, Ronnie, who called to tell me he'd made the deal with the Consolidated Cigar Co.
- Moody's Investor Services confirmed the Baa2 rating for the senior unsecured bank debt of Imperial Tobacco Group Plc and the P-2 rating of Imperial Tobacco Finance Plc for its US$ 1 bn. commercial paper programme. The confirmed ratings reflect the strategic sense in diversifying away from a declining UK market, the expected synergy benefits to accrue in purchasing, marketing, manufacturing and distribution, and the leading market share position the group will now hold in the global hand-rolling tobacco sector.
- "In many cases the large, premium cigars have the tobacco equivalent of a half-pack of cigarettes," said Shopland, who coordinated the [NCI] report. "Half a pack of cigarettes ... is not an insignificant amount of tobacco to be consuming." Many cigar smokers don't realize that nicotine can be absorbed by the pores in the mouth, causing an addiction, Shopland said. As with other types of tobacco, a person can start out using just a little but become addicted. Many cigar connoisseurs don't buy it.
- Amid independent counsel KEN STARR's secret grand jury proceedings yesterday came the first hint of drugs. Maybe. Was that a partially smoked marijuana cigarette (or "roach," to those who inhale) left in the third floor ladies' room near the grand jury chamber? Or was it some exotic hand-rolled tobacco cigarette? Female reporters popped into the loo for a look and a courtroom artist sketched it, reports The Post's Ben White. A U.S. marshal said it could be "reefer" and left it there. Then someone nicked it.
- But DAIMLER-BENZ CHAIRMAN JUERGEN E. SCHREMPP and CHRYSLER CORP. CHAIRMAN ROBERT J. EATON say they are ideal partners in merging two companies into the world's fifth-largest automaker. "We have been very close for the last four or five months," Schrempp said. "I have a feeling that he's a good guy because he's smoking the same cigars."
- Calling the proposal "grossly inefficient and impractical," a Middlesex Superior Court judge ruled yesterday that the tobacco industry cannot interview thousands of Medicaid recipients who allegedly are victims of smoking-related illnesses. JUDGE MARTHA B. SOSMAN, who is overseeing the state's multibillion-dollar lawsuit against the industry, said the interviews could have taken five years.
- A judge has rejected a tobacco industry request to interview thousands of Medicaid recipients with smoking-related illnesses in Massachusetts. . . JUDGE MARTHA SOSMAN also turned down another industry request for the names of the Medicaid recipients, with the state arguing it would invade their privacy. But Sosman did give the tobacco makers a victory on a third motion, rejecting a state request to force the industry to turn over thousands of sensitive internal documents
- In Middlesex Superior Court in Cambridge, JUDGE MARTHA SOSMAN is hearing arguments on whether tobacco industry attorneys should be allowed to take depositions of Medicaid recipients who suffer from smoking-related illnesses. . . . Later today in U.S. District Court in Boston, JUDGE GEORGE O'TOOLE is to hear arguments that the state's first-in-the-nation tobacco ingredient disclosure law should be allowed to go forward.
- Massachusetts argued Thursday that a federal judge should allow its law requiring tobacco companies to disclose all ingredients by brand to go into effect immediately. . . Asst. Massachusetts Attorney General William Porter argued the tobacco industry wanted Judge O'Toole to rule that "it's unconstitutional for the Commonwealth to protect the health of its citizens."
- Minnesota should reclaim its pioneering role in reducing public tobacco use by enacting an outdoor version of its landmark 1975 Clean Indoor Air Act, says a public-private partnership led by BLUE CROSS AND BLUE SHIELD of Minnesota. A "Minnesota Clean Outdoor Air Act" should be just one part of a broader strategy to keep children from smoking, protect nonsmokers from secondary smoke and help tobacco users kick their habit, according to a 72-page report released Tuesday by the group MINNESOTA DECIDES.
- If the rumored $5 billion settlement with tobacco companies comes true, it would be a little like the state winning the lottery. So what would it do with the big prize?
- Sen. Gary Laidig, R-Stillwater, called on Gov. Arne Carlson to appoint a special panel to review any settlement, along with the amounts of legal fees, federal reimbursements and the share going to Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, the other plaintiff in the suit.
- The scent of tobacco money is beginning to permeate the mostly empty Minnesota Capitol . . . "I will be the first among many screaming for some dollars," said Sen. John Hottinger, DFL-Mankato, who could not find any money for his proposed children's endowment in this year's legislative session. . . Like an unhappy family that suddenly wins the lottery, Gov. Arne Carlson and the Legislature have found that riches are no guarantee of peace and happiness. Years of budget surpluses, including a windfall of more than $1.9 billion this year, have provoked pitched battles between give-it-back and spend-it-wisely factions.
- Other brands are laboring to undo consumer misperceptions. . . . Uzbeks peer at bar codes on PHILIP MORRIS COS.' MARLBORO cigarettes to learn where the pack was made; they will pay a premium for smokes made in the U.S.
- Zimbabwe's central bank Tuesday ruled out a state bail-out for the collapsed United Merchant Bank, suspended last week as the government launched an investigation into alleged massive fraud. . . Boka's tobacco auction floor was closed Tuesday but Mnangagwa indicated that it and the other seven frozen companies will be allowed to continue business.
- Zimbabwe has frozen the multibillion-dollar business empire of militant black empowerment campaigner ROGER BOKA. . . The Boka fiasco could imperil government's talks with the International Monetary Fund for re-extension of $280m budget support. Renewed aid is conditional on spending cuts, impossible if the government bales out the Boka empire. . . The nine Boka companies frozen include United Merchant Bank and BOKA TOBACCO FLOORS, which last year opened what was claimed to be the world's largest auction site for tobacco. It sold 8% of the crop.
- In March an Ottawa newspaper reported, on its front page, that a "secretly published study" had shown "not only that there might be no link between passive smoking and lung cancer, but that it could even have a protective effect." Charlotte Gray wonders how a single article could manage to get so many facts wrong and why supposedly reputable papers would publish it.
- 1998 SOI highlights include: . . The top four product categories, as a percentage of in-store sales, were cigarettes (27.6 percent); beer (14 percent); non-alcohol beverages (13.6 percent); and foodservice (12 percent).
- HENRY H. HARRELL, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Universal Corporation, announced today that double-digit earnings growth continued in the third quarter ended March 31, 1998. Net income was $31.5 million or $.89 per share on a diluted basis. This was a 14% increase over the $27.6 million or $.78 diluted earnings per share earned in the third quarter of 1997.
- Standard Commercial Corporation has reached an agreement with Vicente Sanchez y Sanchez Valdepenas and Sra Pilar Sanchez Valdepenas Jerez of Benavente, Spain, whereby its subsidiaries have acquired the 30% shareholding in World Wide Tobacco Espana S.A. previously owned by the Sanchez family.
- The battle of personalities between the REV. MICHAEL PFLEGER and talk-show host JERRY SPRINGER may have been inevitable, but the outcome seems to have surprised Springer himself. . . This isn't Pfleger's first high-profile battle. He waged a 14-year fight that led the City Council last fall to ban liquor and cigarette billboards in residential areas, amid criticism that they were especially prominent in minority neighborhoods.
- Al Pacino will go deep into the heart of tobacco country for his new movie about a former cigarette company vice president who turned against the industry. With Pacino . . . due to arrive in two weeks, a movie crew went to work Tuesday getting the neighborhood ready.
- John Hurt, starring as a man obsessed in 'Love and Death on Long Island,' loves the 'adventurous' content that smaller films offer. As the love-struck writer in "LOVE AND DEATH ON LONG ISLAND," John Hurt's Giles De'Ath (death, get it?) eventually leaves his London study, hops on a plane and heads for the fictional Chesterton, Long Island, N.Y., home of Jason Priestley's Ronnie Bostock. . . One hazard of the role: Hurt had to take up smoking again. "When I started smoking, it was romantic and grown-up and everyone said you should look nervous without a cigarette," Hurt said. "I have given smoking up on several occasions, but Giles in 'Love and Death' smokes, so that makes you take it up again, particularly if you like it."
- The cigar tax amendment, sponsored by Representative Mary Jane Simmons of Leominster, is structured to have the greatest effect on the cheapest brands. . . Cigar manufacturers grumble that a hodge-podge of different state laws impedes their ability to do business. But in 1985 Massachusetts led the way with similar labeling and disclosure regulations on snuff and smokeless tobacco. Some 30 other states followed suit, eventually resulting in a single national standard.
- Monday morning, as Americans thrilled to the news of a dramatic advance in the fight against cancer, nowhere was the joy more electric than in the inner councils of the tobacco industry. . . DR. LESTER TARR (a tobacco industry scientist): This is a glorious day for all of us who have labored in the vineyards of cancer research. I knew that if we could hold out long enough, science would come riding over the hill like the cavalry.
- But the announcement is not just a show of force. It also sheds some light on the focuses of the investigation . . . Liggett, the department's statement claims, has agreed to provide information about the industry's knowledge of tobacco's health consequences; its control of nicotine; its targeting of young smokers; the role of an industry group called the Council for Tobacco Research; and alleged efforts by tobacco lawyers to control scientific research and draft false statements to Congress and regulators. . . The announcement, in short, suggests that the department has not been wasting time . . . It dangles the tantalizing possibility of a new front in the tobacco wars.
- MEEHAN's bill doesn't do everything. It is silent on protecting tobacco farmers and cannot achieve the kinds of severe marketing restrictions outlined in the voluntary settlement. But with tobacco's friends in Congress looking to delay and deceive, it is a direct approach to passing legislation before cigarettes can addict another generation.
- But the basic claim underlying civil tobacco litigation -- that individual smokers were innocent victims, unaware that tobacco was addictive and dangerous to their health -- is too ridiculous to be allowed to clog up our judicial system, as it undoubtedly will unless some liability relief is passed. . . The politicians are not after a deal but blood money, mountains of it. Consequently, there may be no tobacco legislation at all this year. That is too bad. There is a compromise waiting to be struck -- that is, if anybody is really doing this for the kids.
- Tobacco industry lawyers urged a district judge in Helena to throw out Montana's lawsuit . . . Judge Thomas Honzel of Helena did not immediately rule on the dismissal request.
- New York State Supreme Court Judge Stephen G. Crane yesterday vacated an order, issued May 1, which placed The Tobacco Institute into temporary receivership pending a June 8 hearing on the petition of the New York Attorney General seeking to dissolve The Tobacco Institute. In his written decision, Judge Crane noted "the facts upon which the appointment of a receiver is granted must be proved by competent legal evidence ... the Attorney General has made no such showing."
- Wisconsin Attorney General James Doyle, who has a similar lawsuit pending against the tobacco industry, applauded his Minnesota counterpart's view that a proposed national tobacco settlement was unsatisfactory for states and praised Hubert Humphrey III for pressing the state's legal action.
- Police sting operation pays off. Efforts timed for prom, graduation activities
- Anti-tobacco activists want to keep Joe Camel from becoming more recognizable to Denver kids than John Elway. A group of West High School students has joined Mayor Wellington Webb's administration in pushing an ordinance that would outlaw outdoor tobacco advertising.
- The vice president insists that his only sin now is cigarette smoking, and claims he will give up his Pall Malls after becoming president "because then I will have no `vice' left in my title."
- The Health Ministry has embarked on an exercise to empower all school heads nationwide to compound offenders flouting the non-smoking ruling in school premises. Once empowered, school heads would double up as "enforcement officers" to compound offenders such as school staff, students and even visitors who are caught smoking within the school's compound.
- "The world today is economically richer and environmentally poorer than ever," said Lester R. Brown, president of Worldwatch Institute, which released its "Vital Signs 1998" report on environmental trends on Saturday. . . Other data in the report include: Worldwide cigarette production reached an all-time high at 5.74 trillion smokes in 1997, but because population continues to expand so rapidly, per capita production is down about 4 percent from a decade ago.
- "The editors and executives of our nation's media must assume responsibility for their advertising," said MOHAMMAD N. AKHTER, M.D., M.P.H., executive director of the AMERICAN PUBLIC HEALTH ASSOCIATION (APHA). "We first urge them to protect public health by breaking their dependence on tobacco and initiating a process to eliminate tobacco products from their advertising. Until then, when they accept ads for products that kill, they must also prominently disclose to their readers and viewers the public health risks related to those products."
- According to Indian tradition, plant spirits like tobacco, which is generally offered as a reciprocal gift. It should be mentioned though, that firstly, natural tobacco is quite a different kind of substance to what is nowadays sold as cigarettes. The chemical concoctions produced by the tobacco companies and the dried leaves of Nicotiana rustica used by most indigenous people can hardly be compared.
- These are just a few of the tidbits in "Buzzed," a sort of Betty Crocker book for the recreational drug world. In it, three Duke University scientists -- whose motto is "Just Say Know" -- dispel the misconceptions and myths about used and abused drugs from alcohol to Ecstasy.
- So it is at the new Santa Monica Museum of Art . . . Together with "BECK & AL HANSEN: Playing With Matches," a modest but absorbing show of collages by the celebrated young pop musician and his late grandfather . . . A hippy, busty Venus is the most frequently encountered image in Hansen's art. . . Other venuses are made from clumps of grungy cigarette butts or collaged bits of used, unrolled cigarette papers--Parliaments, Marlboro Lights and Benson & Hedges being the favored brands--suggesting the dreamy residue of countless post-coital smokes.
- THANK YOU FOR NOT LIGHTING UP OR STICKING UP: Joe Eisaman of Beverly Hills found a pawnshop in Hollywood that has prohibitions against two forms of smoke--tobacco and gun (see photo).
- your government is required by law to see that it's paying the proper differentials -- with Washington as the base city -- to folks in the nation's most expensive (often most remote) areas, like Hawaii and Alaska. Complaints of COLA (cost-of-living adjustment) discrimination produced several lawsuits, which produced a government agreement to participate in -- and honor -- the results of a major federal look at prices. The firm of Joel Popkin and Co. will get $50,000 (not, officials say, from federal funds) to do the survey this summer. . . The list goes on and on. . . And despite the war on tobacco, the price of 200 WINSTON FILTER KINGS will be compared from region to region.
- State officials are hopeful Minnesota's recent settlement with the tobacco companies will lead to more money and more power to regulate the industry for Florida. But it's too soon to say just what effect, if any, the deal struck Friday will have on Florida's historic agreement, a state spokeswoman said Saturday.
- That's because tobacco advertising has declined steadily as a share of billboard companies' revenue for the past 20 years. And the decline in tobacco advertising has opened up key former hooked-on-tobacco billboard sites to an array of non-tobacco advertisers. "This industry has done an excellent job of overcoming our dependency on tobacco," said Paul Sara, president of Milwaukee-area operations for Eller Media Co.
- : We find it ironic that some people have taken to using the Illinois Statehouse's fire escapes as their own personal smoking lounges. But then again, smoking is forbidden in most parts of the Capitol. So the sight of ashtrays and the smell of tobacco is becoming a common one in the corridor meant to let people escape in an emergency.
- Smokers who feel they're being courteous by stepping outside to light up are increasingly finding that going outdoors is simply not enough. A growing number of California communities are extending smoking restrictions into the outside world by banning puffing in parks, at bus stops and on public sidewalks.
- About 300 African-American women spanning several generations came out in a dreary drizzle yesterday to meet at the Reggie Lewis Center for the third annual Mothers and Daughters Brunch for Good Health. . . Along with the focus on breast cancer, other speakers at the brunch talked about the dangers of smoking. "Since 1995, smoking among black teens nationwide has risen 80 percent," said Dr. Marilyn Griffin. "This statistic indicates that the tobacco companies are still trying to pander to black youngsters and they're doing it effectively."
- The owner of Sooke River Hotel wants to douse an upcoming bylaw making all public buildings smoke-free. Don Rittaler filed a lawsuit Friday against the bylaw that takes effect next Jan. 1. Rittaler contends the Capital Regional District bylaw that will ban smoking in all buildings except private residences and vehicles is contrary to the Charter of Rights and beyond the district's powers.
- But in the PHILIPPINES, the camel and the cowboy are rapidly being replaced by the Virgin Mary selling American and other foreign brand smokes. In POLAND, hot American cars help push smoking as a symbol of new found freedom and, in some ASIAN countries, cigarettes are promoted by smiling children on posters and billboards.
- Tobacco firms aim at 'maximum profits' APHALUCK BHATIASEVI REFORM advocate PRAWASE WASI called on multinational tobacco firms on Friday to ease promotion of cigarette sales in developing countries. "Americans are killing people around the world through exporting cigarettes by trying only to make maximum profits," Dr Prawase said.
- A CLOSE friend of Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, is being held in a Portuguese maximum security prison on charges of possession of £1.7m worth of allegedly illegal tobacco. Kevin McKinley, once the IRA's top American arms buyer, was taken into custody after MI5 tracked a container ship, which it originally believed contained guns and explosives, from South Africa.
- Anti-smoking activist AKINORI ITO is angry. . . The suit against PHILIP MORRIS -- the largest foreign-owned tobacco company in the country -- marks the opening of a new battlefront for Japan's small but active movement against Big Tobacco. The trial . . . starts Thursday
- Loews Corp. Monday restated its first quarter per share loss at $0.73 from the previously released $0.07, attributing the huge revision to the tobacco litigation settlement in Minnesota.
- DIMON Inc. aid Monday it is taking bids for the sale of its Florimex, cut flowers unit and sees lower than expected U.S. tobacco consumption, the Asian economic crisis and smaller tobacco crops in Brazil depressing the company's growth during the fourth quarter and into its 1999 fiscal year.
- Blue mold . . . has appeared in several Middle Tennessee counties and growers are concerned it could spread. . . Blue mold has been found in plants in Robertson, Cheatham, Trousdale, Smith, Macon and Sumner counties. All the infected plants were shipped from Florida, said Steve Bost, plant pathologist for the University of Tennessee Extension Service.
- Blue mold has been found in a direct seeded tobacco greenhouse in Calloway County, but the grower's name and location aren't being disclosed. "Right now we need to take some measures to establish how bad and how controllable the fungus is before we release any names," said county agriculture extension service agent Jay Stone.
- Very rainy April delayed the transplanting schedule, and it just keeps coming
- PC411 Inc. acquired Coinexx Corp., a tobacco inventory control system maker, for 147,500 PC411 common shares.
- Despite its decaying infrastructure, Cuba retains an exotic, decadent charm, not least in the makeshift approach to its most prized creation - the cigar. Jonathan Futrell lights up
- But the real reason David Kessler calls smoking a "pediatric disease" is that he objects to adults making a decision he thinks is foolish. . . But this view of addiction is simplistic. As Sullum notes, "addiction is a pattern of behavior, not a chemical reaction." Certainly, for many people, to stop smoking -- or to stop using heroin or alcohol -- is difficult. . . Most smokers who try to give up the habit but relapse do so because, on some level, they enjoy it, even while understanding the consequences. . . It's ironic that Philip Morris, a generous contributor to drug-war propaganda via the Partnership for a Drug Free America, now finds itself the victim of the same absolutism that motivates policy on illegal drugs.
- The hard-charging drug czar has become a valuable political asset for Mr. Clinton as Republicans gear up to counter the president's antitobacco efforts by linking their tobacco proposals to tougher federal actions to combat increasing teenage drug-use. Heading into this fall's elections, Republicans plan to paint the White House, and Democrats, as soft on drugs. . . Mr. McCaffrey, who has gained credibility even among many Republicans, can help the White House blunt the GOP attack.
- Mark Smith, a spokesman for Brown & Williamson, . . . said that the company was outraged that "any citizen is unfairly threatened by possible criminal charges by purposeful and illegal leaks. . . Brown & Williamson protests this basic unfairness and intends to pursue any remedy available to it." Several law-enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Justice Department officials had recently sent letters to the cigarette-maker, which is a subsidiary of B.A.T Industries PLC, and several of its officials formally notifying them that they face possible prosecution.
- Tobacco industry lawyers hope an Iowa Supreme Court decision will help snuff out an Indiana lawsuit seeking millions of dollars from tobacco companies to pay the public cost of treating people sickened by smoking. But Indiana Attorney General JEFFREY A. MODISETT said Monday that decision doesn't apply in Indiana because Iowa laws are different. His comments came as lawyers for the state and tobacco industry argued before a Marion Superior Court judge whether a lawsuit filed last year against nine tobacco companies should be dismissed.
- Taxi drivers are threatening a one-day strike in New York City to protest proposed tough new rules to govern the city's 12,000 licensed cabs, organizers said Monday. . . The proposals make it easier to yank taxi licenses, require drivers to boost their insurance coverage and hike fines for such violations as smoking or being rude to passengers.
- JERRY LUI KIN-HONG, who worked for British-American Tobacco (HK), was paid the money through offshore bank accounts by distributors anxious to keep hold of the firm's business, prosecutor John Reading said. . . . Lui, 42, denies conspiring with former Giant Island directors to accept advantages between August 1988 and May 1993, by which time he was BAT's director of exports.
- JERRY LUI KIN-HONG, 42, is charged in connection with his activities from June 1988 to December 1993, while he was an officer working with subsidiary firms of BAT Industries PLC in Hong Kong. The charge alleges that Lui had conspired with at least four men, Hung Wing-wah, Chui To-yan, Chong Tsoi-jun and Chen Ying-jen, to accept advantages for Lui to ensure a steady supply of cigarettes to East Asian distributors Wing Wah Co. or Giant Island Limited.
- The vast majority of cigarettes are brought into Romania illegally, and a recent smuggling scandal is just beginning to reveal the extent of corruption in the country, media reported Monday. In the past two years, the number of legal cigarette imports has plummeted, according to statistics released by customs officials.
- Merrill Lynch tobacco analyst Mr Dan Nicholas said the Australian tobacco industry was highly competitive, with three main players dominating the market.
- The major cigarette manufacturers are bumping up cigarette prices by $0.05 per pack, a move Wall Street analysts attributed to the need to fund the companies' $6 billion-plus settlement of Minnesota's lawsuit against the industry.
- The latest increase means wholesale cigarette prices have climbed about 20% in the past nine months, according to Salomon Smith Barney Tobacco Research. . . . Industry analysts said the increase will pay for the first annual payment of about $800 million for the settlement, reached Friday, of Minnesota's suit to recover health-care costs linked to smoking. The price increase also will fund an estimated $300 million in payments to the states of Mississippi, Florida and Texas
- The nation's two largest cigarette companies announced wholesale price hikes of 5 cents a pack Monday, their fourth increase in 14 months. PHILIP MORRIS COS. and R.J. REYNOLDS TOBACCO CO. said the price hikes of $2.50 per thousand cigarettes were effective immediately. A Reynolds spokesman, Richard Williams, said the price increase ``reflects the ongoing cost of conducting business.''
- This kind of self-pitying rhetoric may manage to find a sympathetic ear or two, but more persuasive by far is the recent blitz of cigarette advertising, in particular a billboard by the Philip Morris corporation. At first glance, the latest incarnation of the Marlboro Man scattered around Twin Cities highways might resemble all the others . . . Against a brilliant azure sky, the cowboy hangs with the resignation of Christ on the cross: head swiveled over shoulder, eyes peering into the souls of all those sinners he's about to die for, lips sucking a last-request butt.
