Tobacco.org

Cuyahoga County groups face first battle for cigarette-tax money 

Eight out-of-state experts in arts and culture met in Cleveland this week to review applications from Cuyahoga County groups that want to use cigarette tax money for special projects in the next year. . . .

Seventy-five nonprofit organizations applied to receive part of the $1 million in project-support grants that will be distributed this year through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, the Issue 18 tax administrator. The panel recommended 58 projects for funding. . . .

Support for specific arts projects is the second of three types of grants CAC plans to make with the millions of dollars that will be generated each of the 10 years of the cigarette tax.

The majority of the money -- about $15 million annually the first few years -- is going toward operating expenses for well-established nonprofit arts and culture groups, large and small.

Jump to full article »

• Sculpture of racing legend Peter Brock to display cigarette brand  

A MEMORIAL to motor racing legend Peter Brock due to be unveiled in Bathurst later this year will be emblazoned with cigarette advertising.

The life-sized sculpture, to be unveiled at Bathurst's Mount Panorama in October, depicts Brock standing on the roof of one of his favourite Holden racing cars.

Bathurst city council defended the sculpture on ABC radio's The World Today, saying it was important to faithfully recreate the car's design, with original cigarette advertising.

Bathurst Deputy Mayor Ian North said the car and its cigarette advertising were part of Brock's legacy.

"History is history," Mr North told ABC radio. "We're honouring the man and what he achieved.

"That vehicle was a very significant vehicle in what Peter Brock achieved."

Jump to full article »

History is history. We're honouring the man and what he achieved.
Bathurst Deputy Mayor Ian North, on the life-sized sculpture, to be unveiled at Bathurst's Mount Panorama in October, which depicts Australian motor racing legend Peter Brock standing on the roof of his car--complete with original Marlboro cigarette advertising. One achievement--the propagation of cigarette advertising long, long after his death.

• Cigarette row hits Brock memorial  

The final design of a Bathurst memorial to the motor racing legend Peter Brock could be changed following public outcry.

Melbourne-based sculptor Julie Squires has been chosen to build the life-size bronze sculpture.

Her design, which features Brock standing on top of a VK Commodore, has been criticised because it displays cigarette advertising.

However Ms Squires says the final design of the tribute is open to change. .. .

"It's something that will have to be discussed as far as do we stick with that historical detail or do we maybe just have the M of the Marlboro. . . .

"I just found it very important to try to have him with the car, you can't really separate the two with his legacy.'

Jump to full article »

Out of the ashes 

some local arts groups report they're faring reasonably well. That's thanks in large part to Cuyahoga County's cigarette tax for arts and culture, which supporters credit as a crucial stabilizer for tough times.

"I cannot tell you how fantastic [the cigarette tax] has been for us," said Jill Snyder, executive director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland. It was one of 67 arts and cultural organizations that qualified to receive grants for general operations this year and the next two years. MOCA will receive about $155,000 in each of those years.

Kevin Moore, managing director of the Cleveland Play House, echoed Snyder's enthusiasm for the tax. The theater's cigarette-tax allocation will be $495,000 a year in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

Jump to full article »

When Is a Fashion Ad Not a Fashion Ad?  

MAN IN THE SILVER SHORTS For this ad with Charlotte Rampling, Mr. Teller became both subject and photographer. . . .

to judge by Juergen Teller’s pictures of her for Marc Jacobs’s ads, she is a good sport. . . .

For the Rampling shoot, which was done in a Paris hotel suite, Mr. Teller thought it made sense for him to be in the ads, since he and the actress were friends and she didn’t want to endorse a product. . . .

I said, ‘I’m going to show you what I’m going to wear.’ So I went into the bedroom, and I came out in these silver underpants. And she said, ‘What the hell is that?’ ”

At this point, as Ms. Rampling howled, Mr. Teller said, he was having grave doubts about the rest of his plan. “I was smoking my cigarette, breaking out in a sweat. I said, ‘Well, I was just thinking I could kiss you and fondle your breasts.’

“She sat down and got herself a cigarillo. She didn’t say anything. The whole room was quiet for what seemed like months. I was, like, Oh my God, that is the most stupid thing I’ve ever said, how stupid was that? She just dragged on the cigarillo and crossed her legs, and she said: ‘O.K., let’s go. I’ll tell you when to stop.’ I thought, Oh my God, genius. I can’t believe I’m getting away with it.”

