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Human activities are exacting a "terrible toll" on the world's oceans and seas, UN Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon warned here on Monday in a message marking the first United Nations World Oceans Day.
"Vulnerable marine ecosystems, such as corals, and important fisheries are being damaged by over-exploitation, illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, destructive fishing practices, invasive alien species and marine pollution, especially from land-based sources," Ban said in his message. . . .
The report also noted that smoking-related activities, such as cigarette filters, tobacco packets and cigar tips, account for 40 percent of all marine litter in the Mediterranean, while in Ecuador smoking related rubbish accounted for over half of the total coastal litter in 2005.
"This report is a reminder that carelessness and indifference is proving deadly for our oceans and its inhabitants," said Philippe Cousteau, CEO of Earth Echo International and an Ocean Conservancy board member, in a message to mark the launch of the report. "There are solutions that everyone, everywhere in the world can adopt to make a positive difference for our water planet."
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The ad campaign, called Do You Have What It Takes? asks real-life job-seekers whether they would be willing to participate in the types of decisions and situations that tobacco industry executives have made or encountered. The new campaign rolls out at the end of May with television, print, cinema and online advertisements, along with a new Web site and social-networking elements.
Despite the national recession, the tobacco industry remains a very profitable and stable industry. However, even with economic hardship, recent research studies find -- if given the choice -- many Americans would choose not to work in the industry and already have a negative opinion of the tobacco industry
The Senate cleared the way for a final debate in a decade-old fight over whether the $80-billion- a-year U.S. tobacco industry should be policed by drug regulators.
Lawmakers voted 61-30 to limit deliberations on a measure that would empower the Food and Drug Administration to restrict ingredients such as tar and nicotine, review all new products and expand warning labels on cigarette packages. The House passed a similar measure April 2.
Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican, urged lawmakers to allow consideration of an amendment permitting consumers to import cheaper medicines from other countries, including those used to treat the harmful effects of smoking. Majority Leader Harry Reid objected to the proposal, saying it was off-topic and would prevent the tobacco bill from passing.
One-third of doctors in the country do not know smoking causes coronary heart disease, and nearly four in five do not know passive smoking can cause sudden infant death syndrome, a report revealed yesterday.
Also, three in five smokers do not know that smoking causes heart disease, and four in five do not know it could lead to a stroke, the national tobacco control office of the Ministry of Health said in the report.
The figures have not changed much since 2002 and "the country faces an extremely difficult situation in tobacco control", Yang Gonghuan, director of the office, said as she released the report to mark yesterday's World No Tobacco Day.
Anti-tobacco campaigners are calling for graphic warnings on cigarette packs
Anti-smoking groups welcome the introduction of graphic warnings on cigarette packs and other tobacco products but are sceptical they can have much of an effect on the country's 300 million tobacco users, more than half of whom live in the countryside.
The warnings, which show photos of decayed gums and diseased lungs as well as a skull and crossbones, were supposed to be in place in November but were delayed after lobbying by tobacco manufacturers.
However, last month, the Supreme Court stepped in and set a cut-off date of May 31 after which all packs of cigarettes, beedis (hand-rolled cigarettes) and gutka (a kind of chewing tobacco that also includes crushed betel nut) must carry pictorial warnings taking up about 40 per cent of the packaging area.
Anti-tobacco groups alleged that the government wanted to delay implementing the rules until after the just-completed general elections.
Yet, more than one week after the ruling and almost three weeks after the elections, the new cigarette packs have yet to make an appearance on store shelves.
However, in a little-noticed provision, the bill also expressly provides that "no provision of this chapter . . . shall be construed to modify or otherwise affect . . . the liability of any person under the product liability law of any State." In other words, the regulatory regime that the legislation would establish can't protect companies from tort liability -- even if they rigorously follow every FDA rule.
This is a bizarre pairing of almost total government involvement in an industry without any government responsibility for, or even modest protection from, the damage claims sure to be generated by that industry for following the law.
