Tobacco.org

• Children's Secondhand Smoke Exposure in Private Homes and Cars: An Ethical Analysis  

In response to the growing body of scientific literature linking SHS with serious diseases, many countries, states, and cities have established policies mandating smoke-free public spaces. Yet thousands of children remain unprotected from exposure to SHS in private homes and cars.

New initiatives targeting SHS in these spaces have raised ethical questions about imposing constraints on private behavior. We reviewed legislation and court cases related to such initiatives and used a principlist approach to analyze the ethical implications of policies banning smoking in private cars and homes in which children are present.

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• “A Good Personal Scientific Relationship”: Philip Morris Scientists and the Chulabhorn Research Institute, Bangkok 

Methods and Findings

This paper analyses previously confidential tobacco industry documents that were made publicly available following litigation in the United States. PM documents reveal that ostensibly independent overseas scientists, now identified as industry consultants, were able to gain access to the Thai scientific community. Most significantly, PM scientist Roger Walk has established close connections with the CRI. Documents indicate that Walk was able to use such links to influence the study and teaching of environmental toxicology in the institute and to develop relations with key officials and local scientists so as to advance the interests of PM within Thailand and across Asia. While sensitivities surrounding royal patronage of the CRI make public criticism extremely difficult, indications of ongoing involvement by tobacco industry consultants suggest the need for detailed scrutiny of such relationships.

Conclusions

The establishment of close links with the CRI advances industry strategies to influence scientific research and debate around tobacco and health, particularly regarding secondhand smoke, to link with academic institutions, and to build relationships with national elites. Such strategies assume particular significance in the national and regional contexts presented here amid the globalisation of the tobacco pandemic. From an international perspective, particular concern is raised by the CRI's recently awarded status as a WHO Collaborating Centre. Since the network of WHO Collaborating Centres rests on the principle of “using national institutions for international purposes,” the documents presented below suggest that more rigorous safeguards are required to ensure that such use advances public health goals rather than the objectives of transnational corporations.

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LETTER: Research saves lives 

Re: "Universities fail the test," by Les Hagen, Letters, Dec. 11, and "U of A's double standard," by Dr. Charl Els, Letters, Dec. 13.

Les Hagen and Dr. Charl Els are upset with the U of A for accepting funding from tobacco companies.

How much research has been accomplished by this funding? How many lives have been saved by the outcome of this research?

I know that smoking is bad for you. I smoke and I understand it is an addiction as well as a social habit. Will I die from a smoking-related disease? Who knows? I do know that at some point, I will die.

The U of A should continue to accept tobacco funding because it needs the money to do the excellent work and research.

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FISHER: Virginia GOP's Tobacco Love Affair  

There are indeed Republicans who see the current economic crisis as a moment to put reflexive and parochial political positions aside and seek consensus. Former state Sen. John Chichester from the Fredericksburg area laid out that vision in a recent speech that has many in his party wondering how they can effectively stand up for their principles while cooperating with the governor and other Democrats.

But McDonnell, House Speaker William Howell and other GOP leaders are instead clinging to their tobacco gravy train for dear life.

Why would they do such a thing when public opinion appears to be squarely on the side of cranking up the tobacco tax?

Let's look at the numbers: Altria, the silly name that the Philip Morris corporation has adopted to try to distance itself from its cigarette business, has given McDonnell the largest gift of any it has given any Virginia politician, $15,000 already in this young gubernatorial campaign. (Two of the three Democratic candidates, Brian Moran and Sen. Creigh Deeds, have each received $5,000 from Altria this year.) The cigarette maker has given $93,000 to Republican candidates this year and $65,000 to Democrats. . . .

Republicans argue that picking on the tobacco industry could upset those companies and cause them to pick up and leave the state, leaving hundreds of Virginians jobless. It's a ludicrous argument, especially considering that Altria just got here, having moved its headquarters from New York City to Richmond just last year.

Even the tobacco industry doesn't make that argument, choosing instead to oppose a tax increase as an unfair focus on one industry.

Virginia's tobacco tax is one of the lowest in the nation. Maryland charges $2 a pack and the District's tax is $1 a pack; only deep South states and Missouri are down with Virginia in the sub-50-cents per pack tax range.

Virginia will make severe and very noticeable budget cuts next month; of that, there can be no doubt. And there's little appetite for general tax increases in any political party. But states are searching for relatively harmless ways to bring in at least a little new revenue. Hitting those whose addiction saddles taxpayers with huge medical bills is a helpful way to try to take some of the edge off the service cuts to come.

