Tobacco.org

• Ban confines smoky bars to Buenos Aires history 

The smoky bars and cafes of Argentina's capital, where tango lyrics celebrate the "sensual pleasure" of a cigarette, may never be the same now that a tough smoking ban has taken effect.

In a country where about a third of people smoke, the new ban prohibits lighting up in public spaces smaller than 100 square meters (1,100 sq feet), with cafe owners facing fines of up to 2,000 pesos ($640) if they allow customers to flout the law.

Under the new rules, which follow similar bans in other Argentine cities, bigger establishments will have to provide a separate, contained area for smoking customers.

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• WORLD IN BRIEF: THE AMERICAs 

· BUENOS AIRES -- The smoky bars and cafes of Argentina's capital, where tango lyrics celebrate the "sensual pleasure" of a cigarette, may never be the same now that a tough ban has taken effect prohibiting smoking in public spaces smaller than 1,100 square feet.

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Argentine Guerrilla Gorriaran Merlo Dies 

Enrique Gorriaran Merlo, a former Argentine rebel who claimed he led the squad that killed exiled Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, died Friday. He was 65.

Gorriaran, whose hit-and-run attacks on military units marked years of instability in Argentina, died while being rushed into emergency surgery, said Dr. Donato Spacavento, director of the Agudos Cosme Argerich hospital in Buenos Aires.

Gorriaran, who helped found the communist People's Revolutionary Army, came to prominence in 1974, when his guerrilla group announced it was creating a "free zone" in the mountains of the central Argentine province of Tucuman. . . .

In a 1995 television interview, Gorriaran said he personally led the group that killed Somoza on Sept. 16, 1980, after sneaking into the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion.

"I picked up my M-16 and emptied the clip into him," the chain-smoking Gorriaran said.

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• Paraguayan Smuggling Crossroads Scrutinized 

CIUDAD DEL ESTE, Paraguay -- For years, this region -- where the boundaries of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina converge -- has been considered a teeming stew of globalization's more unseemly byproducts. Much of the trade that crosses the borders, officials say, is illegitimate. The region is full of smuggled goods and laundered money.

Now U.S. officials are launching a broad series of new measures aimed at uncovering money-laundering rings that they believe are funding Hezbollah and other radical groups. . . .

Meanwhile, the State Department this year helped draft stricter anti-money-laundering legislation that was passed by Argentina's congress. The U.S. Embassy's legal adviser in Asuncion, Paraguay has held training courses during the past year for investigators and prosecutors in charge of combating possible terror links, according to the Justice Department.

Glaser said it is the links to Hezbollah and other radical groups that "concern us most."

U.S. officials cite a smuggling case in March in which 19 people were charged in Detroit for allegedly operating an international ring that illegally moved cigarettes through Paraguay and Brazil. The indictment alleged that profits were funneled to Hezbollah. . . .

A trip to one of two warehouses where agents collect three to four tons of confiscated goods from the markets each week offers an instant corrective to that notion. The cardboard boxes are bursting open with pirated CDs and DVDs, PlayStation games, shoes, Hello Kitty dolls and watches. The air smells like tobacco, from thousands of cartons of phony Marlboros.

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Litigation in Argentina: challenging the tobacco industry -- Flores et al.  

Conclusion: The strategies used by the industry have been successful in preventing recovery for tobacco injuries through litigation. Argentinean health advocates and lawyers need to be aware of the roles and strategies of the tobacco industry in order to develop effective litigation in Argentina.

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Challenging Tobacco Industry in Latin America 

But what’s happening in the rest of the world? Is anti-tobacco litigation proving effective elsewhere? While there has been increasing success in some parts of the world, Latin America lags behind.

Eliseo Pérez-Stable, MD, a professor of medicine and director of the Medical Effectiveness Research Center for Diverse Populations at UCSF, decided to find out why. In a study published in a recent issue of the journal Tobacco Control, he and his colleagues looked at the state of tobacco litigation in Argentina, a country with one of the highest smoking rates in Latin America.

Through a systematic search of library and online documents, the team discovered 15 litigation cases in Argentina between 1978 and 2002, in which individuals attempted to sue multinational tobacco companies. All of them failed. Pérez-Stable hopes to help local health advocates and lawyers understand why litigation is not working in Argentina, so they may improve their strategies for the future.

