Tobacco.org

• Tobacco firm hikes cigarette cost to price-out youngsters 

The Franco-Spanish tobacco firm Altadis has put up the price of its cigarettes in an effort to stop young people buying them.

The brands Fortuna and Nobel will go up 10 cent, making the cost of a packet EUR 2.20.

The strong Ducados brand will go up 0.15 cent, bringing the cost of one packet to EUR 2.10.

The rise in prices was widely-expected by the market, after the company's co-president Jean Jaques Comolli said they might raise prices by up to five percent. . . .

The latest price rises are in contrast to the cut in prices by the British and Canary Island-based tobacco companies, Imperial and Cita, who are seeking to attract more young consumers.

Brands like American Jeans, owned by Western Tobacco, or Burton Original, owned by Tabak House, are selling cigarette packets for little more than EUR 1, in order to attract younger and poorer consumers.

But the Union of Association of Tobacconists advocated last week a minimum price for a packet of cigarettes to prevent younger people from taking up the habit.

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• Appeals court reinstates Birmingham family's tobacco lawsuit 

The family of a woman who died after 35 years of smoking will have the opportunity to sue cigarette manufacturers under a federal appeals court order reinstating the family's lawsuit.

A district judge in Birmingham originally dismissed the suit filed by Paul Spain, whose wife Carolyn died in 1999 of lung cancer. But the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to review the case and, after receiving advice about Alabama law from the state Supreme Court, ruled Monday that elements of the suit should proceed.

"It accomplishes getting us to trial, and we've got quite a bit of work to do in advance of that," Spain's attorney, Clay Ragsdale, said of the ruling.

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