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Altria subsidiary to idle snus plant in York County 

Altria Group Inc.'s U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co. subsidiary is idling a manufacturing plant in York County that makes a special brand of smokeless tobacco called snus.

Production is being moved elsewhere as part of a consolidation, the company said.

The shutdown of the plant, which is near Busch Gardens, will affect 41 employees, said a spokesman for Henrico County-based Altria . . .

The company did not say where it would move the production. U.S. Smokeless Tobacco also has plants in Kentucky, Tennessee and Illinois.

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• Tobacco Company Pays $5M In Groundbreaking Case 

Kelly June Hill, Executrix, et al. v. U.S. Smokeless Tobacco: The Altria Group, successor to tobacco marketer United States Smokeless Tobacco of Greenwich, has settled for $5 million a lawsuit filed by the estate of a North Carolina man who died of tongue cancer.

The worker, Bobby Hill, initially went to an Ashville, N.C., lawyer, who referred his case to Bridgeport’s Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder. Partners Antonio Ponvert III and Christopher Bernard launched a state court wrongful death action in Connecticut.

From the beginning, Ponvert said, Hill and his family wanted to draw attention to the danger of “dipping snuff” and to discourage youngsters from starting its addictive use.

“It’s the first time a plaintiff has won a wrongful death chewing tobacco verdict or settlement in the history of the industry,” said Ponvert. Altria, based in Richmond, Va., also owns Philip Morris, and has a corporate policy of not settling any individual consumer cases, he added.

Altria Group spokesman Steve Callahan said, “U.S. Smokeless Tobacco is honoring an agreement it made in this case prior to its acquisition by Altria….We have no current intention to settle cases like this in the future.” . . .

The attorney said the needs of Hill’s widow and two children, 11 and 14, made a settlement for $5 million seem like a wiser course than holding out for more at trial – or maybe nothing. The process of reaching the settlement stage was long and rocky, requiring extensive discovery work and research.

In a 2002 deposition, USST Chairman and CEO Louis Bantle was questioned in another case, and he explained why some 12 million documents in USST files were stamped confidential. Under oath, he conceded they didn’t contain formulas or other business secrets. “A couple of years ago,” Bantle said, “a whole lot of lawyers came to company headquarters and they stamped ‘confidential’ on every single document we had in our possession, whether they were or not.” . . .

Some of the most significant material, said Ponvert, was in a cache of internal correspondence from young customers, aged 9 to 18, written between1978 and 1985.

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One of our experts described dying by mouth cancer as `death by autopsy.’ Literally, over a 10- or 12-month period, your face just falls away. At first, [Hill] lost part of his tongue. Then they took his whole tongue. Then it takes part of your jaw, and your cheeks and your gums. Then the tumor wound its way around his carotid artery and he died.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys Antonio Ponvert III, talking about the Connecticut smokeless settlement.

A couple of years ago a whole lot of lawyers came to company headquarters and they stamped ‘confidential’ on every single document we had in our possession, whether they were or not.
USST Chairman and CEO Louis Bantle, who explained in a 2002 deposition why some 12 million documents in USST files were stamped confidential.

Please don’t raise the price on Skoal, because I only get $5 in allowance, and can’t afford the seven cans a week that I need.
Quote from a cache of internal correspondence from young USST customers, aged 9 to 18, written between 1978 and 1985.

Smokeless Tobacco: Increasing Litigation! 

Many tobacco companies have been hit with massive litigation and their revenues continue to decline in many areas. Will the lack of more stringent regulation with smokeless products allow them to increase their overall revenues and minimize litigation with smokeless products? Many wonder if smokeless products will face greater scrutiny and more significant litigation. Skoal and Copenhagen just felt the sting of such litigation when they paid 5 million in a wrongful death case. Altria, which bought US Smokeless last year, seemed to shift any negative focus of this settlement to all the good they are doing with support programs and concepts to to reduce tobacco use by minors. Regardless of their spin on this settlement there remains an increased trend to litigate more smokeless tobacco cases. More regulation is also on the horizon.

