Tobacco.org

Arkansas Court Strengthens General Tobacco’s Position 

Vibo Corporation d/b/a General Tobacco (GT) announced today that an Arkansas Court has denied the Arkansas Attorney General's motion to remove General Tobacco's cigarette brands from the Directory of approved brands to sell in that State and ordered the Arkansas Attorney General to arbitrate the dispute ordered in 2006, holding that GT's cigarette brands may continue to be sold lawfully in Arkansas.

Since the Arkansas Attorney General served as the identical voice for the other 42 attorneys general, they may now be legally bound to the Arkansas order.

GT believes that the Order, issued by the Circuit Court of Pulaski County on January 26, 2010, should prevent not only Arkansas but any other State that is part of the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) from delisting GT's brands. Arkansas is the only State that has brought a Court action to determine whether the delisting of General Tobacco's cigarette brands is proper. None of the States that have announced the delisting of GT's brands sought any Court's permission to do so. Now that a Court has ruled that delisting of the brands may not proceed, General Tobacco has asked all of the States in the MSA to comply with that Court's Order.

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• Tobacco company challenges states' authority 

General Tobacco, which owes the states approximately $284.5 million and faces delisting, said Monday that the company feels protected after an Arkansas judge said the company's brands cannot be taken off store shelves there over its failure to make payments under the multistate Master Settlement Agreement.

Vibo Corporation Inc., which does business as General Tobacco, is based in Mayodan, N.C. Its cigarette brands include Bronco, Champion, GT, Silver and 32⁰.

General Tobacco could be barred from selling its cigarette products in 18 states over its failure to make the MSA payments.

On Friday, a Pulaski County judge rejected Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel's motion to delist General Tobacco's cigarette brands.

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General Tobacco De-Lists Products in Some States 

Vibo Corp. d/b/a General Tobacco announced that it will comply with recent notices regarding the removal of its cigarette brands from certain state directories of approved brands for sale.

General Tobacco (GT) also continues to dispute the validity of the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) under antitrust, constitutional and other federal and state laws, and GT claims its entitlement to more than $95 million in overpayments to the states. The de-listing does not pertain to the filtered cigars or pipe tobacco products sold by GT. These products can continue to be sold in all states without interruption.

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Mother dies despite daughter's attempts to save her in second fatal Brooklyn fire in three days 

A beloved Brooklyn mom died in a smoky blaze early Monday despite her daughter's desperate attempt to save her, officials and neighbors said.

Flames and thick smoke engulfed Sandra Lubin's fifth-floor apartment in the Bayview Houses in Canarsie when a fire broke out just after 6 a.m.

Her daughter, Jessica, tried to pull her mom to safety, neighbors said.

"I heard her yelling, 'Mom! Mom! Mom!'" said Krisha Belgrove, who lives on the same floor. "And she tried to pull her out of the apartment but she just couldn't." . . .

Police said Lubin was smoking in bed and fell asleep.

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• Tobacco smuggling to get a whole lot tougher  

Tobacco smuggling could get a lot harsher as an EP conference this evening, a UN Conference in March and a World Health Organisation report all point towards governments being too lax on the issue

European Union officials and international experts fighting against global illicit tobacco sales will meet tonight at a conference to discuss the ongoing concern over the illegal cigarette market just weeks before a vital United Nations meeting in March on the issue.

The UN will meet from 14 - 21 March on a new protocol that could secure a binding international agreement to combat the massive market of illegal tobacco sales. It will be the fourth meeting of the International Negotiating Body on the supplementary protocol to the already-in-place Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which passed in 2005 and was the first treaty negotiated under the auspices of the World Health Organization.

Belgian Green MEP Bart Staes, who is hosting tonight's conference in Brussels to push more EU leadership on the issue, said it is necessary to have strong action rather thansimply more political talk.

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• Tobacco scourge 

Contraband cigarettes have become a major problem in Malaysia because of high cigarette prices, low penalties and lax enforcement. The Government is losing approximately RM1.5bil in revenue annually, disclosed industry players.

Furthermore, the illegal market has spawned a major industry which gives syndicates operating smuggling networks up to RM1bil in profits yearly. It also defeats the Government's move to raise prices to discourage smoking among the young.

