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Children who have already inherited a harmful tendency to high cholesterol levels are in "triple jeopardy" if exposed to cigarette smoke, researchers said on Tuesday. American Heart Association researchers said they found passive smoke lowered so-called "good" cholesterol, or high-density lipoprotein (HDL), by about 10 percent in children aged two to 18. . . Ellis Neufeld and colleagues at Boston Children's Hospital studied 103 children with elevated cholesterol levels, who had low HDL levels or a family history of heart disease. They found 27 percent of them came from smoking households. Those exposed to tobacco smoke had significantly lowered levels of HDL. . . "To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of the effect of passive smoking in children with significant dyslipidemia (unhealthy blood fat levels) and family history of early heart disease," the researchers wrote.

A study of 336 patients with rheumatoid arthritis has shown that cigarette smoking adversely influenced the severity of their disease, according to a paper in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, a specialist publication of the British Medical Journal. Dr. Kenneth G. Saag with colleagues from the University of Iowa College of Medicine and a researcher from Japan found that "...smokers with 25 or more pack years were 3.1 times more likely to be rheumatoid factor positive and 2.4 times more likely to show radiographic erosions than never smokers."

Cigarette smoking may have caused more than 40% of adenocarcinomas found in the esophagus and upper stomach, according to a report published Tuesday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

More than 40 percent of the cases of stomach and esophageal cancer can be blamed on smoking, and quitting does not cut the risk for 30 years, U.S. researchers reported . . . Reporting in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, [Marilie Gammon and colleagues at the Columbia University School of Public Health] . . . studied more than 1,000 people aged 30 to 79 who had been diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus or stomach and compared them to 600 people who did not have cancer. . . They found the risk of adenocarcinoma was doubled among current and ex-smokers. The higher risk lasted for up to 30 years after someone stopped smoking, they added. . . Smoking also increased the risk of squamous cell carcinoma more than fivefold, they said. Ex-smokers had a risk nearly three times higher of squamous cell cancer of the stomach or esophagus.

"Patients with multiple risk factors should be informed of the increased risk for lung injury and should be instructed to promptly report even subtle changes in respiratory status or cough to their physicians," the authors write. . . Ann Intern Med 1997;127:356-364.

Young Chinese smokers may be less susceptible to some of the damages of cigarette smoke compared with their white counterparts in Britain and Australia, a new study suggests. The finding may help explain why the risk for heart disease in China is one-fifth that of other nations, despite the fact that 70% of Chinese men are smokers and Chinese women are frequently exposed to second-hand smoke. In the study, young adult smokers from Britain and Australia showed a reduced ability to dilate blood vessels in response to body signals to supply more blood -- a problem that can lead to clogging of the arteries. This reduced ability is called endothelial dysfunction, because it affects the endothelium -- the inner lining -- of arteries. In comparison, young Chinese adults had no such impairment, according to the report in the Annals of Internal Medicine. "It remains to be determined, however, whether protection from smoking-induced vascular dysfunction is caused by environmental or genetic influence, or both, and whether populations other than those in China are protected," according to an editorial by Dr. Mark Shriver of the Allegheny University of the Health Sciences in Pittsburgh.

As the tobacco industry worked on a settlement of its legal problems this year, its political-action committees donated more than $500,000 to the people with final say on the deal: members of Congress. The contributions, tabulated from federal data by the Center for Responsive Politics, were in addition to more than $2 million in industry gifts to the two major political parties during the same period -- Jan. 1 to June 30.

Now, an analysis of campaign contributions from tobacco companies shows that senators who opposed Harkin's amendment had received 15 times more tobacco money during the last election year than did supporters of the FDA funding. The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids said that of the 47 senators who had received money from the tobacco industry, 83 percent voted to table Harkin's amendment. Of the 53 senators who took no tobacco money, just 25 percent voted to table the amendment. The pattern held true in the House, too.

In one broad racketeering case that is on trial in the Adriatic city of Brindisi, some 60 defendants are described in an arrest warrant as members of a "Mafia-like association," which buys "enormous quantities of cigarettes directly" from the tobacco companies. The criminal organizations sign contracts with the tobacco companies, and the criminals have so much economic power that they insist that the company not sell to any of the gang's competitors, according to an arrest warrant in the case. . . "I am personally sure that they know the final destination of their cigarettes," Nicola Piacente, a prosecutor in the racketeering case here, said about Philip Morris and other tobacco companies. "But they have excuses and arguments that they don't."

The Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control is about to launch the state's long-awaited program for enforcing laws against selling cigarettes and other tobacco products to anyone under 18. . . But state officials say they won't try to trick sales clerks with teen-agers who could pass for young adults. "We want people 15 and 16 (years old) who look 15 and 16," said S. Chris Curtis, director of enforcement at ABC. "We want young-looking people."

With last week's historic $11.3 billion settlement with tobacco companies, Chiles probably has secured his legacy. He likely will be known as the governor who took on the tobacco industry, whipped it and, in the process, guaranteed the state hundreds of millions of dollars a year for two decades after he leaves office in January 1999. Chiles will direct as much of the money as he can to improving the lot of poor children, whom he repeatedly has called our most vulnerable citizens.

[I]t's unclear how much the marketing restrictions and anti-tobacco campaigns contained in the deal can do to keep kids off cigarettes. The tobacco industry has long said advertising does not generate new smokers. But health groups say the removal of outdoor advertising and restrictions on vending machines, coupled with anti-smoking messages, are good first steps to cutting down on the number of young people who light up. "If we start to even come close to the number of times they hear our message compared to the number of times they hear the tobacco industry's message, maybe we can start to make a difference," said Andrew Cuddihy,. . .

State Health Director Kim Belshe Tuesday announced that illegal sales of tobacco products to minors in California have decreased 25.9 percent since last year. The 1997 Youth Purchase Survey, conducted by the California Department of Health Services, also reflects more than a 41 percent decrease in illegal sales to minors since 1995, the year in which the California Stop Tobacco Access to Kids Enforcement (STAKE) Act went into effect.

The state of Hawaii began charging an extra 20 cents a pack on cigarettes Monday, boosting the tax to 80 cents a pack. The tax rises to $1 a pack in July under the law passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor.

10. (What about tobacco?) Nicotine, as commonly used, is not an intoxicant. But its addictive potential is great, and chronic cigarette smoking carries severe health risks. The wide prevalence of tobacco use under current policies makes cigarette smoking the leading cause of preventable early death. More stringent regulation is needed to protect the public health.

A company that can earn a pretax rate of return of at least 15 percent on invested capital would have to set aside only $30,378 now to have accumulated $1 million 25 years hence. On that logic, if the so-called $11.3 billion settlement with Florida were spread out evenly over 25 years, only about $3 billion would have to be invested now to support that 25-year payment stream. Also, the payments made under the settlement will be tax deductible. This means that the taxpayer will shoulder close to 40 percent.

Spain's semi-state-owned tobacco and stamp company Tabacalera said Monday it made a net profit of 8.04 billion pesetas (52.8 million dollars) in the first half of the year, up 12.7 percent from the same period in 1996. The increase was lower than market expectations of a net profit rise of 16 to 17 percent.

It's been an expensive summer for the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. But instead of giving money to lawyers and state governments to settle myriad smoking-related lawsuits, the tobacco company was happy to dig a little deeper Sunday to pay Jeff Gordon $1 million for winning the Southern 500. By winning three of stock-car racing's big-four events, the fifth-year driver joined Bill Elliott as the only men to collect the Winston Million since the program started 13 years ago.

Burley tobacco farmers who endured weather troubles in the early part of the growing season are watching their calendars with interest, hoping the first frost will come later than normal. On average, the state gets its first frost Oct. 10. "The 20th of October would help a bunch," said Danny McKinney, chief executive officer of the Lexington-based Burley Tobacco Growers Cooperative. While drought, blue mold and other hazards tobacco farmers face stunt tobacco and rob it of weight, frost wipes it out

"A bar is a bar. If I can't smoke, why bother? I'll probably never go to a bar again. Absolutely not," said Elaine Munro, 35, puffing on a cigarette between sips of a screwdriver at Casey's Tavern in Canoga Park. "People who don't smoke shouldn't go in bars."

Top marks for Benetton's Colors magazine, which devotes its current issue to smoking, including realistic takes on why people smoke and detailing the horrid health effects with gruesome images. This is exemplary, given that Benetton's market is the Gen X crowd that the tobacco companies are cynically targeting with those cool urban ads you see everywhere these days.

'The image of the Olympic Games is at stake,' IOC director general Francois Carrard said Sunday. . . Without naming any countries guilty of the practice, Carrard said the problem has mostly occurred in Asia. 'There are some Olympic transmissions which are heavily sponsored by tobacco companies,' he said. 'We want to make it clear this is unacceptable.'

candinavian Airlines System on Monday began a smoking ban on all its flights worldwide, the company said. "We have chosen to introduce non-smoking in stages and our customer surveys show that an overwhelming majority prefer a totally smoke-free environment on board" . . . During a transition period, the carrier will distribute nicotine chewing gum and nicotine inhalers on longer flights.

Joan Merk of Fluvanna County wants to spice up her garden with something new but isn't sure it's legal to plant it. "I want to plant a few tobacco plants in my garden," said Merk, who lives at Lake Monticello. "They're pretty when they bloom."

Every generation celebrates its independence from its predecessors by lapsing into a kind of momentary lunacy that, on reflection years later, seems shallow, silly and pretentious. That's my take on the 20-something crowd's current wretched fascination with cigars. There's no other defensible explanation for the faux sophistication and phony élan that are part of the laughable cigar ritual.

Reversing course by an unexpectedly large margin, the Senate dealt the tobacco industry a blow Wednesday by approving the Clinton administration's $34 million request for a crackdown on cigarette sales to teen-agers. "Big tobacco fought it because they want to keep on getting these kids hooked," said Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, the main sponsor of legislation backing the administration's funding request. "This is one step in a big battle, but it's a great step."

In a victory for tobacco foes, the Senate reversed itself on Wednesday and voted to fully fund the new Food and Drug Administration anti-youth smoking initiative. . . . "People wanted to be on record on the side of health and children, and not on the side of tobacco," said Indiana Republican Sen. Richard Lugar. He and other lawmakers said that during the recent summer break they heard from constituents who wanted them to be tougher on tobacco.

In a letter to senators, Gore said the Food and Drug Administration needs $34 million if all 50 states are to check whether stores are complying with new rules requiring identification checks tobacco buyers. . . So far, the Senate has only been willing to appropriate $4.9 million, enough for about 10 states to implement the compliance program. Senators were to vote today on an amendment by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, to the fiscal 1998 agriculture spending bill that would add another $29 million. "It is critical that the Food and Drug Administration's request for $34 million in funding be granted in order to stop these illegal sales to our children," Gore wrote in the letter made public Tuesday.

U.S. senators were asked on Tuesday for the second time this year to provide an additional $30 million for ID checks of youthful smokers. A vote on the amendment by Senator Tom Harkin, Iowa Democrat, was scheduled for Wednesday at 0950 EDT/1350 GMT. Harkin was defeated, 52-48, in July when he offered a similar amendment to fund fully the campaign to cut off cigarette sales to smokers under the age of 18. It would have offset the cost with an assessment on cigarette sales.

Texas is ready to go to trial in its $14 billion lawsuit against the nation's tobacco industry, Attorney General Dan Morales said Wednesday. A pretrial hearing in the federal case is scheduled for Monday in Texarkana and the trial is scheduled to begin Sept. 29.

The increase of 7 cents a pack, or 7.5 percent, should translate into a 4 percent retail boost. The rise, effective Tuesday, followed an increase of about 5 cents a pack in March. Analysts said the move should cover the first-year costs of legal settlements reached with Mississippi and Florida over the states' claims to recover Medicaid payments made to treat sick smokers.

Philip Morris Cos Inc (MO) and RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp (RN) said they were raising wholesale prices by $3.50 per 1,000 cigarettes on orders shipped to customers Tuesday. Philip Morris declined to comment on the reason for the price move, but an RJR Nabisco spokeswoman said, "It is a reflection of our increased cost of doing business."

Australia on Wednesday spared international sports events from a blanket ban on tobacco company sponsorship, sparking an angry backlash from doctors and the anti-smoking lobby. Prime Minister John Howard's conservative government rejected recommendations from a parliamentary inquiry that the ban on tobacco sponsorship of ordinary sporting events be extended to special international level events.

The Federal Minister for Health, Dr Wooldridge, said yesterday it would be "a great pity for Australia to lose a number of events that were of international significance" by excluding tobacco companies from sponsorship deals. His comments came before the Government's expected response today to the Herron report on tobacco, tabled in December, 1995, by a Senate committee, chaired by Senator John Herron. The Herron report recommended phasing out exemptions for tobacco sponsorship by the year 2000. The Federal Government allows four or five exemptions each year for "international events" which could be lost without tobacco sponsorship. Previously, exemptions have been given to the Formula One Grand Prix in Melbourne, the Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix, car rallies, golf competitions and yacht races. The Prime Minister, Mr Howard, was unreceptive to the Herron report when it was tabled, saying it smacked of the "nanny State". Asked yesterday if cigarette companies could expect a tougher anti-tobacco regime, Dr Wooldridge said Australia already had "the toughest regime in the world" and he did not want to "raise expectations".

On a lopsided 11-to-2 vote, the Assembly Governmental Organization Committee sent the measure to the Assembly floor over the objections of health and labor advocates, who said smoking was harmful to bar patrons and employees. `. . The bill would allow it to continue until January 1999. . . "This is a major step forward," Senator Ken Maddy, R-Fresno, told the committee. Maddy allowed a bill of his on horse racing to be converted by tobacco company lobbyists into a smoking extension bill. . . If the Assembly passes the bill, which is likely given yesterday's one-sided vote, the measure faces an uncertain fate in the Senate.

Wisconsin could have collected $7.7 million more in cigarette taxes in the past fiscal year if tribal tobacco sales were subject to the full tax, an anti-tobacco group said Tuesday. Wisconsin tribes sold 26.6 million packs of cigarettes in the fiscal year that ended June 30, according to the Tobacco Free Wisconsin Coalition report. Cigarettes sold on-reservation to American Indians are not subject to the state's 44-cent-per-pack sales tax, the group said. Cigarettes sold on reservations to non-Indians are taxed at only 13 cents per pack, it said.

Health-care funds representing more than 351,000 union workers in Missouri sued eight big tobacco companies Tuesday, seeking to recover the costs of treating tobacco-related diseases. Fifteen of Missouri's 32 labor-management health-and-welfare funds, also known as Taft-Hartley funds, filed the class-action lawsuit in St. Louis Circuit Court.

Dr. Cynthia S. Pomerleau cited "mounting evidence that smoking is becoming increasingly concentrated in people at risk for major depressive disorders, adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety disorders and bulimia or binge-eating." . . Pomerleau of the university's Substance Abuse Research Center and Nicotine Research Laboratory said that it might be necessary to treat the psychiatric problem before the person attempts to quit smoking. She urged the development of "new kinds of smoking interventions tailored to the special needs of these difficult-to-treat, at-risk populations." But researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute have found that helping hard-core smokers quit is no guarantee that they will escape the most feared consequence of long-term smoking: lung cancer. In a preliminary study of 37 people, Dr. Jill Siegfried and her colleagues found that 77 percent of those who smoked a pack or more a day for at least 25 years developed an aberration in their lung cells that may predispose them to cancer, even if they had not smoked for years.