The FDA legislation builds on the precedent recently established by the Supreme Court in Wyeth v. Levine. In Wyeth, the Court ruled 6-3 that even if the FDA has approved a drug, the drug maker can still be sued by patients in state court. The majority argued that a litigant is still entitled to claim that the company should have used a stronger warning label than the FDA had required.
But as Justice Samuel Alito observed in his dissenting opinion, "the real issue is whether a state tort jury can countermand the FDA's considered judgment."
The president has proclaimed a "new era of responsibility" for America. But these recent FDA developments -- in which government determines the rules, the business community takes the blame, and trial lawyers take their cut -- seems anything but.
Like elevating the rights of unions over those of secured lenders, the FDA tobacco legislation disturbingly suggests that only those disfavored by the administration will actually be held responsible for anything at all. And it's no secret that the trial bar -- among Mr. Obama's most generous campaign supporters -- has already earned billions from tobacco litigation.
If we truly believe in "responsibility" for businesses, government officials, trial lawyers and ordinary citizens, then regulatory compliance should provide a strong defense against tort claims.
Quebec's iconic corner stores, sources of livelihood for many new immigrants, survived suburban sprawl and supermarket competition - but the rise of contraband cigarettes is rapidly driving them out of business
There was always a grim math to owning one of Quebec's iconic dépanneurs , the ubiquitous corner store that rewarded mom-and-pop owners with long hours and small profits.
But the dep, as the stores are often called in Quebec English, survived in the 1970s and '80s as customers fled to the suburbs and, in the 1990s, as mega-supermarkets and 24-hour chain stores mushroomed.
Dep owners say cut-rate illegal cigarettes from Mohawk reserves are driving them toward insolvency faster than Wal-Mart or Couche-Tard ever managed.
After her clerkship, Gillibrand returned to Davis Polk, where she worked for nine years, logging long workweeks for a series of clients including the tobacco conglomerate Philip Morris. During her 2008 congressional reelection, operatives for Sandy Treadwell, her Republican opponent, compiled boxes of information that documented Gillibrand’s involvement with Philip Morris, but the media was largely uninterested. The New York Times revisited the material after Gillibrand’s Senate appointment. The Times’ 2,700-word front-page story depicted Gillibrand as a key player on the account, making trips to Philip Morris’s European cigarette-testing lab and using her office as a war room to plot strategy to defend the company against government claims that it knew tobacco was a carcinogen and hid that information from consumers. The story noted that Davis Polk allowed associates to decline to work for certain clients if they found the work ethically objectionable, but that Gillibrand appeared to have thrown herself wholeheartedly into her Philip Morris assignment.
. . . I asked her if she regretted her work, she answered with a defiant “No.” She didn’t defend the work on its own terms, however. “I had an opportunity to work with Robert Fiske on the case, and he is universally regarded as one of the great lawyers of our time,” she told me. Then she said, “And the work on that case allowed me to do pro bono cases.” . . .
Gillibrand says it was Bible study that awakened her to public service. “When I was working in New York, I taught a Bible class for 10-year-olds,” she says. “My favorite parable is the one Jesus tells about the talents.” She’s referring to the story in which a master becomes angry with a servant for wasting a coin, or “talent,” he was given. “What I took from that is we have to do the most with the talents God has given us. I was working as a corporate lawyer, where I wasn’t helping people. I was just helping big companies make money. And I wanted to do more.” The story may be true, but it clearly sounded rehearsed. . . .
It’s Schumer, more than anyone, who is responsible for Gillibrand’s relaunch. At Gillibrand’s lowest point, shortly after the Times tobacco story, New York’s senior senator agreed to cooperate with (and some suspect he orchestrated) what was viewed by some as a Times makeup call, a front-page story about how Schumer was taking Gillibrand under his wing. The piece implied that Schumer was supporting Gillibrand because he could manage her. The message Schumer meant to send was clear: He is on Gillibrand’s side and expects others to be as well.
I had an opportunity to work with Robert Fiske on the case, and he is universally regarded as one of the great lawyers of our time. . . . And the work on that case allowed me to do pro bono cases.NY Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand defends her work for Philip Morris in a NY Magazine article.