- Tar Wars is an interactive tobacco education program that increases students' awareness of attitudes about tobacco use, and of the effects tobacco has on the body. Through group activities and classroom discussions, students also examine the different messages in tobacco advertising and how these ads influence people.
- It's a hit-and-miss hour, with too many wide misses. But DeGeneres does connect with a few segments -- one in which she hosts a 1950s black and white quiz show called ``Who's the Commie?'' sponsored by a brand of cigarettes (``now with more nicotine for extra pep'')
- Steinberg and her never-blinking camera was indeed given no limits on what she could seek out, and she was able to delve deeply into the show's most harrowing, divisive moment: the decision in 1995 to scrap a story about tobacco giant Brown & Williamson featuring an interview with former executive Jeffrey Wiegand. Fearing a multibillion-dollar lawsuit at the time when CBS was being sold to Westinghouse, CBS blinked and demanded that the story be scrapped, sending an irate, embarrassed Wallace on the warpath.
- The scoop offered by the program is Hewitt's apology for what he concedes was not his proudest hour, his failure in 1995 to resist CBS management's decision to suppress an interview with a tobacco industry whistle-blower. Wallace and his producer, Lowell Bergman, fought to show it -- network lawyers feared a costly lawsuit -- and felt that the boss did not back them up. There are references to nasty memos and slamming doors and colleagues' not talking to one another. Hewitt says: "I wish I'd conducted myself as well as Mike."
- And revisiting the darkest, stormiest episode in the life of "60 Minutes," there is Hewitt being pressed by Steinberg about his failure to publicly resist CBS management's 1995 quashing of an interview with Jeffrey Wigand . . . Don Hewitt: 90 Minutes on '60 Minutes' " airs at 9 p.m. Wednesday on KCET-TV Channel 28. "60 Minutes at 30" airs at 7 p.m. Sunday on CBS (Channel 2).
- While the "Frontline" story is true enough in its view of how the important Mississippi strategy developed, it has the uneasy feel of scrambling to keep up with its own story.
- In fact, according to official government statistics that have emerged in recent years, there are plenty of occasional smokers. David Mendez, an assistant professor of public health at the University of Michigan, was analyzing smoking statistics from surveys conducted for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with his computer last spring when he noticed that the percentage of people who said that they smoke, but not on a daily basis, made up 18 percent of the country's estimated 45 million smokers.
- Fifty of the nation's best bass fishermen are set to compete in the 15th annual Red Man All-American Bass Fishing Championship May 25-30, 1998, on the Mississippi River in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. . . Sponsors of the Red Man Tournament Trail include: Red Man Chewing Tobacco, Ranger Boats, Abu Garcia Rods and Reels, Armour Vienna Sausage, Chevy Trucks, Stren Fishing Lines, Evinrude Outboards, Evinrude Electric Trolling Motors, Humminbird Fishfinders, CITGO Petroleum Corporation, ENERGIZER Marine Batteries, Old Milwaukee NA, American Camper, Igloo, Uniroyal, Gambler/Bang, and BC Powders.
- Smoking! Name the authors and titles of the following works: 1) This English essayist, a schoolmate of Coleridge's, wrote "For thy sake, Tobacco, I/ Would do anything but die." 2) This picaresque novel, set in the 18th century but written in the 20th, has a protagonist who composes a satirical epic about tobacco.
- Under Minnesota's landmark $6 billion settlement with tobacco makers, reached on Friday, the companies have agreed not to pay Hollywood producers and studios to place cigarettes or other tobacco-related props in movies. The ban, national in scope, is sure to please organizations, such as the Entertainment Industry Council, which have been advocating that actors stop smoking in movies and on television.
- And her SLAM! efforts have landed her all kinds of media coverage, which Nuchow called the ultimate irony: "We've gotten more publicity than Virginia Slims could have offered."
- Researching it, he came across a 1933 document, "The Lone Ranger's Standards and Background," the script-writing reference from the early days of radio that defined how the Lone Ranger behaved. "It said the Lone Ranger doesn't smoke, doesn't drink and doesn't use profanity," says Lichtman. "There was a set of characteristics that were value-based. The Lone Ranger is honest, sincere, straightforward; he is fair . . . caring, loyal, respectful and tolerant." The more Lichtman contemplated those thrilling days of yesteryear, the more he understood the useful device the unerring fictional hero could be in ethical dilemmas today. So he wrote "The Lone Ranger's Code of the West" (Scribbler's Ink, 1996, $15), an entertaining and instructive book whose episodes illustrate the eight ethical values of the Lone Ranger.
- We would contact tobacco companies and the local trade association to provide a list of merchants who had been fined for illegally selling cigarettes to 12- to 14-year-olds. . . to my knowledge no merchants ever faced private penalties. Cheap smuggled cigarettes and sales to kids are part of the same insidious tobacco industry wink-and-nod strategy.
- LORILLARD TOBACCO CO. has apparently set out to target African-Americans with its new brand of cheaper menthol cigarettes, MAVERICK. Billboards featuring black models have already turned up in predominantly black neighborhoods in Milwaukee and other cities. . . Anti-tobacco activists -- including the REV. JESSE BROWN, acting executive director of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF AFRICAN AMERICANS FOR POSITIVE IMAGERY -- are fuming.
- What he, Hansen, Waxman and a growing number of moderate Republicans (many facing tough races this fall) have done is put Newt Gingrich on the spot, not unlike what Meehan and Shays did to the GOP leadership on campaign finance reform. Gingrich has the muscle to block bipartisan initiatives initially, but if Meehan and Hansen can organize a determined majority, they can get somewhere. It's well worth a try.
- Thomas Waugh, serving a 20-year sentence for robbery, sued the state in 1995, saying its failure to provide free patches violated the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishments. . . Florida taxpayers already fund two stop-smoking programs for inmates. This decision establishes a third. Why not cancel all three programs and stop selling cigarettes in the prisons? That would seem to make more sense than tempting inmates to destroy their health, then paying for the treatment to help them recover.
- Liberty is an empty concept if we are not free to make these choices for ourselves--even mistaken choices that may turn out to be harmful. Our government has made smoking into a battleground for freedom. If we allow it to outlaw the Marlboro Man, we are paving the way for another symbol to take his place: the swastika.
- "We won!" a voice shouts. The Rockland County Legislature rejected a complete ban on smoking in restaurants. . . All on the basis of junk science. A few years ago, the feds told us that secondary smoke caused lung cancer in 3,000 people a year. Milk kills more people on better statistics. But this Environmental Protection Agency study gave the kosher label to the Nicotine Nazis. . . In March, the World Health Organization, against its theology and against its will, produced a report that completely destroyed this, showed it to be nonsense. After spending millions on a seven-year study in 12 European countries to prove that secondhand smoke causes cancer, the WHO came up empty! No connection between secondhand smoke and cancer. Zippo. But only if you read it here would you know. The media in America have censored this study, the only legitimate one ever conducted. . . I discovered it by reading a new book, "For Your Own Good" by Jacob Sullum.
- National drug czar BARRY MCCAFFERY says drugs and alcohol pose the most dangerous situation facing 12-year-olds. The retired army general also challenged the medical profession to take the lead in combating illegal drug and underage alcohol and tobacco use. . . Following his speech, McCaffery, the head of the Office of Drug Control Policy since 1996, responded to a member of the audience who claimed neither the Democratic nor Republican parties is "serious about taking on Anheuser-Busch" as aggressively as tobacco companies. He said, "While alcohol and tobacco use are not part of my legal mandate, I remain committed to stamping out underage drinking and smoking, which are part of my statutory responsibilities."
- "The American people don't want to improve their highways by taking disability compensation away from sick veterans," said Anthony G. Jordan, national commander of the American Legion,
- Until recently, the only debate on the issue has been what to do with the estimated $10.5 billion that would be "saved" if the ruling were reversed before too many veterans took advantage of it. President Clinton earmarked the money for an array of new social programs, while Congress would rather spend it on highways. Senate Votes to Kill Benefit But now plans to redirect the money are enraging veterans groups, presenting lawmakers with a thorny choice: veterans or highways? Highways are winning.
- "The administration has all but forgotten the men and women who served and sacrificed to keep this country free. Take the smoking issue. The government encouraged smoking in the military, even provided free cigarettes; now it doesn't want to own up to its responsibility." VA ruled in 1993 and again in 1997 to compensate veterans for illnesses they received from smoking in the service. President Clinton and some in Congress now want to disallow these benefits and shift the money to pay for a budget-busting highway bill currently pending in Congress. "It's a sorry state of affairs when some in Congress want to deny veterans benefits just to pay for 'pork-barrel' projects," said David Hollingshead, regional administrator, Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association.
- he nation's largest veterans groups have joined forces to fight a Clinton administration effort -- approved by the Senate last month with little fanfare -- to eliminate veterans' medical compensation benefits for smoking-related illnesses. Veterans groups are incensed that the Senate's action would use the funding that will be lost to ailing veterans -- an estimated $10.5 billion over five years -- to help finance a $217 billion highway and mass-transit bill, recently passed by the House. "This money belongs to the veterans. It shouldn't be used to fund transportation pork. ... This is election-year politics at its worst," said Bill Warfield, deputy director of government relations for the Vietnam Veterans of America. Said Phil Budahn, spokesman for the American Legion, the largest veterans organization: "I don't understand how anyone can take money from sick people and put it for highways. And I especially don't understand how anyone can take money from sick veterans and use it for highways."
- The City Council voted 5 to 1 last night to ban smoking in certain outdoor areas, including lines for movies and bus stops. After hearing only 15 minutes of heated testimony from smokers, the council speedily approved an amendment that adds tough new restrictions to the city's smoking ordinance. "People shouldn't have to put up with smoke while waiting in line," said council member Mike Rotkin
- A Port Washington police officer accused of slapping a teenager in the face last fall has been cleared of harassment charges by a Nassau County District Court judge. An attorney for Chester Nakelski says he and his client are satisfied with the judge's decision. Nakelski was accused of hitting a 15-year-old girl in the mouth after he saw her with a cigarette in Port Washington's Schreiber High School. The 11-year veteran of the force insisted he was trying to remove the cigarette from the girl's mouth and that any contact with her was incidental.
- The race to replace Scott Harshbarger as attorney general heated up yesterday when state Senator LOIS G. PINES accused her Democratic opponent, Middlesex District Attorney THOMAS F. REILLY, of compromising his independence by accepting money from lobbyists. . . Among the lobbyists who have contributed to Reilly are . . . WILLIAM F. COYNE JR. of the CIGAR ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA
- One in four South Carolina youth ages 14 to 17 succeed in buying cigarettes, according to the 1998 Youth Access Study announced Monday by DAODAS.Federal guidelines require that by 2001, states must document that no more than one in five minors are able to buy cigarettes. Otherwise, federal funding for tobacco and drug prevention and treatment programs could dry up. DOADAS would have lost $6.5 million in federal funds if the deadline was this year.
- Two described another -- BLANCHE LINCOLN of Horseshoe Lake -- as a defender of the tobacco industry. She said she didn't like their accusations. Candidates SCOTT FERGUSON of West Memphis and NATE COULTER of Little Rock criticized Lincoln, a former congressman, for taking campaign contributions in 1994 and 1996 from tobacco interests. They criticized her for signing a letter while in Congress that she characterized as saying the federal government does not have the constitutional right to regulate advertising and sale of tobacco.
- Denver health officials and a group of student activists Monday retreated from their fight to ban outdoor tobacco advertising citywide, agreeing to a last-minute compromise that would outlaw the ads only where kids congregate. Outdoor ad companies, in turn, agreed to limit tobacco advertising to 10 percent of their billboards. They also pledged to donate billboard space for an anti-smoking campaign.
- The Los Angeles County Fair Association dropped tobacco company sponsorships Monday so the annual festival can maintain a family friendly environment, officials said. The move comes after activists staged a protest over letting the maker of Marlboro cigarettes sponsor three concerts at the fair. Marlboro Music had sponsored concerts at the fair since 1994.
- The feisty politician and physician, who will replace Japanese pharmacologist Hiroshi Nakajima at the helm of the U.N. agency on July 21, has vowed to wage a global war against smoking.
- Washington will "encourage and enthusiastically support" World Health Organization efforts to control tobacco use among teen-agers, said DONNA E. SHALALA, U.S. secretary of health and human services. Former Norwegian Prime Minister GRO HARLEM BRUNDTLAND said Sunday she would make it a priority to help governments handle tobacco-related problems in Asia, where consumption is increasing.
- GRO HARLEM BRUNDTLAND, a physician and three-time Norwegian prime minister, said she would fight against children being drawn into smoking in the developing world for lack of legislation against this -- unlike in much of the West. Similar legislation is needed in developing countries and the WHO is prepared to help, said the 58-year-old grandmother who will be elected formally on Wednesday as the new WHO chief.
- The woman likely to become the next head of the World Health Organization has made reducing smoking among Asian teen-agers a priority. GRO HARLEM BRUNDTLAND, Norway's former prime minister, a medical doctor and public health specialist, said under her direction the WHO would make it a priority to help governments handle tobacco-related problems in Asia, where consumption is increasing.
- Lung cancer was the leading cause of deaths from the disease, killing 1.1 million people in 1997 . . . The WHO says smoking is one of the top three causes of premature deaths in Asia, where China alone accounts for at least 750,000 deaths each year attributable to tobacco. Critics have accused the WHO of being timid in the battle against smoking under the decade-long rule of its Japanese director general Hiroshi Nakajima, who steps down this year amid Western governments' charges of corruption and mismanagement. But this is likely to change under the incoming WHO head Gro Harlem Brundtland, who vowed last month to open a new front in the global fight against the damaging effects of smoking. . . She said her focus in the battle against tobacco would be on the Third World
- The attacks cloaked as awards are called the Schmios . . . one for several outdoor advertising companies for concentrating billboards for alcoholic beverages and tobacco products in residential neighborhoods.
- Wickliffe and area tobacco farmers hope dry weather holds out so they can plant their crop, which farmers generally plant the last week of April or the first week of May. "Tobacco has the ability to make up for lost time as long as farmers can get it in pretty quickly," Wickliffe said. "The later we get it planted, the more of a possibility we have of getting into frost problems at the end of the harvest season."
- Another investor, Bradley O'Leary, a political consultant in Washington, D.C., comes to the restaurant's defense. He says Chasen's "is not showing the profit that investors had hoped" because of delays in the opening of the cigar club and legal bills to obtain smoking privileges for the club. Mr. O'Leary adds that "Mr. Sanders's financial position in no way affects the restaurant."
- "I'm certainly not going to tell him to give up in the middle of the World Cup. That could do more harm than good. "Paul has been smoking since his time in Rome (1992-95). All that concerns me is his performance.
- If Gazza was to stop smoking during a period of intensive training, the withdrawal symptoms of weight gain, irritability, headache, sleeplessness, nausea and other abdominal troubles might cause insuperable problems while training and a poor performance on the field. However, Gazza would be well advised to give up smoking once the World Cup is over. Smoking 20 cigarettes a day doubles the time someone is likely to take off work, and in the long term smokers have a 40 per cent chance of not surviving long enough to draw a pension.
- The England coach Glenn Hoddle and PAUL GASCOIGNE are being criticised after it emerged that the player has started smoking again.
- PAUL GASCOIGNE, the footballer whose health and fitness have been a constant source of concern for England managers, was last night given permission to smoke his way through this summer's World Cup. Until yesterday, Gascoigne's habit, now believed to be up to 20-a-day, had not attracted the attention of those other vices which earned him notoriety in the past such as wife-beating and excessive drinking. Yesterday, however, GLENN HODDLE, the England coach, confirmed Gascoigne's nicotine habit. He said it was a private matter and that making Gascoigne give up for the tournament might have an adverse effect.
- President Boris Yeltsin put another modern milestone between himself and his secretive Kremlin predecessors Tuesday when he took to the Internet to field questions from a global public. . . Still on health, Yeltsin repeated his lifelong abhorrence of smoking in answer to a question from Robert of the Netherlands. "I've never smoked in my life, never tried smoking at all," he said. "It does great damage to society, to people and of course we should fight it, this evil."
- Switching subjects, Yeltsin said he was against smoking and had never smoked. Making clear his position, he said: "I can't stand it. I feel ill when someone is smoking near me."
- .Questions...Robert ...from Netherlands....What is your attitude on Smoking?? Host Boris_Yeltsin says: Never in my life I've smoked! I never tried to smoke at all. I feel bad when someone or my friend is smoking close to me. They know about that and they try not to smoke when they are near me. I cannot stand it. And I think for society, we shouldn't buy [cigarettes].
- [C]ampaign finance reform is alive and kicking -- and just as deadly. If it passes, it will make a bloody mess of the First Amendment to the Constitution. While restricting the free speech of other individuals and groups, it will enhance the power of the one institution that has boosted it rabidly: the press. . . Require immediate disclosure of all donations and the sources of all independent spending. Let voters decide themselves whether a candidate is in the thrall of labor or tobacco interests.
- A State Department cable addressed to all American embassies bars them from "promoting" the sale or export of tobacco or tobacco products overseas. The cable, dated Feb. 14, 1998 and obtained by The Wall Street Journal, also directs U.S. diplomatic posts to support, rather than challenge, local antismoking laws and regulations that may reduce U.S. tobacco company sales, as long as they are applied "in a nondiscriminatory manner to both imported and domestic tobacco."
- He said that one of the witnesses he wanted to immunize, KENT LA, the U.S. distributor for RED PAGODA MOUNTAIN cigarettes, which are made by a Chinese government-owned company, might be able to shed light on those reports. La is a business associate of another committee target, TED SIOENG, and together, Burton said, they gave $400,000 to the Democratic Party. "I understand that by voting to block immunity, you feel like you are punishing me," Burton told the Democrats. "But in reality . . . you are punishing the American people [who] have a right to know if foreign tobacco money corrupted their political system."
- He contended that one of the four witnesses he wanted to immunize, KENT LA, could have provided essential information on any Chinese role in the election campaign. . . BURTON said La is a U.S. distributor for a cigarette company owned by the Chinese government.
- Publishers and tobacco company executives are vowing to overturn in court a European Parliament vote banning tobacco advertising within four years.
- European publishers and advertisers have joined forces to take on Brussels over an EU-wide ban on tobacco advertising and sponsorship. Legal challenges were launched in every member state after MEPs in Strasbourg ended 10 years of fraught debate by approving new legislation outlawing all promotion of smoking in print and in sport.
- "This directive is a giant leap forward in the fight to reduce smoking, save lives and protect children from the pernicious of tobacco advertising and promotion," said British Public Health Minister TESSA JOWELL. The directive now goes back to the Council of ministers for action that will make it the law of the region. That action is expected before the end of June.
- Under the proposal, virtually all advertising and sponsorship by tobacco companies would be phased out over the next eight years.
- A Europe-wide ban on tobacco advertising and sponsorship looks certain to be approved by Euro-MPs - and it could be made law within weeks. The final chapter after a decade of fraught efforts by Brussels to outlaw virtually all promotion of smoking in 15 countries comes in a vote in Strasbourg. . . Euro-MPs are being asked to approve a deal narrowly agreed by EU governments last December after the resolution of a row with the British Government over Formula One sponsorship arrangements.
- MINISTERS are studying ways of expanding the identity-card scheme that helps publicans to determine whether young people are legally entitled to buy alcohol. Young people would be encouraged to use identity cards to prove their age when they want to buy alcohol, cigarettes, videotapes, lottery tickets or computer games.
- " None of us can rest until we save all children from the big tobacco companies' advertising and other outrageous efforts that seduce children, " Mrs. Clinton told the 191-nation governing body of the World Health Organization.
- "It is absurd for the Guatemalan attorney general to claim that anything the American tobacco companies have done has misled the government about the health risks associated with smoking," Timothy Lindon, a senior assistant general counsel for Philip Morris, said in a written statement.
- The Republic of Guatemala today became the first country outside the United States to sue American tobacco companies for restitution of costs associated with the treatment of smoking-related illnesses. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., by the Houston trial firm of Fleming, Hovenkamp & Grayson, P.C. at the request of Guatemalan Attorney General ACISCLO VALLADARES MOLINA, seeks to recover these costs from the manufacturers and distributors that virtually control the entire tobacco market in Guatemala.
- Wilner said he intended to present at trial videotaped testimony from Maddox and testimony from Brooke Group Chairman Bennett LeBow, either in person or by deposition. "He is an insider inside the industry and he knows where the bodies are buried," Wilner said.
- "We have no intention of settling," Joe Helewicz, a spokesman for Brown & Williamson, said from the company's headquarters in Kentucky. He said Brown & Williamson was "a bit mystified" by the announcement Tuesday that Liggett had settled. He said the plaintiffs had asked that Liggett be dismissed from the case since the smoker involved in it had smoked Liggett cigarettes for only a short time. "The plaintiffs asked for Liggett to be dismissed from the case and we agreed," he said.
- The settlement leaves Brown & Williamson as the remaining defendant. "Liggett has accepted their responsibility. Now we hope Brown & Williamson accept theirs," Wilner said.
- This time, Mr. WILNER has documents allegedly showing that the tobacco companies suppressed research on the dangers of smoking. He hopes to link the new documents to what he says was an uninformed decision by retail clerk ROLAND E. MADDOX to smoke Lucky Strikes for nearly 50 years.
- Now, NORWOOD "WOODY" WILNER will do battle with big tobacco again . . . Round 4 of David vs. Goliath starts tomorrow . . . "I'm sure they're happy to see us," Wilner said. Angela Widdick vs. Brown & Williamson and Liggett Group Inc. will be Wilner's fourth cigarette product liability case to go to trial.
- "We didn't have enough (evidence) to present with the strength that we can now," Wilner said. "I think the public is long overdue in getting access to these things."
- The town of Orange has become the first community in Connecticut to enact a ban on outdoor tobacco advertising and cigarette vending machines. The Board of Selectmen voted Wednesday night to enact the anti-tobacco measures to take effect July 1.
- The price of cigarettes and alcohol should be increased significantly to reduce consumption at younger ages, and consideration should be given to increasing the minimum legal age for sale of alcohol to 21 years, health experts recommended yesterday. The proposals from the Southern Health Board came after a new survey by the board in Cork and Kerry showed that almost half of those under the legal age of 18 are drinking alcohol.
- Health experts from 23 countries yesterday ended a three-day conference with a warning that unless immediate preventive steps are taken, large numbers of people will continue to die prematurely each year of cancer and heart diseases. "The diseases that are ravaging our nations at present are largely the result of unhealthy behavior established two or three decades ago," said Prof. Witold Zatonski, head of the Polish Institute of Cancer Prevention. Zatonski focused on dangers of smoking. "Multinational tobacco companies have taken advantage of our recent democracy," he said, "and launched aggressive marketing campaigns that have made their cigarettes highly appealing to our people, especially our children and teenagers."
- Prices paid to factories and other producers rose in April for the first time in seven months. The overall increase wasn't much, but smokers and salad eaters were hit hard.
