Tobacco.org

Hall of Shame-Zealots 

What we'll do here - as the news dictates and time allows - is call out and put up names and pictures of the no-smoke zealots in the USA and worldwide.

Should the people shown below come around and admit (in printed media or online) that they've been wrong via supporting un-American no-smoke laws, then we'll take down their names and their pictures. Everybody makes mistakes.

The purpose of this site is not to get even, or to seek out revenge. It's all about freedom and seeing personal liberties restored. And not backing down.

If you find our terms describing the individuals listed below too harsh, see our 'Good Govt-Bad Govt.' page.

Let's Get Started!

Un-American zealot, Mike Rounds

Governor, State of South Dakota

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Repeal Smoking Bans Home  

This site has been brought up in an effort to help organize individuals and groups to begin the process of seeing smoking bans repealed in the United States and worldwide.

Advocates of smoking bans are being met with determined and increased opposition. Smokers and non-smokers alike have begun to realize this is an issue of individual rights and individual ownership. Business owners are increasingly not obeying no-smoke ordinances.

We are all in need of camaraderie in these trying times. Citizens of countries are becoming more polarized in their beliefs. They're drawing metaphorical lines and refusing to budge. Smoking bans do nothing but further divide peoples.

And, believe it or not, that's OK with the no-smoke zealots. They've lost perspective. They're out of control. They're the new American nazi's.

Like the nazi's in 1930's Germany, the no-smoke slobs demand you give up self-governance. Whether you want to or not. They demand it.

And if you don't want to? They demand you be fined and/or jailed and/or put out of business - or even your home - until you submit.

For ooooooooo-smooooooking. That's how far and obscene the no-smoke fascists have taken the issue.

Smoking bans and clean air acts have nothing to do with protecting individuals and the collective health of a populace.

Like drug addicts who inject drugs into their veins to feel a false sense of drama and enlightenment, the no-smoke zealots are addicted to the false sense of drama injected into their lives via fighting for their "Cause," be the cause right or wrong. And they want you to feel the drama they feel. . . .

Miller and others - American Lung Association, American Cancer Society, TheTruth.com - have metaphorically spit on the graves of every Amercian who fought and gave all to preserve freedom.

Smoking ban advocates couldn't care less that people went to war so that theirs might live free

REPEAL SMOKING BANS. THEY'RE UN-AMERICAN sticker above: 2.75" x 15.00," no-fade vinyl. $4.00, postage included.

They go great in tandem with the PRACTICE RANDOM PATRIOTISM stickers.

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Campaign committees form for both sides in St. Louis County smoking ban vote  

Campaign committees for and against a smoking ban in public indoor places in St. Louis County registered last Thursday with the St. Louis County Election Board. Voters will consider the issue at a special election Nov. 3.

Citizens for a Smoke-Free County is the group promoting the ban. The opposing group is Citizens Against Proposition N.

Charles Gatton, the chairman of the supporters' committee, said the smoking ban “is good for the citizens, for workers, businesses and families.” The ban, he said, would “improve the health and well-being of our region for our children and their children.”

The committee has a website, www.smokefreestlcounty.org. It plans to send a mailing to targeted voters in the county, Gatton said. It has a speakers bureau, he said.

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• St. Louis County smoking ban campaign energizes in last weekend  

With the election four days away, energized supporters and opponents of the Proposition N smoking ban have stepped up their campaigns and picked up more money - with the anti-ban committee thus far outraising supporters but the pro-ban committee picking up endorsements.

And their tactics differ - with supporters relying on electronics, operating a get-out-the-vote telephone and email campaigns , and opponents counting on radio and newspaper advertisements. Both are using rallies to try to attract attention.

Proposition N would ban smoking in most indoor public places. Siginificant exemptions include casino gaming floors, smoking lounges at Lambert Field and small bars.

Opponents of the smoking ban debuted a new radio ad today on KMOX, says Tom Sullivan, spokesperson for the Citizens Against Proposition N. Ads against the ban will continue through Tuesday on KEZK and KSIV.

The ads by Citizens against Proposition N so far have been paid for by Discount Smoke Shops and activist Bill Hannegan. . . .

Charles Gatton, chair of the County Citizens for Cleaner Air, said today that he expected that ExpressScripts to make a significant contribution to supporters of a ban. So far, the largest contribution to that committee has been $10,000 from BJC Healthcare.