For the first time in decades, former smoker Lauretta Bambula can taste the garlic in her food and the nutty flavor of her coffee. More importantly, the lump that was discovered in her left lung 14 months ago -- four months before she quit smoking -- has disappeared. Her doctor says the cancer is in remission. "It's been hard, but it's worth it" to quit, said a smiling Bambula, 68. "I still crave cigarettes, but these cravings are fleeting and I'm not obsessed about smoking the way I was before."

[Richard Thomas'] attorney had filed court papers seeking to dismiss the lawsuit, stating that Sally Thomas had agreed to stop smoking entirely. On Tuesday, however, the motion was withdrawn. "She said, 'I was quitting smoking,' (but) the colonel has reason to believe that's not necessarily the case," said Christopher Helt, the attorney for Richard Thomas.

Gum Tech International Inc. (NASDAQ:GUMM) has received a $179,000 opening order for the company's CigArrest (R) brand homeopathic no-smoking chewing gum, which will be sold in selected 7-11 retail convenience stores nationwide.

Dynagen, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, announced Friday that it has terminated its plan to market its NicErase-SL smoking cessation drug, due to disappointing clinical test results.

In a dramatic reversal yesterday, the Senate overwhelmingly approved the Clinton administration's request for $34 million to crack down on cigarette sales to teen-agers.

Florida's two senators found themselves on the winning side of a vote Wednesday to boost spending on a federal program to combat teen smoking.

SEN. LOTT: You know, I just -- I didn't think that that was the appropriate way for that amendment to be offered. I think we -- you know, we have a tobacco program, it's there in the law, and I have supported it in the past and I still do.

New smoking rules under debate for Howard County schools will focus more on trying to help students kick the habit than punish them for lighting up on campus, school officials say. The Howard school board is considering ways to crack down on student smoking, an issue raised last school year by Centennial High School students who said their bathrooms were so smoky that nonsmoking students couldn't use them. . . The most significant of the proposed rules is a mandatory smoking cessation class for students caught smoking or chewing tobacco on campus.

Smokers, banned from lighting up in many work cubicles, government buildings and most areas of sports stadiums -- are taking refuge in the comfy confines of smoking lounges at two malls in Atlanta and Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Sheriff's deputies say the "Marlboro Man" has developed a very nasty habit. At least 12 times this year -- seven in the past three weeks -- the bandit has walked into north Broward convenience stores and stolen display racks of Marlboro cigarettes. On average, the bandit steals 100 packs at a time. . . Nothing but Marlboro cigarettes have been taken in any of the robberies . . .

The good news is, more tobacco retailers in Summit County appear to be complying with the law than in past years. But the troubling fact remains that the smoking rate among minors continues to waft upward, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while public health authorities pressure retailers to follow the law.

The Legislature sent Governor Pete Wilson a bill yesterday to allow people exposed to secondhand smoke to sue tobacco companies. The fate of the bill is uncertain, however, because lawmakers have already sent Wilson a bill that allows individuals to sue tobacco companies. The GOP governor has said he would sign that bill. Approved yesterday was a bill by Senator Byron Sher, D-Stanford, that would allow people who are victims of tobacco company fraud, misrepresentation or conspiracy to sue as well as people exposed to secondhand smoke.

When the Marlboro Man's money was flowing like water, Schubert routinely sent plane tickets to unattached college swimmers so they could compete as Nadadores in the national championships. It was perfectly within the rules. So what if they had to be introduced to their teammates on the first day of competition? As a result, Mission Viejo usually clinched all three titles about midway through the four-day national meets. Without the rent-a-swimmers, they might have had to wait until the third day to celebrate.

The Federal Government is considering a nationwide ban on cigarette vending machines and will examine listing nicotine as a poison as part of an attack on smoking, particularly among the young. But big international sporting events such as the Australian Grand Prix will still be exempt from a ban on tobacco advertising, according to the Government's response to the Senate committee report into the tobacco industry and the health effects of smoking. The response, released yesterday with the report, is tough on the sale and advertising of tobacco.

The first of two general strikes was called for Sept. 17-18, and the second for Oct. 8-9, said Willy Mutunga, a spokesman for the reformist National Convention Assembly, an umbrella group of religious, human rights and civic groups. . . Kenyans were also being urged to boycott alcohol, tobacco and other goods on which the government collects excise taxes.

First the commercials told us the name of the drug but not what it did. Now they're telling us what it does without giving the name. If you put it all together, you get Zyban, the first stop-smoking pill available on the market.

People vowed to quit smoking when cigarettes reached $1 a pack, Wilson said. Then it was $1.50. Now, with $2 a pack looming, "We haven't heard anybody say that 'I'm giving it up because of that.'" For the time being, it doesn't look as if the price increase will deter many smokers. "My husband smokes, and he doesn't care what they cost," said Tamar Moniz of Lexington. Margaret Marcum, a clerk at the PDQ Market, agreed as she handed a pack of Marlboros to a customer. "They'll buy them, whatever the cost," Marcum said.

He smokes a pack of cigarettes a day and is used to lighting up in public, which is why Al Unser Jr. was shocked yesterday morning when a restaurant waiter told him to put out his cigarette. "What's next?" Unser joked. "I can't drink coffee because it's bad for my health?" One of the most famous names in IndyCar racing, Unser Jr. is not very health conscious. . . Not very well-read when it comes to health matters, Unser Jr. didn't know that it's now illegal to smoke in California restaurants, even in a restaurant's patio. "Can you believe it?" he asked.

Deborah Hawkins, who last week married Hoyt Axton, said she rationed marijuana to the singer-songwriter after he quit smoking tobacco on his doctor's orders. "I'd give him a small amount in the evenings... I'm guilty of that and I'm sorry," Hawkins said Wednesday as she pleaded guilty to possessing dangerous drugs and drug paraphernalia. Judge Jeffrey Langton gave her a one-year deferred sentence and fined her $1,000. Axton faces identical charges. . . Axton, who is recovering from a stroke two years ago and uses a wheelchair, is working on a new album. . . A doctor told him he risked a second stroke if he continued to use tobacco, so he turned to marijuana, Hawkins said.

Felix Rendacker, a spokesman for the tobacco forces, told me, "We have always known that bad beef can cause stomachaches and nausea. But there is still some question about whether tobacco can make you sick." "If this is true, why are you paying billions to keep the states from suing you?" I asked. "They need the money and we don't." "Is there any tainted chopped meat in your cigarettes?" "That's a trade secret. . . "

Let the tobacco companies sponsor cancer research or emphysema wards if they're looking for something constructive to do with their money . . . This whole discussion has been dislodged from its natural moment in time which was about five years ago, when Ros Kelly was the Federal Minister for Sport. She had been convinced to do something when shown a comprehensive study which stated, in the Herald summation, that "in 1984 the most popular brand of cigarettes among children aged 12 to 14 in three States coincided with the brand sponsoring the football code in each State. "In NSW the preferred brand was the League sponsor Winfield; In Victoria it was Peter Jackson, the major sponsor of the then VFL; and in South Australia it was Escort, the SAFL sponsor. "A similar pattern was evident in 1987 ..."

Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, a University of Minnesota epidemiologist, compared the eating and behavioral practices of 107 rural and small town teen-age vegetarians in Minnesota with those of 214 otherwise similar meat-eating adolescents. . . They were likelier to use their safety belts, but were just as likely as their meat-eating peers to smoke cigarettes, use marijuana, exercise and brush their teeth, she said. The study was published in the August issue of the American Medical Association's Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. . . She found that: Twenty-two percent of the vegetarians and 19 percent of the nonvegetarians smoked at least weekly.

Patients and staff at University Hospital soon will be able to smoke in comfort. The University of Utah's Board of Trustees has approved the hospital's request to build a patient and visitor smoking shelter in front of the hospital and a staff smoking shelter behind it. Total cost for the heated, three-sided sheds: $66,038. The money will come from hospital revenues.

SHARES of Molins plunged by two-fifths yesterday after the group said weak demand for cigarette and corrugated board machines had halved interim operating profits and will lead to "substantially lower" second-half profits. . . A shake-up in the huge Chinese tobacco industry, which is dominated by the government-owned China Tobacco, depressed demand in the Far East and pushed one £5m purchase out of the reporting period. This caused operating profits in Molins' cigarette machines business to fall to £7.7m from £11.6m last time.

Depression is alleviated by any number of drugs, from Prozak to Valium to alcohol to tobacco. Huxley gave his protagonists Soma, which took them on a virtual vacation of the mind, sparing them the realities of everyday life.

It seems to me that the most equitable thing to do would be to divvy up the money evenly to every man, woman and child in Florida. Based on 14 million residents (give or take), that works out to $807 each.

The lawsuit, originally filed in March 1996 by lead plaintiff Barbara Smith of Pleasant Hill, Mo., was denied class status by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis last week, the cigarette maker and plaintiff's attorneys said. Smith's attorney, Ken McClain, said class status would have allowed just a few plaintiffs to represent the interests of a class of roughly 1,000 smokers who have contacted him. With last week's ruling, some 500 plaintiffs may seek entrance to the Kansas City courtroom of U.S. District Judge Ortie Smith next month to present their cases, he said.

The Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has decided not to accept for appeal a lower court ruling in the Smith case. The August 26 order denied certification of a proposed class of Missouri residents who claimed to have suffered injury as a result of smoking Brown & Williamson cigarettes. The Court of Appeals order means that the case cannot go forward to trial as a class action so that if the plaintiffs wish to proceed, they must pursue the case as an individual product liability lawsuit. . . "There will be more plaintiffs than either the court or the company wants," McClain said.

THE TOBACCO industry isn't the only one that covets China's huge population of smokers, estimated at 320 million last year. There's also the growing industry aimed at people trying to stop smoking. At last week's 10th Annual World Conference on Tobacco or Health in Beijing, sponsored by the World Health Organization and various government agencies, SmithKline Beecham PLC, Pharmacia & Upjohn Inc. and about a dozen Chinese manufacturers were busy explaining to public-health officials and antismoking activists how their products could help reduce smoking in the world's biggest cigarette market.

Nassau's ever-changing smoking ordinance went through a few more changes before it was unveiled at yesterday's meeting of the county legislature's health committee, and it apparently will go through yet a few more changes before the full legislature gets its hands on the measure. Legis. Vincent Muscarella (R-Franklin Square), chairman of the health committee, said he and his colleagues would consider including outdoor restaurants and making other revisions before sending it to the rules committee and then to the full legislature.

About 200 people and a ballroom band helped Lorillard Tobacco Co. celebrate the formal opening yesterday of its $17 million corporate headquarters in Greensboro. The company has been making cigarettes in Greensboro for decades, but its headquarters was based in New York City until May.

Cigarette sales have increased in Wisconsin, providing additional tax revenue for the state treasury and disappointment for smoking foes. Despite health warnings, cigarette consumption in the fiscal year that ended June 30 was 2.2 percent greater than the previous year. That produced about 3.3 percent more revenue, or $6.5 million, than was anticipated, the Department of Revenue said.

And in the 1990s, family-run tobacco farms and homesteads are fast disappearing from the Eastern North Carolina scene. But tucked away in a grove of pines on the line between Johnston and Wilson counties, just past Kenly, is one farm that is unlikely to fall to bulldozers. The Iredell Brown Farmstead is part and parcel of the Tobacco Farm Life Museum, which strives to preserve the history and cultural heritage of the Eastern North Carolina farm family.

None of these conditions, however, resulted from deliberate government policies to inflict addiction, long-term heart ailments, dioxin-induced cancer and such upon us. To the contrary, let's give the policymakers credit for sincere, well-intentioned policies they believed at the time -- and which prevailing attitudes seemed to indicate -- would make bad situations better for us.

Many Kentuckians think tobacco carries far more economic weight than it does, said Dennis Quillen, a professor of geography and planning at Eastern Kentucky University who has researched tobacco. Quillen argues that tobacco accounts for only 0.66 percent of personal income in Kentucky. He used an analysis that subtracted production costs from farmers' gross tobacco income. His conclusions drew a fiery response, illustrating the power of Kentucky's economic, historical and cultural ties to the crop.

The biggest surprise in last week's Wisconsin revenue numbers was an unexpected 2.2 percent increase in cigarette taxes. Put bluntly, Wisconsin residents are smoking more cigarettes, despite the wide spread news coverage that it can lead to a very ugly death. . . Meanwhile in Madison, lobbyists are preparing for the upcoming fight on cigarette taxes. At midweek the Assembly will take up the state's 1997-99 state budget bill. The version being promoted by Republicans calls for a 15-cent-per-pack increase. The budget version prepared by Senate Democrats called for a 19-cent-per-pack increase.

In the images that make up the iconography of the battle over smoking, it is among the most striking: seven suited tobacco company executives standing before Congress, swearing that nicotine is not addictive and that no one had proven that their products cause cancer. . . But for an industry that largely shaped the legal, legislative and health debate over smoking for four decades, old habits die hard. Despite Goldstone's testimony and the recent settlement plan, most of the major cigarette producers still refuse to publicly acknowledge that cigarettes cause cancer or that nicotine is addictive.

[The cigarette price hike] is also calibrated to head off hoarding by wholesalers and ease consumers into paying more, says Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Discover tobacco analyst David Adelman. But the latest hike is just a start, he says: If the settlement is passed, Adelman predicts the companies would need to raise prices by an additional 33 cents a pack to cover initial costs of the settlement and 40 cents a pack more over the next five years.

The artifacts business, although often beautiful and fascinating, has always had a specialized relationship to reality, as may be seen in "The Image Business: Shop and Cigar Store Figures in America," an exhibition of cigar-store Indians, along with cigar-store Turks, Scots, sailors and dozens of other wooden shop figures, at the Museum of American Folk Art in Manhattan from Nov. 8 through Jan. 11.

Clipper Cruise Line has announced that smoking will no longer be allowed in its ships' interior areas: cabins, hallways, lounges and dining rooms. Passengers, however, will still be permitted to smoke on the outside decks. The policy has gone into effect because of the increasing number of passengers who objected to smoking, even after the line tried to reduce the impact by installing "smoke eaters" in ceilings and limiting smoking to restricted areas. An article in Science magazine made it clear that scientists now have proof of genetic-level damage done to lung cells by cigarette smoking, the first direct link between tobacco and cancer. This tipped the scales for Clipper. More information can be obtained from Clipper Cruise Line at 800-325-0010.

R. J. Reynolds' new cigarette ad campaign makes it clear the company is still targeting young people. Congress must look closely at the tobaccosettlement to ensure it protects the public and not just the industry.

I like the cool and heft of it, dull metal on the palm,
And the click, the hiss, the spark fuming into flame,
Boldface of fire, the rage and sway of it, raw blue at the base . . .