- Assuming people spent their money on other goods and services in the United States, job gains in the services and other private industry sectors would more than offset the loss, the report said. It cited two economic studies conducted in the last four years. In one of those studies an economist projected a loss of about 37,000 jobs in the Southeast over seven years under this scenario, compared with an increase nationally of 56,000 jobs -- for a net gain of more than 19,000 jobs nationally. The economist theorized that most industries making products that would replace tobacco are more labor-intensive than the tobacco industry.
- A 1980 trip to Central America forever changed how the REV. MICHAEL H. CROSBY thinks about Big Tobacco. . . "For years, I was the lone voice crying in the woods . . It was very, very lonely. People would say, 'If you don't like it, sell your stock, go back to your church and read your Scriptures.' That went on for years and years."
- Congress has acted so quickly and carelessly in its fervor to punish the tobacco industry that it is only capable of passing a "law of unintended consequences," Steven F. Goldstone, the chairman and chief executive of RJR Nabisco Holdings Inc., said yesterday at the company's annual meeting.
- Addressing about 200 shareholders in a half-filled auditorium in Winston-Salem, the home of the headquarters of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., GOLDSTONE said he had received letters from some of them urging him to give up any attempt to reach a settlement. "They (the letter writers) want us to go back to the war of the last 40 years," he said. "I think that's the wrong reaction to the challenge facing us."
- At RJR Nabisco's Annual Meeting today, the corporate watchdog organization INFACT informed shareholders of increased participation in the consumer boycott targeting RJR's Nabisco food brands, and challenged board members to put an end to aggressive tobacco marketing and promotional tactics internationally. INFACT representatives delivered over 12,000 signed messages from people who have joined the Tobacco Industry Boycott this year, and distributed copies of Global Aggression: The Case for World Standards and Bold US Action Challenging Philip Morris and RJR Nabisco, INFACT's 1998 People's Annual Report, released last month.
- The sale of 2.73 million shares in the company leaves the state with a 5% holding, the ministry said.
- Big League Bubble Gum, the new name for Big League Chew, was developed by former major league baseball players Jim Bouton and Rob Nelson as something to use instead of spit tobacco. Big League Bubble Gum now joins NSTEP in promoting the battle against spit tobacco. The partnership will be featured on the packages of Big League Bubble Gum beginning later this year.
-
On May 19, Oral Health America and its partners in the National Spit
Tobacco Education Program (NSTEP) will gather during a Twins and Tigers
game at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis to give tribute
to Bill and Gloria Tuttle. Oral Health America, the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation, Major League Baseball, Major League Baseball Players
Association, and the Partnership for Tobacco Cessation will display
their appreciation for Bill and Gloria Tuttle for their efforts and
heroism they have given to those around them.
- LINDSAY CROUSE, who was nominated for a supporting actress Oscar for "Places in the Heart," has been cast opposite AL PACINO in director MICHAEL MANN'S untitled project about the tobacco industry. Crouse will play journalist SHARON BERGMAN, the companion of "60 Minutes" producer LOWELL BERGMAN, played by Pacino. RUSSELL CROWE ("L.A. Confidential") has already been cast as JEFFREY WIGAND, the former tobacco exec turned whistleblower.
- Japan Airlines, All Nippon Airlines and Japan Air System will eliminate smoking sections on domestic routes amid growing complaints from customers that smoke wafts into non-smoking areas. . . JAL will impose the ban from September 1 and ANA will introduce it from October 1. JAS will start non-smoking flights from July 17. The airlines will continue to have smoking sections on international flights.
- One thing that is clear is that the tobacco industry's wider goal involved more than getting scientists to write articles favourable to the industry's position on passive smoking. It also used scientists to gather information about unpublished research and committee work that might damage its interests. Claims like the one about THE LANCET should not be allowed to slip by or be left unchallenged. Here, the probity of a world-famous medical journal is at stake. When tomorrow's academics write the definitive history of the lung cancer epidemic and the role of the tobacco industry, these documents will be vital. It would be depressing if we were prepared to pass them on to future generations without applying pressure on those who wrote them to tell their story.
- I resent the misleading statements about our industry in your hostile May 9 editorial. Philip Morris did not cover up significant research on tobacco . . . Philip Morris did not engage in corrupt practices and fraud, nor did we manipulate nicotine in cigarettes. We did not market to children; Philip Morris has not engaged in United States youth marketing for more than 25 years. . . Our marketing is not pernicious as you imply, but is recognized worldwide as classic high-quality advertising. Philip Morris has been a responsible and caring company since I began serving as chief executive in 1957.
- R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. was supposed to do for billiards what it did for stock-car racing, according to a federal lawsuit filed by the Pro Billiards Tour Association. Instead, the cigarette maker nearly forced the PBTA into bankruptcy while attempting to set up its own tour of professional pool players, the suit alleges. "We believe that it was malicious," said Don Mackey, chief executive of the PBTA, based in Spring Hill, Fla. "We believe that they structured it and deliberately put us in a position where they thought we would just collapse so they could take it over."
- The law firm of the governor' s personal attorney should not be involved with Wisconsin' s lawsuit against tobacco companies, because the firm could make millions off it, a candidate for governor said Thursday. Gov. Tommy Thompson' s relationship with GEORGE STEIL SR. could get Steil' s firm $391 million if Wisconsin would get the deal that Minnesota did when it settled a tobacco lawsuit, said Ed Garvey, a Democrat running for governor.
- Minnesota's $6.2 billion settlement of its lawsuit against tobacco companies strengthens Wisconsin's own pending lawsuit, ATTORNEY GENERAL JAMES DOYLE said Wednesday. Minnesota agreed to allow Wisconsin officials to review its lawsuit documents and use its legal resources and expert witnesses, Doyle said. "This is an enormously positive step for Wisconsin," he said. "We have the advantage of knowing what Minnesota did."
- A LAWSUIT brought by the Marshall Islands against Philip Morris Cos. and other U.S. cigarette makers to recover its health-care costs for treating sick smokers is pending in the High Court in the Marshall Islands, a former U.S. trust territory.
- Guatemala's outgoing attorney general lashed out on Wednesday against tobacco industry attorneys who accused him of political grandstanding and defended a suit he filed against U.S. cigarette makers. ``I have a right to aspire to the presidency of my country, but they do not have the right to sow death and kill Guatemalans,'' Attorney General Acisclo Valladares, whose second term in office is up this week, told reporters.
- British cigarette maker Imperial Tobacco Group Plc should report higher half year profits on Tuesday despite a number of small negative factors, analysts said. Imperial, spun off from former conglomerate Hanson Plc in 1996, is expected to turn in first half pretax profits of 147.0 to 152.5 million pounds, compared with 143 million previously and pay out a dividend of 7.5 to 8.0 pence, up from 7.2 pence.
- At the University of Kentucky Plant Diagnostic Lab, little white coolers are arriving. The sealed plastic bags of young tobacco plants inside are treated with "hot zone" sensitivity. . . While the greatest long-term threat to the state's $8 billion tobacco crop might be uncertainty over the government settlement, the threat with the biggest short-term potential is blue mold -- Peronospora tabacina. . . . Acrobat MZ has been used for years in Europe and, although it includes the cancer-causing agent mancozeb, can be pulled off the shelf for emergency use. It's also being used on tomatoes and potatoes under emergency conditions. This year, for the third year, Kentucky farmers have permission to turn to Acrobat.
- Farmers, a hemp company and a trade organization sued the government Friday to get the 26-year ban on growing industrial hemp lifted, contending that Congress never intended for it to be illegal. The lawsuit by six would-be hemp farmers, the KENTUCKY HEMP GROWERS COOPERATIVE and the HEMP CO. OF AMERICA contends hemp's illegal status violates a 1937 determination by Congress that the plant doesn't share the psychoactive effects of its cousin, marijuana.
- For many of the farmers, particularly those here in eastern Kentucky who are almost wholly dependent on tobacco for their income, hemp would provide a viable hedge as a disease-resistant plant . . . "Hemp is no more controversial today than tobacco is," said Andrew R. Graves, a plaintiff in the suit as president of the Kentucky Hemp Growers Council, a group of 60 would-be hemp farmers, including Barton. "You go into any store and you can buy hemp products. But he and I as farmers" -- he pointed to Barton -- "get no portion of that money. That makes no sense to me."
- Saying it has none of the psychoactive properties of its cousin marijuana, farmers and trade organizations want the federal government to make hemp a lawful crop again, The New York Times reported today. . . Farmers in the South and Midwest view disease-resistant hemp as a rotation crop among grains and vegetables, and in eastern Kentucky, provide a hedge against tobacco' s uncertain future. Government officials fear that hemp farming would provide a camouflage for growing marijuana.
- Philip Morris, RJR revise first-quarter reports for charges
- Philip Morris Cos. Inc. and RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp. on Friday said they were taking a combined $1.1 billion in charges because of the industry's $6.6 billion settlement of the state of Minnesota's lawsuit. The announcement by the nation's two biggest cigarette makers came four days after Philip Morris said it would raise prices 5 cents a pack, a move that Wall Street analysts had said would cover the company's costs from the Minnesota case.
- Philip Morris Cos. Inc. said Friday it was revising its first-quarter results, reducing earnings by $0.20 per share to reflect the tobacco industry's $6.57 billion settlement of a lawsuit brought against it by the state of Minnesota. Philip Morris said in a statement that it would take pre-tax charges of $806 million against first quarter earnings as a result of the settlement, lowering its net earnings by $492 million.
- GOV. PETE WILSON and ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER did jumping jacks and traded quips during this year's version of the Great California Workout. . . Joking aside, Schwarzenegger promoted exercise as a way to build self-esteem and get a true high without smoking dope or taking pills.
- The stars of "Seinfeld" went to prison Thursday, found guilty of "callous indifference to everything good and decent." . . The Johnny Cochran-type lawyer Jackie, who once sued a tobacco firm on behalf of Kramer, defends the four
- Actors LINDSAY CROUSE, CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER and DIANE VENORA have joined the cast of the untitled movie about tobacco whistle blower JEFFERY WIGAND that will film in Pascagoula this summer.
- TOMMY RAUDONIKIS temporarily emerged from his trademark haze of cigarette smoke yesterday to say he didn't think he was under pressure to make the cut in the shrinking world of coaching.
- For decades the U.S. armed forces encouraged smoking, offering discount rates for cigarettes at military stores and even putting cigarettes in rations. . . . It looks like the vets are going to get the short end of the stick.
- We suppose it was only a matter of time before the rest of the civilized world bellied up to this free lunch. Don't laugh; if an American jury decides to cut Guatemala in on the action, tobacco companies will be entertaining plaintiffs lawyers from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
- "It is a sorry state of affairs when Congress and the Clinton administration team-up to deny veterans benefits to pay for a huge budget-busting highway bill." That is the sentiment of John Moon, commander in chief of the two million-member Veterans of Foreign Wars. A current measure before Congress would bar the VA from granting new smoking-related claims and would allow the monies saved to be used to pay for transportation programs.
- A Florida woman whose family is suing Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp over the death of her husband, said Friday she had not heard of the dangers of cigarette smoking until he became ill with cancer. Testifying exactly one year after her husband Roland's death from lung cancer, Margaret Maddox told jurors that neither of them was aware of any newspaper or television accounts of the health hazards of smoking until his diagnosis two years ago. . . A former smoker herself, she told jurors that she and her husband did not subscribe to a newspaper or watch television newscasts. And she said doctors did not mention the hazards of cigarette smoking. ``He just said to stay away from smoke,'' she said.
- The Estate of Roland E. Maddox v. Brown & Williamson Corp. and Liggett Group (Live) Jacksonville, FL (Monday - Friday, 9am - 2pm ET) The family of Roland Maddox, who died at age 66 of cancer attributed to his smoking two packs of cigarettes a day for 50 years, sues Brown & Williamson Corp. and Liggett Group Inc. alleging an industry-wide conspiracy to manipulate and withhold scientific evidence regarding the dangers of smoking.
- According to his co-workers, Roland Maddox laughed at the health risks of cigarettes, called them "cancer sticks" and then lit up anyway. . . "The bottom line is that Mr. Maddox liked to smoke and made a personal choice to smoke and did so, despite the fact that he knew there were health risks," lawyer John Nyhan told jurors during opening statements.
- The decades-old snapshot shows a little girl handing her father a carton of Lucky Strike cigarettes as the family sits in front of a Christmas tree. Yesterday, attorney Woody Wilner showed a Jacksonville jury the black-and-white photo from the scrapbook of the late Roland Maddox, whose family is suing the maker of Lucky Strikes.
- LT. GOV. BUDDY MACKAY's campaign, which sharply criticized the Florida Republican Party and JEB BUSH for accepting contributions from the tobacco industry, may be indirectly benefiting from tobacco money as well. While MacKay's campaign account contains no tobacco money, the Florida Democratic Party received $40,000 from the tobacco industry between January 1997 and last month, Times research shows.
- County health officials are recommending a ban on outdoor tobacco advertising within 1,600 feet of schools, playgrounds and libraries. The ban, to be considered Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors, would also apply to window advertising
- U.S. Rep. STEVE CHABOT, R-Cincinnati, seems to be a favorite target of all sorts of groups these days. . . Then this week, the National Center for Tobacco Free Kids announced, via half-page ads in both Cincinnati newspapers, that it too has targeted Chabot in an effort to get him to support tough tobacco legislation. . . Chabot's administrative aide, Gary Lundgren, says Chabot ''has certainly supported legislative efforts to reduce teen-age smoking. He has two kids, and he doesn't want his kids to smoke. He doesn't want any kids to smoke. He voted to increase funding by $10 million for the Food and Drug Administration youth anti-smoking initiative.'' Chabot, however, is ''seriously concerned'' about proposals for large tax increases (on cigarettes) that ''would support new government spending,'' said Lundgre.
- Cigarette smoking may be forbidden by BLACKHAWK TECHNICAL COLLEGE outdoors as well as in buildings when school resumes in August. College President ERIC LARSON said he recalls seeing people smoking while standing under an outdoor banner proclaiming a health-awareness week earlier this year.
- Quebec moved to extinguish its title of the smoking capital of Canada yesterday as Health Minister Jean Rochon tabled tough new anti-tobacco legislation. Under the bill, Quebecers could face fines of $50 to $600 if they light up in a no-smoking area. Stores that sell cigarettes to young people could be fined $200 to $50,000 and prohibited from selling tobacco from one month to one year. However, Rochon's bill could still go up in smoke.
- With as much as Rs 276 crore coming in from the tobacco industry, advertising agencies in India are altering strategies to abide by a new code, that would ban commercials luring children into smoking cigarettes or chewing tobacco.
- Two women who claim cigarette smoking has destroyed their lives urged the Government yesterday to provide financial support for court action they have started against several Irish tobacco firms . . . the women told the Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children they need funds for research that would assist them in their case, which was begun in the High Court last year. Ms Ann Moloney (44), of Bray and Ms Susan Riley (43) of Portmarnock, also told the committee that stronger legislation was needed to curtail the sale of tobacco and to educate young people about the dangers of smoking.
- Seven people sued the Japanese government and the nation's largest tobacco maker Friday, blaming their cancer and lung disease on cigarettes. The suit, against former state monopoly Japan Tobacco, is the first by cancer patients demanding JT take responsibility for tobacco-related disease, said the plaintiffs' lawyer, Yoshio Isayama. The plaintiffs include three lung cancer patients, another with throat cancer, and three with emphysema, Isayama said. Some of them had undergone surgery, and have trouble breathing without oxygen tanks.
- Forty students from four primary schools are surveying their peers on the dangers of tobacco. More than 500 children aged from 10 to 12 are expected to answer questions on the health effects of smoking. The survey is being organised by the Life Education Activity Programme to promote World No Tobacco Day on May 31.
- Tobacco growers Friday announced a week-long boycott of daily auctions and demanded the government remove state levies that have hiked production costs.
- The Zimbabwe Tobacco Association yesterday declared a halt to auctions and protest meetings because of prices 90% down on last year's $1,80c/kg average. Growers failing to make break-even prices still face Mugabe's 5% turnover levy. "The plan is to close the floors for at least a week while we try to arm-twist the trade"
- Hundreds of Zimbabwe's tobacco growers are expected to call for measures to offset the effects of low prices at a protest at Harare's main tobacco auction floor today
- "Zimbabwe is tobacco country and will be so in the future," Zimbabwe Tobacco Association (ZTA) President Rob Webb told Reuters. "There is no crop that can replace tobacco," Webb said, urging President Robert Mugabe's government to scrap a five percent levy on sales, and all duty on capital imports for the industry.
- Multibillion-dollar legal settlements paid by US cigarette manufacturers in compensation for smoking-related health costs were having a "catastrophic" effect on the tobacco industry in Zimbabwe, the world's second-biggest exporter, tobacco executives said yesterday. Faced with possible payouts of $500bn to health authorities over the next 25 years, manufacturers were getting rid of stocks and leaving tobacco merchants with rising stockpiles, said Robert Webb, president of the ZIMBABWE TOBACCO ASSOCIATION which represents the country's 1600 growers.
- The Center for Indoor Air Research, which might be described as the council's younger brother, has largely avoided public attention. Top scientists have continued to serve on its scientific advisory board. Its environmentally friendly name gives no hint of its tobacco sponsorship, permitting researchers not to acknowledge explicitly their industry ties. Asked whether listing the research center as the funding source for her paper did not obscure the fact that it was tobacco industry money, Matanoski replied that the center is "a conglomerate of different funders." Told that more than 90 percent of the budget comes from Philip Morris, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco, Brown & Willamson and Lorillard, she said, "I pay no attention to that. I didn't know what money came from where."
- For the first time, growers of flue-cured tobacco appear to favor ending the federal crop program . . . The survey was conducted by the Tobacco Fairness Coalition, a Wilson-based lobbying group that favors a buyout.
- About 3,500 tobacco growers and quota holders in seven states responded to the survey, which asked participants to choose from five potential legislative options on the tobacco program. Here is what they said: * 86 percent favored a "buy-out" of quotas at $8 per pound coupled with transition payments to growers of $4 per pound of tobacco produced.
- Department of Agriculture has set up a toll-free number farmers can call to sell or buy Kentucky-grown tobacco transplants. "I can't encourage Kentucky tobacco farmers enough to purchase their tobacco transplants from Kentucky growers whenever possible," said Billy Ray Smith, state Commissioner of Agriculture. Farmers are being urged to avoid buying transplants shipped from Georgia, Florida and Tennessee . . . For information on selling or buying transplants, call (888) 531-8083. To check blue mold's progress in the state, see the UK College of Agriculture blue mold web page at: http://www.uky.edu/Agriculture/kpn/kyblue/kyblue.htm
- First quarter 1998 revenues were $84.8 million, compared to revenues of $80 million in the first quarter of 1997. The Company recorded operating income of $7.5 million in the 1998 first quarter compared to operating income of $0.8 million in 1997. Net loss was $17.4 million in the 1998 first quarter, versus net income of $6.2 million in the 1997 period which included a gain of $22.0 million from the sale of assets. Net loss applicable to common shares in the 1998 quarter was $0.89 per share, compared to net income of $0.34 per share, in the first quarter of 1997.
- Tonight, Mr. Falk will open in an entirely new role: as a retired pilot in Arthur Miller's latest play, "Mr. Peters's Connections," with Anne Jackson as his wife, directed by Garry Hynes at the Signature Theater Off Broadway. It is hard to know what to say about such an occasion -- leading character, world premiere, renowned American playwright. "Don't remind me," Mr. Falk says slowly, lighting up yet another cigarette. "I'll be lucky if I'm still standing when that curtain goes up." The cigarettes are the reason the window is open: Mr. Falk still smokes nearly a pack a day, and this is a nonsmoking room in a nonsmoking building. "Getting harder and harder for Columbo to bum a match, I'll tell you that," murmurs Mr. Falk, ashing quietly onto the floor.
- Grace Scholz Spitz, 85, a retired U.S. Public Health Service statistician, died May 5 at Goodwin House West in Falls Church of complications related to diabetes. . . Her postwar assignments included fluoridation studies for dental health programs and the surgeon general's report on smoking and health. In 1968, she retired from the National Cancer Institute.
- We have to record this now, while the people who remember it are still around, because our children might not believe it. . . There were days when doctors practically prescribed cigarettes.
- 1948: "More can be said in behalf of smoking as a form of escape from tension than against it." -- Journal of the American Medical Association. 1995: "The evidence is unequivocal -- the U.S. public has been duped by the tobacco industry. . . . We should all be outraged, and we should force the removal of this scourge from the nation.. . . " -- Journal of the American Medical Association
- There was, and always will be, the light baritone, seasoned by age, flavored by whiskey and cigarettes, romantic, vulnerable, tough and completely original. It was the source of all of Frank Sinatra's power and greatness. Late Thursday night, Sinatra died at 82, his wife at his side, in the emergency room of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, after a heart attack. He had been ill for more than a year.
- In the 1950s, he began appearing in concert with a drink in one hand and cigarettes -- something that would now be considered politically incorrect.
- "THE WAY YOU WEAR YOUR HAT: FRANK SINATRA AND THE LOST ART OF LIVIN'" (HarperCollinsPublishers) . . . is a fresh, insightful look at Sinatra . . . Three years ago, Zehme wrote to Sinatra and asked him to answer essential questions -- questions that could save a guy's life. Sinatra agreed and answered nearly 30 . . . On smoking: Frank never inhaled, saving his reed while maintaining la figura, the appearance, cupping them like Bogie did. After Lucky Strikes, he took up Camels, always unfiltered. Rarely did he take more than four drags before extinguishing.
- As to the question: Is Frank still smoking? He has not had a cigarette in months and we hope that he has finally quit for good. He switched from Camel and Lucky Strike to Capri and then - zip. We are all very proud of his efforts to end a "life-long" habit. (Posted Jan. 26, 1998)
- Fosterıs Daily Democrat The $900,000 targeted at young people in Maine for a television ad campaign against tobacco is money that is going up in smoke. . . State money should be used to fund creative programs in the schools designed to stem the rise in young smokers. Hearing someone speak at school with an artificial larynx about the dangers of smoking is far more compelling and real to students than anything they might see on television.
- Why don't they just tell the truth? Why don't they admit that the true goal of their crusade against smoking is to make it illegal? . . Fighting people who think they are on a mission from God is like being nibbled to death by ducks. No one bite hurts all that much, but it never ends.
- It was not the court that succumbed to the siren call of tobacco, alcohol and other special interests alluded to by Califano; it was the politicians. They could conceive and enforce an ethical system but refuse to do so. And so they continue in the stench and muck of their own refuse -- the electorate be damned
- It is hardly new that tobacco companies make a practice of buying goodwill with generous contributions. But few have come to depend on that money as much as the nation's African Americans, Hispanics and other minorities. . . "The U.S. government is hypocritical," said the black newspaper association's Leavell. "If tobacco is causing the kinds of things it is, why don't they make it illegal to use the product? Plus, you sure don't see many organizations taking out anti-smoking ads in our newspapers." . . "There is no question that tobacco companies have tried to buy respectability and legitimacy," Sullivan said. "It would certainly be helpful and very appropriate to have clear statements from more civil rights and civic organizations. . . . I would like to see more of that because they do influence people's positions."
