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Where Else Are the Liberals' Cigarette Donations Going?  

Labor Member for Bass, Brian Wightman, today called on Will Hodgman to explain where else the Liberals will spend the political donations it received from cigarette companies.

Mr Wightman said the Liberals needed to come clean on exactly what campaigns this money from big tobacco would be spent.

"Given that Mr Hodgman's new website advertisement features him making promises about health care funding, I'm sure Tasmanians would be interested in knowing what else the profits of cigarette sales will be helping pay for.

"He should immediately can these ads, and ensure the Liberal Party start disclosing how much of their advertising is being brought to Tasmanians courtesy of big tobacco companies and their profits.

"Mr Hodgman seems to think it is okay for his Party to pocket $38,000 in proceeds of cigarette sales on the basis that it doesn't alter its policies, and that they have supported Labor's anti-smoking laws.

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Daniel Radcliffe gets tobacco delivery 

Daniel Radcliffe gets tobacco sent to him from England.

The 22-year-old actor is currently living in New York and though he knows smoking is bad for him, he can't resist his favourite hand-rolled cigarettes, but has Golden Virginia tobacco sent out to him because he hates the US products.

He said: 'I have to ship this in from home because you can't get good rolling tobacco here. It's all dry and c--py like you've emptied out a cigarette.

'I shouldn't really smoke.

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• Tobacco companies are biggest political spenders 

New figures have revealed the political spending of tobacco companies, the mining industry and clubs as they fought to reverse government policy in the past financial year.

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) has released financial disclosure returns that show the donations of more than $11,500 made to political parties and the political expenditure of donors.

Large tobacco companies spent about $14 million as they fought against the Federal Government's plain packaging laws.

British American Tobacco, Phillip Morris and Imperial Tobacco gave a total of $9 million to the Alliance of Australian Retailers, which led the campaign against the laws.

Imperial Tobacco also separately spent more than $4 million fighting the move with printed material and broadcast advertising and Philip Morris added to that with nearly $500,000.

The Coalition also received donations worth $184,000 from British American Tobacco and $79,000 from Philip Morris.

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Libs still taking Big Tobacco's blood money ... Heat on Wightman 

The Tasmania Greens today said it was disappointing but unsurprising that the Tasmanian Liberal Party had received another large cash handout from their friends at Big Tobacco.

Greens Leader Nick McKim MP said that today's release of the previous year's political donations report by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) showed that the Liberals received $22,000 from British American Tobacco and $15,900 from Phillip Morris.

Mr McKim said the figures could be the tip of the iceberg, because current disclosure laws do not require political parties to provide a complete or up-to-date picture of the donations they receive.

"As the only state party still accepting tobacco company political donations, any credibility the Liberals might have sought on public health policy has gone up in smoke," Mr McKim said.

"British American Tobacco, Phillip Morris and the Tasmanian Liberal Party continue to be friends-with-benefits, which explains the Liberals' reprehensible stance against a ban on tobacco company donations."

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• Liberals using tobacco revenue to fund attack ads  

The Premier, Lara Giddings, said the Liberal Opposition had been exposed using money from tobacco companies to fund their expensive commercial television campaign.

Ms Giddings said the latest political donations report by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) showed that the Liberals received $22,000 from British American Tobacco and $15,900 from Phillip Morris last year.

"It is reprehensible that the Liberal Party in Tasmania continues to accept donations from tobacco companies," Ms Giddings said.

"We now know how Will Hodgman can afford to bombard commercial television with glossy ads in the lead-up to the next EMRS poll.

"Those ads should carry the disclaimer: funded by Big Tobacco. . . .

*COMPTON Where did the money come from? Most people who have been around the state political traps for any length of time would know that campaigns are hard to fund even at the height of the election cycle. Where did the money come from?

McQUESTIN Ah well.., err, the.., the money has come from.., err.., err.., from our own.., err, resources, I suppose, Leon. Err, we have a.., a consistent fundraising activity which I don't think I'd.., I'm keen to outline, but.., that will.., err, that continues on and on, and.., as I say, given the unstable nature of.., of this.., this Government.., err, we decided it was a good opportunity to.., to u.., to use some now.

