Tobacco.org

CRONIN: Is the EU in the sway of Big Tobacco?  

Maybe there's still hope for journalism when the News of the World manages to squeeze in a story or two unrelated to Michael Jackson. "European zealots", the paper told us on Sunday, are demanding a ban on smoking outside pubs and offices. The ever-reliable Godfrey Bloom, newly re-elected MEP for Ukip, was rolled out to fulminate against this latest affront to his nation's sovereignty. "It's beyond the nanny state," he said. "It's the bully state. Do they want to close down the English pub?" . . .

the sad fact is that EU officials have not been sufficiently tough in standing up to the tobacco industry representatives that have been strenuously lobbying against an EU-wide smoking ban. The lobbyists have resorted to a sophisticated and sometimes duplicitous campaign in trying to advance their threadbare case that smoking isn't really that harmful. Top-level officials have been quite literally bought by the tobacco industry. Pavel Telicka, the former EU commissioner for health, now works for British American Tobacco, setting up appointments for the firm with his old colleagues in officialdom. Others have been charmed into submission; one former commissioner told me he was convinced that Philip Morris represented the progressive side of the industry. It never dawned on him that the firm had sunk gargantuan sums into making him believe just that by, for example, setting up a medical institute bearing its name.

No national administration would allow paedophiles a say in setting child welfare policies. So why should the views of Big Tobacco on issues of health be taken seriously? And no, I don't think this analogy is too extreme. According to the World Health Organisation, half of the children on this planet have to breathe air polluted by smoke.

This week's move towards creating a "smoke-free environment" across the EU by 2012 is superficially positive, but in reality quite a timid move. The commission's ban will not be legally binding but will rely on the goodwill of national governments to put it into effect. . . .

At the cost of five million lives each year, smoking is the top cause of preventable death in the world. The industry that seeks to profit from this misery is beneath contempt – it's about time our policy-makers started treating it that way.

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ESCONDIDO: Activist says Abed shouldn't vote on smoking ban 

With the City Council slated Wednesday to consider a ban on smoking in Escondido parks, a community activist has called on Councilman Sam Abed to remove himself from the debate because Abed owns a gas station that sells cigarettes.

"It's a pretty big conflict of interest for him to sell cigarettes all day and then vote against banning them from parks," said Danny Perez, a longtime community activist in Escondido.

But Abed, a longtime opponent of smoking bans, said Monday that there is no conflict of interest because cigarette sales make up less than 2 percent of the $10,000 in gross revenue his Mobil service station generates on a typical day.

City Attorney Jeff Epp agreed.

"As I understand it, they are a very minor part of his business," Epp said Monday.

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• Senators say tobacco votes based on regulations, not campaign contributions  

The 17 senators who voted against allowing the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco included some of the top recipients of campaign contributions from tobacco manufacturers.

Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss is the third highest recipient of the group.

The historic anti-smoking legislation that the Senate passed Thursday sped to final congressional passage on Friday. Lawmakers and the White House quickly declared that it would save the lives of thousands of smokers of all ages. Even more important, they said, the measure could keep countless young people from starting in the first place. . . .

"I voted against the FDA tobacco bill because I'm opposed to the overregulation of an industry that's already highly regulated, from farmer to manufacturer," Chambliss said. "The bill saddles the already overburdened FDA with even more oversight duties, and does nothing to reduce the rate of smoking among Americans -- cigarettes already on the shelves will remain on the market."

Bunning, whose campaigns received $42,500 from R.J. Reynolds, says his vote reflects his state's interests. According to 2007 figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Kentucky ranks second in overall tobacco exports, and the crop pumps $386.4 million into the state's economy.

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MORFORD: A troubling lack of pure evil / Where to find a refreshing dose of vileness in the Age of Obama? 

it turns out classic, black-hearted evil still abounds in our culture. It's just a little less easy to spot.

Witness, say, the long-forgotten R.J. Reynolds tobacco company ("Passionately dedicated to evil since 1890"), currently struggling, like many supervillains of the past, to maintain its diabolical cred in this new era, especially given the drop-off in smoking rates and the company's diminishing capacity to bring death and disease to millions.