Several weeks later I was shown a critique: virtually the only revision dealt with the cigarette line. My joke had been expunged. Oddly the brand name of the cigarette was still there. Since the revision was ordered by the studio's legal department, I believe my joke may have clashed with some contractual arrangement between the cigarette manufacturer and the producers. That's what is known as product placement. I cannot prove it, but I suspect the same kind of arrangement may explain some of the otherwise inexplicable cigarette moments that Mr. Klein writes about.

The cosmetics provision is one of a handful of issues threatening the latest FDA overhaul bill to emerge from Congress. . . Kennedy also opposes provisions he says would eliminate FDA protections against unsafe or ineffective medical devices and possibly interfere with its ability to regulate tobacco, a power the administration is hoping to increase with any nationwide settlement with the tobacco industry.

In recent days, Mayor Thomas M. Menino has made headlines on the public health front, taking a tough stand against the tobacco industry and pushing an initiative to battle cancer. But Menino will have to do a lot more than that to overcome criticism that the city is barely out of the dark ages when it comes to controlling the No. 1 preventable cause of cancer: tobacco. . . "Boston is terrible for the inaction it has taken," said Joseph Cherner, president of Smokefree Educational Services, a national advocacy group, when asked to grade the city's efforts on tobacco control.

The original "sin tax" may be dead, assigned to a permanent home in purgatory. But a revised "sin tax" -- one that would tax cigarettes while exempting beer and liquor -- has emerged as a strong possibility to fund Erie County's share of a new Buffalo Bills lease, several sources indicated Wednesday. Whether that's the leading scenario for funding a new lease that could keep the Bills here for 15 more years remains unclear.

But talk to the warehouse owner or the tobacco farmers and you'll get a decidedly mixed view about the actual use of their wares. Even Andy Anderson, co-owner of Banner Warehouse, just gave up smoking after 35 years. "I was enjoying it too much," he says with a grin, admitting he was suffering from shortness of breath. But he still has no qualms about being in the business of selling a product that critics link to the deaths of millions of people. "Everything I've ever had in my life comes from tobacco," Mr. Anderson says proudly, displaying the kind of compartmentalized thinking that's typical in tobacco country.

Antismoking advocates team up with tobacco farmers to protect rural economies of the South. . . The health advocates are "very important to us," says J.T. Davis, a board member of Concerned Friends for Tobacco, a Virginia-based advocacy group. "They wield a lot of power in Washington, and that's why we're looking to them."

Left out of the $368 billion national tobacco settlement, some growers seek a share of the deal. Some are looking to new crops.

The Florida Attorney General's Office decided on Friday that it will not intervene in disciplinary action taken against a prison inmate who claimed he was retaliated against for cooperating with the tobacco industry. David Brannon, the attorney general's branch chief for corrections litigation, said his office found no evidence to support the claim. Bobby Gerald Posey, one of 1,200 inmates at Baker Correctional Institute near Jacksonville, helped the tobacco industry assemble a portion of its defense of Florida's multibillion-dollar lawsuit against cigarette makers. . . The tobacco, manufactured from 1935 to 1978, was distributed largely in prisons to keep the peace and also passed out in state hospitals. Posey, who is serving a 297-year sentence for sexual battery, gave a damning description of the cigarettes to tobacco investigators this summer as the industry prepared for trial. Among his allegations: that hundreds of juveniles had access to the cigarettes.

Prayer and thanksgiving are natural components of the centuries-old art of pipemaking. Tourists may visit the quarries and trails of the federal government's Pipestone National Monument here, but only Indians may extract the rich red stone. To them, quarrying is a deeply rooted cultural, spiritual and, for some, economic activity. Now a small group of Pipestone Indians has taken that spiritual tie in a new direction by forming what amounts to a church, the Keepers of the Sacred Tradition of Pipemakers. As much as promoting the spirituality of the pipe, it is a move that is aimed at using the law to preserve Indians' right to make at least part of their living from selling pipes and trinkets made from the pipestone found here. It is a move that also has divided families and brought controversy to the local Indian community.

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. launched Salem Preferred, a "better-smelling" cigarette, in the U.S. four years ago, only to see its hopes go up in smoke. But now Salem Preferred has a new life in Japan. The cigarette, renamed Salem Pianissimo and tweaked to reduce its smoke, has gained a respectable 1.2% share of Japan's $33 billion tobacco market . . Pianissimo's story shows how overseas markets can breathe a second wind into products and technologies that flop in the U.S. It also offers a glimpse of possible approaches in marketing so-called safer tobacco products

1997 Kids Community Challenge -- Making sure that the more than 200 children aged 5 to 12 who competed were all winners who felt good about themselves without fear of head-on competition. . . Under the theme Say No to Drugs and Yes to Fitness, the children romped for an afternoon at Lee Jackson Field at the University of Akron . . "Hold your nose and suck into the straw to demonstrate what happens when you smoke cigarettes," Akron DARE officer Laura Beckley invited one cluster of burgeoning athletes, some of whose shoulders barely reached the demonstration table.

An elderly woman died early Monday in a fire in south Minneapolis that apparently was started by a cigarette she was smoking.

[T]he degree to which the rules have been twisted shows the extent to which lawmakers will go to win passage of a bill they and their political patrons truly want. Even Assemblyman Dick Floyd (D-Wilmington), who carried the first version of the bill early in the year--there have been three versions so far--is looking askance at the lengths to which the measure's backers have gone. "It's a dirty deal all the way through," Floyd said. "It's very protective of several big industries."

B.J. Hall, a former Portland executive and son of a tobacco farmer, has been installed as new board president for the American Lung Association of Oregon. Hall has been on the association's board since 1992, but just recently took over the helm for a two-year term as board president. That's a far cry from his roots. "My father's one of the largest tobacco farmers in Kentucky," said Hall.

Hans J. Eysenck, 81, a popular, pioneering and controversial German-born British behavioral psychologist best known as a champion of the statistical analysis method and his opposition to the discipline of psychoanalysis, died Sept. 4 at a hospice in London. He had cancer. . . Other controversial works included his 1965 book "Smoking, Health and Personality," which propounded that smoking does not cause cancer but is a symptom, along with cancer, of mysterious hereditary and emotional illnesses.

If you go to the movies, you may see people onscreen driving fast, fighting, shooting guns, jumping into bed to have unprotected sex with near-strangers and violating the law in dozens of different ways. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and the American Lung Association are not visibly concerned about all these undesirable forms of behavior. They are upset, though, whenever they see someone in a film light up a cigarette or a cigar. . . Americans have every right to object to truly offensive movies, and so does Mrs. Clinton. But to insist that every film serve the latest fashionable cause would yield bad art and drive audiences away from theaters.

Philip Morris Cos. initial share of the tobacco industry's settlement of health-related lawsuits with Florida will be $371 million, Loews Corp.'s Lorillard cigarette unit will pay $41 million and RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp. will pay $40 million. The money is due Sept. 15 and is part of the industry's first $550 million payment, the companies said in regulatory filings last week.

"This council," he said, "can be proud of the fact that, here in Chicago, the corporate authorities have led the way (against liquor and cigarette ads) when other cities around this country were timid." It was strange praise to lavish on a governing body that had sat on its collective hands for more than a decade until Wednesday, when in an abrupt about-face, the aldermen voted 44-1 to approve the prohibition in residential areas of the city. . . For 14 years before that, a lone South Side priest and his parishioners waged an ostensibly hopeless battle to get the council's attention--and action against such signs. But ranged against them was a heavyweight cast of politically connected lobbyists and a cornucopia of campaign funding . . never in all that time did the council take a head-to-head stand against the alcohol and tobacco billboards that Rev. Michael Pfleger . . calls "24-hour drug dealers" preying on inner-city neighborhoods. Without a touch of irony, Burke tipped his hat to Pfleger on Wednesday, noting, "On many occasions, his was a very lonely and solitary battle." The battle was particularly lonely and solitary because Pfleger was challenging three industries--the billboard, tobacco and alcohol companies--with tight political and financial ties to the council.

Only nine of the state's 122 school districts have barred tobacco use on campus, an annual state report shows. The report is meant to dramatize the need to keep children away from tobacco.

As the National Spit Tobacco Education Program (NSTEP) closes out its second season of collaboration with Major League Baseball, it can point to a new national survey that found the use of spit tobacco declined by one-third among 12 to 17 year olds from 1995 to 1996. A panel discussion on tobacco use and anti-tobacco initiatives that will include former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop will comprise most of the morning session on Saturday, September 13 at the Fifth Annual Oral Health 2000 National Consortium being held at the Grand Hyatt Atlanta.

Congress is moving slowly to increase federal medical research funding, but Sens. Connie Mack, R-Fla., and Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, have a better idea: Double the budget by taxing tobacco.

Persian Gulf War veterans, under revised language in a foreign relations bill, would not be eligible to make claims against $1.3 billion in Iraqi funds now frozen in American banks. Instead the bill, rewritten recently by Senate Foreign Relations chairman Jesse Helms, R-N.C., places at the head of the claim line private corporations - including at least seven big tobacco firms. Veterans' groups expressed outrage.

The compound is called NNK, short for 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone, and it was detected at low levels in the urine of nonsmokers exposed to cigarette smoke, according to a report presented this week at the American Chemical Society (ACS) meeting in Las Vegas. NNK is found only in tobacco smoke.

"This is the first time that a metabolite of a tobacco-specific lung carcinogen has been found in the urine of non-smokers exposed to environmental tobacco smoke under field conditions," says Dr. Stephen Hecht of the University of Minnesota Cancer Center, who presented his results today at a national meeting of the American Chemical Society. The subjects of Hecht's study were nine non-smoking hospital workers caring for live-in patients in the smoking area of a Canadian veterans hospital. Samples of there urine were sent to Hecht's laboratory where they were analyzed to detect a human by-product of a substance called NNK. NNK is the only known lung carcinogen found solely in tobacco smoke and is formed from nicotine. Hecht said NNK is particularly efficient at inducing adenocarcinoma in animals, a cancer of the lung periphery common in smokers. In the body NNK is broken down into another substance called NNAL-Gluc, which is excreted in the urine. All nine test subjects had detectable NNAL-Gluc levels. The levels were about 70 times lower than those found in smokers.

• 9/10/97 FTC Bid for New Nicotine Rating Bloomberg/NY Newsday
• 9/10/97 FTC Proposes Switch in Tests of Cigarettes wp
• 9/9/97 FTC Plans to Alter Cigarette Testing MSNBC
• 9/9/97 FTC Proposal Revamps Tobacco Ads AP Washington Post
• 9/9/97 FTC Proposes Changes in Cig Tar, Nicotine Testing Changes Reuters
  
  "We now know that the way a person smokes affects the amount of tar and nicotine they get. The present system doesn't reflect this," said Jodie Bernstein, director of the Federal Trade Commission's consumer protection bureau.
• 9/9/97 FTC Changes Disclosure Rules for Cigarette Nicotine Levels The Wall Street Journal (Pay Registration)
  
  As early as Tuesday, the agency is expected to propose a new system that would show a range of tar and nicotine levels, rather than a single -- and, critics say, misleading -- number. The proposal is likely to force an industrywide makeover in cigarette advertising.

A Republican legislative leader said Tuesday that Gov. Branstad would be asked to call a special session of the Legislature to authorize an attempt to recover tax-funded Medicaid costs from cigarette manufacturers.

In what was hailed as a victory for anti-smoking efforts nationwide, R.J. Reynolds Co. has agreed to pay 14 California cities and counties $10 million, most of which will fund an anti-smoking campaign aimed at teen-agers. As part of the deal, the cigarette maker will stop its Joe Camel advertising campaign in California. "The fence is around California: No more Joe Camel ads," said Louise Renne, the city attorney in San Francisco.

• 9/9/97 CALIFORNIA: RJR Settles with San Francisco; JOE CAMEL on Way Out SF Examiner
• 9/9/97 $10 Million Settlement in Joe Camel Suit AP Washington Post
• 9/9/97 RJ Reynolds to Pay $10 Million to Settle Suit Reuters
• 9/9/97 JOE CAMEL is History in CALIFORNIA; Tobacco Firm Settles Suit; SF to Share in $10 Million San Francisco Chronicle
  
  As a condition of the settlement, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to release its internal marketing documents that describe the Joe Camel campaign to city attorneys in San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles and 11 California counties that sued. The cities and counties claimed the ad campaign violated state consumer protection laws. It appears to be the first court order nationwide in which a tobacco company has agreed to suspend an advertising campaign.
• 9/9/97 RJ Reynolds Tobacco Co. Reaches Agreement in Mangini Suit PR Newswire
  
  "This in no way should be construed as a concession on the merits of any of the claims in this case," said Charles A. Blixt, RJR senior vice president and general counsel. "The Joe Camel campaign was directed to and highly successful with adults in their 20s who choose to smoke. The agreement we are announcing today simply brings practical closure to this case."

"Ban smoking?" adds Vladimir Olshansky, 46. "That's ridiculous. In Vegas there will always be smoking, so I'll just go there. When you play cards, you do so for five to six hours. How can you not smoke?" Indeed, that's the question being asked these days by lots of California card-club operators, who fear that they will lose plenty more patrons besides Messrs. Duoc and Olshansky if a statewide ban on smoking in their establishments takes effect on Jan. 1. Many of their customers, they believe, will flee either to casinos in neighboring Nevada -- where there is no smoking ban -- or to casinos on Native American reservations across California, where state health officials say smoking will still be allowed.

And their "secondhand" smoke terror is a powerful weapon, since many people lack all sense of proportion: Amid auto exhaust and smokestacks, they worry about people smoking near their office building's doorways. . . Grown-ups in a free country, as opposed to children in a nursery, ought to be able to make their own choices in these areas. Even Adolf Hitler, that strong opponent of tobacco, did not forbid smoking in bars.

Canada's health ministers will take the temperature of medicare and sort out the nuts and bolts of a new national blood agency at their annual meeting beginning today in Fredericton. They'll also discuss suing cigarette makers, even though they've been invited to a local jazz concert sponsored, in part, by a major tobacco company.

Salem sponsors a "virtual reality" dome, where teen-agers attack each other with laser guns. Empty packs of American cigarettes can be redeemed for tickets to movies, discos and concerts. Hong Kong is one of the battlefronts of the modern-day Opium War. While Britain went to war last century ago to keep its Indian-grown opium streaming into Chinese ports, today American tobacco companies win profits and build addiction throughout Asia, where tobacco consumption is growing at the fastest rate in the world. Indeed, American cigarette companies have agreed to the proposed domestic tobacco settlement in part because it does not touch them overseas, where profits are soaring and they can boldly target teen-agers without fear of lawsuits or powerful critics.

In the past year, JT has launched cigarettes that tout low sidestream smoke and less stale lingering smell, in response to the surprise success of such so-called polite cigarettes marketed by R.J. Reynolds. These moves, JT product manager Toshihiro Okawa said, are part of the company's effort to defend its market share, which fell below 80% in 1995 in the face of tougher foreign competition. . . as foreign tobacco companies chase niches, we will match all their products. It's an all-out war."

