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United States Attorney Scott N. Schools announced that Ned Roscoe, vice-president of Cigarettes Cheaper!, and his father John Roscoe, president of the company, were arraigned yesterday on an indictment charging them with conspiracy and five counts of bank fraud. Ned Roscoe, age 46, and John Roscoe, age 76, were also owners of the company, located in Benicia, California.
The indictment alleges that between late 2002 and November 2003, the Company was suffering financial difficulties. In an effort to continue operations, the defendants conspired to fraudulently inflate the value of the company's current inventory in order to increase the amount that the company could borrow from Comerica Bank on a revolving line of credit. The defendants misrepresented the company's inventory in weekly reports to the bank, thus causing the bank to over extend approximately $10.6 million of loans in excess of the amount the bank would have lent to the company.
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Citing concerns about infringement on academic freedom, the UC Board of Regents elected to postpone a vote on prohibiting faculty members from accepting research funds from tobacco companies.
While being urged by some professors to abolish the funding, the regents chose to delay a vote until the May meeting due to fears of setting a precedent that some said could prevent faculty from having control over their research.
“I think academic freedom and how much you believe in your faculty is more important than anything,” said Regent Sherry Lansing. “I really believe we should not be involved in anything that violates academic freedom and I think this does. I believe the faculty can do research without being corrupted.” . . .
Proponents of the ban, like UCSF Professor of Medicine Stanton Glantz, pointed to an eight-year federal lawsuit that ruled in August 2006 that tobacco companies like Philip Morris USA, Inc. were guilty of fraudulent practices, including funding research at UC.
Glantz pointed to UCLA professor James Enstrom as what he said was an example of how tobacco funds could tarnish the integrity of the university.
Enstrom was revealed to have long misled colleagues by not disclosing a tobacco company as his funding source and ignoring problems with his data, according to John Seffrin, CEO of the American Cancer Society.
“The university’s mission is about truth, light and enlightenment,” Glantz said. “The tobacco companies fund universities to confuse things and slow down the transmission of knowledge. There is no question that they have been very successful. The reason the regents should not be engaged is because (the companies) use universities against the university’s fundamental mission.”
The university’s mission is about truth, light and enlightenment. The tobacco companies fund universities to confuse things and slow down the transmission of knowledge. There is no question that they have been very successful. The reason the regents should not be engaged is because (the companies) use universities against the university’s fundamental mission. UCSF Professor of Medicine Stanton Glantz, on the UC tobacco funding brou-ha-ha.
A Harvard study concluding that cigarette makers have for years deliberately increased nicotine levels in cigarettes to make them more addictive led to renewed calls Thursday for greater federal oversight of the industry.
“Given the harm that tobacco causes, it shouldn’t be a game of cat-and-mouse to figure out what the industry is doing to cigarettes,” said Dr. Josh Sharfstein, commissioner of health for the City of Baltimore.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who is now chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, promised to reintroduce within weeks a bill that would allow the Food and Drug Administration to regulate cigarettes.
Mr. Kennedy said the Harvard study, which was released this week, “is dramatic new proof that Big Tobacco is addicted to addicting millions of young smokers.” . . .
In August, in a racketeering suit brought by the Justice Department against the tobacco industry, a federal judge found that tobacco companies had for decades “manipulated the use of nicotine so as to increase and perpetuate addiction.”
In ordering strict new limitations on tobacco marketing, the judge, Gladys Kessler of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, also said that for decades, tobacco companies had “lied, misrepresented and deceived the American public.”
So ask yourself. How happy would you be to discover the sausage on your plate contained a ground-up poisoned rat? And worse. . . .
A hundred years ago, the outcry over filthy and spoiled food helped result in Congress passing the 1906 Food and Drug Act -- known more simply as the Wiley Act, after Harvey Wiley, the government's chief chemist. . . .
Yes, it was government telling business owners how to run their private enterprises.
But the public had come to recognize certain actions required for the common good lie beyond the power of individuals. . . .
Wait. Did someone say it's not the same circumstance today, as far as smoking's concerned, because we have newspapers, TV, radio and the Internet? That anyone who smokes today grasps the consequences?
That's not what a Greenville bar owner testified in court Tuesday afternoon. He and others were seeking an injunction to stop the city from enforcing its smoking ban. The bar owner said his smoking customers "don't understand the reason behind it."
Tobacco companies have spent decades and millions to see to that, a federal judge ruled in August.
An important new study released today finds that the tobacco companies' youth prevention campaigns do nothing to reduce youth smoking rates and the industry's parent-focused ads may actually increase intention to smoke among older teens. The findings, published in the latest edition of the American Journal of Public Health, are further evidence that Big Tobacco cannot be the source for kids when it comes to learning about the dangers associated with tobacco use.
Despite their assertions to the contrary, the tobacco companies are just blowing smoke when they say they've changed their ways. Ninety percent of smokers begin smoking before the age of 21. Tobacco companies know that unless they recruit replacement smokers from among our nation's youth, their profits will plummet.