The legal system in Argentina poses the first major barrier to anti-tobacco litigation. . . .

he thinks there is hope for increasing tobacco control policies and reducing smoking rates.

To that end, Pérez-Stable is overseeing a long-term study of smoking habits in children age 13 to 15 in Argentina. He intends to learn how local attitudes and feelings of cultural identity effect smoking behavior in adolescents. He says education campaigns aimed at young adults — such as the advertisements by thetruth.com in the United States – have promise in Argentina. But success lies in tailoring them to the local culture.

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The Remix / Everyone Into the Pool 

More than 70 years after dying in a plane crash, the godfather of tango, Carlos Gardel (below), remains one of the most revered celebrities in South America. In Buenos Aires, fans still place lighted cigarettes between the fingers of his statue, and such is his popularity that Gardel is claimed by Argentina, Uruguay and France as one of their own. Now he is being co-opted by the fashion world, turning up as a reference on the runway of Kris Van Assche (inset below). "Carlos Gardel is the iconic representation of everything I like about Argentina: the attitude, the pride in tango, the almost sacred ritual of dressing up," Van Assche says. Gardel's signature accessories were his tie, wide-brimmed hat and cigarette

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• Uruguay smoking ban toughest in Latin America 

Uruguay imposed a ban on smoking in public spaces on Wednesday, the stiffest restrictions on smoking in Latin America.

President Tabare Vazquez, a practicing oncologist, was the impetus behind the government-decreed measure, which is among the world's toughest and is similar to bans already in place in Ireland, Sweden, Norway and Spain.

The ban prohibits smoking in all enclosed public places, from bars and restaurants to office buildings and shopping malls. The government says smoking causes 5,500 tobacco-related deaths a year. About 1 million of Uruguay's 3.2 million people smokes.

Workers spilled out on the streets during their lunch hour on Wednesday, many puffing away on local Nevada brand cigarettes and lamenting the new regulations in this tiny South American nation. . . .

Cuba imposed a smoking ban in most public places last year, but the measure has not been seriously enforced on the island famed for its fine cigars.

In Buenos Aires, across the River Plate from Uruguay, the first phase of an anti-smoking law also took effect on Wednesday, barring people from smoking in municipal government buildings.

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A Killer Is on the Loose, and the Message Is Clear 

How is an Argentine detective series different from all the rest?

Everybody smokes. And nobody calls for backup.

"Epitafios," a 13-episode mystery that begins tonight on HBO Signature in Spanish with English subtitles, is film noir with a tango beat: even when a deranged killer is holding a police detective hostage, the cops saunter to the rescue. . . .

"Epitafios" is the first dramatic series produced by HBO for the Latin American market. It was so popular there that HBO decided to show it to North American viewers. And Buenos Aires is a good place to start.

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SUMMIT NOTEBOOK: Distance Shows in Photo 

MAR DEL PLATA, Argentina (AP) -- The staff for the Summit of the Americas was doing its best to keep some distance between President Bush and Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, leaders less than warm toward each other.

Then came the class photo.

When the leaders of the 34 nations gathered for their official summit photograph, Bush was supposed to be in the front row, just off the center. Chavez was supposed to be behind him in the second row. . . .

At age 26, Diego Maradona led Argentina to the 1986 World Cup title, becoming one of soccer's greatest players of all time.

Now, at 45, after battling cocaine addiction that sent him to Cuba for treatment, Maradona has morphed into a strident critic of Bush. . . .

Smoking cigars given to him by Cuban President Fidel Castro, Maradona said of the U.S. president he blames for the war in Iraq: "We are going to stand against the human trash known as Bush."

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EDITORIAL: Smoke gets in your eyes II 

By comparison with everyday office life in the United States or even the prohibitionist tendencies of Health Minister Ginés González García here, the anti-smoking bill passed last Thursday by the City Legislature hardly rates as health fascism — except possibly the ban on chocolate fingers or any confectionery which could be taken to resemble cigarettes and thus subliminally incline the public towards the vice of smoking. The new bill bans smoking in all public spaces (including shopping centres) and in all bars, cafés and restaurants of less than 100 square metres while placing a 30 percent ceiling on the smoking area in premises exceeding that size (a previous ordinance had permitted smoking areas in all bars etc. over 40 square metres). . . .