BRITAIN is expected to lift its long-standing block on an EU law to ban tobacco advertising as a result of a new compromise plan to be discussed in Brussels today. After seven years of deadlock over the draft directive, amendments tabled by the Luxembourg EU presidency appear to have done enough to persuade the Government to end Britain's opposition to the plan and vote for action at European level. The Government has already promised to produce a White Paper on the fight against tobacco consumption by th

A CAMPAIGN to thwart the Government's attempts to stop people smoking is being launched at a TUC fringe meeting tonight by members of four unions. They fear that 68,000 jobs could be lost. The "jobs going up in smoke" campaign is backed by the Tobacco Workers Alliance, which is supported by the Transport and General Workers, MSF (Manufacturing Science Finance), the GMB and the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union.

Now I've seen it all: a magazine named Milton (after its publisher, Milton Berle) that proudly proclaims, "We drink, we smoke, we gamble." I kid you not. Uncle Miltie must have taken his lead from the cigar craze, figuring it was worth diversifying into the other vices. Who knew there was so much to say about craps and cognac? For instance: "No matter which cigars you smoke and potables you drink, the question invariably comes up: Should I dip my cigar in the snifter before smoking it?" Now, there's a question. . . There aren't a whole lot of ads, though. This is only the second issue; maybe Milton needs more time to build its liquor-and-tobacco base. Then again, maybe runaway indulgence is just too hard to sell.

As a smoker, what do you think of the tobacco element in Formula One sponsorship? Nasser: I don't smoke cigarettes, but I smoke cigars. We have to react to the market place and we must react to the mood of consumers in our market. In the U.S. market, smoking and the advertising of smoking are not in the best interests of corporations or their shareholders. We will therefore not touch, absolutely not touch, any form of cigarette advertising [associated with motorsport] in the U.S. And that policy has extended for us beyond the U.S. because we think that's the right thing to do.

Sano Corp said Wednesday it has seen positive results from a dose-related Phase II trial of its Nicotine/Mecamylamine Transdermal System, used to help patients stop smoking. The company said Phase III trials of the stop-smoking patch are under way, with results expected at the end of this year. The company said the product simultaneously delivers nicotine and mecamylamine, and early reports suggest it may be particularly effective in preparing smokers to quit.

Richmond-area consumers, hit this week by the largest price increase for cigarettes in nearly a decade, began scrambling for alternatives. "I thought about getting my own tobacco so I could grow my own," Judy Bridgewater said. . . Many people have been paying close to $1.90 per pack, "so they're not going to quit at $2 a pack," Bridgewater predicted.

Recognized for smoking awareness campaigns: Martin P. Wasserman, state secretary of health and mental hygiene, and Marilyn Lauffer, a nurse at Howard County General Hospital, have been recognized by the Howard County Health Department for contributions to public health.

A federal appeals court Friday reversed a lower court ruling that had thrown out the tobacco industry's challenge to Connecticut's Medicaid suit against cigarette makers. In its decision, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the lower court to reconsider its ruling granting a motion by Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal that had dismissed the industry's lawsuit.

A judicial officer in Minnesota has concluded that 834 research reports and other documents once held by tobacco industry lawyers no longer should be kept secret. The finding, issued Wednesday by Special Master Mark Gehan, is a major victory for Minnesota lawyers suing the tobacco industry. . . Yet the reasons behind the finding, which must be reviewed by Ramsey County District Judge Kenneth Fitzpatrick, remained as cloaked in mystery as the documents. Only a brief summary of the special master's conclusions was made public. Gehan also wrote a confidential, 60-page report to the judge about his review of 2,500 documents from the Liggett Group, the smallest U.S. cigarette maker. It is not clear whether the report later will be released.

A judicial officer recommended Wednesday that a judge release hundreds of secret tobacco company documents, a decision the state attorney general's office called monumental. "This ruling pries open their lawyers' vaults and requires the companies to turn over hundreds of secret documents never before seen outside the industry," Attorney General Hubert H. Humphrey III said in a statement. . . In a brief report to Fitzpatrick, Gehan said the privilege claim is not supported in five of 14 categories, but supported in the others. It said the full report is confidential. The attorney general's office said about 830 secret documents would be released to the plaintiffs, including the state, if the judge agrees with the recommendation.

If special master Mark Geehan's recommendation is sustained by state court Judge Kenneth Fitzpatrick in Ramsay County, the companies would be required to release documents on youth-targeting, industry research on smoking's impact on health, lawyers' control of scientific research and other issues

Tobacco companies facing a flight attendants' class action lawsuit over smoking-related illnesses asked the judge hearing the case to dismiss it Friday, saying the plaintiffs had not proven their case. Dade County Circuit Judge Robert Kaye responded by giving Stanley and Susan Rosenblatt . . . at least Wednesday to respond. As a result, jurors will be told they do not have to return to the court room until Sept. 22, at the earliest. Argument on the motion has been tentatively scheduled for next Thursday and Friday, a court spokesman said. "If there is no further delay, the motion would be argued Thursday and Friday and the jury would return a week from Monday," he said.

The Florida Supreme Court rejected a bid by cigarette makers to eliminate potential punitive damages in a $5 billion secondhand-smoke lawsuit now in trial, a court official said Thursday. The judges on Florida's top court denied the motion without comment and without requesting written counter arguments from the husband-and-wife lawyers bringing the landmark class-action suit, the official said.

More controversially, the firm, for the first time, began working for "Big Tobacco" after all five major cigarette makers sought out George Mitchell late last year. Now Verner Liipfert is spearheading efforts to sell the global tobacco settlement to both Congress and the Clinton administration, and earning about $200,000 a month for its services, according to the National Journal. Mitchell has not lobbied on this issue, but has advised named partner Harry McPherson and Bernhard before their many trips to Capitol Hill to pitch the proposed settlement to legislators.

SENATE DEMOCRATS probing campaign financing send an "interrogatory" to former Republican Party Chairman Haley Barbour on his dealings with the tobacco industry, a major GOP donor. It asks about his intervention with Texas and Arizona officials last year on behalf of tobacco firms.

[Ted] Sioeng is a prominent figure in Southern California's Chinese emigre community. . . Sioeng also has U.S. distribution rights to one of China's most popular brands of cigarettes, known as Red Pagoda Mountain.

CHILDREN are spending £100 million a year on cigarettes, a government report said yesterday. Nearly three-quarters of 11 to 15-year-olds who smoke are buying more than 20 a week. A Department of Health campaign, called Respect, aimed at stopping young people from smoking, and helping them not to start, says that the children are spending on average £13 a month on their habit. Based on the average amount of pocket money children receive, 11-year-olds getting £3.79 would only have 67p left after buying cigarettes, and 15-year-olds getting £10.77 would be spending a third of their allowance on tobacco. In a separate survey, the Health Education Authority found nearly two thirds believed that advertisements made smoking glamorous and exciting to young people. Half believed that the advertisements were designed to appeal to the young. Nearly 60 per cent of 2,000 adults questioned want a ban on cigarette advertising.

Unmindful of the objections raised by the Delhi Chief Minister, Mr. Sahib Singh Verma, on the topic of tobacco advertisement, the Amateur Athletic Federation of India (AAFI) is going ahead with its plans to hold the ITC International meet, as scheduled on September 16. With very little time left, the AAFI perhaps has no other option. More than 130 foreign athletes have been invited and their ticketing arrangements have almost been completed, many of them expected to reach here after participating in the Grand Prix finals at Fukuoka, Japan, on September 13.

Yet, by late this evening there was already some talk, though premature at this stage, of shifting the meet to Pune, which has in the past hosted Permit meets and which has the necessary infrastructure in place. With time running out - the meet is scheduled on September 16 and there cannot be any change in the date - the organising committee has its task cut out. . . Mr. Sahib Singh intervened to say that he had a point to make about the tobacco company being allowed to advertise this meet as `ITC International athletic meet'. An ITC official tried to explain that his company had diversified and was no longer dealing with just cigarettes. But Mr. Sahib Singh would have none of it. He wanted to know what the `I' in ITC stood for. He suggested that the meet be rechristened as `ITC International Anti- Smoking meet'.

Indonesian stocks fell for a fourth day, led by cigarette-maker Gudang Garam, on concern interest rates will be kept high to shore up the rupiah, slowing economic growth. . . Gudang Garam, the clove cigarette maker that accounts for 8.8 per cent of the benchmark index, crashed 7.1 per cent. Rival HM Sampoerna also fell.

Thursday's compromise lets stand an Assembly Republican proposal to increase the state's cigarette tax of 44 cents a pack to 59 cents. The Legislature's Joint Finance Committee earlier proposed raising it 16 cents. Health organizations propose raising it to $1 to discourage smoking.

The study did not explicitly take into account the effects of cigarette smoking or of industrial chemicals other than asbestos or hydrazine, a chemical commonly used as a rocket fuel. That is a particular concern because the types of cancers observed in the study are commonly caused by smoking and by industrial chemicals. In fact, a similar study of the risks to Rocketdyne employees from such chemicals is currently being conducted by other UCLA researchers.

Following Baltimore's lead, Compton is working on an ordinance that would ban billboards that advertise tobacco and alcohol in the city. A county-based women's group suggested the restriction more than a year ago as a way to reduce consumption of alcohol and cigarettes by minors. But city staff delayed drafting the ordinance while a similar ban in Baltimore--which had been under attack from the tobacco industry--made its way through federal courts. Baltimore's ordinance was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in April, prompting cities including Los Angeles to propose similar laws.

"Clearly the settlement would mean price increases, and we would plan to raise prices in stages rather than all at once," B.A.T (BATS.L) investor relations manager Ralph Edmondson told a briefing for analysts in Frankfurt. "Clearly this will reduce consumption, although the price elasticity of the U.S. market is not clear."

Senn said the U.S. activities of Rothmans International group companies, Richemont's tobacco interest, 'are very limited in nature and are focused principally on the cigar and pipe tobacco sectors.' He added the company 'therefore expects that the impact of any settlement will be limited.' . . Commenting on the ongoing tobacco dispute in the U.S., Du Plessis said the U.S. had a 'weird' legal system, and that decisions taken in U.S. courts were therefore unlikely to have a major impact in countries other than the U.S.

In information sent to the Stock Market Commission CNMV, Tabacalera said it had signed an agreement to purchase 100 percent of Tabacalera San Cristobal de Honduras S.A. de C.V. and Tabacalera San Cristobal de Nicaragua SA as well as the assets of the cigar division of Havatampa Inc of Florida.

The Emmy week event also honors shows that put tobacco "in its true light" -- issuing Pink Lung awards to "Chicago Hope," "Touched by an Angel" and "Spin City." "You don't want to be a Phlemmy winner," association president Donald Clark said. "TV stars are some of our children's role models, and when they smoke, it just encourages young people to use tobacco." The group gave a special "dishonorable mention" to three NBC comedies -- "Suddenly Susan," "Seinfeld" and "Friends" -- whose female leads joined the latest Hollywood fad of smoking cigars. "We're not telling the industry not to mention smoking," said Clark. "We're just saying don't glamorize it."

With four trophies apiece, "Nightline," "Frontline" and "60 Minutes" were the big winners of the 18th annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards, presented Wednesday night in Manhattan. . . . "60 Minutes" won for these segments: "Punishing Saddam"; "How He Won the War," about David Koestler's (sic) crusade against tobacco; "Dusko Tadic," about the pursuit of a Bosnian Serb charged with war crimes, and "A Woman of Substance," about the opera singer Denyce Graves.

After an examination of 518 music videos (monitored by teams of 17- to 24-year-olds), doctors at Children's Hospital in Boston found that more than one MTV video in four portrayed musicians or actors smoking and drinking alcohol. Videos on VH1, another music network, showed smoking in 23 percent and drinking in 25 percent. The least amount of smoking, in 12 percent of videos, occurred on Country Music Television. Black Entertainment Television had the lowest alcohol use, at 19 percent. . . `Television is the leading source of information about alcohol and other drugs for adolescents," the doctors report this month in the American Journal of Public Health. "Considering that many adolescents watch music videos an average of 30 minutes each weekday and one to two hours on Saturday and Sunday . . . these findings indicate that adolescents may be exposed to a considerable amount of alcohol and tobacco use by people they consider positive role models."

The Fifth Annual Oral Health 2000 Consortium, September 12-14, features some big names and some equally big health issues. . . In addition to an introduction of the national alliance, it's goals, and reaction to the program from prominent clergy and others, the Fifth Annual Oral Health 2000 National Consortium will feature a panel discussion, "King Tobacco on the Run," which will include an update on efforts to reduce tobacco use and educate the public on its dangers -- in all forms. The moderator of the panel, which includes Dr. Koop, is Michael P. Ericksen, Director of the Office on Smoking and Health at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The panel also will examine the role of organized baseball in helping to reduce the use of spit tobacco, particularly among children and young adults. Jack Dillenberg, National Coordinator of the National Spit Tobacco Education Program (NSTEP), will provide an update on the program, which began in cooperation with Major League Baseball in 1996 under the leadership of National Chairman Joe Garagiola, former Major League ballplayer and Hall of Fame broadcaster.

Leading cruise line Royal Caribbean International said on Friday it was banning smoking at all meals aboard 12 cruise ships. "We're making our dining rooms smoke-free in response to the preferences of a large majority of our guests," marketing executive Adam Goldstein said in a news release.

But in the end, we had to share a king-size bed in a smoking room. We've tried to get compensation from the agent and the tour operator we used, to no avail. What else can we do?

Such battles are being waged on countless legal and legislative fronts. (In Sacramento, one skirmish is over whether to extend a ban on smoking to bars and gambling halls.) The trend of the conflict is clear: No smoking. More and more people in more and more places are observing it. The question is how fast we make smoking a historic artifact.

RJR Advertising

• 9/14/97 ADVERTISING: After JOE CAMEL Washington Post
  
  On most nights at Cleveland's hot night spots, a small group of fashionable, 20-something men and women, each armed with a black canvas bag filled with Camel cigarettes, slip in and out of more than 30 area bars and clubs. They are Cleveland's Camel Club kids, sporting chic attire and names like Twig, Sheff, Ma-Ma and Frankie Boy, as they are known. Their mission is simple: to blend in with the bar and club patrons, make friends with the bar staff and offer smokers free Camel cigarettes, R. J. Reynolds's premium brand. Camel Club kids look as if they belong. They are R. J. Reynolds's ambassadors of cool. And they are the front-line workers in a relatively new, multimillion-dollar cigarette marketing campaign known as the Camel Club Program.
• 9/14/97 SOCIETY: Style Noir Slinks In More on RJR's "What You're Looking For" campaign. The New York Times
  
  Noir's stylish cynicism has never looked better as a sales tool. "What you're looking for," reads the copy at the bottom of a Camel cigarette ad, which features a dark-lidded, 1990s femme fatale behind a martini glass in a shadowy lounge. The copy at the top of the picture is the surgeon general's warning, in letters as large as the sales pitch. What you may be looking for is a good excuse to smoke. And noir has it -- a kind of armed and glamorous, name-your-poison approach. "Camel is embracing night life and sophistication and an urban feeling," said Richard Williams, a spokesman for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. "We think urban night life and sophistication is more of an attitude than a geographic location."
• 9/4/97 OPINION: A Bull Market RJR's "No Bull" Winston ad campaign. Interesting links embedded in breezy copy. Laura Smith Kay, The People Online Daily
  
  "No bull" means black-and-white photos featuring sneers, fast cars and dive bars. It means a blue-collar Martha Stewart-type scoffing: "Until I find a real man, I'll settle for a real smoke." A Bruce Willis look-alike kicking back some brewskies, declaring: "I get enough bull at work, I don't need to smoke it." A B.B. King-clone strumming his guitar and saying: "My blues are real, just like my smokes."