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Chewing Tobacco Company Agrees To Pay $5 Million Settlement To Cancer Victim's Family 

The manufacturer of Skoal and Copenhagen chewing tobacco has agreed to pay $5 million to the family of a North Carolina man who died of cancer in what is thought to be the first wrongful death settlement in a smokeless tobacco case.

It was unclear because of the way the settlement was reached what effect it might have on potential litigation against chewing tobacco manufacturers, an industry segment that has been the target of far fewer liability claims than cigarette makers.

The U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co. agreed to pay the family of Bobby Hill, according to family attorney Antonio Ponvert III. Hill began chewing tobacco when he was 13 and died of complications from cancer of his tongue at age 43 in 2003. . . .

"You may not see the settlements, but this shows that U.S. Tobacco thought that $5 million was the reasonable settlement cost of this case," said Richard A. Daynard, chairman of the Tobacco Products Liability Project at Northeastern University in Boston. "This certainly says to anyone who looks at it that cases like this are worth $5 million, so go for it."

Ponvert said he was aware of only one smokeless tobacco case going to a verdict. An Oklahoma jury found in favor of U.S. Smokeless Tobacco in that case in 1986, Ponvert said.

"I think they have been flying under the radar," Ponvert said. "Because of how bad cigarettes are, I think fewer people are paying attention to smokeless, maybe until now." . . .

Ponvert said that, among other things, when teenagers wrote with product or pricing suggestions, the company responded by letter and with complimentary cans of chewing tobacco. The effect was to introduce children to candy-flavored tobacco and then "graduate" them to stronger and more expensive products, Ponvert said.

"I am very confident that we got documents that no one had ever seen before," Ponvert said. "I am sure with regard to children's letters, no one had ever gotten what we got. In the end, we had dozens and dozens and dozens."

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Hot women love dudes who spit brown juice 

First off, I had no idea that smokeless-tobacco dippers considered themselves a "brotherhood," though I guess inbreeding could explain why they persist with such a dangerous and disgusting vice. Which brings us to the Mad Men-era vice of Playboy magazine, which is publishing a 12-page co-branded Skoal advertising supplement with its 55th anniversary issue in January. Voters at SkoalBrotherhood.com chose playmate Kara Monaco (she's pretty hot, but that won't last if she dips) and rodeo/football star Walt Garrison (soon to be jawless) as the lead interviewees for the section. Skoal, which is celebrating its own 75th birthday, says site visits jumped almost 400 percent during the promo, which suggests the product is just as deadly to brain tissue as it is to mouths, cheeks and gums. Speaking of which: Here's that jawless guy from last year's Canadian anti-dip campaign, one of AdFreak's freakiest campaigns of 2007. (Keep watching this space for our 2008 freakiest-ad contest.) Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to chew some sugar-free gum. Mmmm, delicious. And it's not rotting my face!

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CT "chewbacco'' maker settles victim suit 

In the first consumer tobacco settlement of its kind, the Greenwich maker of Skoal and Cohenhagen brand chewing tobacco will pay $5 million to the family of a man who died of mouth cancer, lawyers say.

U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co., a unit of consumer-goods giant Altria, settled with the family of Bobby Hill of Canton, N.C., who died at age 42 of tongue cancer in 2005, said Bridgeport lawyer Antonio Ponvert III, who represented the family. . . .

Altria spokesman Steve Callahan said the parent is honoring a settlement offer made by then U.S. Tobacco Co. to the victim's family before Altria bought the company in January 2009.

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Chewing Tobacco to Pay $5M in Mouth Cancer Case 

The maker of Skoal and Copenhagen smokeless tobacco has agreed to pay $5 million to the family of a man who died of mouth cancer in what is believed to be the first wrongful-death settlement from chewing tobacco.

U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co. will pay the award to the family of Bobby Hill of Canton, N.C., who began chewing tobacco at 13. He died in 2003 at 42. . . .

Ponvert said his case was bolstered by previously undisclosed letters from the 1980s that the company sent to minors thanking them for their business and sending them free samples. The company even sent a can opener to one child to help open the chewing tobacco, he said.

"It was just this unbelievable trail of incredibly damning documents," Ponvert said.

