Tobacco News

This month, District Judge Richard Leon halted efforts by the United States Food and Drug Administration to place graphic images of the consequences of smoking on cigarette packages, as a result of the allegations that these images would be unconstitutional.

Five of the largest companies in the tobacco industry sued the FDA on the grounds that these pictures, which depict the horrors of tobacco, were against their free speech rights granted by the first amendment. Ream more »

The UN’s health chief challenged governments on Monday to accelerate the implementation of a robust framework convention on tobacco control despite the “despicable efforts” of the tobacco industry to subvert it.
World Health Organisation director-general Margaret Chan told the general assembly in New York that fully implementing the UN’s anti-smoking Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, signed by over 170 countries, “would bring the single biggest blow to heart disease, cancer, diabetes and respiratory disease.”
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The lawsuit that cigarette makers are filing against the U.S. government probably won’t hold up in court, but it will mean delaying the day cigarette packs carry pictures conveying the dangers of smoking. According to the Associated Press, the estimated year-long delay the lawsuit will cause could end up saving the tobacco industry millions of dollars in lost sales and increased packaging costs.

Four of the five largest U.S. tobacco companies joined together to sue the federal government Tuesday, saying the new requirement violates their free speech. Ream more »

Over the past decade, “Big Tobacco” spent over $100 million to influence elections and legislative policy in California, according to a report, Tobacco Money in California Politics. The report can be read in full at the Center For Tobacco Policy and Organizing site. A searchable database of campaign contributions on the site provides precise figures about the campaign contributions tobacco companies are making to individual California state assembly members and Senators.
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As Indonesia struggles to address poverty and an overburdened health sector, a recent survey has found that spending on cigarettes is the second-biggest expenditure in poor households.

Rusman Heriawan, head of the Central Statics Agency (BPS), said on Sunday that the proportion of poor people’s income spent on tobacco was second only to rice.

Urban poor spent 25.44 percent of their income on rice, while rural poor spent 32.81 percent. Meanwhile, city-dwellers spent 7.7 percent of their earnings on cigarettes, with the rural poor spending 6.3 percent.
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Manitoba and Nova Scotia will join New Brunswick and other provinces actively pursuing legal action against the tobacco industry to recover health-care costs.

The Manitoba government said it intends to reach a satisfactory arrangement with a consortium of law firms hired by the New Brunswick government to handle this province’s litigation.
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NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–Altria Group Inc.’s (MO) Philip Morris USA said Friday a St. Louis state-court jury has returned a verdict for a number of tobacco companies, agreeing that 37 Missouri hospitals couldn’t recover costs for treating sick smokers.

Lorillard Inc. (LO), Reynolds American Inc.’s (RAI) R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and others were also named in the suit. Tobacco companies face frequent legal challenges, though this was just the third such health-care cost recovery case to go to trial. Ream more »

The regulations, banning the use of various additives in tobacco processing, are to be drafted by the end of 2012. Some 40 percent of tobacco grown in Poland constitutes the Burley variety, used for the production of so-called American blends, enjoying the greatest popularity among smokers here. The problem is that these brands require addition of sugar components in the production process. Ream more »

More than 20 years ago, when I was living in Washington DC and went on a course to give up smoking, one of the recommended therapies was wrapping your cigarette packet in plain paper so you couldn’t see the name of the brand. Oddly enough, this helped. I hadn’t realised until then how big a part the brand had played in my addiction; how much I was in thrall to the reassuring authority of the handsome Rothmans logo. Ream more »

Farmers have also been spurred on by Zimbabwe’s adoption of the US dollar following the collapse of its own currency, with 99 per cent of all tobacco grown in the country now exported. Operators of a farm outside Zimbabwe’s capital Harare are harvesting a fine crop of lush 16 leaf plants to be smoked dry – the Virginia method of flavouring tobacco.
Last year the tobacco sold by growers was worth about $US274 million – this year that figure has reached almost $US500 million. Ream more »