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Journalistic competition to highlight tobacco control 

Journalists, publicists and other media professionals of Latin America and the Caribbean are invited to participate in the Inter-American Journalism Contest on Tobacco Control.

The contest will honor the best journalism and advertising related to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which is aimed at reducing tobacco use worldwide. The contest also covers related topics such as bans on tobacco ads, protective measures to avoid tobacco smoke, and the control of tobacco smuggling, among others.

The Inter-American Heart Foundation, the Pan-American Health Organization and the Alliance for the Framework Convention are among the organizers. Entry deadline: November 4.

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'Express' man recognised for tobacco control journalism 

DECEASED Express journalist David Brewster has been given special recognition for "Exceptional Tobacco Control Journalism" by the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO).

PAHO recognised health professionals and journalists as award winners in its annual World No Tobacco Day awards.

A minister of health, medical organisations and tobacco control networks were among the winners of this year's PAHO awards in recognition of their outstanding contributions to tobacco control in the Americas.

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PAHO urges countries to sign tobacco treaty prior to deadline 

With just one day left before the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) closes for signature, the director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Dr. Mirta Roses, today urged PAHO's Member States to take advantage of the small window of opportunity remaining to sign the treaty.

Most Latin American countries have signed the FCTC, which was adopted unanimously by the World Health Assembly in May of 2003. However, just over half of the Caribbean PAHO Member States have done so or are scheduled to sign before the deadline at midnight on Tuesday, June 29.

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• PAHO Director Urges Countries to Sign Tobacco Treaty Prior to June 29th Deadline 

With just one day left before the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) closes for signature, the director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Dr. Mirta Roses, today urged PAHO's Member States to take advantage of the small window of opportunity remaining to sign the treaty.

Most Latin American countries have signed the FCTC, which was adopted unanimously by the World Health Assembly in May of 2003. However, just over half of the Caribbean PAHO Member States have done so or are scheduled to sign before the deadline at midnight on Tuesday, June 29.

Current signatories in the Caribbean are Belize, Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago. Antigua and Barbuda and Barbados are scheduled to sign the treaty today at United Nations headquarters in New York, while Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis and St. Lucia have indicated their intention to sign by tomorrow's deadline. The only Caribbean countries that have not yet committed to signing the FCTC are the Bahamas, Dominica, and Guyana.

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Cigar Shipments Up for 2003 

The American premium cigar market is looking surprisingly strong. Imports of handmade cigars increased by 4.2 percent in 2003, to 276 million cigars, a performance that came on the heels of five percent growth in 2002. More premium cigars were shipped to the United States than in any year since 2000, when around 290 million cigars were imported...

"The first four months of 2003 were the worst four months that I've ever seen in history," said Manuel Quesada, owner of Manufactura de Tabacos S.A. and S.A.G. Imports Inc., the maker and distributor, respectively, of Fonseca and Cubita cigars, among others. "Weather had a lot to do with it. When weather hits from Chicago to Boston and from New York to Atlanta, that's a big chunk of the market right there. Prohibition started to come in heavily in 2003, so weather and prohibition combined to make the first four months of that year really terrible. The rest of the year," said Quesada, "made up for the first four months."

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Tobacco seized as cruise liner docks in Falmouth 

AN anti-smuggling operation on board a cruise ship operating out of Falmouth has uncovered one of the biggest hauls of tobacco ever seized from a vessel in a South West port.

One and a half tonnes of tobacco was discovered when a targeted search was carried out aboard the Van Gogh last week, after it docked in Falmouth having returned from the Caribbean.

The ship, which carries 600 passengers, is a regular caller into Falmouth and is popular with Cornish holidaymakers as well as those from other parts of the UK.

Mobile officers, acting on intelligence, discovered 1,535 kilos of tobacco locked in the crew's sauna and 618,000 cigarettes hidden in a store.

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AdvocateB'dos has lower smoking prevalence rate than Americas 

BARBADOS and other English-speaking Caribbean countries have a lower smoking prevalence rate than other countries in the Americas.