In strictly numerical terms, this legislation is an assertion of majority rights since smokers only number some 39 percent of the population.

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• Tobacco industry successfully prevented tobacco control legislation in Argentina 

Conclusions: The tobacco industry, working through its local subsidiaries, has subverted meaningful tobacco control legislation in Argentina using the same strategies as in the USA and other countries. As a result, tobacco control in Argentina remains governed by a national law that is weak and restricted in its scope. . . .

What this paper adds

Tobacco control in Argentina is governed by a weak 1986 national law that essentially codified the tobacco industry’s ineffective voluntary advertising code and a weak health warning on cigarette packages. No measures to regulate secondhand smoke have ever been taken at the federal level and indoor smoking is widely prevalent in the country.

Transnational tobacco companies have been highly influential in Argentina. Using similar strategies as elsewhere in the world, the tobacco industry successfully blocked, delayed, and diluted meaningful federal tobacco control bills. Public health officials and tobacco control advocates need to understand how the industry operates and work to isolate the industry and make it more difficult for policymakers to support the tobacco industry.

In Argentina, as throughout the world,170,183,255 the industry has also promoted its "accommodation" programme

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• Tobacco Industry Dominating National Tobacco Policy Making in Argentina, 1996-2005 

The transnational tobacco companies working through their local affiliates dominate production and marketing of cigarettes in Argentina. Philip Morris International and British American Tobacco, as well as other transnational tobacco companies such as Liggett, Reemtsma, Lorillard, and RJ Reynolds International- through their local subsidiaries Massalín-Particulares and Nobleza-Piccardo- have been actively influencing public health policy-making in Argentina since the early 1970s. These transnational tobacco companies have used the same strategies in Argentina as in the United States to block meaningful tobacco control. . . . .

Recommendations

1. The journalists from print and electronic media, public health advocates, politicians and institutional leaders need to become more aware of how the transnational tobacco industry has manipulated and influenced policy making in Argentina, which affects the health of the public, and report this information to the public.

2. The national government, through the Ministry of Health and Environment, should implement a comprehensive educational campaign to enhance awareness about the health dangers of secondhand smoke and to promote the enactment of city-wide, provincial and national ordinances that prohibit indoor exposure to secondhand smoke.

3. Argentina should implement the principal provisions of the Framework Convention

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• EDITORIAL: Smoke gets in your eyes 

Precisely when and how the City Assembly enacts its various laws and bylaws has never been an exact science but the consensus reached over new anti-smoking legislation shows every sign of acquiring the force of law this week. This legislation will not only ban smoking in all public spaces but in the more public of private spaces as well, such as bars, cafés, shopping centres, etc. — in the offices of private-sector firms, however, it seems that smoking will remain up to company policy. But there are still some grey areas. What happens to smoking on television, for example — will the likes of Jorge Lanata be able to puff freely away? And what happens to the advertising of the tobacco industry, such a hot issue in the developed world?

This legislation should certainly be applauded in spirit. . . .

A serious anti-smoking policy could well lead the government into certain contradictions such as the huge benefits accruing to the exciseman from cigarette sales or the active promotion of tobacco-growing as part of a regional policy to help the poverty-stricken northwest. But let us not run ahead of ourselves — this legislation has yet to be enforced by an assembly where the vice of smoking is far from unknown and even if finally passed, who knows if the new anti-smoking rules will not end up with all the force of compulsory seat belts?

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• Argentina makes move to snuff out its smoking habit 

Last month, President Nestor Kirchner proposed sweeping legislation to Congress that would attack smoking on several fronts.

Parts of the law are facing hurdles:

•Legislators from some farming regions are keen to protect Argentina's status as the world's fifth-largest producer of tobacco.

•Media companies that depend on advertising will fight other aspects of the law.

•And some members of Congress, who occasionally have to be scolded into taking their cigarettes out into the hallways during debates, are leery of imposing rules strict enough to be unpopular with a large bloc of voters.

But many average Argentines seem resigned to a fresh wind of change.

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