- The lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the Minnesota tobacco trial acknowledged Sunday that his law firm will get a lot more money from the deal than was reported earlier this month. The attorneys' fees reported in the news media then is the amount that applies to the state's part of the settlement alone, not to coplaintiff Blue Cross and Blue Shield, MICHAEL CIRESI said. . . Ciresi disputed that anything was hidden. "We got a spectacular deal for these people," he said. "And after we cut our fees to the state by 70 percent, for someone to suggest something was hidden is simply not true."
- An industry lobbyist once summed up Big Tobacco's strategy in Minnesota: "We will employ all means to secure . . . victory." That may change. One of the less-noticed terms of Minnesota's $6.6 billion settlement with cigarette makers requires them to stop lobbying against bills related to youth smoking and to disclose payments to any lobbying front groups that work on tobacco's behalf. It has led to guarded optimism by tobacco-control forces, who for years have witnessed legislative inaction on bills related to workplace smoking, fire-safe cigarettes and retail-sale restrictions.
- The Supreme Court today refused to free cigarette maker Lorillard Inc. from having to pay $560,000 in punitive damages to the children of a California man who died of lung cancer. The court, without comment, turned down Lorillard's argument that it should not have to pay such damages over the sale of cigarettes with asbestos-containing filters during the 1950s by the company that later became Lorillard.
- The attorneys who worked on the state's suit against cigarette makers may earn up to $2 billion if Massachusetts prevails in its attempts to recover tobacco-related health care costs from the manufacturers. But Cellucci, according to administration sources, wants to cap the amount the lawyers can recover to a fraction of that amount. Cellucci's push for the cap and accusations of a legal feeding frenzy are sure to set off another round of attacks from Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, who filed the suit.
- Hill said it's not known for sure what prompted Elston to make such an ill-conceived escape but he may have had a craving for cigarettes. Elston had received two minor infractions for smoking recently, Hill said. . . Friday, counselors met with Hill to determine what Elston would have to do to successfully remain in the camp and not be sent to serve his two-year prison term. Among other things, he was told he had to stay away from tobacco.
- GOV. TOMMY THOMPSON has received at least $30,845 in gifts since taking office in 1987, including two high-priced club memberships he has failed to disclose on ethics reports as required, an Associated Press review found. The hundreds of presents _ including champagne, chocolates and cigars _ were a new experience for Thompson
- LYNN SCHENK, a Democrat running to be her party's nominee for California Attorney General, asked Democratic State Senators BILL LOCKYER and CHARLES CALDERON to return the money, saying it could compromise their ability to sue the tobacco industry to recoup billions of dollars in health care costs. "Who can the voters rely on to act against the industry in an unconstrained manner?" Schenk said in an interview. "My history of not having taken their money and not having voted for them certainly is an indicator of my independence and ability to go after them."
- Proposition 226, which Wilson and other backers call the "Paycheck Protection Act," would require unions to get written permission from each member each year for use of any dues money for political purposes. . . The California Association of Nonprofits, with 1,800 members, has sent out a memo similar to United Way's first alert. Flo Green, its executive director, said, "Our members don't get involved with candidates but many of them support or oppose initiatives. Many of them played critical roles on initiatives to clean up the beaches, limit smoking, ban guns and so on. . . ."
- Yet another fraud was unearthed in the circle of cigarette manufacturing mafia, who continued manufacturing fake cigarettes and their own brands even in sick units. At least ten sick units have been detected preparing fake Gold Leaf, Red & White, Morven Gold and other brands. Surprisingly, chairman of the sick units MNA Nasim-ur-Rehman was also running his sick units, Millat Tobacco Situated at Chota Lahor.
- In the United States a bill that would impose a tax of at least $1.10 on a pack of cigarettes will be considered by the Senate next week. Here is a look at cigarette prices and taxes elsewhere.
- Quebec's efforts to control smoking in public places don't go far enough for anti-tobacco activists, but restaurant-owners and business leaders object to the new measures.
- Tobacco and insurance group B.A.T. Industries Plc said on Monday following the demerger of its financial services businesses, its British American Tobacco unit would receive a net payment of over 700 million pounds. The repayment, to be made at the closing of the demerger, would represent repayment of existing intragroup debts between the financial services business and British American Tobacco.
- B.A.T. Industries Plc CHAIRMAN LORD CAIRNS said the group's tobacco business should thrive when it is split off from B.A.T.'s financial services arm and pay out 50 percent of sustainable profits to shareholders each year.
- ANTI-SMOKING campaign group ASH is considering crossing a moral rubicon and investing in cigarette manufacturers in a bid to gain access to and disrupt the annual meetings of the big tobacco companies. ASH - Action on Smoking and Health - intends to disrupt today's annual meeting of BAT Industries after recent allegations that in the 1970s British American Tobacco considered but then decided against telling pregnant women of the dangers to unborn babies of smoking.
- Michael Samuelson, President of The National Center for Health Promotion (NCHP) today announced that Simon & Schuster's exclusive publishing and distribution rights for NCHP publications which have been in place since 1990, will be terminated on June 5, 1998. That move cleared the way for NCHP and its principal division, Smoke Stoppers, to be acquired by a new corporation, Smoke Stoppers International, Inc., whose principal shareholder is Joseph M. Segel, founder of The Franklin Mint and QVC. The acquisition was completed on May 15, 1998.
- Swisher International Group Inc. said Monday it expects its second quarter results to be below last year's and below analysts' expectations. The company earned $0.31 per share in the second quarter last year. According to First Call, analysts expected the company to earn $0.34 per share in the second quarter this year.
- Swisher International Group Inc., the world's largest manufacturer of cigars, today announced that the recovery in sales of its tobacco products is proceeding more slowly than previously anticipated as overstock conditions in the cigar trade continue.
- "You've got 400 years of history here. Virginia has some very deep political, historical, cultural and economic ties to tobacco," says Kurt Gregory Erickson, executive director of the American Lung Association of Northern Virginia. "A change to that isn't going to happen overnight," he says. But "the writing is on the wall, and change is going to happen."
- Such is the revulsion that companies have launched soaps, shampoos and fabric deodorants that promise to eliminate the lingering smell of smoke. They may find an eager market: a recent survey showed that 90 percent of smokers said that it was important not to smell of smoke; of the nonsmokers polled, 43 percent said they would prefer to change seats than sit next to a smoker, while 24 percent said they had turned down a date with a smoker. The new products may help disguise their vice. Proctor and Gamble recently introduced FEBREZE, a "fabric refresher" that is supposed to mask the smell, and consumers will soon be able to apply BANISH, a "personal smoke deodorizer" that removes the offending smell from clothes and hair.
- Eagle Star is to bear the brunt of 1600 job cuts earmarked from the ambitious merger of BAT Industries' financial services arm and Zurich Insurance.
- For Larry West, tobacco products are the lifeline that makes sure his two convenience stores in Mount Sterling stay profitable. Excluding gasoline, about one in every four dollars he collects is from cigarette sales. On top of that, tobacco companies pay him for posting ads in his store and for displaying their products prominently.
- Workers at the Macon, Ga., plant of Louisville-based Brown & Williamson harbor similar concerns. Randy Crawford, a mechanic at the plant, said that if the plant were to close, nothing in the area could match his $27-an-hour salary.
- In at least two other cases, industries have used freedom-of-information laws to try to pry information out of reluctant academic researchers. . . In 1991, Dr. Paul Fischer of the Medical College of Georgia, in Augusta, released a study on the effects of tobacco advertising on children, in which he found that 6-year-olds were as familiar with Joe Camel as they were with Mickey Mouse. . . "[I] ultimately turned over everything in my office, except for the children's names," said Fischer, who quit his job and gave up his research. "They won."
- AMERICAN TOBACCO: In 1946, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of major tobacco companies for a conspiracy to monopolize and exclude competitors. Among other practices, the companies purchased tobacco they did not need to keep it out of the hands of smaller competitors.
- It's easy for your kids to say they know all about why smoking is bad. Smoking: Truth or Dare? doesn't dwell on smoking's long-term effects, though. (Statistically, most teens swear they'll quit within five years. Most don't.) This program deals with today. Twin sisters - one a smoker, one not - watch an infrared camera monitoring blood flow in their hands. As the smoking sister puffs away, her hand changes from rosy red to chilling blue. Two other girls have their faces aged by a computer program to show what they'll look like in 10 years and 20 years if they continue to smoke. It ain't pretty.
- The row over tobacco sponsorship ran into further trouble today when pop idols Boyzone joined growing calls to curb advertising after young fans going to one of their concerts were offered free souvenir cigarettes with the group's photograph on the front of the packet.
- Q: Several months ago, a congressman was to have had hearings about the film industry people receiving payola to promote smoking. Were the hearings ever held?
- On a good day, Bridget Jones weighs no more than 120 pounds, smokes no more than five cigarettes, . . On a bad day -- of which there are many -- the statistics are less satisfying. Still, the obsessive Ms. Jones dutifully records them all in her hilarious but poignant diary: "Saturday 12 August: 129 pounds, alcohol units 3 (v.g.), cigarettes 32 (v.v. bad, particularly since first day of giving up) . . . The Daily Telegraph newspaper, which is serializing the diary, shows Bridget's ever-present cigarette and wine glass, but not her face.
- Sullum dares question the prevailing political orthodoxy in his new book, "For Your Own Good -- The anti-smoking crusade and the tyranny of public health." Sullum recently made stops in Raleigh and Winston-Salem, visiting one of the few states in the country where he might get a fair hearing -- an area where tobacco empires built such universities as Duke and Wake Forest, where the major charitable foundations are funded by cigarette money, and where hundreds of thousands of ordinary people have made their living from tobacco.
- It's the same for fathers, said Glen Palm, who has researched the effects of fatherhood on men. Palm is a professor of child and family studies at St. Cloud State University. In research projects going back to the early 1990s, Palm found that fathers share with mothers the desire to be patient and caring, and to set a good example for their children. In one case, a father said he quit smoking after he saw seen his young son mimic the habit by taking a drag on his crayon.
- GM CHRIS WALLACE and Celtics staffer TIM SYPHER tried to use RED AUERBACH's cigars to vault themselves to the No. 1 pick, which was won by the Los Angeles Clippers. Auerbach smoked two of his famous stogies last week, sent them to Boston via express mail, and gave his blessing as the half-smoked cigars were put into a plastic bag and carried near the Jersey swamps . . . But all anyone could talk about were Auerbach's ashes. "We had to stay away from everybody because we smelled like the bottom of an ashtray," Wallace said.
- Trained as a physical therapist but able to find only part-time work, she spends nearly $1,000 a year on cigarettes - a substantial share of her sub-$20,000 income. If Congress approves the anti-smoking legislation pending in the Senate, her habit would drain at least another $500 from her wallet. Like Jones, most of America's smokers fall toward the bottom of the income scale and can least afford the increase. But will the price increase persuade Jones and others like her to quit, as Congress hopes? "Even if the price goes up I'll keep on smoking," Jones said. "It keeps me calm."
- This is the legacy of Norma Lawton's 40 years of cigarette smoking: When she went to visit a friend in Frankfort for two days last week, Lawton took along four portable tanks of oxygen; a "concentrator" to provide oxygen when she isn't using one of the tanks; a "nebulizer" to pump medicine into her lungs; and a bag brimming with bottles of gaily colored pills. . . "We raised tobacco, and I worked in tobacco. I have members of my family who raise tobacco right now. But I wish they'd outlaw it." . . . "Nobody told me smoking was bad," she said. "I probably wouldn't have listened, but I wish they had." . . . "I have grandchildren who sit here and watch me gasp for breath. And they're still smoking."
- But those smokers will not disappear, and they have a right to flood his office and the offices of every other senator and representative with petitions, letters, telegrams, e-mail and phone calls, as do other Americans. Now that smokers are beginning to push back against the weight of Congress that has been allowed to demonize smoking and smokers, politicians like Harkin are beginning to feel the heat of the burning butt. If the intent of the legislation is to stop teen-age smoking, as congressional backers say it is, then the punitive nature of its taxes and restrictions should be removed, the politicians should sit down to think about practical ways to warn off teen-agers who have not tried tobacco, and they should forget the visions of billions of dollars in new tax dollars.
- Tobacco corporations always argue that they don't break the law. Yet in Malaysia, no health warnings appear in the company ads, and cigarettes are higher in tar and nicotine. Why do they obey a law in the U.S. they readily break in our country? . . Besides the immorality of it, the U.S. continues to ignore the global abuses of its tobacco corporations overseas, how long will it be before the techniques they perfect abroad in countries like Malaysia are reimported to the U.S.? Loopholes in proposed U.S. tobacco legislation could set the stage for a Joe Camel comeback through "brand stretching." Unless the U.S. acts to restrain global aggression by U.S. tobacco corporations, Malaysia's high addiction levels could be America's wave of the future.
- I am heartbroken and inconsolable. My beautiful wife and the mother of our four young children died yesterday. She killed herself. Did she use a gun? A noose? Pills? A knife? No. It was cigarettes. Grieving in New York. Dear New York: My heartfelt condolences. No comment from me is necessary. Your letter said it all.
- Strict licensing and marking requirements can help authorities track the movement of cigarettes from manufacturers to wholesalers, distributors, exporters and retailers. Tight Federal regulations have long applied to alcohol distribution, effectively ending illegal sales of wine and spirits in this country. The Senate should ignore the scare talk and approve a strong bill that would reduce smoking by raising prices.
- A state that's serious about deterring kids from smoking would . . raise the price of cigarettes to a level that economic research says is effective in discouraging purchases by teenagers. And the state would use that money not to pay for schools and transit, but for other anti-smoking efforts. That way, if the tax works as a deterrent, its proceeds and the need for them would decline in tandem.
- Quitting smoking now might help Mr Tang, and many others who smoke and have psoriasis, to feel better and reduce both their tobacconist's and dermatologist's bills.
- For decades, the tobacco industry has buried research that hurt its product. It has marketed to teen-agers, and, God love 'em, the kids have bought the ad pitches that appealed to their independence. These are not outrageous charges made by anti-smoking zealots. Big Tobacco's own papers, stacks of them, said so and were evidence in four state lawsuits that have squeezed $36 billion in settlements out of Big Tobacco. . . Big Tobacco's heyday is over, but it is too rich to go quietly. Its scurrilous ad campaign indicates it won't. Its message may appeal to Texas Sens. Phil Gramm's and Kay Bailey Hutchison's political leanings. We hope they don't buy it -- and support the McCain bill, instead.
- A recent survey by Republican pollster Fred Steeper showed that GOP candidates will feel the negative fallout if they block a major bill to control teen smoking. Lawmakers need to be on record as acknowledging that they have a role in discouraging smoking and addressing a serious public health issue that costs the country $100 billion a year. Their input and vote on the McCain bill will be closely watched.
- But the stench of the back room grows downright unbearable when it is revealed that one of the law firms -- which stands to collect as much as $360 million in a settlement similar to the one just reached between the state of Minnesota and the tobacco companies -- is that of Gov. Tommy Thompson's personal attorney, George Steil.
- Attempts to curb teenage smoking don't work all that well if they concentrate only on the young users and not on who's supplying them. That is why Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan announced an initiative two months ago to fine businesses that sell cigarettes to minors. Mr. Duncan also is proposing a county tax on cigars and smokeless tobacco products . . . Other regional officials should consider joining in, with an eye toward coming up with uniform laws and enforcement. That is the only effective approach in this multi-jurisdictional region.
- While Mr. MITCHELL and his VERNER, LIIPFERT partners are celebrating over doing the Lord's work in Ireland, they've been doing Big Tobacco's work in Washington. While Mr. Mitchell spoke movingly in his speech about wanting to insure a safe future for the 61 babies born in Northern Ireland the same day as his son, Verner, Liipfert has been lobbying on behalf of an addiction that poses a deadly threat to American children: smoking. . . And when the cigarette makers stalked away, Verner, Liipfert went with them. The industry's critics are saying that Verner, Liipfert should now be doing some soul-searching over whether it wants to stick with Big Tobacco. . . Mr. McCain said that the Washington lawyers and former Democratic and Republican wise men -- BOB DOLE, HOWARD BAKER and GEORGE MITCHELL -- who are becoming rich on tobacco money "really need to examine their responsibilities, they really do."
- Addressing the 1996 Democratic Convention, you said about tobacco, "When I was a child, my family was attacked by an invisible force that was then considered harmless." Was smoking really considered harmless in this country in which cigarettes had for generations been called "coffin nails"? Are tobacco farmers immoral?
- The experience of other countries and individual states shows what can be accomplished when the price of a pack of cigarettes skyrockets - and when it drops. . . A 1987 Philip Morris memo laments, "The 1982-83 round of price increases caused 2 million adults to quit smoking and prevented 600,000 teen-agers from starting to smoke. . . . We don't need to have that happen again." Congress should enact a price increase even larger than that proposed by Sen. McCain for precisely that reason - to protect our children.
- BRITISH American Financial Services, (BAFS), the financial arm of BAT Industries, is to shed 1,600 jobs when it demerges from the tobacco business and merges with Zurich, the insurance group, in the autumn.
- Conclusions.The conclusions of review articles are strongly associated with the affiliations of their authors. Authors of review articles should disclose potential financial conflicts of interest, and readers of review articles should consider authors' affiliations when deciding how to judge an article's conclusions.
- President Clinton has tentatively chosen a New Mexico cancer specialist to become the first female chief of the Food and Drug Administration, officials said Tuesday. DR. JANE HENNEY, vice president of the University of New Mexico's Health Sciences Center, is undergoing routine background checks. Administration officials said Clinton hoped to announce her nomination within weeks.
- The White House has tentatively chosen a cancer specialist who is vice president of the University of New Mexico to be head of the Food and Drug Administration, a position that has been vacant more than 14 months, Clinton administration officials said Monday. The prospective nominee, DR. JANE HENNEY, was deputy commissioner of food and drugs under Dr. David Kessler from 1992 to 1994. . . The next commissioner will also have a big role in one of the most important public health initiatives ever undertaken by the government, as it steps up efforts to curb smoking and regulate tobacco. Bills moving through Congress would enhance the FDA's authority over the sale and advertising of tobacco products.
- "The Microsoft thing raises a very interesting specter. It raises the prospect of a very disturbing pattern whereby government tries to extort money out of industries that are not politically popular," says Scott Williams, a tobacco industry spokesman. "The tobacco thing was about money. It's about how much they can get out of the industry, or punish the industry."
- Rep. BRIAN BILBRAY, R-Calif., has said that tobacco companies make him "fear for his children." Yet he accepted $1,500 in political money from them this year. The money, he says, does not affect his politics. Sen. JOHN McCain, R-Ariz., has sworn off tobacco money. Yet he accepted $1,000 in March from a political action committee largely funded by tobacco money but not connected to any one company. Rep. JENNIFER DUNN, R-Wash., refused a check from cigarette maker Lorillard. But she accepted $1,000 from the PAC of Kraft Foods Inc., entirely funded by the Philip Morris tobacco company.
- Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Tennessee, the state's largest insurer, has withdrawn from a lawsuit against tobacco companies. Spokesman Ron Harr said Blue Cross felt the lawsuit was becoming a lobbying and public relations effort against tobacco rather than a way to benefits consumers. "We are here to take care of our customers. We didn't have the resources in time and money to pursue a national lobbying campaign," he said Tuesday.
- "If you want to talk about something violent, talk about tobacco," the governor told 500 people gathered in Miami for the First Annual International Conference on Global Nonviolence Education and Training. "I've been in a lot of fights, but this is the best fight I have ever been in," CHILES said. "We whipped (tobacco) and we are going to keep them down."
- Saying the private attorneys seeking 25 percent of the state's $11 billion settlement were denied due process, the Fourth District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach on Monday reversed a decision by Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Harold Cohen.
- Attorneys fighting for 25 percent of the state' s $11 billion tobacco settlement won a victory Monday when an appeals court overturned a judge' s ruling that such a fee would be excessive. The 4th District Court of Appeal restored liens filed on the settlement money by attorneys who represented Florida in its fight to recoup the cost of treating sick smokers on Medicaid.
- "The hearings brought the truth to light," Sen. Charlie Crist, chairman of the Senate Executive Business, Ethics, and Elections Committee, said on Sunday. "It exposed the secrecy the governor thinks is standard operating procedure. It's ugly."
- In her multi-million dollar suit, PATRICIA HENLEY charges the big five tobacco companies with misleading the public about the dangers of cigarette smoking. The tobacco companies, which have known since 1946 that smoking cigarettes caused cancer, have pursued a campaign of disinformation and concealment, boosted nicotine levels and targeted youth to maintain a steady market of hooked smokers, the suit states.
- Opponents of the city's ban on smoking in restaurants say they have gathered the 1,500 signatures needed to force the city to either repeal the ordinance or place the issue before voters in November.
- To those farmers, U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell's decision this week to abandon the fight only underscores the inevitable. "We kind of have figured that there's not going to be a tobacco program much longer," said Charlie Dawson, who is growing more flowers and vegetables on his family's 200-acre farm in anticipation of the end of the tobacco program.
- Tougher anti-smoking legislation for mostly upstate New York restaurants was snuffed out by four Democratic state Assembly members from areas downstate where smoking is virtually banned. The bill sponsored by Democratic Assemblyman Alexander Grannis, chairman of the Insurance Committee, would have required all restaurants to be smoke-free - except in bar areas. . . Democrats DARRYL TOWNS of Brooklyn, JAMES GARY PRETLOW of Westchester County, and GLORIA DAVIS and ROBERTO RAMIREZ, both of the Bronx, joined Republican lawmakers in voting against the Grannis bill.
- Maryland's highest court upheld yesterday the state's right to hire a private lawyer to handle its lawsuit against cigarette manufacturers.
- Fairfax County supervisors Monday agreed to examine whether the county can require new employees to be non-smokers, force new hires to quit smoking once they join county government or give preference to non-smokers in the hiring process. The sweeping proposal - introduced by Supervisor Gerald W. Hyland, D-Mount Vernon District, and unanimously approved for study by the full board Monday - would likely be one of the most restrictive anti-smoking laws in the country.
- Immigration and Naturalization Service agents sealed off the exits of the G.F. Vaughan Tobacco Co. on Versailles Road about 7:30 a.m. yesterday and arrested nearly half the workers in the warehouse. . . The immigrants -- who came from Mexico and several other Latin American countries -- did labor-intensive work at the company, unloading tobacco plants from trucks, stripping the tobacco and boxing it, Sowards said
- Two of the three major Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate took to the road yesterday, with both delivering virtually the same message on tobacco. U.S. Rep. SCOTTY BAESLER, traveling through Hardin, Grayson, Breckinridge and Meade counties, voiced opposition to Republican Sen. MITCH MCCONNELL's break with Democratic Sen. WENDELL FORD on tobacco legislation under discussion this week in Washington.