That is according to the Acting Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Ronald Knight, who made the remarks while delivering the feature address at a seminar hosted by the National Committee for the Prevention of Alcoholism and Drug Dependency (NCPADD) and the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) at Solidarity House yesterday.

The seminar, entitled "Empowering Community Leaders to Reduce Tobacco Use Among Adolescents", saw officials from the Ministry of Health, PAHO, the Ministry of Education, the Fire Service and other key organisations, gathering to discuss the dangers which tobacco use can pose to young people.

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Stop promoting smoking, entertainers told 

THE Ministry of Health and the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) yesterday issued a strong call for the local film, fashion and entertainment industry to stop advertising tobacco-related products and promoting smoking in their activities.

"We are calling on the fashion and film industry to stop promoting smoking in the movies and so on. Our statistics show that over one million people die from tobacco-smoking yearly," said Maria Rankine, who was speaking on behalf of Dr Manuel Pena, the PAHO/World Health Organisation representative in the Caribbean.

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The Tobacco Files / What insider documents show about tobacco industry tactics to protect profits at the expense of public health efforts in Latin America and the Caribbean 

According to insider documents released by the tobacco industry since 1998 and reviewed at the request of PAHO, this wasn't the first or the last time that the industry would enlist the help of respected medical and scientific professionals to undermine tobacco control efforts in Latin America and the Caribbean. In one such effort, tobacco companies recruited the dean of the Graduate Program in Health Sciences of the Catholic University of Argentina, a friend of then Argentine President Carlos Menem, to lobby against legislation that would ban advertising and restrict smoking in public or enclosed areas.

In addition, according to insider documents, tobacco companies:

a.. Secretly hired medical and scientific researchers throughout the region to misrepresent the science linking secondhand smoke to disease in nonsmokers;

b.. Courted the media with expenses-paid junkets and cosponsored proindustry conferences with journalists' associations;

c.. Designed "youth smoking prevention" campaigns primarily as public relations tools while simultaneously targeting young smokers in their marketing strategies;

d.. Actively participated in smuggling networks to increase market shares and sales volumes, while publicly opposing illegal cigarette sales.

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Indstria barra restrio ao fumo com pesquisas suspeitas [Industry thwarts smoking bans with suspect research] 

This is a story of fraud against the public health, scientific corruption and impunity. The tobacco industry attacked indoor smoking restrictions in Brazil using as scientific argument research that it paid for. . .

The dismounting of the strategy of the industry was made by two fronts of independent researchers, whose works had been edited in December of the last year:

1. the cardiologist Stanton Glantz and the physician Joaquin Barnoya, both of the University of California in San Francisco, in the west coast of the United States, had published in the scientific magazine "Tobacco Control" an article with documents where the manufacturers debate how to co-opt scientists to prevent indoor smoking restrictions;

2. PAHO (Organization Pan-American of Health) edited the book "La Rentabilidad the Coast of La People" ("Profits Before People"), in which Stella Aguinaga Bialous and Stan Shatenstein disclose that the industry defeated the attempt of the governments of prescribed the tobacco with frauds and together lobby the politicians and the media.

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• Tobacco Conspiracy? 

British American Tobacco (BAT) has been accused by the Pan-American Health Organisation (PAHO) of hiring scientists throughout the Caribbean and Latin America to deceive the public about the link between second-hand smoke and lung cancer and other diseases. . .

When contacted by the Barbados Advocate, BAT referred this newspaper to its web site which stated that it has not been established that exposure to ETS genuinely increases the risk of non-smokers developing lung cancer, heart disease or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Still, the company stated that it wanted to work with Government and other interested parties to support initiatives that aim to reduce exposure to ETS. . .

One of the other findings of the report was that BAT proposed seminars and individual journalist briefings in the English-speaking Caribbean, including Barbados, with the goal of tilting journalists' opinion in favour of the industry. . .

