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• William Stewart: Crusader against smoking  

"Caution - Cigarette Smoking May Be Hazardous to Your Health." By today's explicit and bloodcurdling standards the warning that appeared for the first time on cigarette packs in the United States in 1966 was quaint in its understatement. But with those words William Stewart helped turn smoking - in the West at least - from emblem of cool into, almost literally, a deadly social sin.

Stewart was Surgeon General of the United States, the country's most senior public health official, between 1965 and 1969. In recent years, under the dominance of the conservative doctrine of "small government," the post has lost much of its former importance. But in that era, as President Lyndon Johnson pushed through his groundbreaking civil rights and public health legislation, the Surgeon General was a power in the land. . . .

Today the cigarette packet health warnings he helped pioneer in the US are positively tame by international standards. Across the EU, packets proclaim that "Smoking Kills", while many countries either have already, or are about to have, packets carry pictures of body organs damaged by smoking. In America, by contrast, there are merely rotating warnings printed on the side of the packet only, and in colours that do not clash with those of the product - with no updating since 1984.

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• New York Times Obituary is Wrong on Dr. Stewart's Role Regarding Cigarette Health Warnings 

Contrary to the obituary in today's New York Times, former Surgeon General Dr. William H. Stewart did not "put the first health warnings on cigarette packs," notes the public interest law professor who caused the first decline in US smoking by getting free time for antismoking messages on radio and TV.

"Although Dr. Stewart urged health warnings, he had no authority to order them," notes law professor John Banzhaf of George Washington University. In fact, the story is somewhat more complicated, he explains. . . .

Unfortunately, something that Stewart could not have anticipated -- but which Congress should have foreseen -- occurred. Years later the major tobacco companies were successful in defending themselves from law suits claiming that they failed to adequately disclose the dangers of smoking by arguing that they put on their packs exactly the warning Congress had required.

None of this should detract from Stewart's legacy, however, says Banzhaf.

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低焦油烟：温柔地杀你 

中国吸烟人数高达3.5亿，是世界上吸烟人口最多的国家，也是世界上最大的烟草生产国和消费国。烟草制品每年夺去约100万中国人的生命。低焦油烟真能挽救中国人的生命吗？

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• William H. Stewart Is Dead at 86; Put First Warnings on Cigarette Packs  

eneral in the Johnson administration who put the first health warnings on cigarette packs and integrated the United States Public Health Service and many Southern hospitals, died on April 23 in New Orleans. He was 86.

His death was announced by the L.S.U. Health Sciences Center, including the Louisiana State University School of Medicine, which he directed from 1969 to 1974. . . .

Dr. Stewart also prepared an influential three-part report, "Health Consequences of Smoking," released from 1967 to 1969, as the second salvo in a series of surgeon generals' reports that helped change smoking from social norm to social stigma.

Dr. Luther L. Terry, Dr. Stewart's predecessor, began the campaign with the 1964 report that the death rate from lung cancer for men who smoked cigarettes was almost 1,000 percent higher than it was for nonsmokers.

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• William H. Stewart; Surgeon General Condemned Smoking 

William H. Stewart, 86, who as U.S. surgeon general from 1965 to 1969 led the federal anti-smoking crusade and called for warning labels on cigarette advertising and who used the introduction of Medicare to desegregate hospitals throughout the country, died April 23 of kidney failure at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans.

Dr. Stewart was a career Public Health Service officer who became surgeon general one year after his predecessor, Luther L. Terry, released a landmark report that drew an explicit link between smoking and lung cancer and other diseases.

Expanding on the 1964 report, Dr. Stewart commissioned studies that hammered the tobacco industry by spelling out the toll that cigarettes exacted in lost productivity, disease and early death. Many of his recommendations, including stricter warning labels on cigarette packages and advertising, were adopted despite fierce opposition. . . .

He fought to toughen the Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act of 1965, which affixed a warning on cigarette packages saying that smoking could be "hazardous to your health."

He maintained that it was "indefensible" for the tobacco industry to advertise cigarettes "in a context of happiness, vigor, success and well-being without even a hint appearing anywhere that the product may also lead to disease and death."

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• Tobacco Light Action Dims ($$) 

The McLaughlin decision represents another chapter in the convoluted history of tobacco mass tort litigation. In addition, the McLaughlin decision represents another landmark reversal in Weinstein's controversial history as the judicial King of Mass Torts.

The McLaughlin decision is significant in several respects. In the narrowest reading, the 2d Circuit has curtailed the utility of civil racketeering claims as a basis for classwide mass tort relief.

In a conventional application of class action principles, the court held that too many individualized issues defeated the predominance requirement for certification of a civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) claim. The court concluded that the proposed smokers' class suffered from "an insurmountable deficit of collective legal or factual questions." McLaughlin, 2008 WL 878627, at *1.

In a broader constitutional dimension, the 2d Circuit dealt a blow to aggregate fluid-damages models for economic harms, often asserted in class litigation. The court held that the fluid recovery Weinstein approved offended the Rules Enabling Act, 28 U.S.C. 2072(b), as well as the due process clause.

Significantly, the 2d Circuit issued a sweeping policy statement that "not every wrong can have a legal remedy, at least not without causing damage to the fabric of our laws."

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• Anti-smoking campaign underway in Macedonia  

The Macedonian government amended the Law on Tobacco and Tobacco Products and the Antismoking Law last month, launching an intensified nationwide campaign against smoking. Starting in mid-2009, cigarette packs will be required to depict photos of smokers' diseased organs. . . .

