Email
Password
(Forgot Password?)
"We think today's vote by the U.S. Senate is an important step forward on this legislation. For more than eight years, Altria Group has supported tough but reasonable federal regulation of tobacco products by the Food and Drug Administration and we are glad to see the progress Congress has made toward that goal.
This legislation would establish a regulatory structure and standards for the manufacturing and marketing of tobacco products that should provide important benefits to adult consumers for many years to come. We believe that adult consumers should be the primary beneficiaries of a federal regulatory framework: (1) under which all tobacco product manufacturers and importers doing business in the United States would operate at the same high standards; (2) for the pursuit of tobacco product alternatives that are less harmful than conventional cigarettes; and (3) that should provide for transparent, scientifically grounded, and accurate communication about tobacco products to consumers.
The legislation passed today is not perfect. For example, we have expressed First Amendment reservations about certain provisions, including those that could restrict a manufacturer's ability to communicate truthful information to adult consumers about tobacco products. We also believe that the resolution of certain issues would best be handled by rulemaking processes that involve sound scientific data and public participation. We have made our views known on these provisions throughout the legislative process.
On balance, however, the legislation is an important step forward to achieve the goal we share with others to provide federal regulation of tobacco products. We thus encourage the House to adopt H.R. 1256, and to send it to the President for his approval."
Jump to full article »
Government would have broad new authority to regulate tobacco products, slash nicotine and restrict advertising under historic legislation overwhelmingly approved this afternoon by the U.S. Senate.
Health advocates cheered the 79-17 passage of the bill, saying it could prevent thousands of deaths in the future. One of every five Americans uses tobacco, and smoking-related disease kills nearly half a million a year - more than any other preventable cause of death.
But North Carolina tobacco interests said new regulation would cost jobs, hurt farmers, and maintain the market dominance of tobacco giant Phillip Morris of Virginia, maker of Marlboros.
Gov. Beverly Perdue, who just signed into law a smoking ban in most public places in the state, said she nonetheless disagrees with FDA regulation because it would overstep regulatory bounds in restricting adult choices.
"I'm concerned about the direction this conversation is going," Perdue said in an interview.
Congress struck the government's strongest anti-smoking blow in decades Thursday with a Senate vote to give regulators new power to limit nicotine in cigarettes, drastically curtail ads and ban candied tobacco products aimed at young people.
Cigarette foes say the changes could cut into the 400,000 deaths every year caused by smoking and reduce the $100 billion in annual health care costs linked to tobacco.
The legislation, one of the most dramatic anti-smoking initiatives since the U.S. surgeon general's warning 45 years ago that tobacco causes lung cancer, would give the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate the content, marketing and advertising of cigarettes and other tobacco products.
"This legislation represents the strongest action Congress has ever taken to reduce tobacco use, the leading preventable cause of death in the United States," declared Matthew Myers, president of Campaign for Tobacco-free Kids.
The 79-17 Senate vote sends the measure back to the House, which in April passed a similar but not identical version.
This year, however, the Legislature simultaneously raided the tobacco settlement fund and gutted the Hawai'i Tobacco Prevention and Control Trust Fund, which uses money from the tobacco settlement fund to run those anti-smoking programs. Senate Bill 292 diverts 25.5 percent of the settlement fund's money to the General Fund and shrinks the Prevention and Control Trust Fund's share of the settlement fund's money from 12.5 percent to 6.5 percent. SB 884, which raids various special funds to bolster the General Fund, finds that the Tobacco settlement fund has an "excess" of $20 million and appropriates it to the General Fund.
According to Evans, the tobacco settlement fund had already taken a beating from the bad economy: "The trust fund corpus was about 55 million last year, and it's been losing money ever since due to the market. The current balance is about 33 million." Subtract $20 million from that, and then cut 12.5 percent of that to 6.5 percent, and there's not a lot left for anti-smoking programs. . . .
Tracking tobacco money isn't always easy. Reynolds American, formerly RJ Reynolds, usually donates in its own name -- but the world's biggest tobacco peddler, Altria, donates under a host of names, including Altria, Altria Client Services, Altria Corporate Services, Philip Morris USA and UST Public Affairs. At least one company executive has donated in his own name. And the company also hires a whole network of lobbying firms. In Hawai'i, it uses the services of three lobbyists: Celeste Y.K. Nip, Dan Smith, and George A. "Red" Morris. Reynolds uses John Radcliffe to lobby in Hawai'i. Smith made a $2,000 donation to Honolulu councilmember Romy Cachola's unsuccessful bid for the Senate; Cachola's campaign spending report lists Smith as a District Director for Altria in Richmond, Virginia. Morris, Radcliffe and Nip distributed tens of thousands in campaign donations to dozens of candidates during the 2008 election season -- but since they represent multiple clients, it's difficult to say whether the money they pass out is tobacco money or not.
But even without counting Morris's, Radcliffe's and Nip's contributions, Altria, its subsidiaries and officers passed out at least $51,309 to Hawai'i politicians during the 2008 elections, while Reynolds chipped in at least $19,500. . . .
Cigarette paper
Who got how much and from whom
Rep. Henry Aquino
Altria Client Services $1,000
Reynolds American $1,000
For those of us who covered the tobacco wars of the 1990s, it's hard to believe how much has changed. . . .
But for years one element of tobacco control that the Left craved had been missing: Regulatory authority by the Food and Drug Administration.
Tobacco is one of the few consumable products, along with most of the herbal medicine aisle at the drug store, that's not FDA regulated. . . .
