Tobacco.org

VIDEO: Obama vs. tobacco 

In a Rose Garden statement, President Obama hailed Congress for passing landmark anti-tobacco legislation Friday: "This bill has obviously been a long time coming. We've known for years, even decades, about the harmful, addictive and often deadly effects of tobacco products. Each year Americans pay nearly $100 billion in added health care costs due to smoking. Each day about a thousand young people under the age of 18 become regular smokers.

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MORFORD: A troubling lack of pure evil / Where to find a refreshing dose of vileness in the Age of Obama? 

it turns out classic, black-hearted evil still abounds in our culture. It's just a little less easy to spot.

Witness, say, the long-forgotten R.J. Reynolds tobacco company ("Passionately dedicated to evil since 1890"), currently struggling, like many supervillains of the past, to maintain its diabolical cred in this new era, especially given the drop-off in smoking rates and the company's diminishing capacity to bring death and disease to millions.

R.J. Reynolds has apparently been test-marketing a new tobacco product, some sort of melt-in-your-mouth pellet candy thing, called Orbs, tasty little lumps of toxic tobacco packaged in nifty metal tins, just like breath mints. No smoke, no inhaling, no spitting. Just pop one in your mouth and let the fresh, lethal goodness leech straight into your bloodstream. Cancer never tasted so good!

Pretty evil, yes? It gets better. How about the fact that the U.S. Senate is about to block the damnable product because it's so clearly, albeit subversively, aimed at attracting children? "Tobacco candy," they call it. "We're just giving undereducated, cancer-ready adults what we tell them they want," the evil corporation says. They're both right.

So there you have it. All told, I'm not that worried. This is America, after all. I know we can do it. We have the ingenuity, the imagination. Our megacorporatons and our neoconservative politicians and our gun-wielding sociopaths are famous the world over for innovating new and exciting ways to reek of pure evil.

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Japan Tobacco to buy Tribac Leaf 

Japan Tobacco on Friday said it would buy most of the UK’s Tribac Leaf, a tobacco leaf supplier, and set up a joint venture in the US to secure supplies amid high tobacco leaf prices.

The move is part of a push by the world’s third-largest tobacco group to make overseas acquisitions amid stagnating demand at home and in other developed markets. Japan Tobacco has about $1bn available for deals, it said.

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• High-Stakes Tobacco-Patent Lawsuit Heads To Jury Next Week  

The fortunes of aspiring tobacco company Star Scientific Inc. (STSI) could hinge on a high-stakes patent-infringement case that goes to a federal jury in Baltimore next week.

Star, a small tobacco company with a big patent claim, says it has invented a method of curing tobacco that prevents the formation of certain cancer-causing toxins.

The Virginia-based company sued R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., a unit of Reynolds American Inc. (RAI), alleging that the nation's second-biggest tobacco company encouraged its tobacco farmers to practice Star's patented curing method. . . .

After several years of pre-trial legal wrangling, a patent-infringement trial began May 18. Closing arguments are likely to wrap up Monday, and then the case will be submitted to the jury for deliberations.

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LEX: Tobacco’s road 

The authorities’ love-hate relationship with smoking has had decidedly more of the latter.

King James I called it a “custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.” . . .

Tobacco was a bane well before there was an FDA, but it has been a boon to governments too. Regulating such a heavily taxed product out of existence clearly is not easy. Neither is cajoling an entire population to quit through health warnings and advertising bans. If beatings and the threat of eternal damnation did not do the trick then nothing will.

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• Christopher Caldwell - Addicts have made a choice 

We have a justice system that treats drug use as a malevolent act of will (to be punished) and a medical profession that treats it as an unfortunate disease (to be cured). Who is right? In a magnificent new book, Addiction: A Disorder of Choice , Gene M. Heyman, a lecturer in psychology at Harvard Medical School, argues that it is not his fellow medical professionals.

Addiction is voluntary. The idea that addiction is a “chronic, relapsing brain disease” may be well-meaning but it is false. “Everyone,” Mr Heyman writes, “including those who are called addicts, stops using drugs when the costs of continuing become too great.” We need to make clear, though, what Mr Heyman means by “voluntary”. He does not deny that addiction is an enormous problem that can wreck a life, or several. If you drive drunk or embezzle money to pay for your coke habit when you ought to be studying, the consequences can be permanent and devastating.

But addiction is not the kind of problem that most people think it is. It is not so very far from setting interest rates, devising depreciation schedules and other economic problems of “intertemporal choice”. It involves weighing the value of a current good (intoxication) against the value of various future ones that are shrouded in uncertainty. . . .

The centrepiece of the disease theory of addiction is philosophical, not scientific. It is that nothing that produces sub-optimal outcomes as consistently as addiction does can be freely chosen. “No one chooses to be an addict,” as the saying goes. Mr Heyman shows that this is wrong – or at least that this is the wrong way of getting at the problem.

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Miss. lawmakers might consider additional cig tax  

Another new development: Negotiators said an additional tax might be considered on inexpensive cigarettes - on top of the 50-cent-a-pack increase that took effect on all cigarettes May 15.

Negotiators also said they want to give permission to the state auditor and Tax Commission to auction about a million packs of contraband cigarettes seized by federal and state agents in a raid several weeks ago. Officials estimated the auction could bring the state $5 million to $10 million.