Hill's case also was strong because he was a longtime user of chewing tobacco who did not drink or smoke cigarettes, factors tobacco companies point to as causing the cancer, Ponvert said.

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• Smokeless tobacco company pays family 

A smokeless tobacco company has agreed to pay $5 million to the family of a man who died of mouth cancer in what the family's attorney and an expert called the first wrongful death settlement from chewing tobacco.

Attorney Antonio Ponvert III told The Associated Press on Tuesday that U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co. agreed to pay $5 million to the family of Bobby Hill of Canton, N.C.

"This company manufactures and sells a dangerous and defective product that it knows causes addiction, disease and death in consumers who use it as intended," Ponvert said.

The company, which makes Copenhagen and Skoal brands and was headquartered in Greenwich, Conn. before it was acquired by Altria last year, confirmed the settlement in a regulatory filing, but declined further comment. . . .

this is an unusual instance and runs counter to what had been the sort of the playbook for tobacco litigation," Gottlieb said. "I think that's one of the things that makes this wrongful death settlement intriguing. Perhaps there is a new strategy afoot in terms of dealing with some of these types of cases."

But Gottlieb quickly added that Altria may have wanted to resolve legal issues remaining from its acquisition and calculated it was cheaper to settle than risk a larger award at trial. . . .

Hill's wife, Kelly, filed the lawsuit in 2005 after her husband died of cancer of the tongue, Ponvert said. Hill was 42 and had been chewing the company's spit tobacco products since he was 13, he said.

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Tobacco funds cause friction at University  

An anti-tobacco student group based in Toronto has called for an all-out boycott on involvement with the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health (SPH) because of a tobacco-industry-funded researcher and his attempt to affect the composition of Bill C-32, an act to amend the Tobacco Act.

The anti-tobacco group, called Education Bringing Youth Tobacco Truths (E-butt) identified a letter from SPH Associate Professor Carl Phillips to the House of Commons Health Committee on June 10, 2009, as unethical based on his failure to disclose his reception of funds totalling $1.5 million from U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company, now owned by Philip Morris USA.

E-butt has demanded the SPH issue a statement distancing itself from Phillip’s comments, and condemning both his use of SPH letterhead and failure to disclose his associations with the tobacco industry.

Phillips wrote the letter asking the House of Commons to exempt what he calls “low-risk nicotine sources,” such as Snus, Skoal, and chewing tobacco, including flavoured tobacco products, from the effects of Bill C-32, which is primarily purposed to protect the health of Canadians and “protect young persons and others from inducements to use tobacco products.”

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Lex - Altria 

The king of snuff died this month, but the company Louise Burtle chaired for two decades lives on as part of Altria, which acquired US Smokeless Tobacco in January 2009. Mr Burtle’s tactic of aiming fruity flavours at youths has shared the fate of most forms of nicotine marketing, but snuff is one of the few areas of growth left for the US’s largest cigarette maker.

In Altria’s third quarter, reported on Wednesday, smokeless tobacco sales were a 10th higher than last year. To UST’s well established Skoal and Copenhagen lines, Altria has added Marlboro-branded snuff. With integration savings, operating profits in the division were a third higher.

Yet if this is the growth opportunity, investors might still cough nervously.

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• Tobacco Executive Made Dipping Hip  

Mr. Bantle, who died Oct. 10 at age 81 after a long struggle with lung cancer and emphysema, was chairman of United States Tobacco Co. for two decades beginning in 1973 . . .

In the 1970s, sales of the company's Skoal and Copenhagen tobaccos were relatively small and concentrated in the upper Midwest, where Scandinavian woodcutters had spread the smokeless habit in the 19th century. Mr. Bantle ramped up advertising featuring football and rodeo star Walt Garrison and other rugged athletes.

He introduced a series of "starter" products, including fruit-flavored tobacco. Skoal Bandits were originally touted with the slogan "Take a pouch instead of a puff."

The result was annual revenue that jumped to $1 billion from $100 million in two decades and a vastly larger group of users. About 9% of U.S. adult males between 18 and 24 regularly used smokeless tobacco in 1991, up from about 3% in 1970, according to a 2002 Centers for Disease Control report.

