Tobacco.org

Just FYI: The Smoking in 'Gran Torino' Was Done for Free 

Near the end of the closing credits for Clint Eastwood's new Gran Torino is a disclaimer that caught my attention. It reads as follows:

"No person or entity associated with this film received payment or anything of value, or entered into any agreement, in connection with the depiction of tobacco products." . . . .

The site also reports that Universal Pictures (at the behest of its parent company, General Electric) has started including a somewhat weaker disclaimer on its movies that contain smoking: "The depictions of tobacco smoking contained in this film are based solely on artistic consideration and are not intended to promote tobacco consumption." Note that they don't say they weren't paid off by the tobacco industry, only that they didn't intend for it to encourage people to smoke.

The reason this is a big deal is that for decades, the tobacco companies DID pay for product placement in films. Eileen Heyes' book Tobacco USA notes that Philip Morris paid about $42,000 for Lois Lane to smoke Marlboros in Superman II, and that Sylvester Stallone got half a million bucks to use Brown & Williamson (now part of R.J. Reynolds) tobacco products in five films in the 1980s.

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Tobacco product placements on the downturn 

2009 dawns a new age for disclaimers, product placement disclaimers in particular.

From now on, the screen will also flash “The depictions of tobacco smoking contained in this film are based on artistic consideration and are not intended to promote tobacco consumption.” Warner Bros. films add, “No tobacco companies paid for product placement.”

Most experts conclude that studios don’t want to be associated with the promotion of bad health practices. But, what does this mean for the tobacco manufacturers? While putting disclaimers is an exercise of corporate social responsibility, will it be effective?

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Tobacco product placements on the downturn 

2009 dawns a new age for disclaimers, product placement disclaimers in particular.

From now on, the screen will also flash “The depictions of tobacco smoking contained in this film are based on artistic consideration and are not intended to promote tobacco consumption.” Warner Bros. films add, “No tobacco companies paid for product placement.”

Most experts conclude that studios don’t want to be associated with the promotion of bad health practices. But, what does this mean for the tobacco manufacturers? While putting disclaimers is an exercise of corporate social responsibility, will it be effective?

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• A Brief History Of The Cigar  

Castro's regime (and American attempts to eliminated it) prompted the Bay of Pigs debacle, closed off a beautiful country with a vibrant music culture, and -- possibly worst of all -- triggered a 46-year-old trade embargo that has deprived Americans of Cuba's most prized export: its vaunted cigars.

Though Cuban cigars are perhaps the world's most revered, the stogie probably didn't originate on the island. Cigar smoking first took hold elsewhere in the Americas--exactly where and when remains uncertain. . . .

Ulysses S. Grant's cigar habit proved his undoing, saddling him with the throat cancer that killed him. And Freud was a chimney: Patients on his couch had to endure not only running commentary about their suppressed Oedipal complexes but the acrid stench from his 20-a-day cigar habit (which ultimately killed him too).

Despite the obvious health risks, cigars remain a fixture of pop culture. An episode of Seinfeld centered around a box of Cubans, while the stogie's famous champions include Michael Jordan, Rush Limbaugh and Lil' Wayne. Politicians dabble too . . .

Yet Washington is where cigar-lovers looking to enjoy a smooth Cohiba or Romeo y Julieta -- without skirting the law -- can look for hope. President-elect Barack Obama has indicated a willingness to discuss with Raul Castro the repeal of bans on Cuban-American travel and remittances--gestures that could ultimately lead to scrapping the trade embargo. For aficionados, that would be a welcome tonic for the grim times ahead. As Evelyn Waugh said, "The most futile and disastrous day seems well spent when it is reviewed through the blue, fragrant smoke of a Havana cigar."

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Somali kidnappers release 2 foreign journalists  

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- Two foreign journalists - a Briton and a Spaniard - were released in good health Sunday after nearly six weeks in captivity in Somalia, officials said.

The journalists, reporter Colin Freeman, 39, of The Sunday Telegraph and freelance photographer Jose Cendon, 34, were working on a piracy story when they were kidnapped Nov. 26. . . .

In a story published on its Web site, the newspaper quoted Freeman as saying the pair "are absolutely fine ... We've absolutely no problems at all ether physically or mentally."

"We survived on rice, goat meat and Rothmans," Freeman said. "I gave up smoking in 1992 and somehow decided now would be a good time to start up again."