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Museum opened to show old tobacco growing industry 

A museum to the now defunct tobacco growing industry has opened at Mareeba on Queensland's Atherton Tablelands.

It's now illegal to grow tobacco in Australia, after the Government elected to buyout and shut down the declining industry in 2006.

For decades tobacco was the main produce grown on the tablelands, and at its peak was worth $50 million dollars a year.

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Excess of smoke on the set of Excess Baggage 

THEY might be cutting back on the junk food but it seems the cast of Excess Baggage - Channel 9's submission into the celebrity weight loss reality genre - are having a little more trouble ditching the smokes.

In between snaps of the D-listers sweating off the kilos are just as many pictures of them sucking down their nicotine fixes, with paparazzi mogul Darren Lyons, Kate DeAraugo and Kevin Federline all among the proud puffers reluctant to butt out.

But as any fitness trainer worth their salt will tell you, smoking and fitness aren't exactly well-known bedfellows.

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• Top silks in tobacco fight over plain packaging laws 

A WHO'S who of the legal fraternity will appear in the High Court today when big tobacco challenges the federal government over plain packaging laws.

Eleven senior counsel - including Allan Myers QC, Alan Archibald QC and Bret Walker SC, three of Australia's highest paid barristers representing the four tobacco companies and the government will appear before Justice William Gummow in Sydney as they prepare for the three-day hearing starting on April 17 in Canberra, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Philip Morris, British American Tobacco Australasia, Imperial Tobacco Australia and Japan Tobacco International are suing the government, claiming plain packaging violates the Australian Constitution because the government is trying to take their brands without paying compensation.

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City targeting cigarette sales  

WODONGA Council test results have shown retailers are selling cigarettes to children under the age of 18.

Four out of seven Wodonga retailers have sold cigarettes to minors in the six months of the research, compared to two years prior where not one of 19 retailers approached made the sale.

Last financial year, three retailers out of 25 were caught selling cigarettes to minors.

And it's only the halfway mark of the research, funded by the Department of Health.

But Wodonga Council's director of business services Trevor Ierino said the high sale rate was worrying.

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• 'Plain packs will make smoking history'  

Stripping cigarette packs of their colourful exteriors and forcing them to be sold in plain packaging could prove fatal for the global tobacco industry. Who says so? No less an authority than Tobacco Journal International, the self-styled "leading international trade publication for executives in the world of tobacco". One of its front covers in 2008 said simply: "Plain packaging can kill your business." Back in 2008, plain packs were just an idea; now they are about to become a reality in Australia at the end of this year, with other countries set to follow suit, possibly including the UK.

Australia has blazed a trail in passing plain packaging legislation. Canada had tried, but failed in 1994, when momentum disappeared amid ministerial changes and intense lobbying from the big tobacco firms. Fast forward to 2012 and a policy that for years has been just a gleam in the eye of public health campaigners has become the new weapon of choice worldwide for governments against a powerful industry.

However, without Simon Chapman, Australia might not have taken the bold, pioneering step that has left cigarette firms furious and fearful for their future.

Chapman, a professor of public health at the University of Sydney, is an unusual character: an academic who is better known as a campaigner, a feisty media performer who relishes debating with Big Tobacco mouthpieces, a snappy phrase-maker with a stand-up's wit and timing, and an ex-smoker who wants to smash an industry whose products he once consumed.

His 2008 paper arguing for plain packs was accepted by a preventive health taskforce, set up by the Australian Labor government, and then implemented – to the taskforce's astonishment. Chapman downplays his role. "I don't like David and Goliath metaphors and I don't like being painted as the David," he says, aware that his instrumental role in advocating the policy, and determined campaigning in the Australian media, has seen him become a hero to anti-tobacco campaigners. "I have been one of the most prominent people making the case and attacking the industry, though there were a couple of dozen very smart researchers and activists in Australia involved," he says. . . .