Jump to full article »

Tobacco culture not native  

Within his lifetime, Stephen Yellowhawk has fought stereotypes about his Native American culture and heritage. When a recent art contest opened with a theme asking how the use of commercial tobacco had impacted the Lakota culture, traditions and values, it resonated with Yellowhawk's personal goal to keep youths healthy and tobacco-free.

For the first-time art contestant, the Black Hills Center for American Indian Health's "The Oniyan Wakan" ("Sacred Breath") art contest offered an opportunity to display his skills at beadwork and the cultural knowledge he wanted to share.

"It all fell together," he said. . . .

According to Henderson, the tobacco industry has long targeted Native Americans as a subgroup for its products, using Native American images and names to market its products while also sponsoring tribal rodeos, athletic tournaments and powwows with money and handing out cartons of cigarettes.

"It worked," she said of industry hooking its target.

Commercial tobacco today is not what native tribes introduced to the colonists, she said. Cigarettes and other tobacco products are saturated with 4,000 different chemicals . . .

Afraid of Lightning said it was a contradiction to his tribe's value system and a misconception that tobacco was part of the Lakota culture.

"Tobacco doesn't grow around here, and it never has. What was traditionally used for tobacco was taken from the bark of the red willow tree. … It was never smoked for pleasure or addiction," he said. . . .

"The tobacco companies are tricking us; cigarette smoking is not traditional in any way," he said.

Jump to full article »

Jamaica Cancer Society Launches Anti-Tobacco Poster Competition  

As part of its continued effort to prevent young persons from smoking and getting hooked on other tobacco related vices, the Jamaica Cancer Society (JCS) has launched its Anti-Tobacco Poster Competition for students in Grades 1 to 6.

The aim of the competition is to educate children about the dangers of smoking and tobacco use and also to increase awareness among the nation's youth about the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, which includes not smoking.

"Our mission is to eliminate cancer as a major health problem in whatever areas that we know that the disease will be caused by certain lifestyles and we place a lot of emphasis on these areas," Carol Blair, Administrative Director of the JCS told JIS News in an interview.

Jump to full article »

NI 'peace pipes' sold at auction 

A work of art consisting of pipes smoked by three key players in the Northern Ireland peace process has been auctioned for �6,500.

The Pipes of Peace exhibit consists of pipes belonging to Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams, ex-PUP leader David Ervine and former UVF leader Gusty Spence.

The money will go to a cross-community fund set up in memory of Mr Ervine, who died last January.

Jump to full article »

Art, Tradition at Cuba Cigar Fest  

The tradition of the Cuban cigar and its related art and history are being discussed Thursday in conferences at the 10th World Habano Festival in Havana.

Today's agenda includes conferences by experts on interesting issues like the architecture of tobacco factories, women's participation in production and history and a conference on how to roll a cigar.

As part of this stage, a group of Cuban academics linked to cigars talked with participants of the quality of the island's cigar and its cultural values.

Musicians like Leo Brouwer and Chucho Valdes, actors Jose Antonio Rodriguez and Rogelio Blain, and painter Nelson Dominguez, all of international prestige, attended the talk. . . .

Brouwer, musical arranger, composer and orchestra director, said he started smoking cigars at the age of 10

Jump to full article »

LANDMAN: Working to Make A Difference (In Their Favor): The Arts Dollars of Philip Morris  

Cigarette maker Altria/Philip Morris (PM) recently announced that it is moving its New York headquarters to Richmond, Virginia, and that it will end its corporate sponsorship of the arts in New York. Predictably, New York arts organizations are crying over the loss of cigarette dollars. These organizations sadly believe that their acceptance of PM dollars has been benign. In truth, these organizations have helped PM advance its credibility and legitimacy with policymakers, and have done tremendous harm to the country. . . .

Arts sponsorship is nothing more than a branch of PM's "third party strategy," a massive, decades-long public relations plot to gain political support from diverse groups that under normal circumstances would never come to the aid of a tobacco company. The third party technique is described in a transcript of a 1984 PM Corporate Affairs World Conference,

...the whole question of getting third-party assistance and enlisting this whole third-party concept in our defense structure is to give us clout, to give us power, to give us credibility, to give us leverage, to give us access where we don't ordinarily have access ourselves...

Jump to full article »

• WOESTENDIEK: Up in smoke 

Tomorrow at midnight the last smoldering cigarettes will be snuffed out in barroom ashtrays across Maryland. . . .