- Attorney-general candidate LYNN SCHENK recently outlined her plan, if elected, to end the tobacco industry practice of targeting minors in their advertising messages. She vowed to terminate the distribution of promotional materials bearing tobacco names or logos; enforce the tobacco industry's promise to Minnesota not to place tobacco products or logos in movies, videos or television; and she will seek the removal of all tobacco billboards in the state and the elimination of tobacco ads on buses, taxis and bus shelters.
- Inmates and employees at the Luzerne County Correctional Facility have until July 31 to smoke them if they got them. On Monday, the county prison board unanimously approved a no-smoking policy that will transform tobacco products into contraband at the prison following a weaning period set to begin on June 8. On Aug. 1, no tobacco products will be allowed inside the county jail.
- Fairfax County supervisors yesterday unanimously agreed to examine whether the county can require new employees to be non- smokers, force new hires to quit smoking once they join county government or give preference to non-smokers in the hiring process. The sweeping proposal was introduced by Supervisor Gerald W. Hyland of the Mount Vernon District.
- Activists opposed to cigarette smoking showed their disgust with the General Assembly, holding a symbolic funeral for 31 bills addressing their concerns that failed to get legislative approval. The ILLINOIS COALITION AGAINST TOBACCO today brought about 500 people to the Statehouse to urge state lawmakers to support measures that discourage people from smoking.
- Theater-goers will soon be reminded not to smoke while they are encouraged to visit the snack bar. Six anti-smoking reminders will be shown before movies at 50 theaters around the state. The ad campaign will run three months and cost $156,000, paid for by tobacco tax revenues. Dr. James Allen of the state health services department says the ads will help counter the glamorization of tobacco in movies.
- The University of Wisconsin' s holdings in two major tobacco companies ignores the school' s " socially responsible" investment policy, a student group says.
- San Francisco's forest of tobacco billboards will come down by June 1, after an agreement yesterday between the city and two outdoor advertisers who own virtually all the signs. Outdoor Systems Advertising and Eller Media Co., both with headquarters in Phoenix, Ariz., said they will eliminate the advertising six weeks before a tough new city ordinance banning most of them takes effect.
- The Economic Coordination Committee of the Cabinet (ECC) which met here on Tuesday under the Chairmanship of Minister for Finance Minister, Senator Sartaj Aziz has decided to increase the support price of tobacco for the 1998 crop.
- ZIMBABWE'S tobacco industry, which helped the Rhodesian economy to thrive through 14 years of United Nations sanctions, is on the brink of collapse and threatens to cause the economy to disintegrate. Harare's cavernous tobacco auction floors, usually a hive of activity, fell almost silent on Monday as the 5,300 growers withheld their leaf in a week-long protest at low prices. "Growers may never grow tobacco again," Robert Webb, president of the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association, told an emotional meeting of farmers, both black and white, in a rare show of unanimity, in a tobacco warehouse.
- Zimbabwe's tobacco auctions opened yesterday, but officials reported a sharp decline in volumes as farmers heeded calls to boycott the floors in protest over poor prices. "We are in business but we are offering approximately half what we normally offer," Tobacco Sales Floor (TSF) MD Pat Devenish said.
- Zimbabwe's once vigorous tobacco industry is facing disaster as farmers find themselves driven to the wall by the country's economic and political crisis. The tobacco industry, which kept the Rhodesian economy buoyant through 14 years of United Nations sanctions, is expected to grind to a halt on Monday as farmers heed a call to boycott auction sales in a bid to force up prices being offered by international merchants.
- Renewed pressure is expected on the Zimbabwean dollar following Friday's decision by 1 400 large-scale tobacco growers and several thousand emergent small-scale cultivators to withhold deliveries to the auction floors in protest against "suicidal" low prices. "Our growers are being wiped out and may never recover," Zimbabwe Tobacco Association president Rob Webb said as floors closed for the first time since open auctions resumed at 1980 independence.
- Tobacco growers yesterday announced a week-long boycott of daily auctions and demanded the government remove state levies that have increased production costs.
- Revenue Canada wants three cigarette smuggling kingpins to cough up $45 million apiece. But Nicky Martino and his two partners are declaring bankruptcy to avoid paying the $135 million. Martino, 47, Billy Gagnon, 30, and Donnie Martin, 44, all of Cornwall, pleaded guilty in March to charges of conspiracy to smuggle cigarettes. They were given suspended sentences.
- Standard Commercial Corp. (STW) expects to report diluted earnings per share of $2 to $2.05 for its fiscal year ended March 31, 1998, up from $1.78 a share a year ago. The tobacco and wool dealer expects earnings to drop to between $1.70 to $1.80 a share for fiscal 1999, due to uncertainties in the company's outlook.
- May 20, 1998--Star Tobacco & Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of EYE TECHNOLOGY, Inc. announced today that DAVID P. SHEETS has been named President and Chief Executive Officer of the Company, and a member of its Board of Directors, effective immediately
- Philip Morris Cos. Chairman GEOFFREY BIBLE Tuesday left open the possibility that Big Tobacco may come back to the table in an attempt to work out a deal with states suing the industry. However, he said the states are wasting their time if they believe tobacco companies will agree to a deal that could jeopardize their future. Appearing Tuesday on "MONEYLINE WITH LOU DOBBS," Bible said the problem with all the previous attempts to settle litigation is that the states have made few attempts to involve the tobacco companies.
- The shares have underperformed the market by 15 per cent over the past 12 months, and are still fluctuating wildly. Why should this be? Imperial seems to be doing all the right things: selling Western cigarettes to Asia and increasing exposure to both menthol cigarettes and roll-your-own tobacco. The problem is that the company remains dependent on the UK for almost 80 per cent of its profits - and is watching its home market spinning into ever-sharper decline.
- POPULARITY of roll-your-own cigarettes has helped Imperial Tobacco to maintain profits growth even though its core UK market has shrunk by 4 per cent - double the normal rate of decline. The company's acquisition of RIZLA, the papers company, added £14 million to its pre-tax profits at the halfway stage, making £146 million (£143 million) in the six months to March 28.
- Imperial Tobacco Group PLC said Tuesday that despite plans to reduce its dependency on the U.K. cigarette market it would not be looking to make any more large acquisitions in the short-term
- But according to the Sunday Times of London, by the time "Fear and Loathing" screened at the Cannes Festival last week, the Gonzo journalist . . . had changed his mind. . . Thompson was apparently so incensed at Gilliam he planned on flying to Cannes to disrupt the black-tie screening of the film last Friday - and few people know more about disrupting things than Thompson. The plan was foiled at the eleventh hour, however, when he couldn't find a flight to Europe that would allow him to smoke. The prospect of six hours without nicotine was too horrific.
- In the event, said the film's publicist in Cannes, the chain-smoking Thompson was dissuaded from making the trip only because he was unable to find a flight between America and Europe that would allow him to smoke.
- HODDLE conceded that GASCOIGNE was only 60 per cent fit and that the player's lifestyle of smoking, drinking and late-night kebabs, as much as his recent injuries, was the cause.
- He smokes fags, so he is a bloody fool, but we knew that anyway. Tobacco is a lethal drug but it is legal, and the Government gets a big cut from it so the Government is immoral, but GAZZA is not.
- Maverick midfielder PAUL GASCOIGNE was pilloried in yesterday's newspapers for smoking, drinking and staying out late only three weeks before the start of the soccer World Cup. Gascoigne, photographed out on the town with his drinking friends, said his big ambition was to see a UFO.
- "There are other players in the squad who smoke [Ince is one], and I'm not getting involved in incidentals." He promptly proceeded to do just that. "Let's look at it on the factual side," he went on. "If I said to them, 'You're not going to smoke for five or six weeks', their bodies would dip [with withdrawal symptoms], and then we'd get them in a worse condition than if they had continued to smoke."
- Considering that the military has long been in the business of recruiting young people and that for decades it presented the use of cigarettes as a benign custom, it would seem the VA is obligated to provide treatment for the tobacco-related illnesses of those who served their country.
- McCain's bill does too much antismoking good to be stopped over some breaks for Big Tobacco.
- Use new tobacco taxes to boost child-care programs.
- The tobacco companies are being told to surrender their 1st Amendment rights to advertise and market their legal products in exchange for protection from lawsuits. That is repugnant. . . . A cigarette tax increase can be justified. Research has shown raising the cost of a pack of cigarettes will deter kids from buying. But Congress should narrow the focus of this legislation to do that, without resorting to indefensible tactics such as the coerced surrender of constitutional rights.
- The "public-interest" network is already tapping into this bonanza to make sure none of its members will ever have to get a real job. . . In a more honest political process, someone would at least stand up and propose a complete nationalization of the tobacco industry. But we guess it would offend the Beltway's moral sensibilities if it was capturing 100% of the cash flow from a vice. So we get the McCain bill. We hope as the debate proceeds that at least a few Senators will surface the more egregious hidden agendas, and maybe one of them could put in a word for the Constitution. If in the end the Senate votes through the McCain bill, the Republicans can forget the moral high ground on taxes, because they will have just jumped off of it.
- At town-hall meetings, through newspaper and radio ads and calls to lawmaker offices, veterans are protesting a plan to eliminate VA health benefits for tobacco-related diseases to help finance the six-year highway and mass transit spending bill. "A shameless money-grabbing scheme," said Disabled American Veterans National Commander Harry McDonald.
- As an adjunct to the law, Quebec should also launch a campaign to persuade young people not to smoke. Ninety per cent of smokers were hooked before they turned 18. Making it hard for kids to get hold of cigarettes is half the battle. The other half is convincing them they don't even want to get hold of them. That's a project worth spending a lot of money on, maybe even as much as the $30 million that might be spent bailing out events like the Grand Prix.
- For the next round of political reformation, how about requiring that lobbyists dress the way race car drivers do? . . Had we had the label requirement for lobbyists in effect a few years ago, Wes Lane would have shown up for work with "Teamsters" on one lapel and "Tobacco" on the other. As it was, legislators -- and perhaps Teamsters officials -- didn't know that Lane, once a crusty and powerful figure at the Capitol, was taking money from tobacco while collecting his salary from the Teamsters.
- Raising tobacco prices won't work, but it will create an illegal and unregulated underground market, making cigarette smoking more, not less, alluring to rebellious teenagers, punishing the 98 percent of smokers who are adults and placing in jeopardy the 2 million Americans whose jobs are tied to tobacco.
- "No -- unlike America, the Chinese believe in free choice." . . . "How will the Chinese pay for the cigarettes?" "By selling the Americans ashtrays."
- A statement issued here by Robert Webb, president of the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association (ZTA) - representing 5,300 growers - said it had "good faith that prices will stabilize now that growers will be sending better styles to the auction floors."
- Leading cigarette manufacturers and the Moscow city government are sponsoring a one-month campaign to discourage young people from taking up one of Russia's favorite vices, smoking. The "Smoking? No Time for That" campaign begins June 5, said Olga Kostina, head of Moscow's public relations department. The campaign involves the American companies Philip Morris and R. J. Reynolds, Rothmans of Canada and Reemsta of Germany. The campaign will encourage teen-agers to do things other than smoke, such as take up sports, Kostina told a news conference, according to the Interfax news agency.
- Figures released by Lebanese customs show that 11,464 tonnes of American tobacco worth some $206.9m were exported to Lebanon in 1996, against a figure of $824.25m for total US exports. . . The Kettaneh company, based in Dora with a listed capital of $13m, represents tobacco giant Philip Morris, makers of Marlboro, Merit and Chesterfield. Through Kettaneh, Philip Morris sells between $90m and $100m worth of tobacco a year to the Régie Libanaise des Tabacs . . . According to customs figures, American tobacco constitutes approximately 80 per cent of all tobacco exports to Lebanon
- General Cigar Holdings, Inc. announced today that its Board of Directors has authorized the repurchase of up to 5% of the Company's common shares from time to time subject to market conditions.
- A group led by New York investor Mario Gabelli said Thursday it raised its stake in General Cigar Holdings Inc. to 19.79 percent, or 2,934,661 class A common shares.
- Shares in Rothmans Holdings Ltd surged to a six-year high yesterday after the cigarette-manufacturer surprised shareholders with a second consecutive special dividend to celebrate a 53 per cent rise in net profits.
- This time the threat comes from dastardly interlopers who would dare pass off fake smokes for the real Cohibas, say editors at Cigar Aficionado, the hefty bimonthly magazine dedicated to celebrating premium cigars and the good life they have long symbolized. The magazine's Web site now has a Counterfeit Gallery to alert cigar smokers to the ruse.
- Japan Tobacco Inc. (J.JTB) . . . reported Thursday that its consolidated pretax profit dropped to Y115.17 billion in the fiscal year ended March 31, down nearly 19% from the year earlier. The company's group operating profit fell by 17% to Y129.52 billion and net profit plunged by 28% to Y58.02 billion on a 2.7% drop in sales to Y3.597 trillion. Japan Tobacco said its results were undermined in the latest year by a big drop in domestic tobacco sales. But overseas tobacco sales rose.
- Tobacco major ITC Ltd. (P.ITC) is expected to post a whopping 72% increase in net profit to 5.88 billion rupees (INR) ($1=INR40.57) for the year ended March 31, and remains a favorite buy for most analysts.
- ROBERT CRANDALL ended his 18-year reign at the helm of American Airlines on Wednesday with a parting shot at Washington politicians he accused of trying to re-regulate the airline industry. . . Crandall, who is usually all business, appeared relaxed and pleased at the accolades. He even joked that he did not intend to give up a long-time cigarette smoking habit because he and his wife were "devotees of the weed."
- L.A. Dodgers right-hander Darren Dreifort has a sizzling fastball, a superb slider and the potential to be one of the game's best starting pitchers someday. He also has an addiction to smokeless tobacco. "It's a vice and everyone has one," Dreifort said. "But this obviously is an addiction and, from what I'm told, it's one of the hardest ones to quit because of the nicotine."
- Two other Journal reporters, ALIX M. FREEDMAN and SUEIN L. HWANG, won in the deadline/beat-writing category for their "breakthrough coverage" of the tobacco industry's liability settlement. . . Ms. Freedman, who won a 1996 Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the cigarette industry, joined the Journal's Philadelphia bureau in 1984 and has covered the food and tobacco industry since 1987. This is the second Loeb award for Ms. Freedman, 40, who is an investigative reporter. Ms. Hwang, 29, joined the Journal as an intern in 1990 and became a reporter that year. She has since covered consumer products and the tobacco industry.
- ATTN BUYER'S EDGE: please don't use this before it runs on MAY 21. art is AH1tim21: Tobacco leaf lavatory, photo provided by Decorative Kallista
- The Howard University campus in Washington, DC, will be the centerpiece of a multi-cultural, national commemoration of this year's World No-Tobacco Day on Sunday, May 31, 1998. Tobacco control advocates from around the country will join with local residents at this special event. Many of those in attendance will walk behind a horse-drawn hearse in a New Orleans-style jazz "funeral" procession in memory of those who have died from tobacco.
- This midlife crisis has been brought on by last week's Budget decision to hike the tax on cigarettes as part of the Government's plan to persecute the people who give them more money than any other single private-sector group. . . According to my reckoning, the smokers of New Zealand wholly fund the year's operating costs for the RNZAF ($482 million) and half the army's annual cost of $373 million. This proves smokers are patriotic people. It also means that if some wily enemy ever attacks us, I expect the armed forces to defend the homes of smokers first.
- It is tenuous at best to lump nicotine in with the kinds of pharmaceuticals the FDA regulates. It does not impair judgment or behavior, and the risks accumulate over time. Perhaps caffeine will also join the ranks of "drugs" the government must control. There is more certainty about government restrictions on tobacco advertising: They're unconstitutional abridgements of the First Amendment. . . . Everyone knows that smoking is an unhealthy habit, and that people can become addicted to nicotine. There are several ways to combat this problem. The McCain smoking bill isn't one of them.
- As it happens, Mr. Chafee and his spokesman are right that "no one addicts you." But the whole premise of the tobacco legislation introduced by Sen. John McCain and now being debated on the Senate floor is that someone can "addict" you. That being the case, U.S. veterans have a far stronger claim for health-care compensation than do civilians. . . What's happening to veterans is emblematic of the larger tobacco issue now under consideration in the Senate. No matter what pieties advocates utter in the name of tobacco restrictions, this controversy has never been about protecting children, veterans or anyone else. It's about money, the kind you shake down from tobacco companies or the kind you deny to aging soldiers.
- We doubt the tobacco program's prognosis is as dire as McConnell claims. . . That McConnell has embraced such an unbending approach reinforces the notion that he's really out to kill the tobacco bill. By staking out an extreme position, he lessens the chance of compromise with Southern Democrats defending the program.
- Mr. Lott's caucus is divided on the tobacco issue. He needs to step on toes if a bill is to pass.
- The anti-smoking Bill, which includes one of the largest transfers of wealth from corporations to government and individuals in US business history, is expected to be put to a final vote tomorrow or when lawmakers return from Monday's Memorial Day holiday break. . . But analysts say the chances of getting favourable legislation, or killing an unfavourable bill, appear slim when politicians are eagerly eyeing a new source of revenue while wanting to appear concerned about rising rates of teenage smoking.
- Teenagers are smoking more and more every day, thanks to a five billion dollar tobacco campaign, largely aimed at teenagers.
- In the beginning, you could grow all the tobacco and hemp you wanted to grow and even make all the whiskey you wanted to make. No wonder the pioneers thought this place was paradise. The government hadn't arrived.
- this newfound concern for the working man, the poor, the economically hard pressed -- so lacking when it comes to minimum-wage legislation, medical coverage or, in some cases, decent schooling -- just exudes the noxious odor of hypocrisy. Don't even get close to it. It's enough to make you sick.
- If we want our children to be smart enough to say no to tobacco, then Congress needs to be smart enough to say yes to making child care and after-school programs part of our national strategy for keeping kids healthy and tobacco-free. As a prescription for preventing teen smoking, these programs are just what the doctor ordered.
- We must encourage Sens. Warner and Robb to strengthen the McCain bill, and we must tell Congress that a majority of Americans want strong, effective tobacco control laws.
- Let people buy health insurance and pay any added premium associated with smoking. That policy would be most suitable for a free society. As the Spanish proverb had it: Take what you want, and pay for it.
- Arizona lawmakers won't be imposing limits on what the state can pay private lawyers suing the tobacco industry on the state's behalf. Sen. John Kaites, R-Glendale, dropped his plan after he could not get the necessary 16 Senate votes for approval.
- Yesterday's announcement places Trigon in the delicate position of suing the employers of some of the people it insures. The company counts tobacco industry workers among its 1.8 million subscribers. . . Trigon does provide vision, dental and retirement Medicare supplemental coverage for some Philip Morris USA workers. . . "There's no doubt that we're in a unique position as a Virginia company, and that's why we have deliberated long and hard on this decision," Taylor said. "But we believe we have a responsibility to consider the interests of all of our customers and shareholders. We think this is the right thing to do for them."
- Trigon Blue Cross Blue Shield today joined the coalition of 47 other Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans in 44 states and the District of Columbia in their federal lawsuits against major tobacco companies. Trigon will participate in the suit filed in federal court in NEW YORK.
- In a taped deposition, BENNETT LEBOW detailed what he calls the tobacco industry's efforts to hide the risks of smoking from the public. ''The industry's position for 40 years to me is absurd,'' said LeBow . . . ''It was absurd to keep saying smoking is not addictive. . . ''We couldn't afford to lose anything,'' LeBow said. ''We lose one lawsuit, we'll be bankrupt.'' In his deposition, LeBow said he began gathering information about lawsuits facing Liggett in 1995, the same year that his competitor, Phillip Morris, offered to pay Liggett's $8-million-a-year legal fees, and LeBow learned about lawsuits facing R.J. Reynolds Tobacco.
- LeBow, whose Brooke Group Ltd. (BGL - news) and its Liggett Inc. subsidiary settled privately with the smoker's family, said in videotaped testimony that cigarette makers knew the health risks of their products despite decades of denials. "To this day I cannot understand how these people can stand up and say that smoking is not addictive. It's absurd," LeBow said in the videotape.
- San Francisco officials are worried that the city could lose tens of millions of dollars under the tobacco bill winding its way through Congress and have dispatched its top attorneys to Washington to push for changes.
- The billboards depict a cartoonish figure sucking on a car's exhaust pipe below the question, "What's Equivalent to Smoking?" "I'm trying to say that the guy who's committing suicide is doing the same thing as a smoker," said 14-year-old Nisreen Mesiwala of West Bloomfield Township, whose billboard design won a county health contest.
- The Montana Branch of the American Lung Association is launching an attack against the tobacco industry, which recently placed commercials in newspapers and on television around the state. The association claims the advertising is trying to deceive the public about current tobacco reform legislation in congress.
- So when McCain decided to swear off tobacco money in this year's race, his old friends found a way to show the senator they still cared. A subsidiary of tobacco giant Philip Morris, Miller Brewing Co., came up with a $1,000 check for McCain's campaign in June. Aides didn't notice the end-run until months later. They returned the check May 1. "We weren't aware that Miller was a subsidiary of Philip Morris," McCain's press aide, Nancy Ives, said. "Now, we have our campaign staff monitoring that closely."
- In the first three months of 1998, when Congress took up tobacco legislation, more than a quarter of a million dollars of tobacco PAC money flowed to Capitol Hill. More than 60 percent of it went to Republicans. . . ``If Kraft PAC came to me and I saw that it was an arm of Philip Morris, I wouldn't take their money,'' said Gov. Roy Romer of Colorado, who is also chair of the Democratic National Committee. ``Voters are going to look at those who accept tobacco money and ask, `Who owns you?' ''
- The lawyers who pursued Minnesota's case, eventually winning a $6.6 billion settlement, forced the industry to hand over enough internal documents to fill two warehouses. And the 15-week trial demonstrated to other states how the documents could be used, the industry's defense and the effectiveness of witnesses. Experts singled out Arizona, New York and Wisconsin as having strong pending lawsuits against tobacco.
- States with trial dates for lawsuits against the tobacco industry:
- In 1992, Schenk received $3,000 from BENNETT LEBOW, chairman and chief executive officer of the corporation that manufactures Chesterfield, Eve, Lark and L&M brand cigarettes . . . Lockyer's campaign produced an additional $4,900 in contributions that it said Schenk received from principals of PATTON BOGGS and CASSIDY & ASSOCIATES, two high-powered Washington firms that lobby for the tobacco industry.
- Smokers, who recently got booted from restaurants and bars statewide, are now being asked to keep out of "tot lots" in this city's 14 parks. Those who ignore the new rule, however, won't risk a fine or jail sentence. At least for now. The ban was suggested this week by Tom Klipp, chairman of the La Mesa Community Services Commission.
- Q: Do you support a bill in Congress that would raise the price of cigarettes by $1.10 a pack and authorize federal regulation of tobacco as a drug? Gelman: This is a tax mostly on lower-income people in order to create more government bureaucracy. . . Hoffman: Children need to be protected from drugs and tobacco. . . Westmiller: . . More taxes and more regulation will not cure bad habits.