This study emphasizes the need for states to adequately fund comprehensive tobacco prevention programs. . . .
It is also time for Congress to pass legislation that would grant the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authority over tobacco products. . . .
In her opinion, Judge Gladys Kessler also found that the companies continue to target kids, stating: "The evidence in this case clearly establishes that (companies) have not ceased engaging in unlawful activity ... their continuing conduct misleads consumers in order to maximize (their) revenues by recruiting new smokers (the majority of whom are under the age of 18) ... and thereby sustaining the industry."
Anti-tobacco lobbyists are making another bid to force the federal Competition Bureau to explain why it has taken more than three years to determine whether the words light and mild are deceptive when printed on cigarette packages.
The lobbyists -- a group of 11 health professionals including several public-health officers from across Canada -- say in documents filed recently with the Federal Court of Appeal that the delay amounts to "non-performance of statutory duty" on the part of Commissioner Sheridan Scott.
It is a delay that they say has stranded them in a state of limbo and has harmed "the many thousands of Canadians who begin or continue to use tobacco products in the mistaken belief that the products designated 'light' and 'mild' have more benign impacts on human health." . . .
The health professionals, meanwhile, are trying to remain optimistic and believe the case will be heard before the end of the year.
They have been buoyed by court decisions like one in August in which U.S. Judge Gladys Kessler found that tobacco companies distorted the truth about low-tar and light cigarettes to discourage smokers from quitting. She ordered that the terms be removed from packaging.
At 4 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, Altria shares were down $5.26, or 6.4%, to $77.06. Reynolds shares fell $2.27, or 3.7%, to $59.75. . . .
"Today's decision inevitably delays any restructuring," William Ohlemeyer, associate general counsel for Altria, said in a conference call with analysts and investors. "Today's decision, however isolated it is, is not a step toward clarity [regarding litigation]; it is a step back of sorts," Mr. Ohlemeyer said.
Plaintiffs in the class-action suit could seek to block the restructuring with a court injunction by arguing that the breakup of Altria might jeopardize their ability to collect any damages they might win. As a result, some observers now believe the board might delay a spinoff until an appellate court reverses Judge Weinstein's class-certification decision, which might not happen for another year -- if at all. . . .
"There is a real question of whether the ruling will hold up on appeal," says Robert L. Rabin, a professor at Stanford Law School. "Class actions in tobacco haven't fared well, and we have to see whether the Second Circuit will be receptive to Weinstein's action."
It's only a matter of time, sooner rather than later, that an editorial will appear in The New York Times advocating the prohibition of tobacco products. At least that's what any rational reader would take away from the paper's two latest broadsides against the mammoth industry, which were pegged to the not so shocking revelation that "light" cigarettes are just as dangerous as "full-flavored" brands, and a study by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health that found the amount of nicotine in a cigarette has increased an average of 10 percent since 1998.
At this point in the early 21st century, any person who believes that smoking is a harmless habit is a moron. As with any addiction, whether it's alcohol, crack or heroin, gambling, fast food or speed-racing cars, it's up to the individual to make a decision about the risks and then proceed at will. As a longtime smoker, I'm certainly aware of the hazards to my health and yet I've foolishly continued the habit, knowing that even though my lungs are so far miraculously spotless, that could change as soon as next year's physical. It's a cross to bear, and hard to justify to my wife and kids, which is far more upsetting than the busybodies who wave their hands in the air even as I smoke outside.
The Times, on August 28th ("The Safer Cigarette Delusion") and Aug. 31st ("Raising Nicotine Doses, on the Sly"), in a departure from the usual diatribes about President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Joe Lieberman and other perceived enemies of the United States, wastes space on the obvious. Still, no Times article would be complete without insulting its readers' intelligence. . . .
I have no delusions about the tobacco companies, although I wouldn't echo the Times editorialists in labeling them as "rouges" or "rapacious," and realize that the advertising--that which still exists--is probably misleading and deceptive. . . .
Pointing to Mass- achusetts' Department of Public Health study, the paper lamented that the tobacco industry could not, at least currently, be properly punished. An excerpt: "But hemmed in by an earlier decision, [federal Judge Gladys] Kessler concluded she could not order the industry to hand over billions in profits and instead prohibited it from using terms like 'low tar' or 'ultra light.'"
Sens. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., predicted Kessler's ruling would help boost the chances for bringing the loosely regulated tobacco industry under the control of the federal Food and Drug Administration.
"A court of law has finally said what Americans have known for years - Big Tobacco lied to get people addicted to cigarettes," Lautenberg said.
A day after Kessler's ruling in the seven-year-old case, industry leader Philip Morris USA confirmed plans to appeal, and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. also indicated an appeal was likely. Lorillard Tobacco Co. and Justice Department officials said they were still mulling what to do.
Public health advocates said Friday it is the Justice Department that should appeal, and they encouraged lawmakers to impose new restrictions on the industry. . . .