With money in its pockets, the anti-ban group sent out a 240,000-piece mailing to voters this week and took out full-color page ads in all four Call newspapers, covering a large part of South County, Sullivan said. Another ad appeared in the St. Louis American.

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John Luik  

John Luik has challenged the validity of smokefree policies since the late 1960s and has worked as a lobbyist, consultant, analyst, and advocate of "junk" and "corrupt science" for the tobacco industry worldwide since 1987. Luik - a philosophy and international studies theorist - challenges the science of secondhand smoke and the government's role in protecting public health through the passage of smokefree laws by publicly skewing ideas of personal freedom, ethics, and liberty in the tobacco industry's favor.

In 1987, Philip Morris's law-firms - Covington and Burling, and Shook, Hardy and Bacon - created a campaign dubbed "Project Whitecoat," which sought to single out independent scientists and analysts who would "go beyond the establishment of a controversy concerning an alleged ETS health risk but to disperse the suspicion of risk." Luik was an active player in Project Whitecoat. . . .

After Luik and Gori's book attacking the U.S. EPA's report was published, tobacco holdings in the Fraser Institute increased from 1.3 percent ($31,740 to $76,180) of the institute's total annual budget from 1996 to 1998, to 5 percent ($229,300) in 1999.2

Although a self-proclaimed staunch ethics analyst, Luik has been fired from numerous universities and teaching positions for repeatedly misrepresenting his own credentials since 1977.

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John Luik - SourceWatch 

John Luik is a Canadian philosopher with a history of vocally opposing government agency efforts to warn people about the health dangers of secondhand tobacco smoke. Luik was involved in a tobacco industry-coordinated attack on United States Environmental Protection Agency’s 1992 Risk Assessment on secondhand tobacco smoke.[1]

In 1993, the Confederation of European Community Cigarette Manufacturers (CECCM) hired Luik to write a paper attacking the EPA’s influential 1992 risk assessment, The Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking - Lung Cancer and Other Disorders. [2] (CECCM is a coordinating body for European tobacco manufacturers similar to the Tobacco Institute, and like the Institute, helped European cigarette manufacturers fight public health efforts to reduce smoking. tobacco.) [3][4].

Luik gave several tobacco companies editorial capacity over the content of the paper. . . .

Luik taught philosophy at Nazarene College in Winnipeg, Canada from 1977 to 1985, after which time he was fired for misrepresenting credentials on his resume. In 1985 he was accepted at Brock University where he taught applied professional ethics. In 1990 Brock discharged Luik citing "misrepresentation of his credentials" and saying he was unable to fulfill his duties there "since he has apparently engaged in a series of misrepresentations of his professional and/or academic qualifications to three separate employers, and had done so again, on several occasions, to Brock University." Luik has worked at several conservative Canadian think tanks including the Niagara Institute and the Fraser Institute.

In 1994 Luik was invited to a meeting at Rothmans Tobacco to discuss a proposal he had submitted to serve as managing editor for the book about plain packaging for cigarettes. [14] In 1995 Luik was commissioned to produce and edit the book.

The book, entitled Plain Packaging and the Marketing of Cigarettes, was published in 1998 by Admap Publications in Oxfordshire, England. It concluded that public health assumptions about the beneficial effects of plain packaging were defective, that plain packaging would cause problems with smuggling and threaten the values of a democratic society. It wasn't until June 21, 2001 that a report emerged (in the Montreal Gazette) that Luik was paid US $155,000 to edit the book. [Montreal Gazette, June 21, 2001] The total cost of the book project to the participating tobacco companies was US $240,000.

Luik also served the industry as an associate of the tobacco industry-funded group, Associates for Research in the Science of Enjoyment (ARISE), that was publicly active between 1991 and 1999.

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Secondhand smoke 

This article is part of the Tobacco portal on Sourcewatch, sponsored by the American Legacy Foundation. Help expose the truth about the tobacco industry.

Secondhand smoke, "also known as environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) or passive smoke, is a mixture of two forms of smoke from burning tobacco products," according to the American Cancer Society: Sidestream smoke, which is smoke that comes from a lighted cigarette, pipe, or cigar, and "mainstream smoke," the smoke the smoker himself inhales and exhales.[1]

Video on secondhand smoke produced by the U.S. Surgeon General

Contents

* 1 Secondhand smoke and human health

* 2 Cardiac effects

* 3 Tobacco industry toxicity testing not revealed to public

* 4 The "Biological Plausibility" Argument

* 5 Tobacco industry documents

* 5.1 R.J. Reynolds

* 5.2 Philip Morris

* 6 SourceWatch Resources

* 7 External links

* 7.1 General Information

* 8 References

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Secondhand smoke and human health