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• EDITORTIAL: Outdoor ban request prompts Escondido smoke screen 

Fourteen cities, the county and the port have adopted smoke-free ordinances for public outdoor spaces.

And then there is Escondido . . .

Members of Escondido's Youth Commission on May 23, 2007, asked the City Council to consider a smoking ban at parks, trails and other open spaces. . . .

This fall, youths organized by the Vista Community Clinic and other nonprofits swept 11 Escondido parks and picked up 26,456 cigarette butts. They made a presentation last week . . .

Councilman Sam Abed was not supportive: “Personally, I am against government regulations – especially on personal issues ... to have a blanket regulation, it violates the people's right to smoke ... definitely you are going to see a good democracy here.”

Pardon us, councilmen, but what we are seeing is bad democracy here. . . .

Two-thirds of cigarettes are sold at convenience stores nowadays. The average convenience store, according to an industry association survey, sold $393,327 worth of cigarettes in 2006.

Abed owns a gasoline station that sells cigarettes, revenues undisclosed. . . .

By standards of morality and fair play, Abed needs to recuse himself from council discussions and votes about smoking. . . .

The Fair Political Practices Commission, which oversees California's Political Reform Act, has an informal eight-step test to guide public officials on potential conflicts of interest. . . .

On one side are Escondido residents wanting to enjoy publicly owned outdoor spaces without having to inhale secondhand smoke, youth activists, nonprofits, and such damning statistics as 100 Escondidans will die in 2009 from the effects of smoking.

On the other side are Escondido Councilman Sam Abed and a big red sign saying, “Cigarettes For Sale.”

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On one side are Escondido residents wanting to enjoy publicly owned outdoor spaces without having to inhale secondhand smoke, youth activists, nonprofits, and such damning statistics as 100 Escondidans will die in 2009 from the effects of smoking. On the other side are Escondido Councilman Sam Abed and a big red sign saying, 'Cigarettes For Sale.'
The San Diego Union Tribune tears into Convenience Store owner and City Councilman Sam Abed.

• Pete Earley - Va. Legislators Indebted to Tobacco 

Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's call for increasing the state tax on cigarettes from 30 cents a pack to 60 cents was long overdue. . . .

On its Web site, Altria identifies the recipients of the nearly $7 million doled out by its political action committee in 2008. (That figure does not include contributions by individual corporate officials.) The tobacco giant contributed cash to 28 of Virginia's 40 senators and 85 of its 100 House of Delegates members.

A look at who pocketed the contributions helps explain why Kaine's modest proposal could be doomed. Both the chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, Lacey E. Putney (I-Bedford) and its vice chairman, Phillip A. Hamilton (R-Newport News), received tobacco funds. But they were hardly alone. Overall, 20 members of the committee took in Altria contributions -- and only four did not.

Altria has also been extremely generous with the House Finance Committee . . .

Altria donated to the campaigns of 18 of the 22 members of the House Health, Welfare and Institutions Committee, including Chairman Hamilton and Vice Chairman Samuel A. Nixon Jr. (R-Chesterfield).

Put bluntly, tobacco contributions helped elect the chairman and vice chairman of all three of these important committees. Only nine of the 67 elected representatives serving on these committees did not get funds from Altria's PAC.

Altria also opened its wallet for Virginia senators, especially members of the Senate Finance Committee. The company's contribution list identifies 11 of 16 committee members as getting funds, including Chairman Charles J. Colgan (D-Prince William), who also is the Senate president pro tempore. . . .

If a higher cigarette tax is supported by residents and would help protect children, save lives and generate needed funds to pay for vital state services, then voting for it would appear to be a no-brainer -- except, it seems, to the 113 Virginia politicians whose hands are stuck deep in tobacco's pockets.

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• Spousal Ties to Lobbying Test a Vow From Obama 

Linda Hall Daschle is one of the most important aviation lobbyists in town. Ms. Daschle is also the wife of Tom Daschle, whom President-elect Barack Obama has chosen to be the next secretary of health and human services. . . .

Ms. Daschle has been a lobbyist since 1997. Some early clients had an interest in health policy, like the drug maker Amgen and the tobacco giant Philip Morris.

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• MPs fall foul of 'dirty' tricks by tobacco giants  

Over the summer, MPs were inundated with postcards bearing the Save Our Shop campaign logo, urging them not to back the government's proposals, outlined last week by the Department of Health. The cards stated: 'As my local MP, I hope you will protect our independent local shops by opposing this proposal.' . . .