Lautenberg said Congress should write into law some of the remedies Kessler imposed on the industry, particularly banning the use of "light" and "ultralight" labels
One cannot help wondering whether this litigation was the best vehicle for attempting to hold defendants accountable for their indifference to the health of American citizens. In a democracy, it is the body elected by the people, namely Congress, that should step up to the plate and address national issues with such enormous economic, public health, commercial and social ramifications.Judge Kessler in her Final Order.
The House passed the reauthorization of the Patriot Act yesterday clearing the way for the measure to go to the President to be signed into law. The bill includes two provisions affecting wholesale distributors aimed at combating contraband cigarettes and cracking down on the illegal methamphetamine market.
The first provision would increase penalties for those who illegally transport cigarettes and lowers the threshold requirement for a violation from 60,000 to 10,000 cigarettes. The new law will apply to smokeless tobacco as well and includes reporting requirements for those engaging in delivery sales of more than 10,000 cigarettes or 500 cans or packages of smokeless tobacco in a month.
These record-keeping requirements will necessitate implementing regulations to be issued by the U.S. Department of Justice.
United States Attorney John L. Brownlee announced that pleas were entered today in U.S. District Court by defendants in a large cigarette smuggling case. The pleas follow an investigation and prosecution that lasted over four years and resulted in a 55-count indictment returned in the Western District of Virginia. The defendants, all residents of the Los Angeles/Glendale area of California, who pled guilty today include:
VICKEN I DJEREDJIAN, aka Vick Gregg, Vick Djere, Age 31; AKOP CHICHYAN, aka Jack Chichyan, Age 33; MNATSAKAN GRIGORIAN, aka Miatskan Zakevich Grigoryan, Mike Grigoryan, Age 39; SEROB BOYADZHYAN, aka Serb, Age 36; MANVEL ISKANDARYAN, Age 47; ALBERT ASATRYAN, Age 47; AZAT STEPHANYAN, Age 22
The indictment alleged that the defendants traveled to Virginia to purchase untaxed cigarettes, and then transported the cigarettes via tractor-trailers to California without paying the taxes owed in either State.
Liberal bloggers are huffing. Pillow Talk for the Disaffected's Bush-hating ChuckD points to an LA Times story noting that Associate Attorney General Robert MacCallum, who may be responsible for the reduced demand, worked for R.J. Reynolds in the past. Whiskey Bar's Billmon rounds up a list of tobacco companies' campaign contributions to Republicans. America's Moral and Ethical Demise's Rob Parks writes, "I agree with a lot of what the Republican party and the Bush administration support, but on this I disagree. Don't give a huge financial break to companies that have deliberately caused the addictions of millions of people!"
In the middle of a discussion over a defense objection, Judge Kessler suddenly turned to the witness stand and asked, "Mr. Hoel, are you alright?" Mr. Hoel did not look ill, but when he didn't respond, she immediately rose and went to him, at the same time telling someone to get the nurse. Putting both hands on his shoulders she asked, "Are you alright?"
He responded slowly, saying "I don't feel well right now."
She then asked everyone to leave the courtroom for privacy.
If ever there were an appalling example of government's addiction to litigation (and a waste of $136 million in taxpayer money as the trial began), this lawsuit is it.
Basically, the executive branch is trying to bypass Congress and legislate via the courts — a tactic the Bush administration denounces whenever it's used by the reviled trial lawyers.
Justice accuses cigarette manufacturers of making false statements, manipulating nicotine content, marketing tobacco products to kids and misleading customers about less hazardous cigarettes. For those misdeeds, Justice wants $280 billion, to be disgorged under the civil provisions of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. . . .
Instead of helping smokers or Medicare, the federal lawsuit is designed to punish an industry for quasi-criminal infractions for which federal investigators could not produce sufficient proof. This suit is a second bite at the apple, a blatant and shameful attempt to extort money from a tobacco treasure-trove perceived as bottomless.
Plain and simple, the Justice Department is engaged in double dipping — a failed criminal investigation has given way to a new civil suit by that same government for the same charges originally found wanting.
British American Tobacco Plc failed in its challenge of a London court ruling allowing the U.S. Department of Justice to interview one of the cigarette maker's lawyers for its $289 billion suit against the tobacco industry.
BAT, the world's second-largest cigarette maker, had appealed a High Court ruling permitting the Justice Department to interview Andrew Foyle, a litigation partner at London law firm Lovells, who acted for the cigarette maker from 1986 to 1994. The Justice Department wants to question Foyle about BAT's policy for retaining documents and claims documents about the dangers smoking poses to health were destroyed.
BAT's U.S. unit, Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., is among companies contesting the U.S. government's claims they misled the public and the U.S Congress about the risks of smoking. The Court of Appeal rejected arguments by lawyers for BAT that Foyle's advice to BAT is confidential and legally privileged because it was prepared with the prospect of litigation. . . .
The Justice Department has promised Foyle immunity from prosecution and says there are no allegations of improper conduct by him. He will be questioned in front of a Commercial Court judge on April 26