According to the U.S. Surgeon General, secondhand smoke contains a number of poisonous gases and chemicals, including hydrogen cyanide (used in chemical weapons), carbon monoxide (an odorless, colorless gas found in car exhaust), butane (used in lighter fluid), ammonia (used in household cleaners), and toluene (found in paint thinners). Eleven compounds in tobacco smoke have been identified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as Group 1 Human Carcinogens. They are: 2-naphthylamine, 4-aminobiphenyl, benzene, vinyl chloride, ethylene oxide, arsenic, beryllium, nickel compounds, chromium, cadmium and polonium-210.[2]

In December 1992 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a risk assessment titled "The Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking," that concluded that secondhand smoke is a known human carcinogen which kills about 3,000 nonsmokers each year and is responsible for up 300,000 cases of bronchitis and pneumonia in children annually. The EPA's study stated that secondhand tobacco smoke is associated with increased risk of lower respiratory tract infections such as bronchitis and pneumonia. EPA estimated that 150,000 to 300,000 respiratory infections annually in infants and young children up to 18 months are attributable to secondhand smoke. EPA also concluded that secondhand smoke was associated middle ear effusions, upper respiratory tract irritation, and small reductions in lung function, and that it increased severity of asthma symptoms in children. EPA estimated that up to one million asthmatic children have their condition worsened by exposure to secondhand smoke and that tobacco smoke exposure may also be a risk factor for the development of new cases of asthma.[3]

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has classified secondhand smoke as a Group A Human carcinogen, which means that there is sufficient evidence to conclude that it causes cancer in humans. Environmental tobacco smoke has also been classified as a "known human carcinogen" by the U.S. National Toxicology Program.

"Secondhand tobacco smoke contains over 4,000 chemical compounds. More than 60 of these are known or suspected to cause cancer." [1]

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Cardiac effects

A 2001 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) showed that inhaling secondhand smoke substantially reduced coronary flow velocity reserve in healthy nonsmokers. Coronary flow velocity reserve is a measure of the ability of the coronary arteries to dilate in order to increase blood flow in response to a stimulus or stressor. The cells that line blood vessels are called "endothelial cells," and a decline in coronary flow velocity reserve indicates "endothelial dysfunction," an impairment of the ability of the coronary arteries to dilate in response to a variety of stimuli. The 2001 study's authors conclude that this finding provides direct evidence that passive smoking may cause endothelial dysfunction of the coronary circulation in nonsmokers.[4]

A 2004 study published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) revealed that people exposed to high levels of secondhand tobacco smoke (also known as "passive smoking") are more likely to develop coronary artery disease. Cotinine is a breakdown product of nicotine. The study found that people with higher concentrations of serum cotinine were 50-60% more likely to have coronary artery disease, but their risk of stroke was not increased. [5]

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Tobacco industry toxicity testing not revealed to public

In 2005, researchers and the University of California, San Francisco reviewed unpublished in vivo research on secondhand cigarette smoke performed by scientists at the Philip Morris Tobacco Company during the 1980s at its overseas biological lab Institut f�r Biologische Forschung, or INBIFO. Between 1981 and 1989 PM performed at least 115 studies at INBIFO on the toxicity of secondhand tobacco smoke. The existence of these studies on secondhand smoke was unknown until the tobacco industry's internal documents were made public on the Internet in 1998. The studies revealed that inhaled fresh secondhand smoke is approximately four times more toxic per gram in its total particulate matter than mainstream cigarette smoke (the smoke the smoker himself inhales). The condensate (commonly known as "tar") derived from secondhand smoke is approximately three times more toxic per gram and two to six times more tumorigenic per gram than the condensate produced by mainstream smoke when applied to skin. Philip Morris never revealed the results of these studies to the public or any government.[6]

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The "Biological Plausibility" Argument

Public acceptance of the scientific link between tobacco smoke and disease resulted in increasing public concern about the health effects of chronically inhalation of secondhand smoke in public places and on the job. The argument linking secondhand smoke with disease was known inside the industry as the "biological plausibility argument," and it goes like this:

1) Mainstream and secondhand smoke are chemically similar, 2) Mainstream and secondhand smoke both contain carcinogens, 3) Secondhand smoke consists of the same carcinogens, 4) Therefore it is biologically plausible that secondhand smoke causes lung cancer in nonsmokers.[7]

