Tobacco News

With the former health minister already preparing for a High Court battle with tobacco companies over plain packaging legislation, Ms Roxon said yesterday she would approach state governments to “consider whether there are options” for a separate legal challenge, with the possibility of individual suits or a class action by states a real possibility.

“We are looking at options for what is an appropriate way to reduce levels of smoking in Australia and we can look at whether the tobacco companies are appropriately being held to account,” Ms Roxon said.
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The public health battle against obesity may be taking a cue from the states’ victory against the tobacco industry more than a decade ago.

“The more you look at the modern food industry, the more it looks like the tobacco industry,” Stanton Glantz, PhD, director of the University of California San Francisco’s Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, explains in this exclusive video report.
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John Szymanski was 11 the first time he smoked a cigarette – a filter Chesterfield Red – at the kitchen table in his childhood home in New Jersey.

His father, a butcher, and mother, a school nurse, were there, too. Neither was alarmed. But that grownup feeling he got from lighting up evolved into a two-pack-a-day habit that’s aged the Fort Myers resident beyond his 72 years. He has battled several bouts of cancer – his larynx in 1993, neck in 1999, and this year, his tongue. Ream more »

Graphic anti-smoking labels are coming to a tobacco retailer near you. But will it matter to tobacco companies’ profits?

The FDA is requiring that cigarettes sold in the U.S. feature pictorial warning labels on the top 50% of the front and back of the package. Similar warning labels must comprise at least 20% of advertisements. Domestic tobacco players such as Altria (NYSE: MO ) , Reynolds American (NYSE: RAI ) , Lorillard (NYSE: LO ) , and Vector Group (NYSE: VGR ) have until the autumn of 2012 to comply.
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Tobacco companies have long been the defensive stock of choice for investors, offering strong dividends and generating large amounts of cash. But as austerity packages bite and household budgets are squeezed, some analysts have questioned the continued health of the sector.

In January, Citi analysts shocked observers by downgrading Philip Morris International (PMI) British American Tobacco (BAT) and Imperial Tobacco, based on long term projections that smoking would decline almost to zero in some markets within 30 years. Ream more »

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to review an amendment to Louisiana’s 1998 settlement with major tobacco companies for antitrust violations.
In August, the 5th Circuit had rejected a challenge to the settlement brought by Xcaliber International, a discount cigarette dealer that was not a party to the state’s tobacco settlement. Xcaliber had claimed that a 2003 amendment to the original escrow agreement “destroyed” its ability to compete within a regional market. Ream more »

Lorillard and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco sued the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services, claiming the federal agencies stacked the FDA’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee with “a clique” who have “severe financial and appearance conflicts of interest and associated biases” on the tobacco industry.
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A woman is suing some of the nation’s largest tobacco companies in Manatee County Circuit Court for monetary damages after she developed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease after smoking, according to a lawsuit filed this month. Rebecca A. Ireland is suing several tobacco companies, including Philip Morris USA and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. Ream more »

Soon after lawyers from a tobacco company asked for time to think about a $10 million offer to settle suits filed by thousands of flight attendants, they took the offer off the table.
Attorneys for the flight attendants — who spent years working on smoke-filled planes — say they can prove that Big Tobacco banded together to thwart the deal.
Three tobacco companies offered to help a fourth pay for future judgments and attorneys’ fees if it rejected the settlement, according to a motion filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court this month. Ream more »

I was there trying the case with my partner, David Sales. Here are some of my thoughts from “inside” the trial of a tobacco case. This was a lung cancer (squamous cell) case resulting from a long history of addiction to cigarettes – RJ Reynolds cigarettes. Our deceased client, James Horner, was diagnosed with lung cancer in December of 1991; he passed away in March of 1996 at age 78.
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