But it has now emerged many MPs were unaware the campaign was the brainchild of the Tobacco Retailers' Association (TRA), an offshoot of the Tobacco Manufacturers' Association, which represents the interests of three tobacco companies: BAT, Gallaher and Imperial Tobacco.

The Save Our Shop campaign did little to make its links with the tobacco lobby apparent and its postcards bore no reference to the connection between it and the cigarette manufacturers. . . .

Yesterday MPs expressed dismay that the campaign had been orchestrated and funded by the tobacco companies. 'The early-day motion very carefully avoids any kind of hint of their support,' said Frank Cook, Labour MP for Stockton North, who signed up to it. 'It's a pretty dirty, surreptitious quest they're on. I felt a bit pissed off about it. As a result of what I now know, I've withdrawn my name from the motion.' Cook said withdrawing his name from the motion was not a signal he was turning his back on small retailers.

'People will say Frank Cook no longer supports the independent newsagent or grocer,' he said. 'Well, that's a load of bollocks, but I've got to make the gesture. I've been conned by these people and I'm not going to put up with it.'

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We're contributing to Nigeria's development - BAT  

The Nigerian Area Director of British American Tobacco (BAT), Mr. Simon Welford, said that the direct investment of BAT in the country has contributed to national economic growth.

Welford, who made this known on Wednesday while delivering the fourth Annual Dinner Lecture of the Central Council of Ibadan Indigenes (CCII), said that BAT had remitted over N60 billion in income tax, excise duty, value added tax, import duty, withholding tax and personal income tax since inception while its tax receipts were in excess of N10bn per annum.

"Apart from providing employment to hundreds of youths in the state, BAT has instituted a scholarship awards scheme in support of the sustainable agricultural practice in Oyo state," he said.

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Good clean tobacco: Philip Morris, biocapitalism, and the social course of stigma in North Carolina  

In this article, I analyze the central role of economic liberalization in Philip Morris's makeover into a "responsible corporate citizen," including the firm's unlikely support for U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation of tobacco products. On the basis of fieldwork in North Carolina, I provide an ethnographic view of how the recent shift from traditional auction marketing to private contract agriculture affects differently positioned farmers and farmworkers. This transition has galvanized both potent cultural meanings associated with locality and modes of stigmatization deployed by various actors to respond to social and economic restructuring. Ostensibly about improving public health, Philip Morris's makeover, linked to stringent producer contracts and government regulation of consumption, makes U.S. farm businesses less stable, deepens their dependency on a transnational flow of low-wage labor migration from Mexico and Central America, and compounds social and housing problems that affect migrants. The tobacco industry's transition is an exemplary case of biocapitalism, a strategic merger of economic, ethical, and public health values that mirrors trends in the pharmaceutical industry. Analyzing social dynamics of stigmatization in light of health-driven production models, I show how the involvement of a private firm in regulatory politics builds on uneven social and economic conditions among people who manage and work on tobacco farms. This study expands the scope of tobacco's public health picture beyond a narrow focus on consumer health to include important social and health problems related to commercial leaf production.

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• Cigarette Shop Sign Has Some People Fuming 

The message on the marquee at the Smoke Stop tobacco store in Hutchinson has some people fuming. It says. "Smoking really is cool!"

"It sucks, it's not cool," says Jaelene Huffman.

Smoker and mother Crystal Trammell tells us she thinks smoking is cool.

"They have a right to say what they want to say," Trammell says.

Efforts promoting the image of smoking are nothing new. We've all seen the cigarette ads that obviously try to give the impression that smoking is cool. But rarely do you see that sentiment so clearly expressed. The real debate here seems to be whether putting up a sign that says smoking really is cool, is cool. . . .

The store manager says he plans to keep the sign up until he comes up with something better. Meantime the Reno County Tobacco Use Prevention Coalition plans to send the store a packet of information on responsible tobacco marketing.

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PIERCE: Tony Blair's reputation finally goes up in smoke 

So he lied after all? More than 10 years on, The Sunday Telegraph has presented evidence that Tony Blair deliberately intervened to exempt Formula One racing from the ban on tobacco advertising.

In a funny way, the apparent lie is even more shocking than the one he told in the House of Commons about Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. . . .

When the meeting with Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone first surfaced in the press, in 1997, the size of the donation was unknown. I wrote that it was £1.5 million. Naturally, New Labour's spin doctors dismissed my article as malicious fiction.

Yet within 24 hours the party had confirmed that it had, in fact, received £1 million. That night, I asked its most senior press officer if there were any more uncomfortable revelations about the party's relationship with the most powerful man in motor racing. He insisted there were not. Nevertheless, the next day I reported that a second cheque for £1 million was in the post. So, in total, the deal was £2 million.