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SMOKIN'! How The American Tobacco Industry Employs PR Scum To Continue Its Murderous Assault On Human Lives 

Brill's analysis inspired Bernays to stage a legendary publicity event that is still taught as a model in PR schools. To sell cigarettes as a symbol of women's liberation, he hired beautiful women to march in New York's prominent Easter parade, each waving a lit cigarette and wearing a banner proclaiming it a "torch of liberty." Bernays made sure publicity photos of his smoking models appeared world-wide.

Decades of saturation cigarette advertising and promotion continued into the 1950s via billboards, magazines, movies, TV and radio. Thanks to Bernays and other early pioneers of public relations, cigarettes built a marketing juggernaut upon an unshakable identification with sex, youth, vitality and freedom. The work for the tobacco industry, in turn, earned PR widespread credibility and launched the rise of today's multi-billion dollar public relations industry.

The Truth Hurts

IN 1952, READER'S Digest ran an influential article titled "Cancer by the Carton." A 1953 report by Dr. Ernst L. Wynder heralded to the scientific community a definitive link between cigarette smoking and cancer. Over the next two years, dozens of articles appeared in The New York Times and other major public publications: Good Housekeeping, the New Yorker, Look, Woman's Home Companion. Sales of cigarettes went into an unusual, sudden decline.

The tobacco czars were in a panic. . . .

AT HILL'S SUGGESTION, the industry created a group called the Tobacco Institute Research Committee (TIRC), and ran a full-page ad, titled "A Frank Statement to Cigarette Smokers," in more than 400 newspapers. The ad acknowledged tobacco companies had a "special responsibility" to the public, and promised to sponsor "independent research" aimed at "learning the facts about smoking and health."

This pretense of honest concern from a respected figure worked its expected magic. Opinion research by Hill & Knowlton showed only 9 percent of the newspapers expressing opinions on the TIRC were unfavorable, whereas 65 percent were favorable without reservation. . . .

After all, as PR pro Kirk Hallahan recently observed, new technology has already made you superfluous. "Today, with many more options available, PR professionals are much less dependent upon mass media for publicity," Hallahan stated in the Summer 1994 Public Relations Quarterly. "In the decade ahead, the largest American corporations could underwrite entire, sponsored channels. Organizations such as Procter & Gamble might circumvent public media altogether and subsidize programming that combines promotional and otherwise conducive messages--news, Talk Shows, infomercials, or sponsored entertainment or sports.... Channel sponsors will be able reach coveted super-heavy users...with a highly tailored message over which they exert complete control."

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Yale club with noted members struggles to reopen after more than a century of rich traditions  

Mory's, a legendary Yale eating and drinking club that traces its roots to the Civil War, has a powerful membership that includes two presidents named Bush. Foreign leaders and movie stars such as Al Pacino, Paul Newman, Dan Aykroyd, Tom Hanks and Jodie Foster have patronized the club. . . .

The club survived Prohibition, including a visit to Yale by prohibitionist Carry Nation, who was known to smash up bars with her cane and bricks. Her photo shows students drinking and smoking around her; Getman isn't sure how they pulled that off.

"There are things that happen here that aren't going to happen anywhere else," said Robin Soltesz, the club's comptroller. "They have to save it."

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• The Dish: No smoking gun 

Moviegoers have become accustomed to the "no animals were harmed" disclaimer at the end of movies. Now comes one for a new age: "The depictions of tobacco smoking contained in this film are based solely on artistic consideration and are not intended to promote tobacco consumption." Warner Bros. also adds, at the end of "Gran Torino," among other films, that no tobacco companies paid for product placement.

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Lives To Remember: Iris Bouchard * 1932-2008  

Last April four of Iris Bouchard's children stood bunched together in a spare bedroom in their mother's Bethesda home staring at stacks of it: loose pages on the desk and bookshelves, manila folders poking out of an overstuffed filing cabinet, rows of letters in wooden clementine boxes in the closet. Bouchard had died just days ago, and her sons, Stephen and Ed, and daughters, Charlie and Ellie, had come to sort through the remains of her business, the Inter-American Employment Agency. For 35 years, until Bouchard stopped working around 2004, the company placed chauffeurs, maids, butlers and other household help in the homes of the Washington elite.

Bouchard had a thing for flamboyance -- furs, jewelry, one hat that closely resembled a strawberry shortcake -- but the walls of her home office were bare. She had died of emphysema, and though she had quit smoking several years before, the smell of cigarettes still hung in the air.