House Speaker Newt Gingrich tried to mend ties to his Christian conservative base Saturday by condemning abortion, religious persecution and trial lawyers exploiting the tobacco lawsuits. . . In keeping with the conference's pro-family theme, the speaker also said any government-backed settlement with tobacco companies should include crackdowns on teenage drug and alcohol use. Mr. Gingrich said he was shocked by the size of legal fees in an $11.3 billion settlement by the state of Florida, and he predicted Congress would require attorneys to account for the hours they billed their clients in lawsuits against tobacco companies. "This is not going to be a litigation lottery for the enrichment of lawyers," he said.

The tobacco companies gave more than $10 million, mostly to Republicans, and got a $50 billion tax break in the tax and budget legislation Congress adopted last month. Of course, the campaign donations might have had nothing to do with the veto or the tax provision. The president and the Republican Congress could have decided the cases strictly on their merits. But doubtless the trial lawyers and tobacco companies thought donations helped their causes or they hardly would have contributed so much. "The public knows the system stinks," said Anthony Corrado

A three-judge panel of the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York reinstated a lawsuit that the companies had filed against Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. The ruling reverses a lower court's decision dismissing the suit, designed as a preemptive strike by the companies -- who had sued Mr. Blumenthal in 1996 to try to block him from filing the state's Medicaid suit against the tobacco industry in Connecticut state court.

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, Fifth Ave. at 42d St. -- "Tobacco: Use and Abuse in History." Books and prints from the 17th and 18th centuries. " Tobacco Leaves: Selections From the Collection of George Arents Jr." Printed work and objects related to tobacco. Stokes Gallery. Both open Sat. Through Jan. 3. DAVID SULTAN -- "Smoke Rings." Black-and-white prints of cigar smoke. Borden, 560 Bway., at Prince St. Through Oct. 4.

"'I stopped completely, I was doing so great with it, but then that cigar stuff started happening," he pleaded. "You've gotta be careful with that stuff."

Are we going after butter next, or eggs, or the pork industry? Have those industries fooled us into ingesting unhealthy fat all these years? . . . Using public health as a rallying point, they are whittling away our liberties, civil and uncivil, such smoking. But what about a ban on cigarettes? We've tried this with other products, without much success. The surge in drug use since the 1960s comes to mind. Despite billions of dollars spent on the war on drugs for the past 30 years, people still inhale and inject this stuff in staggering amounts. What makes us think that a war on cigarettes will be any more successful?

My parents grew tobacco, like their parents and grandparents and probably generations before. The money from the few thousand pounds helped make the farm payment. But the money was not what mattered to me about tobacco. What mattered to me, a little then and a lot now, was that it was something we did together, my parents and brothers.

Many lighthearted films of the 30's and 40's had a lovable character who was always inebriated; drinking to excess was cute. We don't see much of that anymore, perhaps because of films like "The Lost Weekend" and "Days of Wine and Roses" -- movies that dealt with drinking in raw, un glamorous terms. Perhaps films showing Ms. Roberts's and Mr. Travolta's characters in a cancer ward with grieving family around would have a similar effect on smoking in films.

Until the tobacco magnate James B. Duke led his American Tobacco Company into China a century ago, only a few Chinese, mostly older men, smoked a bitter native tobacco, usually in pipes.

The tobacco giant, which has pledged to spend as much as £175m to enter the sport, is now concentrating on talks with Benetton about sponsorship and the possibility of taking an equity stake.

Another controversial area was the relationship between smoking and cancer. In Smoking, Health and Personality (1965), Eysenck argued that smoking did not cause lung cancer, but that both smoking and lung cancer were symptoms of the same personality disorder, probably of genetic origin. "The cancer-prone type is characterised by the inability to express emotions, by feelings of hopelessness, helplessness and depression, and also by reacting inappropriately to stress," Eysenck said. "The coronary heart disease-prone type is mainly characterised by anger, aggression and hostility." . . In 1991 he published the results of a four-year study, partly funded by the US tobacco giant R J Reynolds, which claimed to support the argument that personality dictated disease..

But what yesterday's nomination leaves unresolved is whether the job -- largely a bully pulpit from which to exhort the government and ordinary Americans to do better on matters from exercise to AIDS -- can prove an effective megaphone after it has become so politically charged. Clinton's formal announcement of Satcher comes months after his name first surfaced for the job, allowing time for an uncommonly thorough vetting and for potential opposition to surface. If approved, Satcher would also carry the title of assistant secretary for health in the Department of Health and Human Services, the first time one person would hold both jobs since the 1970s.

President Clinton nominated Dr. David Satcher to be the next U.S. surgeon general Friday and told him to help "to free our children from the grip of tobacco." Saying that "no one is better qualified to be America's doctor," the president named Satcher, now director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, to fill a post that has been haunted by controversy and vacant for nearly three years.

"I want to be the surgeon general who reaches our citizens with cutting-edge technology and plain, old-fashioned straight talk," said Dr. David Satcher, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Whether we're talking about smoking or poor diet, I want to send messages of good health to our cities and our suburbs, our barrios and reservations, and even our prisons," Satcher said at the White House announcement of his nomination.

President Clinton plans on Friday to nominate Dr. David Satcher, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to be surgeon general, administration and congressional officials said on Thursday. The officials said that Satcher -- an expert in sickle-cell disease whose wide range of public health concerns extends to illegal drugs, gun violence, tobacco, and teen-age pregnancy -- would also be appointed assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services. That combination, sought by Donna Shalala, the department's secretary, would add a policy-making job to the surgeon general's role as public health spokesman.

In a recently completed study funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), Berkeley Economic Research Associates (BERA), has found that the medical costs attributable to cigarette smoking are higher than previously believed: $56.3 billion per year in the United States in 1993. The figure exceeds the most recent previous estimate, published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report in 1994, by more than $6 billion. The amount is almost four times that which the industry would be required to pay each year under a global settlement of tobacco lawsuits that has been proposed . .

Weider Nutrition International Inc. (NYSE:WNI) announced today that it had entered into a licensing agreement with Nutraceutix Inc. (OTC BB: NUTX) for the distribution of a nutritional supplement containing the patented chemical compound glucarate. Current studies funded by the National Cancer Institute indicate that glucarate may provide effective protection against exposure to many chemical carcinogens such as cigarette smoke.(1) Found naturally in fruits and vegetables, glucarate may enhance the body's capacity to resist many types of carcinogens and toxins. It may in part be responsible for the cancer preventative characteristics of fruits and vegetables. According to Thomas J. Slaga, Ph.D., director of cancer cause and prevention, AMC Cancer Center, Denver, Colo., there is strong scientific evidence that glucarate prevents chemically induced cancers. "I would recommend glucarate to ex-smokers and women with a family history of breast cancer as well as anyone at a higher than average risk of developing cancer," said Slaga . . . These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

Smoking was also cited as the No. 1 cause of fires in BOMA's Fire Safety Survey, conducted in 1993. . . The property damage sustained was significant . . . The bottom line on this issue, of course, is that a ban on smoking in the workplace is crucial to the health and welfare of our tenants and the efficient management of America's office buildings.

Private lawyers retained to represent New York state in its case against tobacco companies would get between 3% and 8% of any court award, Dennis Vacco, the state's attorney general said Monday. Vacco said the award arrangements his office has worked out with six private law firms is the best that any state has made with outside counsels. It is also well below the 25% to 33% which lawyers usually command in such "tort" actions, according to Vacco's

After accepting an advertisement from The National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids targeting Chicago-based ad agency Leo Burnett, The Chicago Tribune decided Friday against running the ad . . . In a justification statement, the Tribune advertising department claimed that the Center's advertisement "does not meet our principles for advertising acceptability" -- but refused to list those principles or general advertising policy.

• The full-page ad: A Fresh Start for LEO BURNETT Means Kicking the Tobacco Habit
• Press Release
• Leo Burnett Letter
• Chicago Tribune Letter

Bulgaria's tobacco output is expected at 70,000 tonnes this year, compared to 39,790 tonnes in 1996 but still below the 80,000 tonne target announced by the government, a senior agriculture ministry official said on Tuesday

The Marlboro Man, that Madison Avenue icon of rugged American individuality, today looms across Moscow's billboard-filled skyline in much the same way Lenin's visage once commanded the view.

"Our local clients certainly have global aspirations," says Viveca Chan, chairman and chief executive of Grey Advertising Inc.'s China operations, based in Hong Kong. "That means we get to create totally new brands that could be huge in terms of their potential." Grey is now helping the Guiyang provincial tobacco factory create a new brand image for its best-selling Huang Guo Shu (waterfall) cigarettes.

The trial of former tobacco-company executive JERRY LUI KIN-HONG, who faces charges of accepting more than $30 million in bribes, is set to begin on March 16 next year and to run for three months. . . He is alleged to have accepted the bribes in order to ensure the sale and supply of cigarettes from one of his employers, the British-American Tobacco Company (HK) Ltd, to Wing Wah Company or to Giant Island Ltd or associated companies.

Fifteen smokers and families of deceased smokers filed a NIS 15 million suit against the Dubek tobacco company yesterday in Tel Aviv District Court. The plaintiffs asked that the suit be recognized as a class action in the hope that others will join. Dubek is a government-recognized monopoly that sells most of the cigarettes smoked by Israelis; it markets 95 percent of domestic cigarettes and imports others.

A 15 million shekel ($4 million) lawsuit was filed Sunday against Israel's only cigarette company on behalf of 15 Israelis allegedly sickened or killed by smoking-related diseases.

ISRAEL'S only cigarette company, Dubek, is being sued for £2.5 million by representatives of 15 Israelis allegedly killed or made seriously ill by smoking-related diseases. It is the first personal damage lawsuit filed in the country against a cigarette manufacturer. Alon Gellert, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said: "We claim that Dubek knew of the health problems caused by smoking and didn't warn the public."

Standard Commercial Corporation (NYSE:STW) today announced the acquisition through a trust of a 74.9% interest in Meridional de Tabacos Ltda from Seita, the French cigarette manufacturer. Meridional is the fourth largest tobacco purchaser and processor in Brazil.

Philip Morris and B.A.T. Industries both said on Monday that they would raise by 20 or 25 pesetas the sale price of brands sold in Spain, in line with the rise by Tabacalera (TAB.MC)over the weekend. "When we learned about the price rise at Tabacalera, we told the government our decision to raise prices on our brands by 25 pesetas," a Philip Morris spokesman told Reuters.

The tobacco group's blond cigarette prices rose by 25 pesetas on Saturday, while black tobacco rose by 20 pesetas. The government announced the price hikes in its official state bulletin. While the cause of the rise was not immediately clear, El Pais reported that it could have been required to finance Tabacalera's international expansion programme. Tabacalera bought three American cigar firms this week for $367 million.

In the past 10 years, the volume of cigarette smuggling around the world has nearly tripled, according to a leading tobacco-research organization. This reflects a general surge in cigarette sales abroad, especially for American brands. . . The companies say they do nothing to encourage the smuggling and do not condone it. But recent criminal investigations in several countries show that people in the tobacco industry have played a significant role at times in stimulating and fueling it.

Hager Memo: Page 1 Page 2

"This is more evidence that Big Tobacco companies and executives have not been honest and forthright with the public about health issues, and that is unacceptable," Beyer said in a statement. "After taking more than $90,000 from tobacco companies, what does Jim Gilmore have to say today?" Gilmore's campaign fired back that Beyer has accepted $40,000 to $50,000 in tobacco money during his career, and that the Democrat was ignoring Gilmore's good record in fighting youth smoking.

John H. Hager wrote a 1972 memo providing the president of American Tobacco Company ways to increase nicotine levels in cigarettes, according to a transcript of Hager's pretrial testimony in a Pennsylvania lawsuit against cigarette makers. Hager, the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, is a retired top executive of American Tobacco, where he worked for 34 years. . . . A lawyer suing the tobacco companies said yesterday if the Pennsylvania case goes to trial ‹ it is scheduled to start Nov. 4 ‹ that "We're going to use (Hager's) memo." "We know that the manufacturers in fact designed their cigarettes exactly the way he set forth in the memo," said Philadelphia lawyer Stephen A. Sheller. . . After learning that a reporter obtained a copy of the transcript, Hager said through a spokesman yesterday, "I feel like I've been raped."

Hager, under questioning this summer by lawyers suing tobacco companies, disclosed that beginning in 1969, American Tobacco executives referred to nicotine by the code name "Compound W" in conversations and reports about the research. In 1972, Hager sent a handwritten memo to Robert K. Heimann, then president of American Tobacco, maker of Lucky Strikes and Pall Malls, describing several ways the company could increase the nicotine content of its cigarettes. "As discussed, higher nicotine at the same tar level is generally accomplished through the selection of tobaccos and Lorillard [a competitor] has bought some higher nicotine tobaccos recently," Hager wrote. "Other ways would include the addition of Compound W, a change in the cigarette paper and the use of reconstituted [tobacco] instead of stems (stems have a very low nicotine content)." Robert E. Denton, a political scientist at Virginia Tech, said: "This memo gives Gilmore another crisis situation. This race will be won or lost in Northern Virginia, and that's where this hurts. He loses the agenda for at least several days, and this is a close race."

Such agonizing tales usually stay within families. But a group called Survivors and Victims of Tobacco Empowerment thinks those stories could be powerful weapons against smoking, even in this tobacco-friendly state. So it is building a statewide network -- probably the first of its kind in the country -- to get people like Nadborne heard in schools, churches, television stations, wherever people will listen. . . SAVE wants to put a face on the smoking-related illnesses that kill 12,000 people a year in this state. To do it, it is borrowing techniques used by groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving and creators of the massive AIDS quilt to try to make the general specific. Goldstein thinks everyday people can be as memorable as the late actor Yul Brynner

The Texas case, which is scheduled for trial Sept. 29 in Texarkana, has become entangled with the national settlement agreement. Every move of the trial will be watched by politicians in Washington as they consider the merits of the settlement. And lawyers on both sides expect it to feature explosive evidence, testimony and judicial rulings.

The City Council voted to ban liquor and cigarette billboards in all residential areas in response to complaints that such ads are too prominent in black and Hispanic neighborhoods. A spokesman for an ad industry group says it is considering filing a challenge.

The Marlboro Man, that Madison Avenue icon of rugged American individuality, today looms across Moscow's billboard-filled skyline in much the same way Lenin's visage once commanded the view.