R.J. Reynolds chemist David J. Doolittle wrote in 1990:

When considering the biological plausibility model we must recognize two well-documented observations regarding ETS [environmental tobacco smoke]:

1) Some non-smokers are exposed to ETS as evidenced by subjective impressions (annoyance), and nicotine and cotinine in urine samples. 2) Even though present at very low concentrations, ETS does contain IARC [International Agency for Research on Cancer] human carcinogens, as well as mutagens and cytotoxins. Thus, we cannot disprove the notion that some non-smokers are exposed to carcinogens, mutagens, and cytotoxins in ETS. Also, even though the level of exposure to these chemicals is extraordinarily small, it is extremely difficult to absolutely prove that these exposures will never adversely affect any individual. This, in effect, forms the basis for the biological plausibility model.[8]

A 1999 Philip Morris report argues against the "Biological Plausibility" argument, saying "ETS [environmental tobacco smoke] has never been shown to be carcinogenic in any animal species." PM did not publicly reveal the results of over 100 in-house experiments it performed on ETS at INBIFO during the 1980s that concluded ETS was more toxic and carcinogenic than mainstream smoke.[9] . . .

R.J. Reynolds

In a 1994 brainstorming document, R. J. Reynolds sought to determine strategies the company could use to fight the emerging information that secondhand smoke is hazardous to health. In response to the question, "What is the most important strategy we [RJR] could take?" respondents answered,

* "We must incite smokers to rebel and spread that rebellion to nonsmokers now! We must be repetitious and persistent. All media, all intellectual levels. What do we have to lose?"

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ICD-9 Project 

The ICD-9 Project, also known as the "ICD-9 CM Issue," was an internal Philip Morris project to impede the creation of a medical billing code that would indicate illnesses that are attributable to secondhand tobacco smoke exposure. . . .

* The Proposal to Include Secondary Tobacco Smoke as an External Causative Agent, by Thorne Auchter of Philip Morris contractor Multinational Business Services, March 8, 1994, Bates No. 2046073521/3523] Memo to Mayada Logue of Philip Morris describing the ICD-9 situation and steps MBS had take to hinder creation of the code. . . .

Abstract: A new medical diagnostic code for secondhand smoke was created in 1994, but as of 2004 remained an invalid entry on a common medical form. The process for creating and utilizing medical codes is open to influence by lobbyists with undisclosed private industry clients. Tobacco industry documents reveal that Philip Morris budgeted over $2 million for an “ICD-9 Project” in the mid-1990s. Tactics to prevent adoption of the new code included third-party lobbying, Paperwork Reduction Act challenges, and backing an alternative coding system. A secondhand smoke code should be allowed on the Medicare form, and physicians should be made aware of its utilization within the new ICD-10 coding system.

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The Power Of Paperwork: How Philip Morris Neutralized The Medical Code For Secondhand Smoke  

A new medical diagnostic code for secondhand smoke exposure became available in 1994, but as of 2004 it remained an invalid entry on a common medical form. Soon after the code appeared, Philip Morris hired a Washington consultant to influence the governmental process for creating and using medical codes. Tobacco industry documents reveal that Philip Morris budgeted more than $2 million for this "ICD-9 Project." Tactics to prevent adoption of the new code included third-party lobbying, Paperwork Reduction Act challenges, and backing an alternative coding arrangement. Philip Morris's reaction reveals the importance of policy decisions related to data collection and paperwork.

Recently, the Bush administration has been subject to charges of "abuse of science."1 Science is vulnerable to pressure from politicians and from private industry.2 For example, decisions about data collection policy are often contested in the political arena by various interests.3 According to a Los Angeles Times story in 1995, one controversial case has been the tobacco industry's response to the collection of data on secondhand smoke.4 In December 1993 the U.S. government adopted a medical code for secondhand smoke as an external cause of illness or injury, in response to requests from coders and also in light of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) 1992 risk assessment of secondhand smoke.5 The tobacco industry responded swiftly.

To better understand the tobacco industry's involvement with the code, we conducted a search of once-private internal tobacco industry documents. . . .