- Like other tobacco-state lawmakers who oppose teen smoking but are wary of offending an industry that has been an economic engine in the South for generations, Robb has expressed reservations about proposed legislation to settle lawsuits against tobacco companies. Throughout rural Virginia, Robb has called for protections for tobacco farmers whose livelihoods are linked to the success of tobacco companies. Robb has hinted that he might support Arizona Sen. John McCain's $516 billion tobacco bill, but he led efforts to include $3.5 billion in it for farm communities and buyouts for Virginia's tobacco growers.
- But the Democratic primary is a closer call. REP. SCOTTY BAESLER, who hails from the state's 6th Congressional District, centered on Lexington, has the lead in most recent surveys. But there is still a large undecided vote out there and his two challengers, LT. GOV. STEVE HENRY and CHARLIE OWEN, a wealthy cable television executive, continue to run hard. Before it all ends, Owen may pour in as much as $5 million, most of it for television and radio ads. Lately, the three Democrats have been arguing a great deal about tobacco , trying to outdo one another in their support for the price-support program. Kentucky's other senator, MITCH MCCONNELL, put tobacco front and center in the contest by proposing a few days ago that supports be abolished
- Mark Gorski, the owner of Bullfrogs in Ocean Beach, said he received a warning from the county last week that he may be in violation of the ordinance for allegedly allowing smoking in his establishment and for allegedly failing to post no-smoking signs at the bar entrance. The notice -- which threatened potential legal action to ensure compliance with the regulations -- arrived at Bullfrogs via registered mail a day after Gorski's comments appeared in The San Diego Union-Tribune in which he asserted that the smoking ban had cut his revenues by 50 percent and forced him to consider closing his doors during daytime hours.
- Norm Paquette of Palm Desert sent along a snapshot of a sign that might be interpreted as a protest against puffers (see photo). Actually, it belongs to a tobacco company in the city of Banning.
- Some cigars produce from two to 16 times the carbon monoxide, nicotine, and tar that an average filter tip cigarette does, according to state-funded test results released yesterday at a hearing on a cigar warning-label proposal. "If you look at all the evidence, one has to conclude cigars pose a serious public health risk," said GREGORY CONNOLLY, director of the Massachusetts Tobacco Control Program, which comes under the Department of Public Health. "It's the responsibility of the department to take action."
- With public hearings in Boston and Springfield yesterday and today, and in legislation pending at the State House, officials hope to reduce cigar smoking as much as they have cigarette smoking, particularly among young people.
- Tiny dramas including a death threat allegedly from the Ku Klux Klan are unfolding this week in Cardinal Valley, where many Hispanics are anxious after 86 illegal immigrants were arrested by federal agents at G.F. Vaughan Tobacco Co. on Versailles Road.
- The Arlington Heights Board of Health has decided to be more lenient with its former policy of attempting to ban smoking in all public areas of the village and may now try to compromise with businesses. . . But MARK SILVERMAN, vice president of the village's chamber of commerce who attended the meeting, convinced the board that it would not be economically feasible for restaurants and bar areas to ban smoking altogether.
- ohn Melton, a 25-year employee of KRAFT FOODS, says heıs called everyone from Missouri senators to city council members. . . Melton says his 17-year-old daughter was up for a summer internship at Kraft to help her pay for college. However, because of cigarette vending machines in the plant, Amy Jo Melton canıt work there. According to the cityıs ordinance, anyone under 18 canıt have access to tobacco vending machines. . . City officials say itıs Kraftıs policy, not the law that kept Amy Jo from getting the internship.
- Domestic cigarette smugglers have long made Washington state a favorite target, attracted by smokers trying to escape paying the nation's second-highest excise tax. Officials there now report an influx of illegally imported Chinese cigarettes, which some say is a sign of things to come nationwide if the Senate bill that would raise prices by $1.10 per pack becomes law.
- But her most outspoken initiative so far has been to vow to open a new front in the global fight against tobacco. The world's "Tobacco Inc'' has taken a big hit following her call to ban cigarette advertising and create a global campaign against the product. . . Many within the U.N. health agency's staff see Brundtland as the "new broom'' coming in to clear out the musty WHO. "For 10 years we've been a sleeping beauty,'' said Jens Jorgensen, a senior WHO official. "Mrs BRUNDTLAND will wake us up.''
- CUSTOMS officers have seized 8.5 million smuggled cigarettes after trailing a lorry halfway across England. They believe it to be the biggest haul of contraband cigarettes seized in Britain and say smugglers stood to make £1 million from their crime. . . checks showed 425,000 packets of Jet cigarettes, which are thought to have been made in the Philippines.
- Retired bus driver George Alders has been jailed for nine months for selling bootleg cigarettes and hand-rolling tobacco. He was also ordered to pay £150 costs and £3,500 compensation. Alders, 68, admitted avoiding paying £33,129 duty on 14,200 cigarettes and 12.95kg of tobacco in 1995 and 1996, Durham Crown Court heard.
- THE THRIVING grey market in foreign cigarette brands is jeopardising the launch plans of a number of multinationals like BAT, Phillip Morris, Rothmans and R J Reynolds. Most of these companies are waiting in the wings. Even those MNCs who have just entered the market with powerful brands like the Benson & Hedges, 555, Dunhill, Marlboro are unlikely to go the whole hog unless the grey market is curbed. The companies, however, don't stand to lose as much as the exchequer. Their brands are getting sold anyway.
- A campaign to eradicate tobacco and the use of `gutka' was set in motion to herald the ``World No Tobacco Day'' . . . Several prominent health experts and anti-tobacco campaigners called for an unequivocal ban on the use of tobacco and other nicotine-based products like pan masalas and gutka which account for 40 per cent of all cancers. They were speaking at a meeting organised by the Cancer Patients Aid Association.
- Ontario Place general manager MAX BECK says it's time for Rock . . . to get moving and announce a decision on this hotly debated issue before the Commons breaks for summer recess in mid-June. Beck wants to know how the minister intends to fulfil a promise to ease tobacco sponsorship restrictions for sports and cultural events, including Toronto's annual MOLSON INDY car race. "You've got to let us know even if it's the worst possible news," said Beck, who heads a group of 280 event organizers in Canada demanding a break from the tough new ad restrictions which kick in Oct. 1.
- The US tobacco giant PHILIP MORRIS set up a network of scientists throughout Europe who were paid to cast doubt on the risks of passive smoking and highlight other possible causes of respiratory problems, according to confidential documents from the company's law firm released on the internet. The company's consultants included "an editor" of the LANCET, an adviser to a Commons select committee, and members of working groups of the International Agency for Research in Cancer, claims a memo from the US lawyers Covington and Burling.
- Petr Skrabanek, who died in 1994, was a witty and popular contributor to the Lancet who wrote amusing articles debunking conventional medical thinking. Born in Bohemia and trained in Ireland, he began his career as a forensic toxicologist but changed to epidemiology. A chainsmoker, he deplored "healthism" and rejected the notion that many diseases were preventable and that diet and other lifestyle factors shortened life. When he died at the age of 53 from prostate cancer he was associate professor of community health at Trinity College, Dublin. The Covington and Burling memo says one of the company's consultants "published a book exposing the vagaries of medical truisms" called Follies and Fallacies in Medicine.
- China plans to restructure its tobacco industry into several giant conglomerates, the China Daily's Business Weekly said on Sunday. "We will try hard to alter the scattered cigarette production layout in China and shape several large corporate groups," the newspaper said, quoting Ni Yijin, director-general of the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration.
- investigators say the closed society has opened itself in the 1990s to partnerships with criminal gangs, whose operations there are virtually untouchable. These include producing counterfeit cigarettes and offering safe harbor for hijacked ships, said a former law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. A 1995 seizure by Taiwan police of 20 ship containers loaded with counterfeit cigarette packaging destined for North Korea proved its involvement with a Southeast Asian crime syndicate, the source said. One of the tobacco companies whose products were being counterfeited said the seized materials could have been used to make cigarettes with a retail value of $1 billion.
- A nurse who claimed she developed asthma through being exposed to passive smoking in an old people's home yesterday lost her claim for damages in a landmark court case. Mr Justice Holland ruled at the High Court in Manchester that the management of the home had taken all practical steps in view of 60-year-old Sylvia Sparrow's aversion to cigarette smoke.
- Standard Commercial Corporation today announced that it expects to report diluted earnings per share of $2.00 to $2.05 for its fiscal year ended March 31, 1998, up approximately 20% from the previous year. Fiscal 1998 earnings are subject to final audit. The Company believes that it has established a solid platform for long-term growth through its recent acquisitions and investments and has strengthened its balance sheet as a result of its refinancing in fiscal 1998. However, in reviewing the current outlook, uncertainties have emerged that have caused the Company to adopt a diluted per-share earnings estimate of $1.70 to $1.80 for fiscal 1999.
- Top five states for tobacco production: North Carolina, 39.1 percent; Kentucky, 26.9 percent; Tennessee, 7.6 percent; South Carolina, 7.4 percent, and Virginia, 6.5 percent.
- 8:12: Members of the media, waiting in the communications room for the meeting to start, are asked whether they would like to speak with anti-tobacco protesters. Reporters who say yes are shuttled in a Philip Morris van to a wind-whipped roadside shoulder where protesters are holding a banner bearing photos of people who have died from tobacco-related diseases. On the road adjacent, a stockholder in a Cadillac gives them the finger. 8:55: "I'm PROUD to be a Philip Morris stockholder," say the buttons of most people in the main auditorium
- But the unregulated tobacco substitutes concern federal health officials, who warn that smoking or prolonged chewing of any substance should be avoided because of potential health risks. The trend has also raised concern among anti-smoking groups, who fear that the products may lead young people to the real thing. The substitutes -- which are made of blends of herbs, flower petals and other materials, including honey-soaked tea leaves and processed, flavored lettuce -- carry names like Herbal Gold and Honeyrose but come in cigarette packs, pouches and snuff cans that closely resemble tobacco brands like Camel cigarettes or Skoal snuff.
- A new technique that makes seeds sterile is sowing controversy among critics who say it will protect big-business profits while unfairly ending the age-old farm practice of saving a crop's seeds for next year. . . One of the hottest trends in agriculture is use of genetics to develop plant varieties that resist disease or pests or include traits sought after by consumers . . . These seeds produce cotton normally, generally with moneymaking benefits from genetic engineering. But when the plant produces seeds, they don't germinate because the ``blocker'' gene doesn't work, sending the farmer back to the dealer for next year's supply. So far, the technique is proven to work on cotton and tobacco seeds
- Tobacco major ITC on Friday reported a net profit of Rs 526.20 crore for the year to March 31, 1998, up 52 per cent on the Rs 346.90 crore in the previous year.
- ITC Ltd is willing to shell out $26 million for settling with the creditors of ITC Global, its beleaguered 100 per cent Singapore-based subsidiary.
- Tobacco major ITC Ltd. has posted a net profit of INR5.26 billion for the year ended March 31, up 52% from the INR3.47 billion it posted the previous year. A Dow Jones survey of five analysts had forecast a net profit of INR5.88 billion, but dealers pointed out that this hadn't included INR1.10 billion the company set aside as provision for contingencies.
- Mrs. Coyle died Sunday at Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside. She was 74. She had suffered from multiple illnesses, including lung and breast cancer, heart disease, diabetes and emphysema. "She was a chain smoker," daughter Meredith Day said. "And she suffered every conceivable side effect of smoking, including losing 1 1/2 lungs. She finally quit smoking five years ago."
You can order Cancer Wars: How Politics Shapes What We Know and Don't Know about Cancer
- a show this afternoon on KCOP-TV Channel 13 smashes the mold of the ho-hum do-gooder documentary and gets across a vital message about quitting tobacco in an absolutely riveting hour of television. . . Using a hip filmmaking style reminiscent of the best of MTV, "Smoking: Truth or Dare?" follows several teenagers who smoke or use snuff and are presented with the likely, unimagined consequences of their habits. They observe the autopsy of a longtime smoker who died of lung disease, meet elderly emphysema patients who don't even have the breath to walk, and view horrific slides of mouth cancers. Stunned and disgusted at how prolonged tobacco use can ravage the body, the youngsters vow to quit. It is hard to imagine that anyone watching the show would not want to do the same.
- "Cancer Wars" begins with the little-publicized news that Nazi Germany's scientists were pioneers in research that linked cancer to smoking and diet. Hitler, remember, was a nonsmoking vegetarian who made an ideological connection between physical health and the purity of the Nordic race. The Nazi record is not meant to exonerate cigarettes on the principal of innocence by association, merely to draw attention to how long it took for the United States and other countries to get serious about the causes of cancer and what to do about them.
- It . . . cites the arresting fact that France delayed its first official report on smoking until 1986.
- "The Nazis had the most aggressive antismoking campaign in the world," said Proctor, a nonsmoker who has testified against the U.S. tobacco industry. "It's been ignored. You could say there's a community of disinterest. It was in no one's interest to point out the research. Nobody outside Germany paid a lot of attention to Nazi scientists. And when the Germans lost, many of the anti-tobacco activists committed suicide because they [feared they] would be brought up for trial as war criminals."
- The plural in the title is a tip-off, Thomas says: With so much at stake -- lives, money, power, ego -- there's more than one cancer-related war going on in America and abroad. It's people vs. the disease, alternative vs. conventional medicine, and public welfare vs. corporate and political interests. Not to mention, us against ourselves. ``There's a war on our own misguided personal pleasures,'' Thomas says, including efforts to break people of the deadly smoking habit . . . The Nazi research had a narrow benefit: German women were four times less likely to die of lung cancer in the postwar years than American women. It would take two more decades for the U.S. surgeon general to make the tobacco-cancer connection.
- Frank Sinatra was buried with some of his favorite things: a bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey, a pack of Camels, a Zippo lighter and 10 dimes. . . Her sister, Nancy, put the bottle of whiskey in Sinatra's pocket and someone else slipped in the cigarettes and lighter.
- Robert W. Morgan, a fixture on KRTH-FM and other Los Angeles radio stations for more than three decades, died Friday after a two-year battle with lung cancer. He was 60. . . After 15 years at KRTH, he left last year to fight his illness, which he blamed on a 35-year, two-pack-a-day smoking habit.
- BARONESS THATCHER last month joined the advisory board of the world's largest hedge fund that takes billion-dollar bets on global economic developments. . . She joins Bob Dole, the former US presidential candidate, on the advisory board. . . A spokesman for Lady Thatcher said . . . she would attend four to six advisory board meetings a year at Tiger. He refused to discuss Lady Thatcher's work with PHILIP MORRIS, the US tobacco group: "That naturally came to its end a year ago."
- The 51-year-old Auster, who is better known as a writer (his novels include "Leviathan" and "Mr. Vertigo," and he penned the screenplay for Miramax's 1995 film "SMOKE"), makes his directorial debut here this year with "Lulu on the Bridge," starring Harvey Keitel, Mira Sorvino and Willem Dafoe. He's had four hours of sleep. Clad all in black from his blazer and T-shirt to his jeans, oval sunglasses and suede Hush Puppies, Auster chain-smokes slender Dutch cigars and does his best to be fascinating.
- Lions should roar, not wheeze. What the England fans really want to see this summer is Gazza blazing a trail and lighting up the pitch in France, not a cigarette in the dug-out - Cancer Research Campaign spokesman on revelations that Paul Gascoigne smokes. Seventy-five per cent of Italians smoke. Some even go to the toilet at half-time for a fag and I class them as world-class players - Gascoigne.
- Two months ago I brought you my idea of a KISS campaign--the letters stand for Knowledgeable Investor, Smart Saver--to make saving sexy and get more Americans to save and invest. Students at Tillamook High School near Portland, Ore., took the message to heart--or I should say to their lips. As part of a class project, 40 of the students came up with make-believe ads, radio scripts and bumper stickers, all around the KISS concept . . . "And for cigarettes: You will spend $2.50 to purchase this product. By purchasing a pack of cigarettes each day for 20 years, you will spend a total of $18,250. If you were instead to invest this money, you would accumulate $45,079 in 20 years, assuming an 8 percent annual rate of return and ignoring taxes. This information is being provided to you because your financial future depends on your current spending decisions."
- In 1997 more than 6 million people went to Winston Cup races, including more children than ever. Marketing to youngsters is a tricky business for a sport that displays its stars under the banner of a tobacco company.
- LAKE ZURICH -- A cigarette dropped into a plastic garbage can caused a fire to break out in the basement of a two-story frame home at 54 E. Harbor Drive, officials said Thursday.
- It may have come from the discoloring of their moccasins by the ashes of prairie fires, or it may have come from moccasins which were actually painted black. The Blackfeet migrated west from their early homeland in eastern forests and were constantly at war with all their neighbors, including the Cree, Sioux, Crow and Flathead. Always on the move, they had no crops except tobacco.
- Backers of the tobacco bill say they will keep trying to reach an agreement. But even with a tax hike on cigarettes, even with a huge settlement payment, the tobacco companies are likely to be the winners in the long run. As long as they can find willing customers--in this country and increasingly overseas--they will continue to sell addiction, illness and death at a profit.. . . Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) is widely quoted as saying, "We are making a deal with the devil and the devil walked away from the table. Now, we have the unseemly situation of the United States Congress chasing after the devil, pleading with the devil to take our plan."
- To those who argue that the proposed national tobacco settlement and/or Sen. John McCain's tobacco legislation is government gouging of a legal industry, the VA's situation assigns a real cost from tobacco to all taxpayers. . . "They paved roads on the backs of sick veterans" would be a cruel legacy for the 105th Congress. But that's what it might be, if the highway bill passes in its present form. e
- At present a workable, bipartisan middle is allied behind the legislation that conservative Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain sponsored and President Clinton supports. . . And by the way, if heavy cigarette taxes hit the poor the hardest, then it's today's poor children whom they will benefit the most.
- Oddly, people who revere freedom of speech ignore the fact that this bill denies the right to advertise a legal product. . . Congress should have been done extorting Big Tobacco by now, but it got greedy. Major tobacco companies were ready to pony up $370 billion this spring but walked away from negotiations when lawmakers kept bellowing: more, more. Dollar signs, not smoke, got into the politicians' eyes and blinded them to this bill's hazards.
- Even as the cost of the bill is thus masked or understated, the value of the offsets or savings proposed to meet the cost is overstated. The most important offset would alter an unintended provision of current law that could leave the government liable for the health care costs of any veteran with smoking-related disease . . . The Bush and Clinton administrations both have sought to limit the liability, the right thing to do. The Congressional Budget Office says the likely savings would be about $10 billion over the life of the highway bill. The Office of Management and Budget says $17 billion. Because no one knows, the prudent thing to do would be to accept the CBO number. The conferees have decided to take the puffy OMB number instead.
- ALFONSE D'AMATO is in, but the word is out. Just as the senator was making the Albany swing of his announcement that he's running for re-election, a report was released in Washington showing that Mr. D'Amato is one of the Senate's biggest recipients of campaign contributions from the tobacco industry. . . Mr. D'Amato has sided with the tobacco interests on other votes. . . Is there any special interest to which he can say "no"? If Mr. D'Amato wants to convince voters that there is, Big Tobacco would be a good place to start.
- WASHINGTON (May 22, 1998 09:32 a.m. EDT http://www.nando.net) -- To paraphrase an old cigarette commercial, the tobacco bill hit the floor this week all round, firm and fully packed not only with mega-dollars, but world-class anomalies. After a day, senators were yearning for the simplicity of Ira Magaziner and the health care reform bill. . . "The tobacco companies are bad guys: the trial lawyers are bad guys," said a disgusted Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., a former actor who usually played good guys in the movies. Therefore, Thompson said he was opposed not only the bill to punish the tobacco companies but the amendment to limit the trial lawyers' fees. Figure it out.
- The American public would consider itself at war and demand that its leaders take action if a foreign power was responsible for the toll in lost lives and health costs exacted every day by tobacco products. . . The industry is now launching a multimillion-dollar campaign that will attempt to divert the public's attention to "big taxes" and "big government." We cannot allow the industry to sidetrack or dilute tobacco-control legislation with other issues.
- Despite the change in regulations that made it easier to give smoking as a certified cause of death, doctors rarely use this opportunity to bring the role of smoking in mortality to wider public attention. . . Future studies should consider why doctors do not give smoking as a cause of death and review the justification and value of the current policy.
- When the bombs and bullets stopped, and American troops came up for air in World War II, their commanders barked a common refrain: "Smoke 'em if you got 'em." . . In a move that enraged veterans groups on the eve of Memorial Day weekend, the House and Senate cut the funding to help offset extra spending in a $203 billion highway and mass-transit bill approved Friday. "What a painful irony," said Dennis Cullinan, legislative director of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
- Congress decisively endorsed the biggest highway and mass transit bill ever on Friday, a six-year, $203 billion package that promises to create tens of thousands of jobs and help restore the nation's crumbling infrastructure. . . "This package is loaded up with an incredible number of pork projects in order to drive through the House a legislative steam engine that will bust the budget to smithereens,'' said Rep. David Obey, D-Wis. Obey objected to the decision to cut $15.5 billion in veterans programs . . . Veterans groups have strongly protested a decision, backed by the administration, to end a program to provide disability compensation for veterans who took up smoking in the military and later came down with tobacco-related diseases.
- The tobacco companies want the smoking liability case tried in federal court, while the plaintiff's lawyers want it returned to state court, where it began. U.S. District Judge Dee Benson took the matter under advisement. . . Benson said he wondered if jury size had more to do with the arguments. In federal courts, there are 12 members in a jury, which must return a unanimous verdict. In state courts, however, there are only eight jury members in a civil trial, and a majority of six can decide a case.
- Even public-interest lawyers who are happy to see the tobacco industry under fire are uncomfortable. "My gut feeling is that these fees are very, very difficult to justify," says Alan Morrison of Public Citizen in Washington, D.C. It turns out that the antitobacco lawyers may be sharpshooters in the courtroom but they can't shoot straight in the court of public opinion.
- Last month, a group of nonsmoking casino workers brought suit in New Jersey Superior Court against a dozen tobacco companies and the industry's marketing association, the Tobacco Institute, asserting that secondhand smoke was making them sick.
- For the past couple of years, whenever a billboard advertisement for cigarettes appeared on a Buffalo, N.Y.- area intersection, it soon was covered with paint. Police in Tonawanda, N.Y., say they don't know who the anti-smoking vandal is. The suspect has struck more than half a dozen times and apparently is winning the battle. The general manager of Lamar Outdoor Advertising says his company won't erect any more cigarette billboards at that intersection.
- Smokers may be on the run everywhere else, but on the silver screen, they're back to their glory days. Although in decline for three decades, smoking in movies has returned to levels comparable to those in the 1960s--before the first surgeon general's report warned about the dangers of tobacco, according to a recent study from UC San Francisco. Researchers found that cigarettes were used once every five minutes in the '60s; about once every 10 to 15 minutes in the '70s and '80s; and about once every three to five minutes in the '90s.
- Mr. Morgan died Friday night . . . after a two-year battle with lung cancer, said KRTH news director Joni Caryl. . . Mr. Morgan left the station last year to fight his illness and thanked listeners for their prayers. "My doctors aren't quite sure what caused it but suspect those two packs a day for 35 years might be a factor," Mr. Morgan said in 1997. "One more thing, don't smoke, OK?"