"It keeps open the question, 'Will there be a settlement?"' Morgan Stanley-Dean Witter analyst David Adelman said. "I don't think the deal gets any better than today. I think it only gets worse. ... You're prolonging the uncertainty." In early afternoon trading, stock of Philip Morris Cos Inc (MO), the maker of Marlboro, Merit and Virginia Slims, was down 1-3/8 to 41-1/4; and RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp (RN), the producer of Camel, Winston and Salem, was off 14/15 to 33-3/16.

On an operating basis, this should boost the company's earnings by 5 cents per share in the fourth quarter of 1997, according to industry analyst Gary Black of Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York. But Black, a closely watched Wall Street analyst, quickly adds that the company will probably declare a loss of 22 cents per share in the fourth quarter that ends Dec. 31. What gives? The settlement, of course.

Tobacco advertisements have been banned from television in North America since the early '70s, but the visual image of people lighting up has proven to be a hard habit to break for television networks. Tobacco usage -- including cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco -- on prime-time comedies is at its highest level since 1963. And on TV dramas, there hasn't been so much tobacco use on screen since 1970, according to a study done at the University of California, San Francisco, medical school.

"The nose ring you can outgrow," said Bill Novelli, president of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, a public health advocacy group that helped negotiate the $368.5 billion settlement pact with the cigarette industry now undergoing a White House review and awaiting action in Congress. Even drinking, reckless driving and illegal drug use -- although they can have devastating, tragic and even fatal consequences -- change as people grow older and wiser. While anti-tobacco activists do not minimize those threats, they note that many people, including parents, underestimate the dangers of their children getting hooked for life on smoking. According to the CDC, more than half of smokers are still hooked within a year of their death.

Lamm can't run for governor because, bless his 70-year-old Southern Baptist heart, he is much too busy being the voice of Smithfield. He is owner, operator, programmer, salesman, manager, comedian, tobacco spokesman, religious consultant and all-around celebrity disc jockey of country station WMPM, 1270 AM.

Alice was never sick a day in her life. She lived to be 94 and dropped dead with a smile on her face. Guess who's sick from her smoke? Me.-- . . [T]here are a few, like your sister, who beat the odds. But it's a very dangerous gamble, and the loser pays dearly. Keep reading, and you'll see what I mean . . .

What Al Gore did was unseemly, but it was not corrupt. It did not remotely approach the stink of the huge contributions made by the tobacco companies to Republicans last year, for example, or of Congressional committees inviting corporate lobbyists into the room where bills undoing environmental laws were being written. . . Campaign finance is a profound problem for the survival of American democracy. That is not because Vice President Gore may or may not have violated an 1883 law designed for other purposes. It is because our campaign finance system puts such pressure on him and all Federal politicians to raise huge amounts of money. The system is corrupting our politics, and everyone knows it. The question that matters is whether Congress will change it.

Smokers could accumulate genetic changes in their lung cells that persist for years and may linger long after kicking the habit, a new study suggests. Similar genetic damage is seen in lung cancer, the number one cancer killer of men and women in the U.S. Current smokers and former smokers had the same types and patterns of gene loss in the lung tissue, even if they had quit smoking 10 to 48 years earlier, noted senior investigator Dr. Adi Gazdar of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. The results seem to make sense in light of known patterns of lung cancer risk.

These proposed rules could force sweeping changes in the way that companies advertise their low-tar brands and have already set off a debate between tobacco executives and health-care advocates who want stricter rules. They have until November to comment. Tobacco scientists, however, discussed some of the technical details of the proposed changes this week at the 51st Tobacco Chemists' Research Conference at the Benton Convention Center. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. was the sponsor; Wake Forest University and Winston-Salem State University were the hosts.

Harkening back to its puritan heritage, the city of Boston moved yesterday to ban tobacco and alcohol advertising from taxicabs and tourist trolleys. The City Council passed a measure asking Police Commissioner Paul Evans to implement the ban, since the police department handles the licenses for taxicabs and trolleys.

A small but significant number of N.C. elementary school children also have begun smoking. . . The UNC-CH research, the first to report smoking at such early ages in the state, underscores how young children are when they begin experimenting with tobacco products, she said. About one in 25 children already had begun occasional or regular smoking before the fifth grade.

Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture Tommy Irvin and Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker will be meeting with tobacco farmers on October 27 in Tifton and Lyons to seek their input in the lawsuit the state of Georgia has filed against tobacco companies

Jane Hull will spend $600,000 from the state's tobacco-tax fund to rescue a nearly bankrupt program that provides lifesaving medication for people with HIV and AIDS. The governor's action, which must be approved by a legislative oversight committee, will keep the state's AIDS Drug Assistance Program going at least through this year.

A local anti-smoking coalition has put together the first guide to smoke-free dining in Tucson, and copies are free. Full Court Press lists 500 restaurants in its 25-page Smoke-Free Dining Guide . . . Copies can be obtained from the Metropolitan Tucson Convention & Visitors Bureau, 130 S. Scott Ave., or by calling Full Court Press through the local office of the American Cancer Society at 321-7989, extension 216. The organization will mail copies without charge.

Democratic Senator John Burton, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he will hold a hearing in Los Angeles on November 4 to take testimony from representatives of the filmmaking industry on increased smoking in movies and television shows .. . "What we're hoping is this will bring some enlightenment to the industry and start a discussion within the industry so they can be more responsible as far as limiting onscreen smoking and try not to make it so glamorous it entices young people into that terrible habit.'

As President Clinton continues his crusade against teenage smoking, some members of the state Legislature want Hollywood to take responsibility for encouraging teens to smoke. State Sen. John Burton says an increasing number of movies feature cigarettes and cigars. The theory is that teenage audiences see smoking in the movies and want to imitate the behavior.

Philip Morris spokesman Nicholas M. Rolli said Morgan's departure was a personal decision. He declined to elaborate, but noted that Morgan has discussed the issue for a "couple of months."

Mr. Morgan, 55, was named president and chief executive office in December 1994. He has been with the corporation for more than 28 years. "Jim is one of the finest and most capable executives in the tobacco industry today," said Mr. Geoffrey C. Bible, chairman and chief executive officer, Philip Morris Companies Inc. "While he is well-known for inspirational leadership, it is his exceptional strategic marketing skills that set him apart from all the rest. His retirement, which he has been considering for several months, will be deeply felt by everyone who has worked with him." The corporation also announced that Mr. Michael Szymanczyk has been named to succeed Mr. Morgan. The position will continue to report to Mr. William H. Webb, chief operating officer, Philip Morris Companies Inc. Mr. Szymanczyk is currently chief operating officer, Philip Morris U.S.A.

It's only days until the live broadcast of "ER" and Noah Wyle is wearing a nicotine patch. Dr. Carter sure picked a fine time to wrestle with cigarette withdrawals. The fresh-faced Wyle had actually quit smoking a month earlier but he couldn't resist lighting up after the premiere of "The Myth of Fingerprints," a film about a dysfunctional New England family also starring Blythe Danner, Roy Scheider and Julianne Moore. It's easy to see how the cigarette seduced him . .

Events proceed almost exactly as they did a year ago, with stylish West Coast touches (in a bow to health consciousness, for example, this Fitz is trying to give up smoking, and fiddles with an unlighted cigarette rather than firing up constantly).

As the nation's chief medical officer, as an advisor to the president and as an assistant secretary of Health, the nominee should be judged by the Senate on his achievements and qualifications for a job that requires unflinching honesty. It's too bad that the White House, nervous about the demands of political correctness on the right, didn't bring Satcher aboard a long time ago.

Dubek advertisements from the Fifties and Sixties claiming that its cigarettes are "beneficial, cleaner, richer" and "will make your throat happy" are coming back to haunt the country's 65-year-old tobacco monopoly. . . So far, although the health budget is over NIS 1.3 billion ($371m.) in deficit and the Treasury has pushed for severe cuts in vital public services, neither Health Minister Yehoshua Matza nor Finance Minister Yaakov Neeman have jumped onto the anti-smoking bandwagon of Deputy Health Minister Shlomo Benizri, who has the blessing of Shas mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. Benizri asked the State Attorney's Office two months ago to look into the possibility of suing tobacco importers and manufacturers, but only now have government lawyers gotten around to tell him the ministry's legal adviser should have applied, rather than the deputy minister. The government should pursue this legal option immediately. Israeli cigarettes, despite taxes, are still among the cheapest in the Western world. . . . The Health Ministry and Treasury should also agree to include smoking-cessation courses in the basket of health services to encourage tobacco addicts to kick the habit, and to set a "dedicated tax" on cigarettes whose proceeds would go to a government publicity and education campaign against smoking. Such a program has significantly reduced smoking in one Australian state. Even before the court ruling, initiatives such as these could immediately help clear the air.

Peter Wilson, chairman and chief executive, said: "The matter of the advertising ban has not gone to Parliament yet and given the availability of parliamentary time and the need to draft legislation it could be a while before any change comes about. It's hard to speculate exactly how long it will take, but my opinion is that it will be in 2000 rather than 1997."

GALLAHER, the Silk Cut and Benson & Hedges group that floated in May, yesterday argued that it was well-placed to withstand the government's planned ban on tobacco advertising. Nigel Northridge, UK marketing director, said only 20pc of Gallaher's marketing budget was spent on conventional advertising. Much of the rest was directed at international sponsorship, including Formula One motor racing, and point-of-sale material.

The improvement in Gallaher's market share from 39pc to 39.5pc could indeed be called a triumph but it is unlikely to generate much excitement among investors, particularly as the group's big winners were the low-price, low-margin Sovereign and Mayfair brands. Sure enough, Gallaher's shares rose only 4 to 273p, where they trade on a 45pc discount to the market on an earnings basis. It sounds a lot but do not expect a major upward re-rating in the short term.

RECORD August revenues from Customs and Excise, as people bought extra cigarettes to avoid the duty announced in the Budget, boosted the government's finances last month.

A French group has filed suit against Philip Morris, accusing the tobacco company of failing to clearly warn smokers about the dangers of cigarettes and asking the court to issue $21.7 million in fines. The National Committee Against Tobacco Addiction said executives for Philip Morris's German and Dutch subsidiaries will be summoned Thursday to a court in Quimper in western France. A spokesman for the group, Pascal Melihan-Cheinin, said Philip Morris uses the phrase "according to the law" in warnings on its cigarette packages, implying that smoking may not necessarily be harmful to health.

The sight probably chills Romanian cigarette czars. In Ploiesti, about 40 kilometers outside Bucharest, British tobacco giant B.A.T Industries PLC is putting the finishing touches on its cavernous $70 million cigarette factory, slated to open in October. The plant is designed to churn out more than four billion cigarettes a year -- and to help B.A.T compete with rival R.J. Reynolds Tobacco International Inc., the RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp. unit that opened a plant near Bucharest in late 1994. . . Make no mistake, the battle for Romania's smokers is about to intensify: . . Meanwhile, the state-owned tobacco company, Regia Autonoma a Tutunului din Romania, scrambles to reinvent itself.

A bill that would force Massachusetts' pension system to sell $193 million in tobacco stocks may be voted on as early as Wednesday when the Senate returns from its recess.

Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor, an opponent of anti-tobacco lawsuits yielding millions of dollars for other states, will propose Wednesday laws meant to win Alabama payments from cigarette makers, an aide said Tuesday

All four major-party candidates running for Minnesota attorney general next year signed Tuesday an American Heart Association pledge not to take campaign contributions from tobacco industry sources. DFLers Mike Hatch and Sen. Ember Reichgott Junge and Republicans Doug McFarland and Rep. Charlie Weaver joined seven of the nine major-party candidates for governor who earlier took the unusual pledge to swear off tobacco money.

Despite agreeing not to take tobacco money, the four candidates are not unified on whether Minnesota should accept the terms of a proposed nationwide settlement with the industry.

In the gubernatorial race, these candidates signed the pledge: Humphrey, former state Auditor Mark Dayton, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman, and former state Sen. Ted Mondale, all DFLers; and state Sen. Dean Johnson, Rep. Tim Pawlenty and former legislator Allen Quist, Republicans. Lt. Gov. Joanne Benson and state Sen. Roy Terwilliger, both Republicans, did not sign the pledge.

The state's 44-cent-per-pack cigarette tax would rise 15 cents.

Minnesota children ought to be in smoke-free environments both at home and in child-care centers, the 6,000-member Minnesota Medical Association said Tuesday. . . Delegates to the association's annual meeting at Madden's Resort near Brainerd adopted resolutions urging parents to keep their homes free of smoke and called for state regulations banning smoking 24 hours a day in licensed day-care centers.

General Cigar said the new blend consists of Dominican-Cuban seed filler tobacco, a Jember binder from Indonesia and a wrapper grown in Cameroon.

Get ready for the lettuce cigarette. That's right, lettuce. As in romaine and iceberg, the two varieties now filling Safer Smokes Corp.'s Bravo, an otherwise normal-looking cigarette that's being introduced Sept. 18 by pharmacist and inventor Puzant Torigian. The 75-year-old Torigian admits that a lettuce smoke sounds bizarre, but in an interview with Business Week Online, the New Jersey native says he doesn't intend for the nicotine-free Bravo to replace traditional tobacco brands. Rather, he's marketing the new product to smokers who want to quit, but who can't abandon the habit's tactile rituals -- holding a lighter or tapping a fresh pack of cigarettes, for example. "You'll smoke these a few times and keep the ritual, but you'll be cutting out the addictive nicotine," he explains. A package of 20 will retail for about $3.50

"The total freedom from nicotine gives Bravo its power to help people stop smoking," said Torigian. "Bravo provides oral, manual and psychological satisfaction during the transition from smoking tobacco to smoking Bravo to not smoking at all."

Whatever happened to Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater special prosecutor, who several months ago was reported missing and presumed dead in the water? Did he . . . 3. Go to work full time for his tobacco company clients? (No word on this.)

A Louisiana law allowing plaintiffs to sue insurance companies directly has backfired on the state as it tries to collect damages from the tobacco industry for smoking-related illnesses. Unless federal courts intervene, Louisiana's lawsuit must be moved to London. Three of the thousands of tobacco industry insurance policies targeted by the suit have clauses requiring cases to be arbitrated in London. The three were issued by ACE Insurance Co. Ltd., based in Bermuda.

Why? Because three of the thousands of tobacco industry insurance policies have clauses requiring cases to be against insurance companies. Louisiana was the only state to directly sue the industry's insurers as well as the cigarette makers. Officials estimate the state is due as much as $400 million in smoking-related Medicaid costs.

When a billion dollars are up for grabs, and the booty is held by villainous tobacco companies, the rule of law is out the window. That's the situation in Iowa, where Republican Gov. Terry Branstad and Democratic Attorney General Tom Miller are about to grease the wheels of justice in order to fleece the industry and replenish Iowa's depleted Medicaid coffers. Iowans, if they knew what was afoot, ought to be apoplectic. . . When it comes to tobacco, the Iowa Legislature will be put to the test. If it permits this outrageous, retroactive application of the law, it will have tapped the deep pockets of a feckless and friendless defendant. But in the process, Iowans will have bequeathed to their children a message even more pernicious than cigarettes: First, you may change the rules after the game has begun. Second, you can engage in risky behavior, then force someone else to pay the bills.