A Star Probe shows that illegal cigarettes are quite easily obtained at outlets in Malaysia. Most of those who smoke them appear to come from the lower income bracket as these cigarettes are available for as low as RM2.50 for a pack of 20. Legitimate cigarettes retail for between RM6.40 and RM9.30 for a pack of 20.

The illicit market now accounts for more than one out of three cigarettes sold. Some 38.7% of the industry by volume is now illicit, up from 27.5% in 2008, according to The Illicit Cigarette Study conducted by Taylor Nelson Soffres commissioned by a major cigarette manufacturer.

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Heart disease will kill 400,000 Americans in 2010 

Decades of progress in the United States on cutting cholesterol, blood pressure and smoking are being stalled by rising obesity rates, and heart disease will kill around 400,000 Americans this year, experts said on Monday.

A study by British scientists found that around half of those deaths could be averted if people ate healthier food and quit smoking, and experts warned there was no room for complacency when it came to heart health risks.

Simon Capewell of the University of Liverpool said recent weight trends were "alarming," with 1.5 billion adults worldwide expected to be overweight by 2015.

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NYC Pensions Press Companies to Disclose Political Spending  

Jan. 28 (Bloomberg) -- New York City pension funds are pressing as many as 15 companies including Bank of America Corp. and Humana Inc. to disclose campaign contributions as the U.S. Supreme Court ends a ban on corporate political spending.

The city's public advocate, Bill de Blasio, is encouraging other pension funds to follow New York's lead and file investor proxy resolutions calling for companies to report their campaign contributions and political spending. Five city pension funds had already submitted resolutions with the companies ahead of last week's Supreme Court decision, de Blasio said in a statement yesterday. . . .

The New York City Comptroller's office withdrew a proxy resolution for one of the 15 companies, Altria Group Inc., after "productive conversations" with executives at the tobacco producer, according to a company spokesman, Bill Phelps.

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BLEVINS: Right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins 

When I was growing up, no one talked about the possible consequences of smoking, and we all watched cigarette commercials on TV. When my parents and I would go out to eat, we were always seated right away because my parents (non-smokers) always requested the "non-smoking" area. People smoked in their homes, their cars, in their workplaces, and everywhere, pretty much.

Thanks to research, education and tobacco funds, we now know the risks of smoking, as well as breathing secondhand smoke. I started smoking at the age of 20, and I was in the majority at my workplace and within my circle of friends. Cigarettes were cheap, and although I had heard of people who had died from lung cancer or emphysema as a result of their smoking habits, it wasn't publicized the way it is now. I quit smoking in 1995, and even though I didn't struggle with the addiction to nicotine the way many do, I have a great deal of sympathy for those who make the choice to put the cigarettes away. . . .

In Arkansas, 4,900 adults die each year from their own smoking and 64,000 kids now under age 18 will ultimately die prematurely from smoking. There are 490 adult non-smokers who die each year from secondhand smoke.

It's time we took a firm stand and protected people, adults and children, from secondhand smoke. Whenever a business, government office, college or hospital goes tobacco free, there's always an outcry of infringement on smokers' rights, but no one seems to talk so openly about the rights of those who don't want to breathe secondhand smoke.

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CARNEY: Obama's SOTU talk on special interests -- and his record 

"To close that credibility gap we must take action on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue to end the outsized influence of lobbyists; to do our work openly"

Obama's call to "do our work openly" would represent a change of procedure in many ways. We didn't know about a July deal on health-care reform between White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and top drug lobbyist Billy Tauzin until the LA Times reported on it, thanks to Tauzin's talking outside of school.

Also, "work[ing] openly" wouldn't be how I would describe Obama's claim that "today, despite decades of lobbying and advertising by the tobacco industry, we passed a law" that had the full support of Philip Morris--by far the number one tobacco lobbying power and number one tobacco company.

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Over-reaching, Right Out of the Starting Gate (PDF) 

The problem, however, is that there is no definition of “characterizing flavor” in the Act, and thus, in the absence of FDA regulations addressing this issue, uncertainty exists. Of utmost importance to manufacturers is the fact that the Act requires that any cigarette marketed as being a certain flavor, such as “chocolate” or “clove,” the manufacturer has, in effect, already “characterized” the cigarette. In the absence of such marketing practices, the concept of what constitutes a characterizing flavor is not clear. . . .