- To pour money, for example, into a stop-smoking programme will do no good if those targeted are personally unwilling to give up cigarettes. Exhortation, example, and encouragement do sometimes act as spurs when people wish truly to change their personal habits. Providing information about a habit's health risk, though, is frequently not enough. It appeals only to rationality -- sometimes the least effective persuasion. Despite the self-evident dangers, smokers -- many of them Maoris -- still take pleasure in lighting up. Nothing the State is prepared to do may make much difference.
- Smoking is a habit that harms people in its grip. The hypocrisy and greed of public officials violates the body politic. And a witch hunt is an ugly thing, even when there may be real witches involved. . . Yes, but I also value a certain amount of vice. It's the canary in the mine shaft of a free society. They can come for the tobacco people today and most of us won't care. But who will they come for next? We all do or believe something that could eventually cause us to huddle like fugitives in cold doorways.
- According to an article in the NATIONAL JOURNAL, the TOBACCO INSTITUTE and BROWN AND WILLIAMSON tobacco company have each donated $100,000 to a June 16th Senate-House dinner. In addition, HALEY BARBOUR, the former Republican National Committee Chairman who has lobbied against the McCain tobacco bill, has promised to raise $300,000 from unspecified donors. GOP sources believe those donors will include tobacco interests.
- San Diego Democrat Lynn Schenk stirred up the attorney general's race yesterday with an attack ad that portrays front-runner Bill Lockyer as a friend of big tobacco and the gun lobby. . . "Bill Lockyer," the ad declares, "wrote the law protecting the tobacco companies ... Maybe that's why they've given his campaigns over $180,000.
- Jane Harman is like a lot of California career women: She's caught in a crazy juggling act between her marriage, her children and her work. . . ``I'm not running for governor as a woman's candidate,'' Harman, 52, has said. ``I'm running for governor because I believe I'm the best candidate.'' . . She also is personally driven, she said, for more money for anti- tobacco campaigns. ``I lost my own mother five years ago to lung cancer,'' she said. ``To her dying day, she still smoked.''
- Giuliani administration conceded Wednesday that its 17-point plan to overhaul the taxi industry probably would not be passed in its entirety at Thursday's meeting of the commission. . . Taxi drivers are particularly incensed by proposals that would triple fines for offenses ranging from smoking to speeding and would allow the commission to suspend their hack licenses after only 6 motor vehicle penalty points.
- SCOTTY BAESLER played on his background as a tobacco-farming congressman to win the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate yesterday in the most expensive race in state history.
- Lucas said he plans to remind voters during the general election campaign that he is a lifelong Kentuckian who grew up raising tobacco. Williams, 45, moved to Northern Kentucky from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in the mid-1980s. "I can represent the tobacco farmer with conviction, better than somebody that lived in Florida," Lucas said.
- But some analysts in the state said that BAESLER might have received an unexpected boost last week when Kentucky's other senator, MITCH MCCONNELL, a Republican, said he would favor ending price supports for tobacco. . . In Bunning's Fourth District, a mix of 22 counties along the Ohio River, the Republican primary was won by GEX WILLIAMS, a state senator and hard-line conservative . . . Williams will face KEN LUCAS, the judge-executive of Boone County and a moderate Democrat who has promised to fight for Kentucky's tobacco farmers.
- Democratic Rep. SCOTTY BAESLER narrowly won the most expensive primary campaign in Kentucky history Tuesday for the right to face Republican Rep. Jim Bunning for the state's open Senate seat. . . Baesler countered by telling a victory-party crowd that he will represent "mainstream Kentucky values" against "the extreme positions of Kentucky Republicans." Baesler has said his support of NAFTA was a mistake, and that he opposed the budget bill because of its tax increases on tobacco.
- Rep. Scotty Baesler is clinging to a narrow lead in the race for the Democratic nomination to replace retiring Sen. Wendell Ford (D-Ky), fighting off a late charge by Lt. Gov. Steve Henry, a new poll shows. Ford's departure set the stage for a three-way Democratic primary Tuesday and predictions of a nail-biter finish in the general election. Primaries tomorrow also will determine nominees in several hotly contested House primaries, including races to succeed Reps. Baesler and Jim Bunning (R), who is expected to coast to the GOP nomination for Ford's seat. Add to that a Democratic primary for the right to challenge freshman Rep. Anne Northup (R) and Kentucky emerges as one of this cycle's top battleground states. . . McConnell "has turned his back completely on Kentucky farmers," said Baesler. "If Ford's bill is not accomplished, it's McConnell's fault."
- Village Trustee Dan Carter summed up the apparent sentiments of the board when he said: "Let the people vote with their feet." The proposal had been opposed by restaurant owners, who warned that patrons would cross the border into Evanston to find smoker-friendly eateries. But the village's Board of Health argued that secondhand smoke was a health threat for non-smokers. Supporters of the proposal stormed out of the meeting afterward, shaking their heads in apparent disappointment.
- Motorists are using Texas as a big ashtray, strewing cigarette butts and packages along state highways. . . "We need to know what kind of situations there are," said Linda Levitt, program manager of "Don't Mess with Texas," a public education campaign for the Texas Department of Transportation, "where a person might have littered or been with someone who litters. How frequently do they see this happen?" "Our goal is to find out when and why they are littering and find ways to change that behavior," she said. Tossing cigarette butts out the window is a key issue, Levitt said, because many don't consider that littering.
- Denver City Council members voted 9-4 Tuesday night to ban tobacco billboards and posters within 1,000 feet of schools, parks and recreation centers. The ordinance also will outlaw distributing free samples of tobacco; displaying tobacco anywhere but behind store counters or in locked cabinets; and selling tobacco in vending machines except in liquor-licensed and adult-only businesses.
- Since the settlement in the tobacco trial May 8, smoking-cessation programs have been under much discussion. Part of the $6.6 billion that will be be paid by the tobacco companies to the state and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota is expected to be used to help people quit tobacco and to educate young people about its dangers.
- "I'm not here to talk you out of anything," Andy Peroutky soothingly tells his patients. "I sympathize. I've been where you are." Peroutky, a former smoker who calls himself a tobaccoholic, goes from bed to bed at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, offering help to those smokers who would like to quit.
- ELIOT SPITZER is hoping to smoke his competition in this year's race for the state attorney general seat. Criticizing incumbent DENNIS VACCO for his soft stand on the controversial tobacco issue, Spitzer is campaigning today alongside a walking, talking pack of cigarettes and an equally animated carton of milk. Spitzer says he is planning to descend upon the Philip Morris building in Manhattan today to show that he thinks Vacco's remarks about the health risks of cigarette smoking being equal to drinking milk are ridiculous.
- Britain may be unwilling to legislate but other countries have not been so reticent. . . Fears about the dangers of cigarettes, ignited by the World Health Organisation and other groups with events such as this week's World No-Tobacco Day, have led to many governments introducing tough legislation.
- Economic pressures in Zimbabwe are likely to lead to further "social disruption" this year, according to a statement issued Wednesday by London-based gold miner, Rio Tinto Zimbabwe. Company chairman Solomon Tavengwa warned that depressed mineral prices and the unexpected slump in tobacco prices was putting an "intense strain" on the balance of payments which "must lead to further volatility in the exhchange rates in the months ahead."
- Health Minister Allan Rock is headed for another trial by fire as he prepares to introduce long-awaited amendments to the federal anti-tobacco bill. As the controversy about compensating hepatitis C victims continues to engulf the minister, Montreal's La Presse reported Wednesday that Rock will delay giving arts and sports groups an additional five years to wean themselves off tobacco-sponsorship money.
- Organizers of major tobacco-sponsored sports and arts events say they need more time - not Ottawa's $100 million - to ensure their future.
- Health Minister Allan Rock is quietly shelving his plan for a $100 million fund to compensate arts and sports groups for lost tobacco company sponsorships.
- Impending government anti-tobacco legislation, due to take effect Oct. 1, is threatening du Maurier's involvement in the Series and its underwriting of the du Maurier Classic, Canada's only LPGA tournament, and a major at that, and the rest of the company's sponsorships of other sporting and cultural events.
- Although one worm does little harm, a person with hookworm could have hundreds or thousands of them and lose as much as a cup of blood a day, causing severe loss of iron and protein. . . The worms like damp, cool places, and fields of rapeseed, cotton and tobacco are ideal. Eggs deposited in the soil develop into larvae, which are swallowed or attach to passing humans or animals and penetrate the skin.
- Health Minister NKOSAZANA ZUMA had said she intended to amend the Tobacco Products Control Act, yet tobacco growers had not been consulted by either her ministry or the health department, Tobacco RSA spokesman JAN VENTER said. "Neither have we been asked to participate in any economic impact assessment of the measures which the minister intends implementing."
- Tobacco prices in Zimbabwe rose by 20 percent on Monday, the first day of selling after a week-long sales boycott by growers in protest against low prices.
- FRANK DOBSON, the Secretary of State for Health, and TESSA JOWELL, the public health minister, accept that it will be difficult to curb smoking without legislation, but they hope an anti-smoking policy based on voluntary codes will encourage a reduction in the habit. The forthcoming White Paper on smoking reduction will put forward policies aimed at stopping children from taking up the habit, and at persuading adults to stop smoking. Pubs and restaurants will be urged to set aside smoke-free zones, and they will be warned that their staff can take action under the existing Health and Safety at Work Act to insist on a safe place to work
- Colombian stocks ended with slim gains on Tuesday in sessions dominated by pocket-to-pocket deals in cigarette maker COLTABACO. . . Trading in Coltabaco accounted for at least 3.8 billion pesos of the Bogota market's turnover. The shares closed unchanged at 2,400 in the capital and gained 0.83 percent to end at 2,420 in Medellin.
- The cartoon character was the marketing idea of LYNN BEASLEY, an R.J. REYNOLDS TOBACCO CO. executive vice president who grew up as a non-smoker on a farm near the southwestern Wisconsin community. Her mother worried about her going to work for a company that makes cigarettes, but she joined the company anyway, took up smoking and now spends some of her time, as the originator of Joe Camel, testifying in court in lawsuits against tobacco companies. . . She acknowledges that RJR makes "a product that increases health risks. We market it in a responsible way. I am very comfortable marketing cigarettes. People have the right to make that decision (to smoke.)" "In looking back, it (Joe Camel) was the right decision, and I am proud to work for this company. "We would not do a cartoon character again," she added. "We did not see that Joe Camel would be turned into what it was. We did not target children. We have conducted ourselves in a responsible way."
- Plant pathologists are warning tobacco growers not to take the threat of blue mold lightly, calling the disease the biggest short-term threat to Kentucky's $1 billion crop. ''We could easily look at a $200 million loss this year if the industry doesn't respond in a timely manner,'' said William Nesmith, a world-renowned blue mold expert at the University of Kentucky.
- Several industry analysts have speculated Carso may leave the tobacco business when it scaled down its holding in CIGATAM to 50 percent last year as earnings dwindled amid a price war and increased smuggling. But [MARCO ANTONIO] SLIM said sales volumes in what was formerly Carso's biggest earner had recovered and he underscored the firm's commitment to a partnership with PHILIP MORRIS. ``The idea is to remain as partners with Philip Morris...backed by the combination of Carso in producing tobacco and cigarettes, and they in marketing,'' he said.
- GUDANG GARAM, Indonesia's largest clove-cigarette producer, is another company that investors like, but they are waiting to see whether it gets any cheaper. . . Investors have another concern about Gudang Garam: taxes. Indonesian authorities have already raised excise taxes on cigarettes, and analysts worry that another increase is coming.
- Austrian tobacco group Austria Tabakwerke AG (R.ATW) Monday announced a sharp rise in profits in the first quarter due to improvements across the board at its manufacturing and wholesaling operations.
- But until now, they've managed to avoid getting swept into the political maelstrom surrounding tobacco in Washington. But any detachment they may have enjoyed ended recently when BLACK and FELDMAN were attacked as tobacco industry "advocates" by a major anti-smoking organization in Washington. The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids issued a news release on May 11 accusing Black and Feldman, as well as other unnamed Wall Street analysts, of "using the tobacco industry's rhetoric against effective tobacco legislation."
- Was it because of complaints from the rock group the CARDIGANS that print advertisements for LUCKY STRIKE cigarettes, sold by the Brown & Williamson unit of BAT Industries, were revised so that the band's name, visible on a theater marquee behind several smokers, was removed from subsequent versions of the ads?
- I wish I had as much faith in all those self-improvement programs as you do. If only I thought that cutting back on junk food or cigarettes or alcohol would help make me a better person -- or help me find the right guy.
- BRIDGET Jones is a thirty-something who compulsively tracks the number of cigarettes, alcohol units and calories she consumes daily. . . Written by London journalist Helen Fielding, the breezy, often hilarious novel debuts at American bookstores next week - just in time for beach reading. And already media insiders everywhere are predicting that Bridget will make a smashing entrance on this side of the pond.
- A new ban on promoting cigarettes in movies is sure to be a pain in the butt for the many peculiar web sites dedicated to smoking celebrities.
- The political footing for tobacco is so slippery we wouldn't begin to predict where the tobacco settlement ultimately will head or what will become of the tobacco price-support program. But we do see a grim future for Kentucky if today's farm families continue to tie their tomorrows to tobacco. And good leadership - from the farm bureaus, from the counties and state and from Washington - will help lead them away from a reliance on tobacco, as well.
- Judge John R. Lewis left intact claims that the industry engaged in unfair and antitrust practices. He has granted the attorney general permission to amend the state's complaint on the more important Medi-Cal and punitive damages claims. This lawsuit should be among Lungren's highest priorities. California, with more smokers than Minnesota or Florida, deserves no less in the way of compensation.
- Sen. John McCainıs much-touted anti-tobacco legislation fell apart because of its sponsorsı avarice . . . Letıs face it: The tobacco bill was a way to turn an unpopular industry into a treasure chest for politicians who wanted to spend a lot of money and make major contributors happy. . . Congress ought to stick to the basics: Keep whittling taxes. Stop writing pestilential new rules and regulations. And whenever the impulse to spend a trillion dollars arises leave town and let your constituents tell you what they think of the idea.
- Working people might be a little nervous about their newfound champions, Republican Sens. JOHN ASHCROFT of Missouri and PHIL GRAMM of Texas. The ambitious pair of would-be presidents helped defeat the $1.50-a-pack tax increase on cigarettes, all, they claimed, in the name of workers and the poor. . . . just how much of a favor is it, Sen. Ashcroft, to make it easier for working parents and their children to smoke, to get sick and to die of cancer. How much of a favor is it when many of the working poor don't have medical insurance because there is no universal health care? Your newfound compassion overwhelms us, senators.
- While anti-tobacco interests accuse the industry of cleverness and sophistication in defending itself, nobody has been more disingenuous in this struggle than those trying to further their interests by plundering the tobacco business. There have many casualties in this war, but truth has been perhaps the most visible. Meanwhile, the shabby treatment of those who choose to continue smoking has been a national disgrace, given that these people are doing nothing more than availing themselves of a legal product from which they derive pleasure.
- Have I ever lied to you? No. Has Big Tobacco lied to you? Twenty-four, seven, three-sixty-five. If you don't know what ''twenty-four, seven, three-sixty-five'' means, ask the next young man you see wearing a worn ball cap and a brown plaid flannel shirt. . . . Trouble is, a lot of the people he's listening to are not telling the truth. . . They're part of the machine he wants to rage against, but he hasn't discovered that yet. So he's not only not raging against them, he's buying their product and letting it shorten his life. . . So when you're an average citizen like you and me, and you have two radically opposing sides like Big Tobacco versus Decent Americans, you have to make a choice. . . . If you see through Big Tobacco's Big Lie, write to that good Arizona Republican Sen. McCain and urge him to keep up the good fight toward a reasonable settlement.
- U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher denounced cigars yesterday as "very dangerous," saying he would support any move by Congress to impose a warning label on the popular product and to craft broad regulations on all tobacco sales and advertising. In his first public comments on the issue, Satcher said cigars can be just as lethal as cigarettes and that he is especially worried about the rise in smoking among children. He also said he was disturbed by the "glamorization of cigars" by the entertainment industry. "Any movement in public health related to tobacco should be targeted to cigars as well as cigarettes because cigars contain the same toxins and the same carcinogens, sometimes in larger amounts than cigarettes," said Satcher in an interview with The Sun. "Cigars have the same environmental health effect, if not greater."
- A bill to prevent two major public pension systems from investing additional money in tobacco companies was narrowly approved Wednesday by the state Senate. The measure, which now goes to the Assembly, would take aim at the CALIFORNIA PUBLIC EMPLOYEES' RETIREMENT SYSTEM and the STATE TEACHERS' RETIREMENT fund. Under the measure, the funds would be prohibited from making new or additional investments in tobacco firms beginning in 1999. The bill, SB 1433 by Sen. TOM HAYDEN, D-Los Angeles, passed on a 21-10 vote, the minimum needed.
- the King County Board of Health will consider barring tobacco advertising near schools and playgrounds. And to protect kids from drive-by advertising, health officials say they may bar tobacco ads on top of taxi cabs - just in case they pass the children. The new regulations, expected to be taken up by the board tomorrow, would still allow tobacco advertising away from schools. But there'd be no more frolicking beach scenes or cartoon camels. Tobacco ads around the county would have to be of the "tombstone" variety - black and white, with no pictures or color.
- CHILES was reading from THE BERENSTAIN BEAR SCOUTS AND THE SINISTER SMOKE RING, and it seems that Too-Tall, the head of a gang, was enticing Brother into taking up smoking. . . Seven months before the end of his 40-year political career, Chiles is continuing to wage what he calls "the best fight I've ever been in." At every opportunity, he pushes his anti-tobacco agenda . . . Thanks to the agreement, for example, the Berenstain Bear anti-smoking book will be distributed to all children in grades 1 through 3.
- Gov. LAWTON CHILES unveiled Florida's latest weapon in the war against youth smoking on Wednesday -- a BERENSTAIN BEARS children's book being distributed free to 600,000 children in the first, second and third grades.
- The jury deliberation rooms have a small area for smokers, separated from the main space, a choice Woodlock said was made because some jurors may rush a verdict, or argument, if they are in need of a cigarette. "Jurors are the people who make our system work. And the idea was to give them nice space," Woodlock said.
- ATTORNEY GENERAL MIKE MOORE deflected questions on his political aspirations while regaling students Wednesday with stories of his battle with Big Tobacco. . . "I like the way he handled the tobacco case," said Levell Hairston, 17, from Pascagoula. "He did a good thing. He brought money in the state of Mississippi so we can build more schools."
- "Everybody appreciated the dangers of secondary smoke and the amount of work and passion from the Board of Health," village President Nancy Canafax said Wednesday, "but the economic argument did it in."
- Finally, after languishing in his House Transportation Committee since last June 4 (357 days), a Senate-approved bill, sponsored by Sen. Loren Bennett, R-Canton, to ban tobacco billboard advertising in Michigan is due for a committee vote Wednesday, according to Chairman Burton Leland, D-Detroit. And he predicts it'll win approval and be sent to the House floor.
- The American Cancer Society reports that the House Transportation Committee, chaired by Representative Burton Leland (D-Detroit), showed great leadership in passing Senate Bill 341 out of their committee yesterday. The American Cancer Society applauds this leadership. The bill will ban tobacco advertisements on all billboards throughout the state.
- The Quebec government has introduced tough new anti-smoking legislation which could allow it to control the content of cigarettes, including the tobacco blend and levels of tar and nicotine. That could mean changing 150 different products made at the Montreal plant to conform to the law, Lessard told a government commission studying the anti-smoking legislation. The law could push Imperial to pull up stakes resulting in the loss of 5,000 direct and indirect jobs in the tobacco industry. "If we are forced to respond to a Quebec market alone what will happen is that we will have to rearrange and relocate some equipment and make some major modifications," Lessard said after the commission hearing.
- SPORTING, arts and health funding body Living Health will be disbanded and its $13.4 million budget divided between three government departments. The State Government yesterday announced the money would be divided between the Recreation and Sport, Arts and Human Services departments. And a new Tobacco Control Strategy would be established and given $3.9 million a year to reduce the State's smoking rates by 20 per cent over the next five years. . . He noted last year's Economic and Finance Committee report found Living Health, formed in 1988 as Foundation SA, had been "unsuccessful in achieving" its original objective of reducing smoking.
- Suspicion about the identity of a tobacco-industry consultant linked to THE LANCET in a 1990 memo is focusing on the late PETR SKRABANEK, formerly of Trinity College, Dublin. Though not on the journal's staff, Skrabanek featured regularly in The Lancet's correspondence columns and wrote a number of unsigned editorial comments.
- The foreign cigarette manufacturing firms are now transferring the tobacco hazard to developing countries as a number of developed countries have made stringent and effective legislations against smoking. At a news conference on Monday, Dr Nadeem Rizvi, the general secretary of the Karachi chapter of the Society of Chest Physicians (SCP), regretted that though the use of tobacco had been increasing worldwide, it was increasing at a much faster rate in the developing countries.
- ITC will refocus its attention on international trading business to earn foreign exchange. The company also intends to reach a $26 million compromise deal with the creditors of ITC Global, mostly banks, provided the proposal is favoured by the appropriate authorities in India and Singapore, according to ITC chairman Mr. Y. C. Deveswar.
- Reader mail with my responses. * Troy Branch, Stuttgart, Germany: "Your article on cultural clash in the Daimler-Chrysler merger appeared just as I was trying to make the decision to stay (at Daimler). I thought it was a real joke when I read the part about smoking. In my new work environment, there is a colleague who smokes cigars in the office. When I heard this, I almost flipped!" I don't believe it! Please snatch a box of Cohiba Robustos and send to me at The News for further investigation.
- The retail unit of cigarette manufacturer PT HM Sampoerna (P.HMS) suffered an estimated 17.7 billion rupiah (IDR) (IDR=10,450) in losses during Indonesia's recent rioting, the company said. Three of the outlets of the unit, PT Alfa Retailindo, located in greater Jakarta and central Java, were damaged and looted, Sampoerna director Ekadharmajanto Kasih said in a statement to the Jakarta Stock Exchange.
- British cigarette maker Gallaher Group Plc told its shareholders on Wednesday that sales fell in the legitimate domestic cigarette market by just over four per cent during the first three months of this year.
- U.K. tobacco group Gallaher Group PLC (GLH) said Wednesday it's maintained local market leadership in high-margin premium sector cigarette sales, commanding 53% of the sector in the quarter January to March. Speaking at the group's annual general meeting Chairman PETER WILSON said the sector contributes 45% of the group's consumer sales.
- "We've all demanded some revisions," WIGAND told PAGE SIX yesterday from his home in South Carolina. . . Wigand is particularly concerned because the screenplay has him on the verge of committing suicide at one point, an act of desperation he never came close to. . . But WALLACE has written to MANN complaining that the movie shows only reporter Bergman fighting with executive producer DON HEWITT to get the story aired. In reality, both Wallace and Bergman fought to air the report
- Simon J. Liebowitz, a former New York State Supreme Court justice and State senator from Brooklyn, died on Sunday at Good Samaritan Hospital in Palm Beach, Fla. He was 92 . . . In January 1964, the U. S. surgeon general put out the famous report that linked smoking to cancer and other diseases. While Congress debated national legislation, New York did not wait and in the same year passed a law. Co-sponsored by Liebowitz, it ordered cigarette packs to be labeled: "Warning: Excessive use is dangerous to health." New York was the first state to mandate such a requirement.