But the state should go further to discourage impressionable children from lighting up, according to political activist Pete Stumberger, a Boca Raton area resident. Prohibit teachers and other adults from smoking on school campuses, Stumberger says. "It should be 'do what we do,' not 'do what we say.' "

Brazil's leading tobacco company Souza Cruz SA (E.SZC) announced Friday an 8.8% average increase in its cigarette prices to take effect Sept. 22. Rising production costs was the main reason for the price increase, according to a Souza Cruz spokesperso

Smoking will have killed 20 million people in Europe in the period between 1950 and the year 2000, a leading lung specialist said on Thursday. Nearly 500,000 people in the European Union were killed by tobacco in 1995, said Professor Stephen Spiro, president of the European Respiratory Society, at the body's annual congress in Berlin.

Philip Morris USA's unions have rejected a request to extend labor contracts by one year to give the company time to settle the tobacco industry's legal and political woes. Two key tobacco union leaders in Richmond said this week they rejected Philip Morris' bid late last month because they expect tougher bargaining once the company agrees to pay billions of dollars to stave off lawsuits.

Fresh Smoke is a cool mint-flavored gel, specially formulated for use on all brands of cigarette filters, which smokers apply directly to the cigarette filter tip to freshen breath and flavor smoke as it is inhaled. Vermillion Industries Inc. claims: "Today's tobacco consumer is alienated; not all smokers want to quit. Fresh Smoke does not promote cigarette smoking, but makes it more enjoyable." A company spokesperson stated: "There's never been a product like Fresh Smoke. It is the most innovative breakthrough for smokers since the filter tip."

Diana reveled in her role as a mother and felt threatened when Charles hired Alexandra Legge-Bourke to plan activities for the boys when they were with him. The former nursery school teacher, known as Tiggy, joined the Prince's staff a few months after his separation from Diana. . . . Tiggy was quoted as saying: "I give the boys what they need at this stage-fresh air, a rifle, and a horse." The Princess fumed. "She's undermining my boys," she said. She complained about Tiggy's cigarette habit and said she didn't want the young woman smoking in front of the boys. "What is it about Charles, who professes to hate smoking, and women who're addicted to cigarettes?" she asked, alluding to Camilla Parker Bowles, also a pack-a-day smoker.

North Carolina's flue-cured tobacco heritage will be featured during the annual Mock Tobacco Auction at Durham's Duke Homestead State Historic Site Oct. 5 from 1 to 5 p.m. . . Former employees of the American Tobacco Co. will be on hand for a reunion commemorating the 10th anniversary of the plant's closing.

9. Smoking does not make you look cool. Watch an 11-year-old with a butt in his mouth. That's what you look like to anyone over 20.

The Great American Smokeout of 1996 got more smokers than ever to quit or at least cut down, according to health officials who say joining forces with promoters of nicotine gum and patches helped the effort. The American Cancer Society credits the partnership with persuading 26 percent of smokers surveyed to cut back last November 21, according to a report . . . Philadelphia-based SmithKline Beecham PLC, which markets Nicorette gum and Nicoderm CQ patches, spent $1.5 million on ads promoting the smokeout.

"This decision is comparable to the outcome of similar court cases in other countries and confirms the company's position that smoking is a personal choice exercised by enlightened individuals," said Souza Cruz lawyer Luis Roberto Barroso. "It is not legitimate to hold a company responsible for the sale of a legal product," he added. Ceara state court Judge Inacio de Alencar Cortez Neto threw out the case filed by Edvaldo Nojosa dos Santos, saying it was the plaintiff's "free and spontaneous" decision to smoke and that upon buying cigarettes, consumers became well aware of the dangers involved with smoking.

Marlboro's cowboy billboards came down and no-smoking signs went up on cabs and buses today as Taiwan's sweeping anti-smoking law took effect. Some 100,000 street-corner stands and stores throughout the island were under orders to stop selling cigarettes to people under 18, officials said.

"The law is a very good law, but it is important whether it can be enforced fully," said David Yen, chairman of John Tung Foundation, who has campaigned against smoking in Taiwan for more than a decade. The law will ban smoking in all public areas except for those specifically permitting puffing. . . The law bans tobacco sales to minors and virtually all forms of promotion, including television, newspaper, movie and video ads, posters, leaflets, give-aways and even sponsorship of sport events -- with fines ranging as high T$300,000 (US$10,500).

John O'Quinn, one of a team of high-powered trial lawyers hired to lead the Texas case, said in federal court in Houston the settlement issue was still up in the air even though both sides have insisted publicly that no agreement would be reached and there would be a trial. "We might settle. What happened in Florida was they said 'We won't settle, we won't settle, we won't settle' and they settled. I just don't know right now," he told U.S. District Judge David Hittner during a hearing in a lawsuit against Chevron Corp.

The founder of an organization called Texas Association of Nonsmokers should be thrilled with a ballyhooed "historic settlement" aimed at forcing Big Tobacco at long last to pay the wages of its sins. Right? Well, not exactly. TAN founder and spokesman Charles Gibson stands squarely behind 60-some health advocacy and anti-tobacco groups in opposing the deal three-quarters of America's state attorneys general put together with the major tobacco companies. The proposal calls for the tobacco companies to pay the suing states $368.5 billion over 25 years. "It's a tobacco industry protection deal," snapped the usually even-tempered Abilene Realtor who founded TAN a decade ago.

There will be neither a special session of the Iowa Legislature nor, for now, a lawsuit by the State of Iowa over medical damages from tobacco. Attorney General Tom Miller had asked for legislation declaring that the state had a right to sue the tobacco industry to recover state Medicaid costs for treatment of ailments due to smoking and to spell out procedures for assessing damages. House Majority Leader Brent Sieg-rist, R-Council Bluffs, said Thursday that Republican legislative leaders wanted narrower legislation. Miller, however, could not accept it.

A handful of local cigar shop owners are fuming over the Chamber of Commerce's choice of a Huntington Beach-based tobacco dealer to run the Taste of Newport's one cigar booth. Both last year and this year, they said, those who run the chamber-organized event have not gone out of their way to get local cigar shop owners involved. Newport Tobacco owner Annie Hallajian said she felt shut out of last year's three-day event, and what she saw as another snub this year just stoked her anger even more.

Philip Morris Cos. has given its top tobacco job to a company veteran who is more tactical street-fighter than flashy marketing czar. Michael Szymanczyk, who became chief executive of Philip Morris's U.S. tobacco unit Wednesday, is well-versed in behind-the-scenes merchandising efforts that will become increasingly crucial for the tobacco industry if the Marlboro Man and his kin disappear from billboards.

ne thing about the tobacco business: It helps sharpen your geography skills. With lawsuits filed from San Francisco to New York by states, cities, counties and even union pension plans, this story has all the territorial twists and turns of "Where's Waldo?" Call it, "Where's Tobacco?"

As Congress makes final spending decisions for next year's budget, some groups fighting to end "corporate welfare," or special subsidies to private business, already have tossed in the towel and have declared themselves losers for the third year in a row. "There's just no enthusiasm in this Congress to cut anything. I'm afraid we won't be able to kill any of these programs this year," said Stephen Moore of the libertarian Cato Institute . . . In both the House and Senate, legislators even voted down a plan to kill crop insurance subsidies for tobacco growers, which would have saved taxpayers $34 million. Congress supported the tobacco growers even as momentum builds in Washington for a massive new antismoking campaign.

John F. Kennedy High School is ground zero in the nation's fight against teenage smoking.. . Ten days ago, the Denver school district - where the rate of teen smoking is among the nation's worst - officially took a step that more and more high schools across the country are following: It became smoke-free. Unofficially, however, the smoking continues. When the lunchtime bell rings, scores of students scurry off school grounds, clustering along the sidewalk and spilling over into the tidy yards of this tranquil southwest Denver neighborhood. All just to light a cigarette.

Cigarettes have a lasting legacy, even in smokers who haven't lit up for years, a new study of genetic damage suggests. Scientists at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and other institutions have found that even though lung cells may appear healthy after someone stops smoking, harmful changes persist in their genetic material.

Welke recalls the advent of Marlboro advertising using oversized cigarette packs and a more oblique Marlboro logo. Other brands did the same: Ad agencies began experimenting with typography, subtle imagery--and the result was startling. Cigarette advertising in Britain began to draw worldwide creative attention and became showpiece creative pieces for agencies. As the U.S. tobacco industry prepares to face some of the most stringent advertising constraints ever, marketing experts believe that the same thing will happen here. Consumers will see fewer ads, but what they do see will incorporate some of the most innovative approaches to marketing that have ever been attempted on this side of the Atlantic. The challenge could actually spark somewhat of a creative renaissance in U.S. cigarette marketing, long considered a conservative industry best known for artistically mediocre, plodding advertising campaigns.

In Des Moines, a businessman recently spent $10,000 creating a 4,000-square-foot smoking club called "Puffs" for his downtown mall, where people pay 50 cents to duck in for a smoke or $1.25 for a day pass. The University of Nebraska Medical Center -- like many other smoke-free institutions -- has opted to build 13 "smoking shelters" outside its buildings so employees and visitors will no longer have to smoke in doorways. One manufacturer of such shelters -- which resemble translucent bus stop huts -- reports a 70 percent increase in sales this year.

The group's own finances have been questioned by some of its 2 million members. Though Citizen Action has always supported environmental, health and consumer causes, the Ohio and Indiana chapters left the organization after learning last fall that the group had taken money from tobacco and nuclear power interests for specific lobbying programs. Members of those chapters say that after winning those lobbying contracts, Citizen Action changed its views on issues like tobacco excise taxes and the allocation of costs from failed nuclear utility projects.

Today, a collection of learned scientists, professors of epidemiology, radiology, pharmacology, microbiology from Yale, Stockholm, Berkeley, London, Harvard, Glasgow, have published an astonishing book, edited by [Roger] Bate. What Risk? seems to show that our favourite phobias are either irrational or exaggerated. Take passive smoking . . . It is true, say the boffins, that smoking gives you cancer, and that passive smokers must ingest some carcinogens. But what carcinogens do we mean? . . . environmental tobacco smoke is peanuts next to the potentially deadly vapour of the frankfurter.

The legal protection that RJR Nabisco would gain from the proposed $368.5 billion settlement should help the company's volatile and undervalued stock mount steady increases, analysts said. Martin Feldman, an analyst with Smith Barney in New York, said that Nabisco will not be spun off until the company's liability questions are settled. RJR Nabisco does not want to be accused of trying to keep its cookie assets away from its anti-tobacco opponents.

Here are excerpts from the newsletters, The NSA Voice and its newer, more activist-minded sister publication, The Resistance. -- In its inaugural issue four months ago, The Resistance framed its cause in stark yet stirring historical terms: In France, in the darkest days of World War II, the flame of freedom was kept burning by the Resistance. . .

"When they raised their right hand and told Congress that nicotine is not addictive...I believed that they lied to Congress," Mississippi Attorney General Michael Moore said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "I think some action should be taken against them if some criminal charge could be made," Moore said.

Most of the volunteers said they saw more cigarette butts than any other type of trash. "Cigarette butts are the worst," said Cricket French-Wright, 28, a Boca Raton resident who coordinated volunteers from St. Gregory's and St. Andrew Episcopal churches. "That was just really sad. "People probably think they biodegrade, but they don't."

Smoke.Whether he's entering the mind of a psychotic or retreating into his own thought, Mr. Coltrane's Fitz can be found surrounded by a cloud of his own cigarette smoke. Mr. Pastorelli's Fitz doesn't smoke; he just carries around an unlighted cigarette. "Standards and practices are different here," says Peter Locke, one of the ABC show's co-producers. "You can't have your leading man walking around drunk and smoking cigarettes all the time."

Outlawing smoking in the automobile is the logical follow-up to outlawing smoking in that second-most sacred and intimate of American places, the saloon. . . . When bluenoses start telling people to put out cigarettes in bars, though, the costs of fixing broken noses will skyrocket. And just wait until people start telling guys in traffic to put out their cigarettes. Then you'll see some tobacco road rage. Now, about those smoking and no-smoking lanes . . .

The fact is that each "C" ration contained two cans: One was the meal (my un-favorite was greasy sausage patties); the second had dry items -- a cookie or candy, a couple of sheets of toilet paper and two cigarettes. You can check this out with World War II or Korean War veterans or with the Center of Military History.

As an attorney for asbestos companies, Norwood Wilner argued for more than two decades that cigarette smoking, and not exposure to asbestos, gave people cancer and respiratory problems. A year after Wilner shocked the tobacco industry by winning a $750,000 lawsuit for an ex-smoker with cancer, he is suing the tobacco industry on behalf of an asbestos manufacturer. The lawsuit filed this week in Circuit Court in Jacksonville and in U.S. District Court in Atlanta wants the nation's cigarette makers and related groups to reimburse Utah-based Raymark Industries Inc. for a portion of the $400 million it has spent defending itself against asbestos injury claims.

Attorneys working with lawyer Norwood Wilner of Jacksonville, Fla., said a lawsuit on behalf of Raymark Industries against Philip Morris Cos. Inc. and other cigarette companies had been filed in Florida's Duval County Court and federal court in Atlanta. The lawsuit claims that Raymark, once a maker of asbestos cloth which has been hit by scores of lawsuits by workers with lung cancer and other ailments, should share with cigarette makers the costs of settling asbestos litigation.

The decision by Britain's new Labour government to support the ban, reversing the policy of its Conservative predecessor, and a softening of opposition among other unenthusiastic EU states had significantly improved chances of an accord, Lahure told the European Parliament's consumer affairs committee.

To some, the question of whether VA should or should not provide compensation and medical care benefits to veterans suffering from smoking-related illnesses or who die from such conditions is very controversial. The fact that it raises complex social, health policy, and budgetary issues should not overshadow the fact that the nation has always honored its historical commitment to veterans and their survivors for disability and death which is determined to be related to their period of military service We believe this is the only fair and proper policy.

The Hoosier Republican said so far he has not tried to drum up support for his plan because there are so many questions that he can't answer yet about how it would work. For that reason, he said, he has asked his committee staff to draft legislation that will fill in the missing details, and give senators and tobacco farmers something concrete to consider and debate. If the farmers, whom he regards as the "beneficiaries" of his proposal, object, it won't become law, he said.

With the big tobacco agreement in limbo, the Senate Agriculture Committee is working on legislation that would phase out federal tobacco programs, Chairman Richard Lugar said Sunday. Lugar, R-Ind., said his committee will have ready this fall its part of the tobacco legislation, including the phaseout, an $8-a-pound buyout of tobacco quotas and aid to communities whose economies depend on the crop. "That's a pretty solid piece," Lugar said on "Fox News Sunday."

MR. SNOW: Let me open up, I want to read you a quote that Jessie Helms recently made about -- you know, about smoking. And what Senator Helms said is, somewhere along the line I hope we'll find out how many people starting smoking because they had a gun to their head. Your reaction?

