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• Briefing document in relation to the CPI Report of 31 January 2000 dealing with Latin America (PDF) 

1.1 The purpose of this paper is to provide a briefing in relation to the allegations made in the CPI Report of 31 January 2000 dealing with activities in Latin America . . . .

2.1 The essential allegation is that, in the period 1990 to 1995 (the period covered by the CP I Report), British American Tobacco and its subsidiaries sought to control and exploi t smuggling as part of a world-wide marketing strategy to increase revenue . . .

3.3 A market developed in smuggled cigarettes and consistent with its general policy, and with a view to securing market share, British American Tobacco acted, within the law, on the basis that its brands would be found alongside those of its competitors in the smuggled as well as the legitimate market . . . .

3.10 Although British American Tobacco did not instigate the smuggling of its brands into Colombia, and although its policy throughout the 1990s has been to work toward th e establishment of an entirely legitimate business there, the evidence is that it used DNP channels to grow its market share in Colombia and to establish itself there . That fact does not detract from what is said above given the wide compass of the statement that British American Tobacco "acts within the law on the basis that its brands will be found available alongside those of its competitors in the smuggled as well as the legitimate market". However, the use of DNP channels in Colombia needs to be borne in mind when responding to the Select Committee's questions.

3.11 Although it is true that DNP can have different meanings, it would appear that in Colombia and other Latin American countries it does connote smuggled goods .

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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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• HEALTH: Poisoned Lives: the Price Of Tobacco Farming 

For the world's anti-tobacco movement, a small town in southern Brazil has become a symbol of a silent tragedy unfolding among communities which have turned to tobacco farming for a livelihood.

What has contributed to such symbolism is the ''very high rate of suicides'' in that town, Venancio Aires, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, says Angela Cordiero, an agronomist and a Brazilian activist in the movement. While the national average in Brazil has been three suicides per 100,000 people, in Venancio Aires it is seven times higher - 21 suicides per 100,000 inhabitants.

For Cordeiro, the suicide rate in Venancio Aires can be traced to the ''dangerous pesticides'' used by the tobacco farmers in that area.

''The organophosphate pesticides that farmers use in the tobacco fields have chemicals known to affect the neurological system. They often get depressed after exposure and try to kill themselves,'' she adds. . . .

Studies have revealed that a majority of those who committed suicide in Venancio Aires were farmers, and they had killed themselves during the months when organophosphate pesticides were used extensively in the tobacco fields.

For the tobacco-control movement, such a disturbing phenomenon is only one of a litany of problems that has been plaguing those who work on tobacco farms. In this country, for instance, the plight of the Huichol Indians working in the tobacco fields in the western state of Nayarit has become a cause for concern.

Says Patricia Diaz-Romo, a Mexican anti-tobacco activist, the most glaring as been the impact of pesticide poisoning on the pregnant Huichol Indian women who have worked in the fields.

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• 700,000 Health Professionals in the Americas Pledge To Combat Tobacco 

More than 520 health professional and support organizations from throughout the Americas are joining together to support tobacco control activities and to advocate for governments to ratify and implement the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). The organizations have more than 700,000 members and workers in 30 countries.

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) invited health professional organizations to sign the "Declaration of the Americas" to increase awareness and motivate action by health professionals to mark World No Tobacco Day, May 31.

This year's theme, "Health Professionals Against Tobacco," calls on health professionals and their associations to be on the front lines of efforts to reduce tobacco use, which claims more than a million lives every year in the Americas.

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Hopkins Institute for Global Tobacco Control Gets Elite Recognition from PAHO/WHO 

The Institute for Global Tobacco Control (IGTC) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has been designated a "collaborating center" of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and World Health Organization (WHO). As a collaborating center, the IGTC will work to support global efforts to reduce tobacco use. The IGTC is one of three tobacco control surveillance and evaluation collaborating centers in the United States, joining the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the University of California, San Francisco Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education...