R.J. Reynolds has apparently been test-marketing a new tobacco product, some sort of melt-in-your-mouth pellet candy thing, called Orbs, tasty little lumps of toxic tobacco packaged in nifty metal tins, just like breath mints. No smoke, no inhaling, no spitting. Just pop one in your mouth and let the fresh, lethal goodness leech straight into your bloodstream. Cancer never tasted so good!

Pretty evil, yes? It gets better. How about the fact that the U.S. Senate is about to block the damnable product because it's so clearly, albeit subversively, aimed at attracting children? "Tobacco candy," they call it. "We're just giving undereducated, cancer-ready adults what we tell them they want," the evil corporation says. They're both right.

So there you have it. All told, I'm not that worried. This is America, after all. I know we can do it. We have the ingenuity, the imagination. Our megacorporatons and our neoconservative politicians and our gun-wielding sociopaths are famous the world over for innovating new and exciting ways to reek of pure evil.

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• Video: truth(R) Asks: 'Do You Have What it Takes?'  

The ad campaign, called Do You Have What It Takes? asks real-life job-seekers whether they would be willing to participate in the types of decisions and situations that tobacco industry executives have made or encountered. The new campaign rolls out at the end of May with television, print, cinema and online advertisements, along with a new Web site and social-networking elements.

Despite the national recession, the tobacco industry remains a very profitable and stable industry. However, even with economic hardship, recent research studies find -- if given the choice -- many Americans would choose not to work in the industry and already have a negative opinion of the tobacco industry

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Life, health insurers invest big in tobacco 

Major US, Canadian and British life and health insurance companies have billions of dollars invested in tobacco companies, a study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine said.

Wesley Boyd, the study's lead author, found that at least 4.4 billion dollars in insurance company funds are invested in companies whose affiliates produce cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco.

"Despite calls upon the insurance industry to get out of the tobacco business by physicians and others, insurers continue to put their profits above people's health," said Boyd, a faculty member of Harvard Medical School.

"It's clear their top priority is making money, not safeguarding people's well-being," he wrote.

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ADAMS: Doctors, American Medical Association hawked cigarettes as healthy for consumers 

Despite its stated mission, "To promote the art and science of medicine and the betterment of public health," the American Medical Association (AMA) has taken many missteps in protecting the health of the American people. One of the most striking examples is the AMA's long-term relationship with the tobacco industry.

Both the AMA and individual doctors sided with big tobacco for decades after the deleterious effects of smoking were proven. Medical historians have tracked this relationship in great detail, examining internal documents from tobacco companies and their legal counsel and public relations advisers. The overarching theme of big tobacco's efforts was to keep alive the appearance of a "debate" or "controversy" of the health effects of cigarette smoking.

The first research to make a statistical correlation between cancer and smoking was published in 1930 in Cologne, Germany. . . .

The TIRC promised to convene "a group of distinguished men from medicine, science, and education" and it did so. Early members of the TIRC's Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) included: McKeen Cattell, PhD, MD, professor of pharmacology from Cornell University Medical College; Julius H. Comroe, Jr., MD, director of the University of California Medical Center's cardiovascular research institute and chairman of University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Medicine; and Edwin B. Wilson, PhD, LLD, professor of vital statistics, Harvard University.

According to the New York State Archives, the TIRC's functions "included both the funding of research and carrying out public relations activities relating to tobacco and health." Faced with mounting evidence that smoking was harmful, "it became evident that this was not a short-term endeavor . . .

Allan M. Brandt, a medical historian at Harvard, writes about the role that medical research played on both sides of the smoking debate in his new book, The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America. After reviewing research, court transcripts and previously restricted memoranda from tobacco companies, Brandt summed up the misleading nature of "expert" medical testimony in tobacco litigation: "I was appalled by what the tobacco expert witnesses had written. By asking narrow questions and responding to them with narrow research, they provided precisely the cover the industry sought."

In a recent interview with The New York Times, Brandt acknowledged that his research is a combination of scholarship and health advocacy -- pointing out the means by which the American public was intentionally misled for most of the twentieth century. As Brandt stated, "The stakes are high, and there is much work to be done."