Within days, the saintly new prime minister went on television with John Humphrys to insist: "I'm a pretty straight sort of guy. . . .

Having worked through election night, I was outside Festival Hall in May 1997 when the newly elected PM talked of the birth of a "new dawn", as thousands of supporters sang Things Can Only Get Better. What a shattering blow it must be for those who believed the lyrics that, within three months, their champion was lying through his teeth to save his political skin. No wonder people are turned off politics.

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AGUNBIADE: Another Side of Social Responsibility 

Over the past couple of years, the British-America Tobacco Nigeria (BATN) through its charity arm, the British-America Tobacco Nigeria Foundation, has cleverly used some of the noble goals of CSR to push its way further into the good books of the Nigerian public. Simultaneously its toxic products i.e. cigarettes are being showcased as cool and fashionable. Its strategy is clearly to identify the gaps in our socio-economy and provide what it considers to be solutions to poverty reduction. Hence we see its support for initiatives such as provision of water, support for farmers, and other kinds of pro-poor interventions on the rise. Last week the Foundation inaugurated an animal husbandry project and laid the foundation stone for a vocational enterprise institution. Guests at the ceremony included the wife of a Governor.

All these point to the fact that the BATN and the rest and their products are further gaining popularity and affinity with the citizenry. The unholy wholesale push of its products through a series of anti-poverty interventions should by now have set alarm bells ringing. The corporation has clearly worked out how to keep its popularity alive and by extension the romantic liaison between the killer stick and Nigerians.

In advanced countries, smoking has come up against a strong tide of opposition from a vibrant anti-smoking lobby and it is no longer deemed so fashionable and funky. Over here, the anti-smoking lobby is up against the likes of BATN's heavy duty and 'pro-people' CSR portfolio. . . .

One of the arguments being promoted by supporters are the jobs these tobacco industries are able to generate. But this is at such a high cost to the nation in terms of the number of able - bodied men and women who become incapacitated with tobacco-related illnesses. . . .

Anti-smoking lobbyists need to step up their campaign against the wiles and tactics of the Tobacco industry. A limit needs to be placed on its areas of influence. For instance targeting the vulnerable through needy interventions and flogging their harmful products in the process are not on. Government should not allow itself to be hoodwinked into accepting goodwill interventions (?) from the tobacco industry which will ultimately harm the people whose interests they (the government) were elected to protect. . . .

Anti-poverty interventions should not be used as a channel by the tobacco lobbyists to promote their products as a pleasurable way if life. Health education campaigns really need to be targeted towards the poor especially in the rural areas where many of the interventions and sales distributors are located. The rural populace need to be fully aware of the dangers involved as they inhale and exhale on their favourite brands.

Effective awareness campaigns mounted by activists require funds. The paucity of funds severely limits the extent to which the message can reach. One is not sure if the Government is sincerely disposed towards tackling smoking as one of the hazards in our society today. Early in the year a ban on smoking in public places was instituted. Not much has been heard about it since the announcement on No Tobacco Day.

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5 Stocks You Can Feel Good About  

But even if you believe in investing in socially responsible companies, you're probably also supporting companies you wouldn't choose on your own -- without even paying attention.

Just for example Tom Gardner, co-advisor of Motley Fool Stock Advisor, recently confided in me (Ilan) that he wouldn't feel comfortable investing his own money in Philip Morris parent company Altria.

Although reasonable people can -- and often do -- disagree about whether a given company is socially responsible, tobacco is one of the few sectors with wide agreement. According to the World Health Organization, tobacco use will kill 1billion people over the next century, and business legends such as Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, and (by proxy) Warren Buffett recently pledged $500 million to promote antismoking efforts around the world.

Even so, many of us -- perhaps even you -- are invested in tobacco companies through broad-market index and mutual funds.

If you're invested in an S&P 500 index fund, for example, you're automatically a part owner of Altria, Philip Morris International, Reynolds American, and other companies you might find distasteful.

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Speaker 'to probe' Blair F1 claim 

Commons speaker Michael Martin has said he is "deeply concerned" at claims Tony Blair misled MPs over exempting Formula One from a tobacco advertising ban.

The government has said the decision was not made straight after a 1997 meeting between Mr Blair and F1 owner, the Labour donor Bernie Ecclestone.

But documents suggest the then PM ordered that ministers find a way to create an exemption.

Mr Martin said he would look into two Tory MPs' claims of wrongdoing.

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