Nevertheless, you must remember this: For hundreds of years, the smoky tavern/pub/cocktail lounge/jazz club/blues bar have been part of our culture, and to erase the memory of it would be wrong, on numerous levels. So, too, would be failing to acknowledge its demise.

Hence, this homage to the smoke-filled bar - an ode to an odor most foul, a paean to a pain in the neck. For in losing the smoke-filled bar, we are losing a layer of society's texture - granted, an unhealthy, lung-irritating, certifiably toxic texture - but texture all the same. It's another vanishing icon, like the milkman, the typewriter, 8-track tapes and the rotary phone.

It's another tool lost for writers and movie directors . . .

When a piece of popular culture bites the dust - even as unpopular a piece as the smoky bar - it rates an obit ...

Smoky Bar, the illegitimate son of Sir Walter Raleigh whose roots stretch back to Colonial times, died today after a long illness.

Jump to full article »

Judge Dredd Writer - My Nightmare Vision Of A State Gone Mad Has Come True  

ALAN GRANT, the writer behind the infamous lawman Judge Dredd and the post-apocalyptic Mega-City One, has admitted he now finds it hard to write the comic because real life has strayed too close to his science fiction dystopia.

While doing research for his talk, Writing Tomorrow Yesterday: How Fiction Became Reality this Tuesday in Edinburgh, Grant skimmed through copies of Judge Dredd from the early 1980s and admitted he was amazed at how much has come true. The obesity epidemic, overcrowding and smoking bans all appeared in his comic strips. . . .

The smoking ban is another worrying example of science fiction becoming reality, according to Grant. A 1979 Judge Dredd storyline featured the Smokatorium, the only place in the city where people could smoke. "But instead of having a Smokatorium, they've made us go outside to do it," said Grant. "This blanket ban is, well, it's Judge Dredd. We deliberately set out to portray Judge Dredd as a fascist. And while our government is nominally a left-wing government, it has all the signs of a fascist government." . . .

Grant's talk is part of the Edinburgh Lecture series. Now in its 16th year, previous speakers have included Stephen Hawking, Seamus Heaney, Princess Anne and Mikhail Gorbachev. It will be chaired by crime novelist and fellow comic book writer Denise Mina, and is in conjunction with the Scottish Arts Council.

Jump to full article »

• Cigarette companies advertise through CSR 

This report in Indonesian Tempo states that the General Chairman of National Commission for Child Protection in Indonesia thinks that the CSR program of cigarette companies is a hidden cigarette campaign. This is as a result of a recent study where "as many as 81 percent respondents from 353 junior high school, high school and vocational school students acknowledged having participated in the activities sponsored by cigarette companies. As many as 51 percent of them agreed that art performances and sporting events in schools be sponsored, for 30.4 percent of the respondents see free cigarettes as an interesting part of an event sponsored by cigarette companies".

Jump to full article »

BAUM: Keeping a French tradition 

Someone once noted that a sure sign of the passing of a cultural phenomenon is not its disappearance but its preservation, or sanctification, in a museum. And so it is now with smoking in France.

After I moved to Paris three years ago from Manhattan, where Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg doesn't even let you eat artery-clogging cookies, never mind have a Marlboro, I couldn't believe it when I read that only 24% of the French smoke, a figure roughly the same as in the U.S. How was it possible? . . .

The dawning of the new, improved smoke-free France is scheduled for Tuesday, when the last phase of a smoking ban goes into effect in all indoor public spaces, including bars, dance clubs and cafes.

Still, I was skeptical that the French would fall in line. So I turned to Le Musee du Fumeur.

In a city where eccentric little museums are thick on the ground, the Museum of Smoking somehow manages to be the only one in the funky but rapidly gentrifying 11th Arrondissement. Unless you count that collection of stuff about Edith Piaf in some old lady's apartment.

Jump to full article »

Graffiti Art at Brighton Ski Resort Tells The TRUTH About Tobacco 

The Utah Department of Health (UDOH) is taking The TRUTH about tobacco to high-risk youth at Brighton Ski Resort with colorful urban art at The TRUTH Terrain Park. As part of a new sponsorship, The TRUTH is offering skiers and boarders discounted tickets and prizes through www.warriorsagainsttobacco.com.

The TRUTH commissioned internationally-known graffiti artists to paint the terrain park's rails and wall ride with the theme "See through the smoke, don't be manipulated." The artwork depicts images of corporate devils seducing others to smoke, burning money to represent the high costs of smoking and the satisfaction that can come from saying "no" to tobacco.

Jump to full article »