The medical conspiracy continues today

It is my belief that just as private industry and the medical community conspired to deceive the public on tobacco (and thereby profit from the public's ignorance of tobacco's extreme health hazard), the same story is repeating itself today in the cancer industry, the sunscreen industry, and the pharmaceutical industry. In each case, so-called "authoritative" doctors insist that whatever they're pushing is safe for human consumption, and that the public should buy their products without any concern about safety.

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• MINTZ: Parsing an op ed ad in the Times 

The Washington Legal Foundation, a self-described "advocate for freedom and justice," published one of its occasional quarter-page ads in the New York Times the other day. The headline: "Bull Market for Plaintiffs’ Lawyers."

"At least one industry—Litigation, Inc.—is expanding at a fast pace," the group's chairman, Daniel J. Popeo, declared in the May 4 op-ed ad. He characterized this newly-invented industry as a "parasitic," "unregulated," "multi-billion-dollar" business in "pursuit of riches [that] restrains U.S. economic recovery."

The ad appeared under a logo, "IN ALL FAIRNESS". But fairness to those who read Popeo's rant requires some background. I have in mind the long-standing ties that he somehow overlooked between WLF and the tobacco industry. . . .

It is thanks primarily to plaintiffs' lawyers who sued tobacco companies that damning, truth-telling internal documents that would otherwise have remained secret if not destroyed have surfaced in recent decades. . . .

A 1968 Philip Morris draft memo, for example, revealed an industry-wide "gentleman's agreement" barring cigarette companies from doing in-house biological research on the health hazards of smoking. The memo became public 20 years later in U.S. District Court in Newark, N.J., during the trial of a landmark smoker-death lawsuit titled Cipollone v. Liggett Group. It was among two dozen highly damaging industry documents that plaintiff's lawyer Marc Z. Edell and colleagues Cynthia Walters and Alan Darnell had obtained during years of costly pre-trial discovery and put into the public record. (I covered the nine-week 1988 trial for the Washington Post.)

The 32-year-old WLF and the tobacco industry have long been on the same wavelength regarding legal issues. When WLF attacks plaintiffs' lawyers as a class, it automatically targets those lawyers whose lawsuits have repeatedly brought to light devastating facts about the industry's conduct. . . .

In the five years 1995-1999, Philip Morris gave WLF $1,250,000; in the four years ending in 1998 the Tobhacco Institute donated an additional $125,000. (Click here for funding details.)

In 1996, the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company Foundation made an "unrestricted" $75,000 grant to WLF. . . .

Just in 2008, Philip Morris International sold 850 billion cigarettes outside the United States. Its profit was $16.3 billion—40,750 times the award that the Cipollone family—and their lawyers—never saw. PMI was not pursuing riches? Perhaps WLF will buy another op-ed ad so Popeo can tell us what else it was pursuing. Justice, maybe?

Plaintiffs' lawyers have not been alone in going after tobacco. State attorney generals have . . .

The WLF ad makes no mention of tobacco. It is silent, too, about corporate lawyers who defend the industry and, more broadly, pharmaceutical and other companies that have committed crimes or engaged in grave misconduct. The silence invites an inference that, in stark contrast to those "parasitic" plaintiffs' lawyers, corporate defense lawyers are honorable professionals, gentlemen through and through. That's not how Kessler saw tobacco lawyers.

"At every stage, lawyers played an absolutely central role in the creation and perpetuation of the Enterprise and the implementation of its fraudulent schemes," Kessler wrote. Both in-house counsel and outside law firms "devised" and "coordinated" strategy, directed scientists' research in favor of the industry, destroyed documents and "took shelter behind baseless assertions of attorney client privilege."

It should be noted that WLF gets significant funding from right-wing foundations, including those in the names of Lynde & Harry Bradley, John M. Olin, and Sarah Scaife. And perhaps this should be noted, too: advocacy ads that bring desperately needed revenue to news organizations can pollute the well of public knowledge.