- "Hey, is somebody smoking?" one of them will yell. "Let's clear the air," shouts another. At this point, the culprit, a sound-crew technician, will let the butt fall from his mouth. And once the air is clear again, the Boyz will return to the rehearsal, crooning "Doin' Just Fine" in that butter-smooth, four-part harmony style they've perfected.
- Given the climate of world legislators and here - even the Quebec separatist government has passed strong anti-tobacco laws - it is up to these sporting events et al to go out and find themselves new sponsors. Agreed, that is easier said than done. But there is gigantic money out there, apparently. If these races and golf tournaments and such are as beneficial to society as they claim, surely someone can be found to come forward and bankroll them.
- Democratic candidate for governor Ed Garvey has accused incumbent Republican Tommy Thompson of setting up his personal attorney for a windfall if Wisconsin scores a huge settlement with tobacco companies. . . The best way to guarantee that fees are reasonable -- and that no hanky-panky was involved in selecting private lawyers -- is to open the board's proceedings. If and when the time comes, the stateSupreme Court should open up the proceedings. Speaking of tobacco lawsuits: . . . Guatemala's suit raises questions. . . If tobacco industry money has to reach around the world . . . What will be left for Wisconsin . . . Unless a comprehensive way is found to resolve the public's complaints against tobacco makers, the result is likely to make losers of all
- Look behind the window at 6 W. Maple St. and you will see focused, jovial men rolling cigars, or puros, as they are known in Spanish. Enter the shop and the unmistakable aroma of tobacco slaps your senses. The vivid smell brings back images from my childhood in Cuba, reminding me of the pungent smell of cigars from the dry hands of my grandfather. Or my mother in the kitchen, stirring black beans, while she holds an unlit Cohiba against her nose, only for the pleasure of
- There are many people in Kentucky and the nation who believe that our rural people and places are worth saving, and that our small farmers are better producers and stewards than the industrialized agribusiness firms that are trying to replace them. The wishes of those people are reflected in Sen. Wendell Ford's LEAF Act -- which McConnell, for reasons now unclear, once co-sponsored. To put an end to the hopes of so many and to jeopardize the economy of an entire region ought not to be the sole prerogative of McConnell.
- In the European Union last year, 51 million people died of smoking-related diseases. Most of them probably wanted to stop but couldn't. What are we to do? The SCOTH report earnestly concluded that the Government should "require" the tobacco industry to apply "reasonable" and "normal" standards in the assessment and disclosure of the health hazards of smoking. Such standards should be "comparable to that expected from other manufacturers of consumer products". Yet tobacco is unlike any other "consumer product", and these are small, timid words to pit against the fury of nicotine addiction. King James's counterblast was probably closer to the mark.
- Richmond's tobacco unions are organizing a boycott of TRIGON BLUE CROSS BLUE SHIELD because the state's largest health insurer has joined a lawsuit against Philip Morris USA and other cigarette-makers. "I believe it is ludicrous on the part of Philip Morris to continue to feather the bed financially of an organization that I now believe is identified as the enemy," said Stephen W. Spain, who represents more than 600 members of the Machinists union at the company's cigarette plants in Richmond, Chesterfield County and York County. The head of the 3,500-member Local 203-T of the Bakery, Confectionery and Tobacco Workers International Union also has asked Philip Morris to sever its ties with Trigon. "I've asked the company to consider looking at another program," said James B. "Sonny" Luellen, president of the tobacco workers' union.
- PRESIDENT-ELECT Joseph Estrada yesterday accepted the challenge of health officials for him to quit smoking so he could serve as a role model. But first, Estrada wants a month-long grace period. Sure, he'll stop smoking, but only by June 30, the day of his inauguration as the country's 13th President.
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African tobacco growers meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on Thursday said they were very concerned by the South African government's intention to amend its Tobacco Products Control Act. . . "Instead of attempting to destroy tobacco production in central and southern Africa, governments sould be focusing efforts on developing an economic activity for which we have an international reputation and excellence," said Hamisi Liana, general manager of the Tanzania Tobacco Board.
- The International Tobacco Growers Association's on-going meeting in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania on friday voted unanimously to support South African growers who are fighting against an anti-tobacco bill. The vote came two days before the International Anti- Smoking Day Sunday. Its theme is "Growing up Without Tobacco".
- GONDA PEREZ, the health department's director of health promotion, said the antitobacco bill due to be introduced this year would propose "effectively banning" the advertisement of tobacco products and smoking in public places and workplaces.
- Melburnians have become enthusiastic suckers for "smart" society's latest deadly fad - cigars. . . Cigar enthusiasts are embracing more than Cuba's best-known export. There is a boom in establishments offering fine cognacs and cigars and deep sofas in which to enjoy them. The new Melbourne Supper Club is one such.
- Tobacco stocks, depending on how you look at them, are either smokin' good investments these days, or their future has already gone up in flames. Buy stock in Philip Morris Cos., whose Marlboro brand is the nation's biggest seller, because it's a growth story that "looks like Coca-Cola and Gillette on paper," advises Gary Black, tobacco analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.
- RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp. today announced that L. DENNIS KOZLOWSKI, chairman and chief executive officer of TYCO INTERNATIONAL Ltd., is resigning his position as a member of the RJR Nabisco board of directors. The company said Mr. Kozlowski, who has been a director of RJR Nabisco since 1996, requires more time to focus on issues related to his own company. Tyco International recently announced that it would acquire U.S. SURGICAL CORPORATION, marking the fourth major acquisition for the company in the past 18 months.
- Henry H. Harrell, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Universal Corporation, Richmond, Virginia and Harold S. Wertheimer, President of Socotab Leaf Tobacco Company, Inc., New York, New York today announced that they have completed the formation of a partnership combining their oriental leaf tobacco businesses. The new company, Socotab, L.L.C, ("Socotab") is the leading oriental leaf tobacco merchant in the world.
- And there are lots of things he really doesn't like: New York . . . hypocritical Pentecostal preachers . . . alcohol . . . smoking and his three ex-wives.
- A world tour of 20 of her frocks will open in Washington next month with a fund-raising gala . . . But two of the charities -- the Cancer Research Foundation of America and Inova HIV Services -- don't want to soil their pockets with money from one of the gala donors -- tobacco giant Philip Morris. "It was like someone socked me in the stomach," said Bo Aldige, head of the cancer foundation, after learning about the tobacco company's largess. "Under no circumstances will I ever accept money from the tobacco industry." . . . Philip Morris has bought a $25,000 table at the June 11 event . . "Tobacco use is contrary to our values, to everything Inova stands for," said Steve Meyerson, vice president for development..
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As we've previously remarked, the state attorneys general have become a disturbing presence on the legal scene . . . Similarly, he resisted joining the anti-tobacco lawsuits, and California was among the last to do so, not coming aboard until last June's settlement. . . Then came the pot of gold already decided, and the flood of documents making tobacco executives look like slimeballs, and he finally signed up too.
- A nonsmoker, and no friend of Philip Morris while in the House, [DAN LUNGREN] initially refused to join other states suing the tobacco companies. . . But Mr. Lungren's backbone cracked when the state Legislature indicated it would amend the product-liability law to allow tobacco lawsuits. Having once been a voice of moderation in a sea of hysteria, Mr. Lungren started to sound like his onetime House colleague Henry Waxman (D., Calif.), accusing the tobacco companies of everything but the assassination of President Kennedy. Even he has expressed hope . . . that voters will support the office-seeker who is grounded in principle, "rather than be attracted to a candidate who does everything by the polls . . . " Now Mr. Lungren must live up to his words.
- "What amazes me, all of this from a Republican Senate," Goldstone carped. For good measure, he added, "I am disappointed with some of the Republicans in the House." Goldstone isn't alone among Fortune 500 honchos. Others are displeased with the congressional Republicans whose previous campaigns they have financed generously. Business leaders are discovering that the traditional party of business now has other priorities.
- Veterans groups were furious last week when Congress voted to finance the pending highway bill by denying billions of dollars to veterans suffering from tobacco-related illnesses. This week, the groups were stunned to discover that the lawmakers actually went further than that and declared any veteran who smoked on active duty could be considered to have engaged in "willful misconduct." That is the same standard that the Department of Veterans Affairs uses to deny benefits to alcoholics and drug abusers. The comparison has made veterans groups livid and yesterday they vowed to force a second vote on the issue.
- But [REP. BOB STUMP, R-Ariz] said he did not become addicted to smoking, would not have blamed the government if he had, and does not think other veterans should, either. PHIL BUDAHN, spokesman for the 2.9 million-member Legion, said Stump is being naive. "There are generations of Americans introduced to tobacco by the United States military," Budahn charged. "It's bizarre to have the U.S. government trying to force the tobacco industry to take responsibility for its legacy when the U.S. is not living up to the same standard."
- But who are they? . . . Are they the predators of the political system, buying influence through legalized bribery? . . . To find out, The Wall Street Journal took a close look at a defined sample of big donors: everyone who contributed the $5,000 maximum to Sen. Lott's New Republican Majority Fund in any of the three years after the GOP took control of Congress in 1995 . . . MR. BARBOUR also represents the tobacco industry, a major source of contributions for the GOP. Last summer, he helped win approval of a provision that would have saved cigarette makers tens of billions of dollars under the proposed tobacco liability settlement. Although later repealed amid controversy, the proposal was supported by Sen. Lott, whose PAC received a $5,000 donation from SARA BIBLE, the wife of Philip Morris Cos. CEO GEOFFREY BIBLE, another Barbour client. The Bibles had no comment.
- Bible, Sara C., Greenwich, Conn., Wife of Philip Morris Cos. CEO Geoffrey Bible
- A West Palm Beach woman suing a tobacco company for the death of her father told a Jacksonville jury yesterday that her father tried several times to quit smoking but couldn't until the year he was diagnosed with cancer. Angela Widdick tearfully described to the jury Roland Maddox's struggle to end a smoking habit that lasted nearly five decades.
- "I never really associated smoking with it (lung cancer) until my Dad was diagnosed," she said. . . "I can't count all the times he tried to stop," she said, adding that he was only able to quit smoking for a day or two. When he tried to stop smoking, "He was a different man. He was nervous. He was tense. He got agitated real easily. He wasn't himself. He wasn't Dad." . . "He would always do things for the family. He would go bike riding with his. He would take walks with my mom. He would come and see my son's baseball games," she said, her voice breaking with emotion. She testified that despite being a smoker herself from 1970 to 1983, that she was unaware that smoking caused health problems, despite the warning labels. "It didn't come out and say cigarettes would kill you. So I didn't think there was any risks," she said. She quit smoking when she had a series of ministrokes.
- Six tobacco companies can be sued over the lung cancer death of a nonsmoker exposed to secondhand smoke, the state's highest court ruled Friday. The state Supreme Court reinstated the lawsuit filed by ROXANNE RAMSEY-BUCKINGHAM, who died in 1996, a year after suing the cigarette makers for unspecified damages. Ramsey-Buckingham, 44, claimed in her suit that tobacco companies either knew or should have known their products could be harmful to nonsmokers. The high court allowed the lawsuit to go forward on that point, but upheld a lower court ruling that dismissed her other claim -- that cigarettes are inherently defective because they are dangerous.
- A judge is trying to use an obscure law to shut down tobacco companies in Alabama by revoking their corporate charters. CIRCUIT JUDGE WILLIAM WYNN, acting as a private citizen, filed suit claiming five tobacco companies should be barred from operating in the state for contributing to the use of tobacco by minors and for other alleged wrongdoing.
- The Mt. Spokane High School freshman was protesting the mall's smoking section with some 90 students from several Spokane-area schools. At 4 p.m., the teenagers marched in front of the mall, waving signs and chanting. Then they came close to reaching their goal of filling the 124-chair smoking section.
- A New York City taxi group is trying to block 15 tough new rules against reckless and rude driving by suing the Giuliani administration. . . Brought by the owners of 3,500 taxi medallions, the first lawsuit claims some of the rules--including hiking fines for discourteous behavior and smoking in a cab--are illegal unless sanctioned by the City Council.
- Ohio Gov. GEORGE VOINOVICH plans to sign legislation that will bar municipalities from taxing tobacco, alcohol, motor fuel and other items the state now taxes, a spokeswoman said on Friday. The legislation, in response to an Ohio Supreme Court ruling earlier in May, would close a legal loophole that essentially allowed municipalities to levy a number of taxes not specifically prohibited by state law.
- Organizers of the "No Smoke Show" are hoping the pen -- not to mention paintbrush, pencil and camera -- is mightier than the urge to light up. The anti-smoking art show will feature more than 100 works from Johansen High School students. It will run from noon to 3 p.m. today and Sunday in the Modesto Junior College Art Gallery. The show is part of Project ALIVE (Arts Leading Into Vital Education), a dual anti-smoking effort by the Stanislaus Office of Education and Modesto City Schools.
- For years, the stink of cigarettes has wafted around the 12th floor of the county Governmental Center in West Palm Beach. Everyone there knows where it's coming from, but no one dares say a word. . . Who would rat out a commissioner for smoking in a smoke-free building? We would. That's right, Carol Roberts: You're busted. . . Confronted on Friday, she was forthcoming, albeit a bit terse. "I smoke in my office on occasion," she said. "I've never denied it. I don't smoke in the rest of the building."
- state Treasurer MATT FONG and car alarm entrepreneur DARRELL ISSA each clearly hoped that the event would vault him to victory Tuesday--and to a matchup with Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer in the fall. . . Tax fighters both, Fong and Issa disagreed on the move to slap additional taxes on tobacco products as part of the settlement between the tobacco industry and the Clinton administration. Fong said that as long as the prospect of taxes is part of a settlement reached by both sides, he would not oppose it. Issa said he opposes any increased taxation on any product without a corresponding decrease in taxation elsewhere to keep the federal budget from growing.
- Anti-smokers are fuming because Health Minister Allan Rock found millions of dollars in funding for AIDS victims but next to nothing for the fight against smoking. During a forum to commemorate World No Tobacco Day -- to be held Sunday -- health experts called on the government to stop stalling and put a tough tobacco strategy in place. The Canadian Council for Tobacco Control demanded to know how Rock can justify granting permanent funding of $42.2 million a year indefinitely for AIDS/HIV programs and only $20 million a year -- which expires after five years -- for anti-smoking programs. This comes at a time when AIDS-related deaths are declining.
- Health Minister Allan Rock promises to table anti-smoking legislation before Parliament adjourns in mid-June. But he has been making similar promises that his long-awaited legislation will be announced within weeks since last fall. "I expect to be tabling legislation before the House rises in June. We'll try to clarify the position as soon as possible," Rock told a news conference Thursday.
- SHARES in Rothmans hit a six-year high yesterday after the cigarette maker unveiled a 53.1 per cent jump in annual profit to $145 million.
- Farmers across the Southeast are starting to adopt the new baling method of packing tobacco, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is going to do a detailed study of how baled tobacco handles shipping. The department is looking for volunteer farmers to help with the study.
- There's one federal agency that could kill tobacco tomorrow, farmers say, but it doesn't have anything to do with smoking, the settlement or burley quotas. It's the INS. "If you take the migrant workers out of Kentucky, you wouldn't have to worry about the McCain bill or what (Sen. Mitch) McConnell's doing -- tobacco production would be gone," said Rod Kuegel, president of the Burley Tobacco Growers Co-op.
- Farmers, Workers Feel Pressure To Be Legal
- Some Arrive On Their Own; Others Have Help
- 5 Counties Get Grant For Migrant Health Care
- the National Spit Tobacco Foundation is turning its attention to college baseball. The organization tries to make fans -- especially youngsters -- aware of mouth and throat cancer and other dangers related to chewing tobacco. This year, the group set up a booth at Rosenblatt Stadium. . . The other side of the card features color photos of 28 major league stars, including MARK MCGWIRE, MIKE PIAZZA and TOM GLAVINE, who endorse the organization's goals.
- ICR Research, a national polling firm located in Media, Pa., has compiled a list of the "most unusual" slices of the population that they've ever surveyed for clients. The list included female cigar smokers, parents of bedwetters, men interested in penile implants, former loose-leaf tobacco chewers . . .
- I also feel, a belief not shared by everybody in my field, that we have a social responsibility as regards tobacco companies. If we feel, as many of us do and as some in Congress do, that tobacco is a dangerous item, it's dangerous to people all over the world, not just Americans. Tobacco should be outlawed. It's as simple as that. Personally, I, as a stock broker, won't sell tobacco stocks to my clients.
- (1) "A Farewell to Tobacco," by Charles Lamb. (2) "The Sot-Weed Factor," by John Barth. (3) "Thank You for Smoking," by Christopher Buckley. (4) "The Anatomy of Melancholy," by Robert Burton. Winner: Irene Moose, McLean.
- A heart attack is caused by the blood vessels which supply the muscles of the heart becoming clogged and narrowed with inflamed fatty deposits. Smoking is one of the main reasons for this - it contributes to atherosclerosis (furring of the arteries) in the coronary arteries. Many smokers will have heart attacks and strokes, and may even lose their limbs, well before their time. As a hospital doctor, I have rarely seen a heart-attack patient under the age of 40 who is not a keen smoker. Most of those I see in their fifties and sixties are also addicted. . . . To avoid heart disease, we shouldn't smoke, and we should eat a healthy diet. But more importantly, we should exercise regularly. . . . "Survival of the Fittest" (Cape, £16.99), by Mike Stroud, is available post free from Telegraph Books Direct, 24 Seward Street, London, EC1V 3GB (0541 557222). Please quote ref PA239
- The real issue in the race for Massachusetts attorney general is not whether LOIS PINES's campaign telephone solicitations are too strident; it's whether TOM REILLY's are even defensible. A man who is campaigning to be the public's advocate in the most powerful regulatory role in Massachusetts has taken campaign contributions from lobbyists or executives of tobacco concerns, the insurance industry, telecommunication companies, utlities - all of which are overseen by the attorney general's office. Nothing Lois Pines has done can compare in aggressiveness to Tom Reilly's sycophantic pursuit of support from business interests.
- In Canada, raising tobacco taxes created chaos. President Clinton cannot have private enterprise make tobacco products if government wants to extract all the profits. If Washington wants a government monopoly, it can have the keys to the factories. But it cannot have it both ways. . . If President Clinton's tobacco bill is passed, another black market will develop. In 2000, we'll be scratching our heads, wondering why we passed the bill to begin with.
- I will give up smoking, however. Soon. The arguments against the drug are overwhelming, no question. But not today, not on World No Tobacco Day, not on a day full of sanctimonious people giving all us nicotine-crazed wretches at least 10 incontestable reasons to abandon the weed. That sort of thing - like gruesome television adverts showing close-up bits of putrid anatomy - is just too scary to contemplate. It makes you feel like a cigarette to calm your nerves. And that's the problem: the very notion of quitting makes you want to have a fag while you think about it. Like many people, I'd find giving up really easy if I could smoke while I was doing it.
- Democrat JOSEPH M. HOEFFEL III last week held the first of what he promises will be a series of FoxWatch press conferences he says will be necessary to set the record straight whenever U.S. REP. JON FOX speaks on virtually any topic. . . Fox said the money that was cut was to have gone to veterans who develop tobacco-related illnesses in the future. "Those veterans who are already eligible will get their payments," he said. . . Hoeffel said at his press conference he doesn't think Fox should be relying on some future settlement. "That's speculative reasoning -- none of that's a sure thing," he said. "The whole tobacco settlement is up in the air." Fox responded that he is reasonably certain there will be a settlement in the near future. "They (tobacco companies) know they are culpable," he said. "We're just arguing over the final figure."
- Largely overlooked in the wide-ranging debate over the historic tobacco bill is the impact it would have on a few city and county governments now suing cigarette-makers. High among them is Cook County. . . "Our county spent millions of dollars in public funds to treat people with tobacco-related illnesses," said John Stroger, president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners. Congress, he added "is trying to exclude us."
- Dealers and other casino workers, fed up with the ubiquitous haze produced by hard-puffing gamblers, have filed a class-action lawsuit claiming that their health is being damaged by secondhand smoke. The first hurdle for the workers is to persuade a New Jersey judge to certify them as a class, so that they don't have to file individual lawsuits.
- TEXT: "For attorney general, compare: Bill Lockyer wrote the law protecting the tobacco companies. The L.A. Times reported it was among the most famous back-room deals ever struck. Maybe that's why they've given his campaigns over $180,000.
- Virginia Gov. James S. Gilmore III will host a summit next week that he says will examine ways to protect the interests of the state's tobacco farmers whose livelihoods are threatened by the proposed multi-state tobacco settlement. In a statement, the Republican governor said the June 11 meeting at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond will involve farmers, union leaders, politicians and tobacco industry representatives from several states. Gilmore said the meeting also will examine ways to limit youth smoking.
- An early strategy of the Democrats appears to be attempting to align Mr. Bunning's stand on tobacco with Mr. McConnell's, who recently proposed doing away with the federal price support program for tobacco, the leading crop in Kentucky.
- SISTER PATRICIA DALY has faith she can encourage the nation's largest companies to consider the health of the world as much as the health of their pocketbooks. That's why the Roman Catholic nun and other holy activists have gone behind company lines to push shareholder resolutions on global warming at mammoth companies. . . The [Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility], based in New York, coordinates the shareholder advocacy programs of 275 religious orders nationwide with an estimated $90 billion in investments. In past years, the group has taken on such issues as tobacco and helped persuade Kimberly-Clark Corp. to divest its cigarette paper business in 1995
- Cigars are launching a counterattack to the worldwide anti-smoking offensive. NEIL PENDOCK discusses what to drink with your stoogie [sic]
- "He said: 'This is the last year you're growing tobacco . . . that's what the computer says,'" Gilvesy recalls. . . "I said: 'We'll see about that, eh. We'll talk at the end of this year. . . . I'm going to stay in tobacco,'" Gilvesy adds. A decade later, the 43-year-old, third-generation grower is still raising tobacco, despite his debt, despite increasingly tough bans on smoking in public buildings and on tobacco advertising, despite an aggressive anti-smoking campaign in schools and despite the kind of stinging tax increases that the U.S. Congress believes will slash teen-age smoking.
- It's pretty easy to get cigarettes in Ontario, even for underage smokers or those who balk at paying excise taxes. At a dozen small smoke huts -- trailers and quickly built wooden sheds -- along the two main roads in the Six Nations Indian Reserve, smokers save 15 percent on the price of brand name cigarettes.
- Please call your United States Senators and urge them to support comprehensive tobacco legislation that adheres to the principles below. Senate floor action could commence as early as next week. 1. States should have flexibility in how they achieve youth access targets. . . 2. States should not be required to establish a retail licensing program. . .
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