Snuff-dipping spread to areas of the country that had never had a market for the product. "If you go to high school in Texas and you don't have a can of snuff in your pocket, you're out," Mr. Bantle told Forbes in 1980.

A self-described recovering alcoholic who used Alcoholics Anonymous to conquer his addiction, Mr. Bantle said he was shocked at the brutal treatment of alcoholics he witnessed on a business trip to Russia in 1988. . . .

C. Everett Koop, the U.S. Surgeon General at the time, crusaded against smokeless tobacco and sparred with Mr. Bantle. In a memoir, Dr. Koop described him: "Looking like a courtier of Louis XIV, [he] took an antique sterling-silver snuff box out of his pocket and tucked some tobacco between his lower gum and cheek." More often, though, Mr. Bantle smoked Kools.

Smoking was encouraged at a tobacco museum Mr. Bantle created at U.S. Tobacco's Greenwich headquarters. On exhibit were cigar-store Indians, spittoons, hookahs and a three-foot Meerschaum pipe with a relief carving of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow.

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Tobacco Issues.com: Welcome 

Welcome to "TobaccoIssues.com," where you can obtain current information on tobacco-related public policy issues and tips on how to impact them. By joining this on-line community of activists, you can keep up-to-date on issues, share information, and obtain resources that can help you make your voice heard. Together we can make a difference!

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Growing demand for smokeless tobacco boosts Nashville plant 

The smokeless tobacco plant on Harrison Street downtown may be one of the rare bright spots in Tennessee’s lagging manufacturing industry.

Nearly two years after Altria bought U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co. and its facilities for $10.4 billion — including the Nashville operations — the plant’s future is promising, fueled by the growing popularity of cigarette alternatives.

U.S. Smokeless’ Nashville processing facility manufactures dry snuff products and moist smokeless tobacco, also known as dip, under the brand names Copenhagen, Skoal and others.

While Copenhagen and Skoal were losing market share when Altria bought U.S. Smokeless in January 2009, the brands have rebounded

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• Louis F. Bantle, Chief of U.S. Tobacco, Dies at 81  

Louis F. Bantle, who helped build the United States Tobacco Company into one of the most powerful brands in the tobacco industry, gaining an 80 percent share of the market for chewing tobacco, died Oct. 10 in Greenwich, Conn. He was 81.

The cause was complications from a long struggle with cancer . . .

During his tenure, the company's sales expanded tenfold, pushing it into the ranks of the Fortune 500. But it also came under fierce legal attack from antitobacco groups who accused it of concealing the dangers of smokeless tobacco and inappropriately marketing its flavored tobacco products to young people. . . .

In 1996, Mr. Bantle founded and financed the International Institute for Alcohol Education and Training, whose House of Hope center in St. Petersburg, Russia, helped introduce the Alcoholics Anonymous treatment model to that country. He was chairman emeritus of the Alcohol & Drug Abuse Council and was a director and adviser to several residential addiction treatment programs.

He had served on the boards of Syracuse University, Fairfield University, the Taft Institute, the National Legal Center for the Public Interest and the Bruce Museum in Greenwich.

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• It's not your usual tobacco plant 

In a former Philip Morris cigarette-equipment repair plant, the nation's top tobacco company is now making something called Marlboro snus, one of the newer entries in a growing array of alternative tobacco products. . . .

The York County factory itself isn't a typical tobacco plant, either.

"It is something that is new and unique and different from anything else that we have," Ed Tucker Jr., director of smokeless tobacco manufacturing at the York plant, said yesterday during a tour of the plant.

The plant operates more like a food-processing facility than a tobacco factory. Employees wear hair nets, plastic aprons and gloves. "Clean-room" rules are enforced in areas where the snus is blended, flavored and packaged. Hand sanitizer dispensers are strategically placed around the plant.

"We use pretty extreme sanitation measures to make sure everything is clean," . . .

The FDA is still developing guidelines for safe manufacturing processes for tobacco products, but the agency could require similar sanitation measures in other tobacco plants. . . .

In July, the plant's ownership was transferred from Philip Morris to sister company U.S. Smokeless Tobacco, which is producing snus for Philip Morris.

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