Chapman thinks that "Australia's historic plain cigarette packaging legislation is a weapons-grade public health policy that is causing apoplexy in the international [tobacco] industry". Australia's ban on tobacco advertising in 1992 means 19-year-olds there have never seen such promotion of smoking as is common elsewhere, and young people's smoking rates in Australia are at their lowest ever, just 2.5% of 14- to 17-year olds smoke. The figure in England is 17%. Generally, 15% of adult Australians smoke compared to 21% of Britons. "Plain packs will turbocharge this trend, making smoking history," Chapman believes. "This is unequivocally the biggest thing ever to hit the tobacco industry – the biggest threat it's ever faced. That's why the tobacco companies are all taking court action in Australia and talking to each other, something they don't usually do," he says.

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Smokers divided on tobacco blitz  

COAST smokers appear divided on a proposal to butt out smoking across the nation within 15 years.

An anti-smoking lobby has provided the Federal Government with a 10-point plan to rid the nation of its tobacco addiction.

The plan includes raising age limits, smoking licences, cigarettes that taste disgusting and financial incentives.

While some Coast smokers yesterday voiced concerns the plan posed a threat to freedom, others said it could be just the incentive they needed to kick the habit.

The vast majority cited addiction as the only reason they continued to smoke and most expressed a desire to quit.

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Blacktown's wellbeing goes up in smoke  

LIKE many people, Alexander Larrarte started smoking towards the end of high school and, also like many others, now that he is hooked he wants to give the deadly habit away.

"I'm trying to cut back," the 21-year-old from Mount Druitt said. "Now I smoke probably a pack a week, down from a pack a day."

But Mr Larrarte isn't turned off smoking by the fact it is the single largest contributor to premature deaths in Australia.

Nor is he worried by Health Department figures that show more residents from the Blacktown area are hospitalised by smoking-related illnesses than people anywhere else in NSW.

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• Dead keen for a smoke: puffing on with lung and colorectal cancer 

About one in seven people diagnosed with lung cancer report that they keep smoking, as do one in 11 colorectal cancer patients, despite smoking reducing the effectiveness of their treatment and significantly increasing the chances that the cancer will kill them.

These are among the findings reported in ‘A Snapshot of Smokers After Lung and Colorectal Cancer Diagnosis’, published today in the journal Cancer.

The researchers led by Dr Else Park of the Harvard Medical School studied smoking rates at diagnosis and five months later in 5338 US lung and colorectal cancer patients, and tried to determine which smokers were most likely to quit. They found that at diagnosis, 39 percent of lung cancer patients and 14 per cent of colorectal cancer patients were smoking; five months later, 14 per cent of lung cancer patients and 9 per cent of colorectal cancer patients were still smoking.

Professor Michael Farrell, the Director of National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, said that “cognitive dissonance” and the unforgiving power of cigarette addiction were at play, given that it was no secret that half of all smokers will die of a smoking-related disease and, compared to the average, smokers lose 16 years of life.

Asked if smokers had a death wish, Professor Farrell said that they were “more likely to think that they’re not going to incur the negative consequences of their behaviour. That’s where cognitive dissonance comes in; you say, ‘It’ll happen to other people but it won’t happen to me.’”

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Push for more smoking bans outdoors 

THE HEART Foundation is one of the leading advocates of banning smoking in all public outdoor areas.

Foundation cardiovascular health director Julie-Anne Mitchell said secondhand smoke could have serious effects on the health of non-smokers.

"The evidence shows that exposure to secondhand smoke in some outdoor areas is almost as risky as exposure in enclosed indoor areas," she said.

"The Heart Foundation advocates for smoking-free areas in places such as playgrounds, sporting fields, shopping centres and outdoor dining areas. There are numerous benefits to banning smoking in outdoor areas, particularly for children.

"It demonstrates that the majority of the public expect to be able to go outdoors and enjoy outdoor living without secondhand smoke; it reduces litter (from cigarette butts) and for people who are trying to quit, it strengthens their resolve."

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Paternal smoking linked to leukemia in children 

Children whose fathers smoked around the time of their conception have at least a 15 percent higher risk of developing the most common form of childhood cancer, a type of leukemia, according to an Australian study.

Although the findings, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, credit multiple factors in children developing acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the study follows others that have also found an increased risk.

"Study results suggest that heavier paternal smoking around the time of conception is a risk factor for childhood ALL," write researchers led by Elizabeth Milne at the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research in Australia.

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