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[A]dvocacy ads that bring desperately needed revenue to news organizations can pollute the well of public knowledge.
Morton Mintz, in a scathing rebuke of the Washington Legal Foundation's May 4 anti-trial lawyer ad in the NYT.

EDITORIAL: Rein in pharma  

It's no surprise that continuing medical education courses bought and paid for by drug companies come with a heavy dose of marketing.

The surprise is that schools like the University of Wisconsin-Madison haven't done more until now to insulate themselves from the pernicious effects of drug company money. . . .

Pfizer, for example, is shelling out $12.3 million for an online UW course to instruct doctors on how to get patients to quit smoking. The course materials heavily promote Pfizer's drug, Chantix, which is the most effective drug on the market but also has been linked to serious side effects. None of them are mentioned in the course. . . .

Universities should not lend their good names to the marketing machines of the nation's pharmaceutical industry. Strict guidelines are needed.

Should the University of Wisconsin-Madison restrict drug companies' ability to pay for doctors' continuing education? To be considered for publication as a letter to the editor, e-mail your opinion to the Journal Sentinel editorial department.

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GABLER: Pfizer's sneaky ad promotes anti-smoking drug  

By law, a pharmaceutical company cannot mention a drug's name without listing its most serious side effects. Pfizer has thought up a creative way around this law. But first you should know this: Chantix has some significant side effects: "serious neuropsychiatric symptoms," including "changes in behavior, agitation, depressed mood, suicidal ideation and attempted and completed suicide," according to the FDA.

Pfizer has found a way to promote its drug without mentioning the side effects. The company has been running an ad promoting a smoking-cessation site called MyTimeToQuit.com. It's sponsored by Pfizer. Once on the site, consumers will find links to the Web site for Chantix.

Public Investigator wrote about the possible dangers of Chantix last April. In that story, we spoke with a Green Bay man and his wife who said they were not aware of the drug's side effects. Here's what happened to that couple, or click here for the full article:

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• Drug firms' cash skews doctor classes 

Drug companies have largely taken over the field of doctor education, in part by bankrolling physician education courses at medical schools.

Critics say the practice increases medical costs by encouraging doctors to write prescriptions for expensive brand-name drugs and by exaggerating the frequency and prevalence of rare conditions. It also promotes the use of drugs not approved for the ailments.

A Journal Sentinel investigation found that industry-funded doctor education courses offered at UW often present a slanted view by favoring prescription medications over non-drug therapies and by failing to mention important side effects. . . .

Smoking cessation course

Some of the biggest money paid to UW has been for its smoking cessation course, part of a national campaign funded by Pfizer.

Of the $12.3 million paid by the drug company to fund the course, $3.5 million is going to UW.

The course materials heavily promote Pfizer's drug, Chantix, considered to be the most effective drug on the market. But the drug is under investigation by the FDA, and in its relatively short history on the market, it has been linked to serious side effects, none of which is mentioned in the course.

Side effects include depression, agitation, suicidal behavior and blackouts. For two consecutive quarters, Chantix was connected with more serious injuries than any other prescription drug, according to an October report by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices. Since its approval in 2006, the drug has been linked to 3,325 serious injuries and 112 deaths in the U.S.

Last May, the FAA ordered pilots and air traffic controllers to immediately stop taking the drug because of safety concerns.

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• VIDEO: Pfizer and Chantix: Stealth advertising at its finest 

Can an ad promote a drug even if it doesn't mention the drug by name? That's the topic we tackle in the video at right—the fifth installment in our AdWatch series of drug advertising critiques. The commercial highlights a smoking-cessation Web site called MyTimeToQuit.com, and it looks in many ways like a public-service announcement, at least initially. But wait—a logo at the end of the commercial reveals that it's sponsored by Pfizer. And the MyTimetoQuit site includes links that ultimately lead you to the Web site for Chantix (varenicline), Pfizer’s blockbuster smoking-cessation drug.

If this sounds a little sneaky to you, well, we think it is. But it’s also totally legal, and representative of a growing trend in direct-to-consumer advertising: the “help-seeking ad.” These are ads that, instead of mentioning a drug by name, address the condition it’s meant to treat–then drive you to a Web site or toll-free number that offers, among other information, the option to learn about a “prescription treatment option.” (For two other prime examples, see www.FibroCenter.com and www.PsoriasisConnect.com.) . . .