The government, in addition, amended the Antismoking Law to outlaw lighting up on all public premises, including those that were not covered by the 2006 law. The ban comes after the previous policy of setting aside separate tables for smokers in restaurants and other establishments proved ineffective at improving air quality for nonsmokers.

Currently, almost every restaurant or bar in Macedonia has designated smokers' and nonsmokers' tables. However, the smoke-filled atmosphere generally is unchanged

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“低焦油”外衣难改香烟致癌本色 

今年4月15日~20日是第十四个全国肿瘤防治宣传周。今年的主题为“提倡全民戒烟，让儿童远离癌症”。吸烟被临床医学研究证明与肺癌有着确凿的 “因果联系”，而肺癌近年来已成为我国恶性肿瘤第一大杀手。记者了解得知，市面上涌现不少卖点为“低焦油”、“淡味”的香烟，以此标榜“焦油含量低的烟对人体危害没那么大”。对此理论，呼吸科专家纷纷大声说“不”。专家表示，目前根本没有任何科学根据表明低焦油含量代表低风险。

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吸烟：低焦油可减少危害是误导性宣传 

大家都知道香烟中的焦油是香烟危害健康的“元凶”之一，“低焦油”的概念一推出，烟民们就像找到了可以“健康”抽烟的理由，其实这种观念是错误的——低焦油不等于低危害！

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Low tar, nicotine cigarettes 'still harmful' ($$) 

Cigarettes containing low levels of tar and nicotine were still harmful a spokesman for the Department of Health (DH) said on Tuesday.

The spokesman was citing the 2007 findings of the government laboratory on the tar and nicotine yields of 77 brands of cigarettes in Hong Kong.

“They best way to protect one’s health was to quit smoking,” the spokesman said.

He noted that the average tar and nicotine yields were 9.4 milligrams and 0.69 mg per cigarette respectively, representing a rise of 0.5 mg for tar and a drop of 0.08 mg for nicotine respectively compared with the findings of 2006.

He stressed that even cigarettes in the low-tar group were harmful to smokers’ health.

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《经济半小时》：“低焦”香烟的诱人陷阱 

“低焦”是个诱人的幌子，经过国际医疗组织的试验表明，焦油含量的高低对人身体的危害是没有什么差别的。

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COPLAND: Smoke Test for Supremes 

Later this year, the Supreme Court will hear the case of Altria Group v. Good in order to look at state lawsuits that claim that tobacco companies engage in deceptive trade practices when they advertise cigarettes as "light" or "low tar and nicotine." The case will "decide whether tobacco companies are vulnerable to state law suits arising from the claims on their labels."

The tobacco companies argue, convincingly, that such claims are preempted by the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act of 1965. Under that law since 1967, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has regulated cigarette packaging and advertising, including claims about tar and nicotine levels. . . .

Although Judge Weinstein inevitably will continue to attract similar cases before him, Thursday's decision does stand as a major rejection of stretching our federal anti-mob laws into lawyer-driven class actions that target legal businesses. But the state law claims proliferating around the country are based not upon RICO but often ambiguous state consumer fraud statutes. For the fate of those lawsuits, we'll have to wait until the Supreme Court speaks.

--Mr. Copland is the director of the Center for Legal Policy at the Manhattan Institute. He owns shares in Altria.

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• Tobacco Companies Win Upset of Damages Award 

In a major victory for tobacco companies, a Manhattan appellate court Thursday reversed a 73-year-old lung cancer victim's $3.4 million compensatory damage award against two industry giants and threw out $17.1 million in punitive damages against Philip Morris USA. . . .

But two dissenters sharply criticized the tobacco companies, finding that the test of consumer acceptability amounted to "nothing more than a cynical effort by the defendants to maintain the commercial advantages of continuing to sell unreasonably dangerous addictive products to addicts." . . .

Rose and her husband argued that the tobacco companies should have sold only "light" cigarettes, and that their failure to cease marketing regular cigarettes constituted a negligent design flaw. . . .

Rose and her husband maintained that they had satisfied this burden by showing that it was technically feasible to manufacture light cigarettes. But the majority held that they had failed to present evidence of "consumer acceptability." . . .

Justices James M. Catterson and Eugene Nardelli dissented in a 38-page opinion written by Catterson. . . .

Finz, citing what he characterized as the "extraordinarily strong dissents," said his clients would appeal the decision and expected the Court of Appeals to reverse the verdict, "consistent with the current state of the law in New York on products liability."

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Rejection of Class Certification in Tobacco 'Light' Case Marks Another Chapter ($$) 

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Supreme Court turns out the 'lights' 

By refusing to take action Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote the end to one of the most celebrated and controversial legal cases in the history of Madison County.

The Supreme Court sided with Philip Morris USA, refusing to disturb an Illinois Supreme Court ruling that threw out a $10.1 billion verdict out of Madison County over the company's "light" cigarettes. The court issued its order without comment. . . .

The case became part of a contentious Illinois Supreme Court campaign in 2004. Tort reform groups, including the Illinois Civil Justice League, pointed to Byron's ruling as symptomatic of what they said was bias toward plaintiffs and their attorneys in the Madison County court system. The Republican candidate, Lloyd Karmeier, who was supported by the ICJL, won election to the Supreme Court.

Philip Morris appealed Byron's ruling directly to the Illinois Supreme Court.

Last year, Karmeier was part of the 4-2 majority on the Supreme Court who overturned Byron's verdict, effectively ruling that the Federal Trade Commission had permitted Philip Morris USA to use the term "light" in its packaging and advertising.

Tillery appealed the Illinois Supreme Court's ruling to the nation's highest court, which declined Monday to hear arguments in the case.

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