Tobacco.org

Plain-pack case strong, says Roxon  

In its defence filed with the High Court, the government argues its plain packaging laws do not amount to an acquisition of the companies' property, because they do not deliver to the Commonwealth or anyone else ''any identifiable and measurable benefits or advantages''.

It argues that the rights of the companies as trademark owners have always been subject to other laws. It also argues the companies use the trademarks to maintain or increase the consumption of cigarettes, which was harmful to the public and the public interest.

High Court judges have previously held that ''just terms'' were not required for laws ''which provide for the creation, modification, extinguishment or transfer of rights'' in ''areas which need to be regulated in the common interest''.

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Bid to filter out the glamour from cigs 

PARENTS in South Tyneside are being urged to help protect children from starting to smoke by backing a new campaign calling for plain tobacco packaging.

The Plain Packs Protect campaign is being launched by health campaigners Fresh, aimed at banning the kind of glitzy packaging which can attract youngsters.

Kids as young as nine in the region have been reported as starting smoking, and colourfully eye-catching and increasingly innovative packs of cigarettes can act as ‘silent salesmen’.

The campaign comes after the Gazette revealed last week that the overall cost of smoking-related hospital admissions in the borough has risen to £3.9m annually.

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Cigarette packaging campaign  

ANTI-smoking campaigners are urging parents to back a new campaign calling for plain tobacco packaging.

The Plain Packs Protect campaign is being launched today in the North-East by health campaigners FRESH, aimed at reducing thousands of North-East child smokers who are attracted to glitzy brands.

The average age most smokers in the North-East start smoking is just 15, but some start at just nine years old.

FRESH believes eye-catching and increasingly innovative packs of cigarettes can act as ‘silent salesmen’.

Plain Packs Protect is supported by FRESH, Action for Smoking and Health (ASH), Cancer Research UK and the British Heart Foundation.

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• Australia Says It Has Right To Restrict Tobacco Packaging 

Australia's government claims in court filings that it has the legal right to enforce plain packaging on the tobacco industry, setting up what's likely to be prolonged legal battle with the world's largest cigarette makers.

In a defense filing Tuesday with the High Court of Australia, the government argues it has the power to regulate the marketing and packaging of tobacco and also claims tobacco products are harmful to public health.

"The Commonwealth will vigorously defend the validity of the plain packaging laws and does not accept there is any basis for big tobacco's claims that the measures are unconstitutional," said Attorney General Nicola Roxon in a release. . . .

Philip Morris is also seeking arbitration from a United Nations tribunal to challenge the Australian government's plan. The company claims that the plain packaging laws breach a trade agreement struck in 1993 between Australia and Hong Kong to protect their respective offshore investments.

Rivals Imperial Tobacco Group PLC (IMT.LN), British American Tobacco PLC ( BATS.LN) and Japan Tobacco Inc. (2914.TO) have also filed cases against the Australian government, claiming the laws are unconstitutional. The hearings will run concurrently and hearings are likely to begin in April.

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BELLO: The Definition of Tort Reform Hypocrisy? The U.S. Chamber of Commerce 

The Chamber filed its brief in support of the tobacco industry (one of the industries that provides back-door funding of the Chamber's "tort reform" initiatives) and against the Food and Drug Administration (in other words, the Federal Government), arguing that the government has "no legitimate authority to take space on a tobacco company's packaging or advertising to persuade consumers not to buy the product". . . .

Can you think of anything more hypocritical than this lawsuit and the U.S. Chamber's support of it? The goverment (you, the taxpayer) has to spend millions in taxpayer dollars defending it. What a waste of taxpayer money and government time, just to buy time to save a few years profits for a corporate polluter, perhaps the most serious health hazard on the planet. The Chamber is constantly railing against "lawsuit abuse" (a campaign funded, in part, by the tobacco industry), but this one is not "frivolous"? A producer of an acknowledged dangerous product files a lawsuit against the government for trying to graphically warn the public that the product is grossly unsafe and the Chamber backs this lawsuit but attacks those filed by citizens to address and punish corporate wrongdoing? This is the same Chamber that says when a citizen sues a corporate wrongdoer for the serious harm suffered by the citizen, that citizen is guilty of "lawsuit abuse". This organization has zero credibility when it comes to this issue. The public should repudiate the Chamber and any candidate it supports, by its voice and its vote. As corporate lackey and tort reform hypocrite, John Stossel, would say: "Give me a break"!