IN THE CROSSHAIRS: FLAVORED LITTLE CIGARS

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce and its Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations have sent correspondence to several tobacco products manufacturers that produce flavored little cigars. The Committee has characterized these companies’ practices as an attempt “to circumvent this ban [on flavored cigarettes] and repackage [the] flavored cigarettes as ‘little cigars.’” The Committee has launched a series of notices to these manufacturers of flavored little cigars asking them to appear, produce numerous documents, and defend allegations that certain little cigar products are nothing more than flavored cigarettes, and the manufacturers’ marketing of such products is simply an attempt to circumvent the Act.

This correspondence and oversight investigation make it clear that Congress is attempting, without the enactment of legislation, to broaden the prohibition of the sale of flavored cigarettes to also include flavored little cigars. The Act as currently written applies only to products that are offered to or purchased by consumers as a cigarettes or roll-your-own tobacco. Based upon these inquiries and the uncertainty of the Act itself, the top distributor of clove-flavored tobacco products in the U.S., Kretek International, has asked a federal court to decide whether its new filtered clove cigars fall under the federal ban on flavored cigarettes.

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EDITORIAL: Memorial's smoking stand 

Memorial Hospital's decision to stop hiring workers who smoke beginning February 1 can be broadly justified as a symbolic standard for a health-care provider. Yet its challenge to traditional standards of fair treatment for employees and job applicants is a bit more tricky. Ultimately it leads to question of whether employers should attempt to regulate the private, legal, off-premises, life-style behaviors of their employees, and, if so, where to draw the line. . . .

Yet other risky behaviors abound. Many people, for example, drink too much alcohol. Others ride motorcycles, which produce a high incidence of catastrophic brain injuries and exorbitant medical costs that is often shifted to the public. One could argue that rock-climbing, hang-gliding, sky-diving, and bicycle, ATV and horse-back riding are needlessly risky.

It is imminently fair to ban smoking and other tobacco use at work, and to charge differentiated health insurance premiums. But if it is fair to discriminate against smokers by barring them from jobs on the grounds of a commitment to health, why stop there. Or better yet, why begin down that slippery slope.

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Some businesses ignore smoking fines 

Smoking in Ohio bars and social clubs has been illegal for more than three years, but it certainly hasn't been extinguished.

A CentralOhio.com review of about 25,000 smoking ban violation investigations shows discipline is rare and offenders largely ignore financial sanctions.

Three-fourths of all investigations resulted in the complaint being dropped without discipline, according to the data from the Ohio Department of Health. Even at the locations where health department officials are frequent visitors for smoking ban allegations, the rate of successful enforcement is only slightly better.

The top 10 most investigated businesses, mostly bars and clubs, averaged a complaint every six weeks or so, but three out of every four of those were tossed out.

LOCAL STATISTICS

There have been 258 smoking violation complaints against businesses in the City of Zanesville since inception of the indoor smoking ban, and 49 in Muskingum County outside of the city.

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1 held for smoking on flight from Urumqi 

Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region authorities yesterday denied media reports that two people were detained after one of them set fire to toilet paper in the lavatory on a flight taking off from regional capital Urumqi during the weekend.

"Only one person was detained for smoking in the toilet, not for setting fire to toilet paper as some media reported. The second person was taken away by police because the two were traveling together," regional spokesperson Hou Hanmin told China Daily yesterday.

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Smokers to face doorway ban in new public health policy 

Smoking outside the entrances of public buildings may be banned in a new government health initiative. Photograph: Frank Baron

Smokers could be forced to light up away from the entrances to public buildings under government moves aimed at ensuring that no more than one in 10 Britons smoke cigarettes.

The health secretary, Andy Burnham, now favours extending the 2007 landmark law which banned smoking in pubs, workplaces and other enclosed places, to prevent non-smokers having to walk through clouds of secondhand smoke.

The move comes as part of a wider attempt by Burnham to set out the case for state intervention to improve public health, insisting it does not amount to a nanny state. He will set out four principles where he says intervention is justified: where it protects the health of children, where a person's choice affects the choices of others, where barriers need to be removed to allow people to behave healthily, and where the environment can be shaped to offer healthier lifestyles.

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