Consider it part of the beauty of federalism. The small ideas that incubate in laboratories of democracy, as the former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously called the states, have grown wildly. Causality is the hardest thing to trace. But I suspect without the heavy-duty smoking bans begun in earnest after 2004 in Mike Bloomberg's New York, you wouldn't have seen the conditions change so dramatically that the passage of FDA regulation of tobacco is a relatively minor story. When the FDA bill is signed, Bloomberg should be there because it's very much his.
The downdraft Illinois' anti-smoking law may have had on casino revenues appeared to ease up during the first three months of this year, an industry trade group said Wednesday.
Revenues for Illinois' nine casinos fell by 9.3 percent from January through March of this year compared with the first quarter of 2008, the American Gaming Association reported. . . .
In a May report, the industry trade group showed casino revenues in Illinois dropped by a whopping 20.9 percent in 2008 compared with a year earlier, the sharpest decline in the country.
The AGA attributed that decrease largely to the impact of the state's no-smoking policy, which made cigarette smoking off-limits in casinos and other public indoor areas beginning Jan. 1, 2008.
"We believe the majority of decline now is the result of the economy," said Thomas Swoik, executive director of the Illinois Casino Gaming Association. "There is still some backlash from smoking, but we're seeing the numbers getting better."
Ahead of the national smoking ban due to be put in place July 19, Health Minister Recep Akdağ has announced that ministry mangers who smoke either need to quit or give up their positions of authority.
Smoking will be banned in cafes, restaurants and other enclosed public places across Turkey in just over one month’s time. In preparation for the ban’s adoption, the Health Ministry has launched various projects around the country to raise awareness about the health risks of smoking and promote strategies for quitting before the ban.
The United States is becoming a nation of haves and have-nots when it comes to tobacco control, according to a comprehensive publication on cigarette smoking prevalence and policies in the U.S. that was released today.
The new report, "Cigarette Smoking Prevalence and Policies in the 50 States: An Era of Change -- the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation ImpacTeen Tobacco Chart Book," was presented today at the National Conference on Tobacco or Health meeting in Phoenix.
It was prepared for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation by researchers in the University at Buffalo Department of Health Behavior in UB's School of Public Health and Health Professions and at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute. Researchers from eight other institutions also contributed, including the University of Illinois at Chicago, the National Cancer Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The report includes individualized data on smoking behaviors for all 50 states as well as a discussion of national trends revealed by the data.
"States can reduce death and disease by reducing smoking prevalence," said Gary G. Giovino, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Health Behavior in the UB School of Public Health and Health Professions and principal investigator on the report. "It's that simple."
"States should feel morally obligated to use a higher proportion of the revenues they receive from cigarette excise taxes and settlement payments to prevent smoking initiation, protect nonsmokers and help people who smoke to quit. Strong tobacco control programs save lives," he added.
In terms of reducing death and disease from tobacco use, this bill misses the mark by a long shot. It would keep Marlboros and Camels on the shelves by grandfathering them in while making it virtually impossible to bring reduced-risk products to market. If the goal is to reduce mortality rates, then it makes no sense to keep these higher-risk products in stores at the expense of offering lower-risk alternatives to consumers.
According to the government's own experts, if we did nothing and allowed current trends to continue, the smoking population would decrease by 6 million over 10 years. We are being asked to create a new, multibillion-dollar bureaucracy that, if successful, will be only one-sixth as successful as doing nothing. . . .
If we want efficient, effective regulation of tobacco, the FDA is not our best option. This is why I have proposed regulation under an agency in the Department of Health and Human Services responsible solely for tobacco.
In the past 10 years, states have spent just 3.2 percent of their total tobacco-generated revenue on smoking prevention and cessation programs. Currently, no state is funding tobacco prevention programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's recommended level, and only nine states are funding tobacco prevention at even half the CDC's recommended level.
If we want to improve public health, we have to do more to keep kids from smoking. And for those Americans who are struggling to quit, we need to at least offer them safer options. Unfortunately, the bill currently before Congress does neither.
Smoking costs the NHS five times as much as previously thought, researchers have calculated.
Treating disease directly caused by smoking produces medical bills of more than £5bn a year in the UK.
In 2005, smoking accounted for almost one in five of all deaths and a significant amount of disability, the Oxford University team said.
The British Heart Foundation who funded the research said tighter regulations were needed on the sale of tobacco.
The figure of £5bn in 2005-06 equates to 5.5% of the entire NHS budget.
The City passed a law in 2008 that banned drugstores such as Walgreens and Rite-Aid from selling tobacco products.
The company sued, but in a judge denied the lawsuit, leading to an appeal. . . .
The City fired back Wednesday with a 39-page brief.
"Consumers reasonably expect drugstores to serve their health needs, not to enable their deadliest habits," said City Attorney Dennis Herrera.
The effort by opponents of Salina's month-old public smoking ban to get Salina city commissioners to reconsider adding exemptions for bars, private clubs and other establishments ended with a simple two-word benediction from the commissioner responsible for bringing the matter back up for discussion.
"Let's vote," Commissioner Tom Arpke said in referring to Salina voters, who it appears will get the chance to express how they feel about the issue at the ballot box in a special election.
Because the commission chose at Monday's meeting not to repeal the controversial ordinance, the voters themselves will be asked to decide if repeal is warranted.
Opponents say they have enough signatures on a petition to put the question to a special election. . . .
Saline County Clerk Don Merriman said late Monday there's a lot to do to get ready for a special election, which might be sometime in July.
He noted that his office has to verify the signatures on the petitions, and that could be four or five days, depending on the condition of the petitions. He said about 1,390 signatures are needed.
In addition, the wording on the ballot has to be set, ballots printed, machines programmed and delivered to polling places, and more than 100 people have to be hired to work the election.
All of that adds up to about $20,000 to stage the special election, he said.