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Diaz has same New Year resolutions every year 

Hollywood actress Cameron Diaz has the same three New Year resolutions every year.According to mirror.co.uk, Diaz said every year she resolves to "stop smoking, start wearing a bra and stop shopping".

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• Gotcha! Salma Hayek, more star smokers try to hide the habit 

Whatcha got there, Salma Hayek?

The "Ugly Betty" star is the latest closet celebrity smoker to be exposed after she was spotted puffing away on American Spirits this weekend in Beverly Hills alongside her 1-year-old daughter, Valentina. . . .

Hayek told Marie Claire last year that she got hooked on cigarettes while filming "Frida" - and subsequently quit last April.

"It's the s---iest vice you could possibly pick," she said. "I've tried to quit before. But this time I'm done with it. I've changed." . . .

"Desperate Housewives" star Eva Longoria Parker was desperate to keep her habit a secret after she was caught in the act while vacationing in Puerto Rico earlier this month. . . .

But why all the secrecy?

"It's so taboo," says Antonia Russo, a Manhattan image consultant who specializes in advising performing artists.

Not only does does the habit work against Hollywood's health conscious image, she says, but it's counterintuitive to being a role model for teens.

"There's definitely a concept of 'people who smoke just don't care about themselves' or they're socially irresponsible," she says. As a role model, "you wouldn't want to be a part of that."

Onetime closet smoker Britney Spears now openly flaunts her Marlboro Lights . . .

"A lot of celebrities smoke - a lot," he said. "Young Hollywood is still a big smoker. The [anti-smoking] campaign has no effect on them."

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Merle Haggard beats lung cancer, but craves pot 

Merle Haggard is not letting a bout with lung cancer get in the way of his ambitious touring and recording plans.

Seven weeks after the 71-year-old country legend had a lemon-sized tumor removed in what he calls "the greatest test of my fortitude," he said on Wednesday that he expects to work harder in 2009 than he has in 20 years.

Haggard says he is singing better now that he is in the throes of kicking his daily marijuana habit. . . .

They will be the first shows of his life where he has not loosened up before with either tobacco or marijuana, he said. "So it's gonna be interesting as to what kind of a show comes out of this body that's used to performing the other way."

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The Neediest Cases - Harlem Man, 79, Rebuilds His Life After Thieves Clean Him Out  

Mr. Ford was referring to the loss -- he calls it a burglary, but admits he does not know what really happened -- of almost all his belongings while he was in the hospital last year for complications from gout and high blood pressure. . . .

While he was in the hospital, Mr. Ford said, he kicked cigarettes, which he had smoked since age 14. But faced with the stress of pulling his life together, he resumed smoking, and is back up to half a pack of Newports a day. . . .

He leaned forward on his cane and took stock of what he called “my world.” His hallway and apartment has the institutional look of most projects in the city, but the elevators usually work, and he has views of Harlem, including City College in the distance. Mr. Ford said he regretted not having children, and regretted resuming smoking.

“That’s next,” he said, “quitting the cigarettes.”

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Will Red Lion's cigar be snuffed out? 

'Ten years ago, we were young and durable,' Red Lion Mayor Bob Frutiger said Tuesday of the volunteers who put on the 'Roarin' in the New Year' each New Year's Eve. The fiberglass cigar, which a lion character holds as it's hoisted into the air, weighs 100 pounds and is 8 feet, 3 inches long. Tuesday, the cigar was lying in the borough's garage, awaiting what could be its final rise into the sky. (Daily Record/Sunday News - Paul Kuehnel)

Tonight could be the curtain call for Red Lion's cigar-raising lion.

The popular "Roarin' in the New Year" tradition, which draws 1,000 to 2,000 people to the borough's square each New Year's Eve, is in jeopardy after 12 years.

"We're burnt out," committee member Jeff Herrman said recently. "Most of us have been doing this since the beginning. Unless we get new blood to help, this will be the last year."

But a call for volunteers in the fall led to only one new recruit, member Christina Frutiger said Tuesday.

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1990s: 10 key events 

1998: LAWSUIT EXPOSES TRUTHS OF TOBACCO

It's only appropriate that Minnesota, the state that pioneered clean indoor air, was a leader in the landmark legal action that brought the tobacco industry to its knees. The state, along with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, reached a $6.1 billion settlement and that money has been used to gild attorneys' offices as well as pay for smoking cessation programs.

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