As for the My Time to Quit commercial, one place it does get it right is in portraying how very difficult it is to stop smoking. If you’re facing that arduous and admirable task, you can find independent, unbiased advice on all available treatments at Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (including a free interactive PDA tool).

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• Nomination Tests Antilobbyist Policy  

President Barack Obama says lobbyists won't run his administration, but he picked an antitobacco lobbyist with ties to the pharmaceutical industry as the No. 2 official at the Department of Health and Human Services.

The nomination of William Corr -- former executive director of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, where he was a registered lobbyist until September -- highlights the murkiness of Mr. Obama's antilobbyist policy. . . .

But Mr. Corr's nomination raises another question: In an era when industries often make financial donations to public-interest groups that support policies that help those industries, when are public-interest advocates conflicted by the funding that supports the causes they advocate?

The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids has received millions of dollars from pharmaceutical companies that would benefit from the organization's work to reduce smoking because they sell products that help people quit, such as Nicorette gum and NicoDerm patches.

If confirmed, Mr. Corr would help run a department that not only regulates the drug industry through its Food and Drug Administration arm but also is its biggest payer through federal insurance programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, said the drug-industry funding of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids creates "a win-win: They get to support the public interest at the same time they are supporting their bottom lines."

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LETTER: Carlson attempts to undo my vote 

As a resident of Grand Forks, N.D., I am not directly represented by Rep. Al Carlson, R-Fargo, and so I wondered how it is that this one legislator from Fargo can undo my vote for Measure 3 and thwart the will of the majority of North Dakota voters. What kind of person does that? Who is this Carlson who arrogantly ignores 165,000 voters?

Well, I did a little checking and found out that Carlson is a representative from Fargo’s District 41. In 2006, when he was re-elected to the North Dakota Legislature, Carlson received only 2,903 votes (52 percent of the votes cast). By contrast, last November, 3,998 voters in Carlson’s district voted to support Measure 3. That’s right: In his own district, 1,000 more voters supported Measure 3 than supported Carlson’s re-election bid.

I then wondered, where does this guy stand on other tobacco control issues? In June, 61 percent of the voters of Fargo voted for smoke-free workplaces. Yet Carlson goes to the Legislature and votes against a statewide smoke-free law. Without boring you with the details, on pretty much all tobacco control issues, Carlson takes the side of the tobacco industry over the constituents in his district, the city of Fargo, and the public health community. Shame on him.

Now the only mystery left for me to resolve: Why do Republican House members (with the notable exceptions of Reps. Bob Martinson and George Keiser, both from Bismarck) support Carlson’s pro-tobacco industry policies over the public health interests of the people? I do not know. That is something voters should ask their legislators directly. I know that I intend to ask mine.

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• IN THE MAIL: Carlson works against own district’s wishes 

As a Grand Forks resident, I am not directly represented by Rep. Al Carlson, R-Fargo, and so I wondered how it is that this one legislator from Fargo can undo my vote for Measure 3 and thwart the will of the majority of North Dakota voters.

What kind of person does that? Who is this Al Carlson who arrogantly ignores 165,000 voters?

Well, I did a little checking and found out that in 2006, when Carlson was re-elected to the North Dakota Legislature, he got only 2,903 votes or 52 percent of the votes cast. By contrast, some 3,998 voters in Carlson’s district voted to support Measure 3 in November.

That’s right: In his own district, 1,000 more voters supported Measure 3 than supported Carlson’s re-election bid. . . .

on pretty much all tobacco-control issues, Carlson takes the side of the tobacco industry over the constituents in his district, Fargo and the public health community. Shame on him.

Now, the only mystery left for me to resolve is: Why do Republican house members (with the notable exceptions of Bismarck Reps. Bob Martinson and George Keiser) support Carlson’s pro-tobacco industry policies over the public-health interests of the people?

I don’t know. That is something voters should ask their legislators directly. I intend to ask mine.

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