Research by this newspaper revealed that BAT came under fire during that last media forum in 2000

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la cortina de tabaco [The Tobacco Curtain] 

During the tobacco Nineties, companies- principalmente Philip Morris and British American Tobacco - they turned upside down on Latin America: They not only increased his production and sales, also lobbied with civil employees and legislators to stop laws that restrict the consumption of the tobacco, influenced in campaigns that they looked for to reduce the habit to smoke and until they spread results of supposed?científicas surveys? that they distorted the effects that the tabaquismo causes in the health. So it is the denunciation that?con bases on the revision of thousands of internal documents of these companies? it makes a report of the Pan-American Organization of Health.

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New PAHO Report Describes Tobacco Industry Tactics to Derail Public Health Efforts in Latin America and the Caribbean - Global Policy Forum - Social and Economic Policy 

Profits Over People, a new report released today by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) shows that transnational tobacco companies have engaged in active comprehensive campaigns of deception over the last decade in Latin America and the Caribbean regarding the harmful effects of second-hand smoke and the nature of tobacco company marketing activities. These campaigns were designed to delay or avoid tobacco marketing restrictions and restrictions on smoking. . .

"This report demonstrates that the priorities PAHO has identified for tobacco control bans on promotion, increased tobacco taxes, and smoke-free environments are on the right track," said PAHO Director Dr. George Alleyne. "The tobacco companies' internal discussions confirm that these are the measures that affect tobacco use the most."

Dr. Alleyne also urged governments in the Americas to view tobacco industry recommendations regarding tobacco control with skepticism, and to avoid partnerships with the industry.

"PAHO and governments have a responsibility to listen to credible, independent experts when making decisions that affect public health. The tobacco companies are not credible experts on those issues of public health that relate to their vital interests," he said.

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PAHO exposes tobacco-industry tactics in Latin America 

Previously secret documents on tobacco-industry tactics in Latin America and the Caribbean are exposed this week in a report commissioned by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).

"These documents reveal that the industry's strategies for the [Latin America and Caribbean] region mirror worldwide tactics devised to promote the tobacco companies' deadly products, increase corporate profits, and forestall any meaningful regulation of the industry's practices or products", states the report, Profits Over People, which was released on Dec 17.

Profits Over People is the result of a year's investigation into more than 10 000 pages of internal tobacco company documents by Stella Aguainaga Bialous and Stan Shatenstein. . .

Although these strategies are not unique to Latin America and the Caribbean, this is the first study to attempt to document the industry's tactics in this region. In addition, "I think there's great immediacy to this report, which allows people in Latin America to read information in Spanish about the tobacco industry's activities in their countries", Shatentein said.

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• PAHO: Tobacco Firms Lied to Latin Americans 

Several transnational tobacco companies hired scientists throughout Latin America and the Caribbean to deceive the public about the link between secondhand smoke and lung cancer and other serious diseases, according to a report released this week by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), a regional office of the World Health Organization.

But the companies neglected to inform the public about their connection with the scientists. They instead used consultants who agreed to portray themselves as independent, objective researchers while parroting the views of the tobacco industry in their liaisons with the media and various government officials, the report indicates.

In fact, tobacco executives circulated a memo that stated: "I cannot stress strongly enough the absolute necessity for the industry to have no direct contact with these scientists that are part of the program...All contact, as previously explained, must be carried out through (a Washington, DC-based law firm)."

This is just one of the components of the tobacco industry's deceptive campaigns that were carried out in Latin America and the Caribbean over the last decade, according to PAHO's "Profits Over People" report.

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It is not constructive to dwell on events that (occurred) several years ago. It is more productive to focus on what we can and should be doing to address society's legitimate concerns about tobacco. Our approach today is to support sensible government regulations.
Jayme Fowler, Philip Morris' communications director for Latin America, in response to the PAHO report "Profits over People.

We are and always have been in favor of sensible tobacco regulation . . . [T]here is no convincing evidence that the substance of any work or the opinion of any doctor or scientist has been altered or affected by tobacco industry influence
Unidentified BAT spokesperson, in response to the PAHO report "Profits over People.