The CMS form 1500 expires 31 march 2006 and will need OMB reapproval; this presents an opportunity to readdress the issue by allowing all E-codes, including secondhand smoke, back on the form.62 Successful lobbying by MBS has had a wide impact for different industries in which chemical exposures or occupational hazards are not documented. The agency will presumably solicit public comment on any changes to the form. The public health sector should be prepared to respond and to be attentive to any challenge to the form from private industry. Meanwhile, the ICD-10-CM, when it comes into use, contains some major changes in medical coding.63 The secondhand smoke exposure code will be found under Z58.83.64

The tobacco industry has thus far undermined the collection of data on secondhand smoke's relationship to illness. These findings exemplify the use of politics to influence science. The medical and public health communities need to be made aware of these different codes and the potential for tobacco industry interests to undermine their use.

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Cigarette companies manipulate legislation, profs. say 

Federal regulation of cigarettes will not ultimately result in a safer cigarette or decrease the number of smokers, partially due to the large part tobacco companies played in drafting the legislation, professors said.

For example, the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, signed into law on June 22, allows the FDA to ban fruit and candy flavored cigarettes and prohibits tobacco companies from using terms such as "light" on the packages.

Harvard School of Public Health professor Gregory Connolly said the bill is merely regulating a lethal product under the approval of the tobacco industry instead of developing a safer cigarette at a discussion with three other panelists on Friday at the School of Public Health to an audience of about 50 attendees.

"This law has moved the responsibility from the hands of the industry to the hands of the FDA," Connolly said.

American Legacy Foundation founding President and chief executive officer Cheryl Healton agreed that the federal regulation of cigarettes is quite unusual. . . .

The legislation also requires tobacco companies to reduce the number of carcinogens in their products.

BU School of Public Health professor Michael Siegel said this approach would make sense if cigarettes were composed of three chemicals instead of 10,000.

"There is no way of knowing which chemical actually make a difference," Siegel said. "Instead of companies saying that their cigarette now have reduced carcinogens, now the FDA is mandating it, potentially giving the impression that cigarettes are now safer."

BU School of Public Health graduate student Dan Lustick said he enjoyed the discussion on how corporate influence in Congress affects the final draft of the bill. . . .

Democracy Institute founding director Patrick Basham said FDA regulation of cigarettes is essentially preventing the creation of a safer cigarette.

"The new FDA regulation does not accommodate the fact that smoking is here for the long run," Basham said. "It practically guarantees that no safe cigarette can reach the public."

Siegel said this law was not worth passing because the companies had too much influence on the outcome.

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The Chemical Industry's Attack on Historians 

We think it important to put this controversy in a broader context. During the past decade or so historians have been drawn into the courtroom as expert witnesses in cases involving workers and consumers harmed by a variety of products including tobacco, lead, asbestos, silica and most immediately plastics. This issue has become widely discussed among historians of medicine but has so far escaped attention within the broader community of historians.[2] Of most significance for the historians of medicine is that Kenneth Ludmerer, past president of the American Association for the History of Medicine, Peter English, professor of medicine and history at Duke, Robert Hudson at the University of Kansas and John Burnham at Ohio State, among others, have worked for or testified on behalf of tobacco companies, lead companies and other industries that have been the defendants in lawsuits. In addition, historians such as ourselves, Robert Proctor at Stanford and Allan Brandt at Harvard have testified or worked with workers injured or diseased by their job, children damaged from lead and individuals hurt by tobacco, as well as various cities, states, and the federal government in suits brought against tobacco, lead, silica, and now the chemical industry.

It appears that the legal strategies of the law firms defending the various industries have been more or less the same, following a common pattern and a common rationale. In what historian Robert Proctor has called agnatology, industry has created a new "science" for the creation of doubt and ignorance about its actions in the past and historians have played a significant, if duplicitous role.[3]

In brief, as Robert Proctor has stated in a number of oral presentations and editorials with regard to the tobacco industry, historical experts testifying for industries have adopted a few basic techniques to undermine the historical data indicating knowledge of danger. In general, they have argued that:

* Whatever the evidence of knowledge within industries of the dangers of a product existed in the past, there was insufficient information available for there to be definitive proof of real danger.

* Therefore, there was always a need for more research before doubt could be eliminated and those who questioned that a material was dangerous meant that there was a "controversy" about whether or not it was.

* Causation is extremely difficult to prove and requires years, if not decades, of careful experimentation and observation before "controversy" about the sources of disease could cease.

* Hence, without certainty, and in the context of any on-going controversy about the danger of a product or substance, there was little or no obligation on the part of industries to act to remove their product from the market or to lower exposures to toxic materials within the factory. [4] . . .

[3] Robert Proctor has been engaged in the path-breaking research into historians' role in the tobacco cases and has coined this term in oral presentations. See, Robert N. Proctor, "Should Medical Historians be Working for the Tobacco Industry?" Lancet 363 (Apr 10, 2004), 1174-5.