Gov. Haley Barbour will call the full House and Senate back to the Capitol for a special session

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Landmark tobacco regulation bill goes to Obama 

A landmark bill giving the U.S. government for the first time broad regulatory power over cigarettes and other tobacco products won final approval in Congress on Friday, and President Barack Obama said he would quickly sign it into law. . . .

FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said there is "a lot of excitement at the agency" to start work on the effort.

"Tobacco is such a serious and compelling public health problem, and we really do feel by being able to regulate tobacco and tobacco products we can reduce the burden of disease and help promote stronger smoking cessation efforts," Hamburg told reporters.

Critics have questioned whether the agency is ready to handle an entire new sector after struggling through recent troubles involving tainted food and drug safety issues.

Some experts have said the bill essentially seals Philip Morris' position as market leader.

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Cigarette Packs Go Graphic as FDA Gets Tobacco Oversight  

Cigarette makers concern over packaging makes sense. As restrictions on conventional tobacco marketing have increased, the packs have become more and more valuable unfettered advertising space. Tobacco companies increasingly rely on packaging as one of their last best methods of image building. Packs are both a way to create a presence in stores and to communicate what the brand is about.

According to a study of tobacco company documents made public through litigation, the industry's own market testing results "indicate that such imagery is so strong as to influence smoker's taste ratings of the same cigarettes when packaged differently." The study found tobacco companies carried out systematic and extensive research to ensure that cigarette packaging appeals to selected target groups, including young adults and women.

The bill that passed today directly requires bold health warnings on both sides of a pack of cigarettes, a move countries like Brazil, Australia, Thailand and Singapore pioneered. In those countries stomach-turning photos of premature babies, oral cancers, tracheotomies and children on ventilators due to second hand smoke, cover the side of a pack of smokes.

Initially text-only, the US version would cover the top half of the packs, front and back. But within two years, the FDA would have to come up with similar "regulations that require color graphic labels depicting the negative health consequences of smoking."

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ADLER: Is Legislation Anti-Tobacco or Pro-Philip Morris?  

Today's NYT editorial on the tobacco regulation bill is interesting. The Times claims the bill is an "enormous victory for public health," yet cites estimates that it will only reduce youth and adult smoking by 11 and 2 percent over the next decade. . . .

Consider further that one likely effect of the legislation is to make it more difficult to market tobacco-based alternatives to cigarettes, such as "Snus" or various forms of smokeless tobacco, that are a less deadly way for smokers to obtain their nicotine fix. This certainly benefits incumbent firms, like Philip Morris, and could actually harm public health. Another provision of the bill will empower the FDA to reduce the nicotine content of cigarettes. Yet insofar as many smokers smoke for the nicotine, this could mean that some will smoke more cigarettes to satisfy the same habit. And this will be good for public health how? The more one looks at this bill, the less it seems like a genuine "public health" measure -- and yet it will still give the federal government tremendous new regulatory control over a legal industry. Like so much these days, the bill represents the marriage of big government and big business, and there's little left for the little guy.

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VIDEO REPORT: Obama Looking Forward to Signing Tobacco Bill  

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Obama Struggles With Smoking 'Addiction' as He Praises Congress for New Tobacco Regulations 

The White House acknowledged Friday President Obama is still struggling to break his smoking addiction even as the president congratulated Congress for passing tough new regulations that puts tobacco under control of the Food and Drug Administration for the first time.

Asked if the president still smoked, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama has "a struggle with nicotine addiction" every day.

Obama has a long history of smoking and a photo emerged of him during the campaign trail smoking as far back as college. During the presidential campaign, he chewed nicorette chewing gum in an effort to kick the habit.

Gibbs said he "assumed" the president still chewed the nicorette.

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• Not smoking a struggle for Obama 

The White House press secretary says President Barack Obama still struggles with a nicotine addiction, but the spokesman would not say whether the president still smokes cigarettes. . . .

Asked directly if Obama still smokes, Gibbs said: "I would simply tell you I think struggling with a nicotine addiction is something that happens every day."

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It’s a lifelong struggle…  

In a hastily added event at the White House Friday, President Obama turned his attention to an old habit of his own. Cigarette smoking. . . .

When asked about why the president didn't mention his own tobacco use in his remarks, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that if the president were to comment, "the President would likely tell you as I think anybody would who has smoked or been addicted to smoking that it is a life long struggle."

The press secretary was peppered with questions about the president's smoking throughout Friday's briefing, and while Gibbs wouldn't answer specifically as to whether or not Mr. Obama is still smoking, "I would simply tell you...struggling with nicotine addition is something that happens every day."

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• Cigarette loving Greeks banned from smoking in the workplace  

The days of cigarette friendly Greece are about to go up in smoke as the government announced a ban against smoking in the workplace to take effect starting July 1. The new law will have a heavy impact on a nation where nearly 45 per cent of the adult population smokes, and where smoking in offices and cafes is seen as a traditional pastime.

Greece, one of Europe's heaviest smoking nations, had initially allowed for designated smoking rooms to be set aside in state and private businesses under the new law, but the minister of health ruled that option out on Thursday.

"As of July 1 no smoking will be allowed anywhere in the workplace," said Health Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos.

He said the government will only pass a partial ban for restaurants and bars, saying smaller establishements will become strictly non-smoking but larger businesses were allowed to designate smoking and non-smoking areas.

Under the new law, smoking will be banned in other public places such as schools, universities, state offices, hospitals and on all forms of public transport.

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