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MORTON: Cigarette makers intend to defy the governmen 

Apparently, Cigarette makers have told U.S. District Judge Richard Leon they can't be forced to spread the government's anti-smoking advocacy with "massive, shocking, gruesome warnings" on products they legally sell.

Since there is so much evidence to support how detrimental cigarettes and cigarettes makers are to society; why is there so much resistance to reduce of remove cigarettes from human consumption? Why all the fuss? Just do it. . . .

For all practical purposes it seems that the cigarette makers intend to defy the government and take their products to market at any cost if it means robbing you of your health and/or costing your life.

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• Chris Snowdon: plain packs nothing to do with health 

THE LAW TO MANDATE plain cigarette packaging passed through the Australian parliament last year to the delight of tobacco control groups and the fury of the tobacco industry.

The general public can be forgiven for being apathetic about a policy which had become a pitched battle between anti-smoking extremists and the cigarette companies. Plain packaging does not obviously victimise smokers in the same way that smoking bans and regressive taxes do, and although plain packaging is another unwelcome step towards 'denormalisation', they--like everybody else--have bigger worries.

For the anti-smokers, industry indignation is tantamount to proof that the policy will succeed in lowering the smoking rate. They are willfully missing the point. The tobacco industry is not a monolithic entity but a group of companies engaged in fierce competition.

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Hands Off Our Packs off to a promising start 

The Hands Off Our Packs petition against plain packaging got off to a great start this week with several hundred people signing up.

The petition was mentioned in The Times business section. It was also reported by several trade publications including Off Licence News, Retail Times, Packaging Gazette and Tobacco Journal International and You can read about us on Talking Retail and Politics.co.uk.

Elsewhere Spectator columnist and Telegraph blogger James Delingpole retweeted our tweet about the petition and there have been supportive comments on both Twitter and Facebook where Hands Off Our Packs has its own page.

Bloggers too have come out in support.

They include historian Chris Snowdon (who also blogged here on Monday) and the ever passionate Pat Nurse.

Popular libertarian blogger Dick Puddlecote also spoke out. . . .

Finally, we're delighted to report that the opposition - Plain Packs Protect - are following us on Twitter. This could get interesting!

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Should cigarettes have plain packets? ($$) 

...sneaking a puff from a friend’s cigarette to make sure I looked “cool”. I knew...traditional adverts have been banned, cigarette packs covered in attractive colours...design alone. The reality is that all cigarettes contain harmful toxins, tar and carbon...

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Should cigarettes have plain packets? 

Yes, says Maura Gillespie of the British Heart Foundation. No, says Simon Clark, director of Forest.

In a head-to-head debate in The Times, Clark disputed Gillespie's argument that branding on cigarette packs is an important factor in children taking up smoking.

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Hockney hits back at "haters of tobacco" 

Artist David Hockney, a member of Forest's Supporters Council, has criticised a leading anti-smoking activist who wants tobacco sold in plain packaging.

Writing to the Guardian in response to an interview with Simon Chapman, a professor of public health at the University of Sydney, Hockney asked:

Why doesn't Mr Chapman debate with a good and satisfied customer of the tobacco companies (Plain packs will make smoking history, 25 January)? Someone who has seen what will replace it as a smoothing, calming contemplative helper. Someone whose friends died of alcohol consumption, not tobacco. Someone who has smoked for nearly as long as he has lived. Someone who knows about the fanatical attitude of haters of tobacco. Someone who is not so naive about advertising and packaging. . . .

Someone who is shocked by the growing conformity among people, and what that might mean for a reasonable free society. Someone who prefers the centre of Bohemia to Australian suburbia. Someone who knows we have to die.