The Institute for Global Tobacco Control (IGTC) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has been designated a "collaborating center" of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and World Health Organization (WHO). As a collaborating center, the IGTC will work to support global efforts to reduce tobacco use. The IGTC is one of three tobacco control surveillance and evaluation collaborating centers in the United States, joining the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the University of California, San Francisco Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education.

The IGTC will promote research, surveillance, evaluation and training in support of a progressive and aggressive policy development agenda. These activities play a critical role in building and maintaining strong tobacco control programs. The IGTC has been active in all of these areas throughout the world. It participated in the 1996 national smoking survey in China and recently conducted an assessment of second-hand smoke exposure across Latin America.

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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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Secondhand Tobacco Smoke in Public Places in Latin America, 2002-2003 

Conclusions

The finding of airborne nicotine in critical locations in Latin America provides a basis for enforcing smoke-free initiatives and for strengthening the protection of the public from unwanted exposure to secondhand smoke.

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• Secondhand Smoke Found in 94 Percent of Public Places in Latin America 

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Pan American Health Organization and other institutions have found carcinogenic secondhand smoke in a significant number of public places throughout Latin America. Smoke-free, indoor environments are one way nonsmokers can avoid premature death and disease as a result of exposure to secondhand smoke. The scientific evidence supports the 2001 Pan American Health Organization’s Smoke-Free Americas initiative, which was established to achieve smoke-free, indoor environments in Latin America and the Caribbean. The study researchers documented the extent and location of exposure to smoke in indoor locations in seven capital cities. They also identified the most critical areas for control. The study, “Secondhand Tobacco Smoke in Public Places in Latin America, 2002-2003” was published in the June 9, 2004, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

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Un Informe De La Ops Denuncia Las Campañas Tabacaleras Y El Contrabando De Cigarrillos 

Prepared with documents kidnapped to the tobacco growers, the report of the Pan-American Organization of the Health it indicates that the companies have like objective that the young people begin to smoke and who "simulate" to fight the cigarette contraband, which in fact they see like "prominent" in its plans of marketing. . . .

In the report of the OPS a series of documents is transformed until recently secret. . . . They wrote up the study Stella Aguinaga Bialous and Stan Shatenstein, . . .

The publication of the OPS looks for to alert to the governments on the strategies of the tobacco industry in Latin America and the Caribbean. "It is imperative that the debate and the policies on the control of the consumption of the tobacco are based on a deep knowledge of the plans and the deceptive practices of the industry", indicates to the work the yield at the cost of people. A unit of the book already is into the hands of the minister of Health, Ginés González Garci'a, just when in the House of Representatives it advances the study of a law project to impose forts restrictions to the sector in syntony with the company/signature by president Néstor Kirchner, in September in New York, of the Agreement Frame of the WHO for the Control of the Tobacco. Tuesday a meeting with representatives of 13 legislative commissions is predicted to analyze a rough draft of opinion of the commissions of Health and Prevention of Addictions, and Fight against the Drug trafficking. To the encounter the minister of Health will concur and were invited directors of the tobacco growers who distribute the Argentine market: Nobility Piccardo (subsidiary of British American Tobacco) and Massalin Particular (filial of the North American Philip Morris) . . .

The documents analyzed by the investigators of the OPS also describe the participation of the industry in the contraband.

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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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• More Latvian teenagers lighting up, adding to country's tobacco-tinged reputation 

A survey released Tuesday found a sharp gain in smoking by teenage girls in Latvia, a country with a reputation as one of Europe's heaviest users of tobacco.

According to the report, 41 percent of boys and 30 percent of girls between 13-15 consider themselves regular smokers, smoking at least one cigarette per week. Ninety percent said they smoked at least once in their lives.

"The smoking rate among girls here is now higher than among adult women and that's particularly troubling," said Iveta Pudle of the Welfare Ministry's Health Promotion Center. . .

The report is part of the Global Youth Tobacco Survey. Latvia was the first European country to release results of the survey.

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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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