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DIPIETRO: The Daily Walk of Shame: "Unbiased" Health Insurance Industry Report 

This new Motley Fool series examines things that just aren't right in the world of finance and investing. Here's what's got us riled today. . . .

This all comes out despite a report released last week by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) stating that the legislation in question would reduce the federal deficit by $81 million by 2019 and would probably extend coverage to about 29 million Americans who currently lack insurance.

Why you should be indignant: Where to begin? There are at least three very good reasons to be apprehensive of PwC's report.

* Because the report is commissioned by AHIP, a group that represents health policies from companies like Aetna (NYSE:AET), Aflac (NYSE:AFL), and Humana (NYSE:HUM), PwC should have been extra careful to dispel any apparent conflict of interests. However, instead of performing tremendous due diligence, PwC seemed to have produced a report with too many holes to poke through and too much room left to be guessing about the legitimacy of their work. . . .

Well, you can choose to believe PwC's report or you can choose not to. Before you reach any conclusion, consider this: In the early 1990's PwC performed similar studies for the tobacco industry, which included bigwigs like Phillip Morris International (NYSE:PM) (then part of Altria) and Reynolds American (NYSE:RAI). They provided supposedly hard data that showed how a new excise tax on tobacco would destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The report was apparently so lopsided that another consulting firm, Arthur Andersen, reviewed PwC's work. They found "serious methodological problems and errors of omission (one-sided analyses likely to lead to misinterpretation) in both the PW Report and the [tobacco industry's Tobacco Institute] Estimates." Ultimately, the string of blunders made by PwC led Andersen to report that "these and other serious flaws in the Price Waterhouse Report and the Tobacco Institute Estimates build upon one another in a cumulative fashion to present grossly exaggerated and misleading estimates of job loss from an increase in the federal excise tax on tobacco products."

There are some eerie similarities here considering that one of the methods considered for funding health-care reform is a tax on some very expensive "Cadillac" health-care plans. Looks to me like another case of lobbyists hiring consulting groups to find data that supports their claims instead of performing a comprehensive, objective analysis.

This report has conflict of interest written all over it. Ill-timed. Factually debatable. Contrary to reports by the CBO. I'm not buying one word of it.

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• Govt denies involvement in missing tobacco article 

The government has denied any involvement in the striking off of a contentious sub-article on tobacco in the recently endorsed health law, deemed an effort to protect the country’s cigarette industry.

State Secretary Hatta Radjasa said Tuesday the law, passed by the House of Representatives last month, was already missing the sub-article when his office received it.

He said he had contacted the Health Ministry and the Justice and Human Rights Ministry to settle the problem, and that the State Secretariat now had a complete version of the law, including the missing sub-article, to be signed by the President.

“The House of Representatives’ secretariat is lying if it said it received the law without the sub-article from the State Secretariat. That’s not how we send bills to the House,” Hatta said at a press conference.

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Benson & Hedges manufacturer attacks Bill to ban tobacco displays 

Japan Tobacco International (JTI) has attacked the UK government for its plan to ban retailers from displaying tobacco.

In advance of the third reading of the UK Health Bill, in the House of Commons today (Monday 12 October 2009), Daniel Torras, JTI's UK managing director, said:

"The UK Government continues to demonstrate that it fails to recognise or listen to the evidence provided by key stakeholders that hiding cigarette packs from view in retail outlets will not achieve its goal of further reducing youth smoking. There is no credible evidence that tobacco display bans reduce youth smoking."

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• Phillip Morris Fights Display Ban 

Philip Morris International (PMI) has hit back at groups advocating a total ban on the display of tobacco products in retail stores via a new website.

The cigarette giant supports effective regulation but opposes a total ban on the display of tobacco products in stores.

"A number of countries are investigating a ban on display of tobacco products in retail stores," said PMI's director of regulatory communications, Morgan Rees.

"There is limited information in the public domain that describes experiences from countries that have banned display and so we felt that it would be useful to create a website that provides information on the effectiveness of the ban, as well as to describe its impact on adult smokers, retailers, tobacco manufacturers and enforcement agencies."

To date four countries - Australia, Canada, Iceland and Ireland - have prohibited the display of tobacco products at point of sale. . . .

Meanwhile, Donegal newsagent and National Federation of Retail Newsagents member, Maurice Timony, last week lodged a High Court challenge to contest the Irish Governments ban on tobacco display.

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