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• Letters: HOCKNEY: The trouble with tobacco haters  

Why doesn't Mr Chapman debate with a good and satisfied customer of the tobacco companies (Plain packs will make smoking history, 25 January)? Someone who has seen what will replace it as a smoothing, calming contemplative helper. Someone whose friends died of alcohol consumption, not tobacco. Someone who has smoked for nearly as long as he has lived. Someone who knows about the fanatical attitude of haters of tobacco. Someone who is not so naive about advertising and packaging.

Someone who has almost outlived a fanatical anti-smoking father. Someone who is fed up to the teeth with people who think they really know what health is. . . .

Someone who thinks laughter is good for you as it drains fear from the body. Someone who has something better to do than to try and control the quiet lives of others. Someone who knows we are all a bit different and is fed up with the growing regimentation of people. Someone who knows that smokers can live perfectly average-length lives but heavy drinkers rarely. Someone who is shocked by the growing conformity among people, and what that might mean for a reasonable free society. Someone who prefers the centre of Bohemia to Australian suburbia. Someone who knows we have to die.

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Hockney hits back at "haters of tobacco" 

Artist David Hockney, a member of Forest's Supporters Council, has criticised a leading anti-smoking activist who wants tobacco sold in plain packaging.

Writing to the Guardian in response to an interview with Simon Chapman, a professor of public health at the University of Sydney, Hockney asked:

Why doesn't Mr Chapman debate with a good and satisfied customer of the tobacco companies (Plain packs will make smoking history, 25 January)? Someone who has seen what will replace it as a smoothing, calming contemplative helper. Someone whose friends died of alcohol consumption, not tobacco. Someone who has smoked for nearly as long as he has lived. Someone who knows about the fanatical attitude of haters of tobacco. Someone who is not so naive about advertising and packaging.

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• $300 million trial into the 'reprehensibility' of Philip Morris begins again  

Ten years after a Multnomah County jury awarded $150 million after finding Philip Morris deceived a low-tar cigarette smoker into thinking she'd chosen a healthier alternative, the case is before a jury again.

The Oregon Supreme Court overturned the first jury's punitive-damage award because of the way the jury was instructed to deliberate. This time, with a slight but important tweak to the instructions, a new 12-person jury will decide how reprehensible the tobacco maker's actions were in causing the death of Salem resident Michelle Schwarz. The jury can award up to $300 million. Jurors were not told about the original verdict of $150 million.

Opening statements began today in the courtroom of Judge Henry Kantor. The trial is expected to last four weeks. . . .

Schwarz began smoking in 1964 when she was 18. She tried to quit but failed. In 1976, Philip Morris introduced a low-tar cigarette under the brand Merit. Schwarz, who smoked a pack a day, believed the low-tar cigarettes weren't as harmful as regular cigarettes, so she switched.

"She smoked these low-tar cigarettes from 1976 until her death in 1999" at age 53, said Larry Wobbrock, an attorney for Schwarz's estate. "She smoked them up until she got sick and couldn't."

Schwarz died after contracting lung cancer that metastasized with a tumor in her brain. The family's attorneys successfully argued to the first jury that Philip Morris was aware that low-tar smokers tended to inhale more deeply and hold the smoke longer in their lungs -- enabling smokers to rationalize a habit they would otherwise consider deadly.

"The case is no longer about the conduct of Michelle Schwarz. It's about the misconduct of Philip Morris," Wobbrock said.

An attorney for Philip Morris, however, spoke at length about how Schwarz should have known that smoking in general was dangerous. . . .

Kelly also said Philip Morris doesn't make $300 million of profit in five days. What's more, he said Philip Morris has paid dearly for damage caused by smoking -- $55 billion since 1997 as part of an agreement with 50 state attorneys general. About $526 million of that has gone to Oregon.

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EDITORIAL: What Bill of Rights? 

The Obama administration was back in court Wednesday, trying to convince a judge that tobacco companies should be required to put large, gruesome, graphic photos on cigarette packs to show that the habit kills smokers and their babies. . . .

Mr. Obama once taught constitutional law. But apparently the government he leads can't be bothered by the faded words of dead 18th-century males like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, who sought to protect Americans from the incursions of a tyrannical state.

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