Researchers who studied the smoking and eating habits of a representative sample of the Austrian population told the European Respiratory Society conference in Berlin that fewer than one in four smokers was interested in healthy eating. Contrary to the common belief that smoking reduces appetite, a significant number were also overweight. "Smokers are more likely to be overweight than nonsmokers and probably eat more carbohydrates which tend to be junk food. We need to tackle both risk factors when we try to promote good health," Dr. Rudolph Schoberberger of the University of Vienna said in a statement released in London.

In a trial that opened yesterday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, prosecutors contended that for the last two years, Houston-based North Van Tours transported about 23,000 undocumented Mexicans to jobs on the Eastern Seaboard, in some cases delivering them right into the hands of tobacco labor contractors in Virginia and North Carolina.

Businesses selling cigarettes in unincorporated Cook County would be required to obtain a license that could be revoked if they sell to minors under an ordinance proposed Monday. County Board President John Stroger said it was time for the county to take its own advice. Two years ago, the county Public Health Department began urging local communities to pass ordinances cracking down on businesses that sell cigarettes to minors. The unincorporated areas would join more than 50 municipalities in the county that already have adopted similar laws, said Dr. Karen Scott, the county's public health director. About 300 establishments that sell tobacco products would be required to pay $125 to obtain a county license.

Attorney General Tom Miller and Republican legislative leaders should launch new talks aimed at a special legislative session to strengthen Iowa's case against the tobacco industry, Gov. Branstad said Monday. Those talks collapsed late last week, but Branstad said the push should continue. The governor conceded he had no specific proposals to put on the table, and there were no meetings planned.

"It potentially is the biggest consumer protection case in the history of the state," Miller said last week. "It's potentially the biggest ongoing criminal conduct case in the history of the state. It's a potentially huge Medicaid case. . . . It could be one of the biggest state cases in punitive damages." But it also could turn out to be a bedeviling case that leaves Miller and the state empty-handed.

The governor was virtually alone in holding out hope for such a session, as Attorney General Tom Miller and Republican legislative leaders said there's little room left for concessions after two weeks of talks.

This recent attempt to control advertising reflects government's need to create a society of victims, where we all feel helpless to society's evils, and where "Big Brother" bureaucracy must come to our rescue. . . The City Council's ban is made more ludicrous by its choices of where advertising can and cannot exist. These ads are banned in neighborhoods, but allowed at sporting events, along interstate highways, at special events and on CTA vehicles. Do people in neighborhoods succumb to this evil advertising easier than people on interstate highways and attending sporting events? And isn't it interesting to see that the bureaucracy will profit, since these advertisers still will be permitted to buy space on city-owned CTAvehicles?

Had the Legislature followed the attorney general's lead in "cutting a great road through the law" to get to the tobacco companies, a dangerous precedent would have been set, even if the Legislature attempted to limit the new special rules to tobacco. When "the Devil turned round" on us in the future, with new lawsuits alleging expansive theories of liability against other Iowa businesses and industries -beer brewers or agricultural-chemical companies or pork producers -we would have sorely regretted the failure to observe the rule of law in this day. Those concerned about the rule of law must remain vigilant, as these issues promise to rise again. But for the moment, the legislative leadership has recognized -as Thomas More admonished 500 years ago -that for our own safety we must give even the Devil the benefit of law.

Given his legislative agenda, it was a surprise to find President Clinton visiting a cigarette factory on Monday night. But there he was at the Metropolitan Opera, warding off theatrical second-hand smoke from the likes of Carmen, Don Jose, Morales and Zuniga in the safe, distant air of his first-tier box.

Brooke said the settlement terms of the Nevada agreement are substantially the same terms as its agreements with 25 other states. "We now have resolved more than 70 percent of the nation's Medicaid claims pending against Liggett, and we will continue to work to expand our settlement agreement to the broadest scope possible," said Bennett LeBow, Brooke Group chairman and chief executive officer, in a press release.

"Raymark has always disputed, and continues to dispute, that asbestos is a pure carcinogen, and contends that cigarette smoke inhaled by the asbestos claimants caused the cancers complained of," the lawsuit states. "What Raymark is saying is, `We paid for damages that were partly caused by tobacco companies,' " said Norwood S. Wilner, a Jacksonville, Fla., attorney representing Raymark. He said the lawsuit is the first "third-party contribution claim" filed against tobacco companies by an asbestos company.

It is time for Zambia to wake up against tobacco. Can our Government let millions of people die by allowing the tobacco industry to continue just because we are a poor nation that needs export earnings. Where are the members of Parliament on this matter? The speech by the Health Minister Dr Katele Kalumba on national Tobacco Day gave the viewers a dilemma rather than Government's position on tobacco. National addresses by Government officials must give a clear message.

BUNZL, the paper and plastics group that makes cigarette filters, will be a surprise beneficiary of the backlash against tobacco in the US. It said revenue would grow rather than decrease, as feared, on the back of low tar cigarette sales. Anthony Habgood, chief executive, said: "Filter sales have fuelled our growth in the past and low tar sales have been rising for some time." He rejected criticism of the $72.45 million (£45 million) purchase of American Filtrona, its US rival in cigarette filters, which will be completed this week.

Raymark may get support. One of its attorneys says about a dozen other asbestos companies are "considering joining the lawsuit," charging tobacco companies with misrepresentation, negligence and fraud. "Oddly enough, they're the very things which were traditionally alleged against the asbestos manufacturers, who were assumed to have the greatest amount of knowledge regarding the potential dangers of asbestos use as early along as possible," said Joseph Crociata, an attorney with Gilberg & Kurent.

- Saying they were left out of national tobacco settlement talks, labor union health-care funds are mounting their own legal battle against the tobacco industry. A coalition of funds has filed federal lawsuits in 21 states claiming the tobacco industry has been targeting blue-collar workers for decades, resulting in billions of dollars in health-care costs shared by workers and their employers. Another lawsuit was expected to be filed in New Jersey this week.

America's blue-collar workers are at the very heart of this nation's tobacco problems because they and their children smoke far more than any other segment of society and consequently suffer far more from tobacco-related diseases with all that implies from a public health standpoint. This was the message delivered today by a grouping of union and management-sponsored health care funds that appeared before the Senate's Democratic Tobacco Task Force, Chaired by Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.).

When convenience-store clerks were allegedly selling cigarettes to minors a few years ago, it wasn't a team of badge-wielding state regulators who set up a sting operation to catch them in the act. Instead, it was Donald Driscoll, a private lawyer who established a nonprofit group called Stop Youth Addiction. The organization then hired 16- and 17-year-olds to try to buy cigarettes -- in the face of a part of the California criminal code that says you must be 18 to do so. Following the investigation, Mr. Driscoll filed suit under the Unfair Competition Act, a decades-old California statute that prohibits "any unlawful, unfair or fraudulent business act or practice."

Some U.S. senators are going even further, preparing to introduce a bill that could immediately boost cigarette taxes by $1.50 per pack - an idea that would have been laughed at several months ago but is now getting serious attention in Congress. "Study after study has shown that the most powerful weapon in reducing smoking - particularly by the nation's youth - is to raise the price of cigarettes," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said in a recent speech to the Senate. Industry critics add, however, that the price increases need to be sharp enough to jolt teenagers. And legislators are debating the best way to ensure that the revenues go to public-health programs rather than to boost industry profits.

Sen. John Glenn of Ohio, the top Democrat on the panel holding the hearings, initiated the partisan crossfire in his opening statement Tuesday morning. He observed that the hearings so far had focused on issues like coffees at the White House with President Clinton and said the public had not been "fooled by this diversion from the real issue, which is that quid pro quos for political money happen here on Capitol Hill every day." The real problem, Glenn said, involves matters like the Republican Party's close relationship with the tobacco industry and the National Rifle Association and Republican plans to filibuster against legislation that would change campaign finance laws.

Prodded by President Clinton yesterday, the Senate put aside its partisan bickering and agreed to bring up campaign finance legislation before Congress adjourns in November. . . Glenn warned that under the existing campaign financing system, "the potential for corruption is enormous. At some point we're no longer a democracy but a plutocracy -- a government by and for the rich." Glenn then cited the support of Senate Majority Leader Lott and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) for an amendment to an appropriations measure, later overturned, that would have meant $50 billion for the tobacco industry, a major political contributor.

President Clinton threatened today to call Congress into a special session to address campaign finance reform proposals if Republican leaders don't allow ample time to debate the matter in the regular session. In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, the president demanded "sufficient time for debate" on a bill cosponsored by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis., according to White House press secretary Mike McCurry.

The European Commission said on Wednesday it would not bow to intense industry pressure and reverse a European Union controversial decision to scrap duty-free sales of goods such as alcohol and tobacco in 1999. EU Taxation and Single Market Commissioner Mario Monti launched a fierce attack on "the duty-free lobbies" which claim that tens of thousands of jobs would be destroyed . . . "The decision is not going to be changed...the time has come for airlines, airports and ferry operators, as well as suppliers of tobacco and alcohol products, to face up to reality and invest their money wisely to get ready for 1999," Monti said.

PRAGUE -- The planned Czech cigarette tax increase may encourage more cigarette smuggling, said Richard Vavrik, financial director of Reemtsma International Praha SRO, the Czech subsidiary of the German cigarette maker. . . The government said last week it may raise excise taxes, including charges on cigarettes and alcohol, to balance its budget for 1998. Under the Finance Ministry's plan, tax charges could rise on the average 4.40 koruna per pack of 20 cigarettes as of 1998. ($1=33.37 koruna)

Turkish State Minister Eyup Asik said Tuesday the government is seeking foreign partners for the proposed privatization of state tobacco and alcoholic beverages monopoly Tekel. 'We shall privatize the company by forming foreign partnerships. There is considerable investor interest in such deals,' said the minister. . . He said Dutch, British, French and Italian tobacco companies have already expressed interest in the Tekel privatization.

FEW analysts believed that it would ever hit 500 but the API index in Malaysia yesterday soared to a record 839. But there was little rejoicing. API stands for Air Pollution Index and the inhabitants of Sarawak state face evacuation from the smog. The pollution reading, which is equivalent to smoking 70 cigarettes a day, now stands higher than the country's stock market index for the first time. Even prime minister Mahathir Mohamad cannot blame George Soros for the smog: it's down to forest fires in Indonesia, apparently.

Lung cancer would outstrip breast cancer as the number one killer of Australian women, the Federal Minister for Health, Dr Wooldridge, warned yesterday. Australian women were also smoking in much greater numbers than women in neighbouring countries, he told a meeting of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Sydney. The rate of smoking among Australian women was 23 per cent - 15 per cent higher than the regional average. . . "With lung cancer amongst women rising at a faster rate than the increase in breast cancer we can expect in the future lung cancer in women - as in men - will be the largest cancer killer in this country," Dr Wooldridge told the WHO meeting. The meeting also heard that research done in the UK for WHO projected that worldwide lung cancer would be the leading cause of female deaths by 2020.

Since the liberalization of the tobacco industry, farmers in Arua have been feuding. Two giant companies, British American Tobacco and Mastermind Uganda Limited buy tobacco from the farmers. The Chief Administrative Officer, Abdul Isodo, who chaired the meeting warned buyers against buying tobacco from farmers contracted by other companies. He said some farmers got loans to cultivate tobacco for one of the companies but sell their crop to the rival. Akure lashed out at the two companies saying tobacco growing is declining because of the conflicts among the farmers. He did not give statistics of decline. It was not possible to get a comment from either BAT or Mastermind Uganda.

"It's just like your Mama leaving bread in the oven too long," said Allen Joyner, a co-owner of the Big Winston Tobacco Warehouse at 724 N. Trade St. "It's going to get burned, and once that happens, it's going to be hard to get it back to the way it should be." Still, it's not as bad as it could be. Sam Young, the sales supervisor for the Winston-Salem tobacco market, said that the quality of the tobacco has been improving in recent weeks despite the dry conditions.

Tobacco may serve as a source of a new medicine for a rare and life-threatening genetic disease under patents being awarded this week for research at Virginia Tech. The patents cover the processes involved in setting up a new biochemical Trojan horse: a bacterium which carries a human gene into a tobacco plant, from which scientists later extract a human enzyme. The tobacco-produced enzyme could eventually be turned into a drug. "It's an incredibly effective delivery system," said Virginia Tech plant physiologist Carole Cramer.

Oakland will almost certainly banish all liquor and tobacco billboards within the city limits next month and order that every neighborhood billboard be torn down . . . The liquor and tobacco ads might be ordered off the city's billboards quickly, but they are certain to be replaced right away with other advertisements, city and billboard company representatives said. So the hulking ad structures that activists have reviled for years as a blight on the city's poorer neighborhoods are sure to be around for several more years.

For the first time, Advertising Women of New York, an organization founded in 1912, is officially passing judgment on the myriad images of women in sales pitches for products. At a luncheon Wednesday at the New York Hilton, the organization will present the initial honors and dishonors in what is intended to be an annual event called the Good, the Bad and the Ugly Awards. . . Ms. Steedman said, "But what was egregious was very egregious." Among the work bothering the judges are print ads for Camel with a pouty sexpot; for Candie's, with the actress Jenny McCarthy seated on a toilet, and for Wonderbra, featuring women revealing their ample endowments.

In the latest development in the controversy over advertisers that demand pre-screening of magazine contents, the Magazine Publishers of America and the American Society of Magazine Editors issued a joint statement that said magazines should not submit a table of contents, text or photos from upcoming issues to advertisers for prior review. However, MPA VP-Marketing Christine Miller said the two groups agree that advertisers could be told of upcoming articles and given a chance to move advertising to another issue.

"The illusion of certainty is Washington's stock in trade," Murray says. "There are no real numbers in Washington. There are just useful numbers and non-useful numbers." In other words, it is in the interest of all players in the skirmishing over tobacco to have statistics on underage smoking. The numbers don't have to be correct, as long as they are broadly acceptable. . . "The more smoking becomes socially unacceptable behavior, the more it is likely that the behavior will be under-reported." Since the government plans to spend billions to teach teen-agers about the perils of smoking, each year a higher percentage of the underage smokers might well lie on the surveys, thereby further contaminating the already suspect data. Whoops, I forgot. It is now official government policy that teen-agers always tell the truth.

You don't hear much of any of this, because the press has generally parroted the self-serving assumptions of anti-smoking crusaders. They have a case. . . There is almost no one to make the smokers' case. They have been abandoned by the tobacco industry, which wants a settlement. Most politicians won't defend smokers for fear of being cast as stooges of a bad industry and enemies of good health. And the press has blessed the whole process in its latest spasm of group-think. It has popularized the fiction that this debate is mainly between the tobacco industry and public health. The murkier reality is that, for better or worse, smokers are the main targets. Do they have rights? Apparently not.

Both Elders and C. Everett Koop proved that a surgeon general occupies a position that can focus widespread attention on public health issues. Many such concerns cry out for attention and action now -- among them teenage pregnancy, smoking, childhood immunization and handgun deaths. It's time to fill this important position, so that these problems get the greater attention they deserve.

The cruise ship Paradise, a $300 million, 2,040-passenger vessel still under construction, has already been designated smoke-free more than a year before her first scheduled sailing. Smoking will be banned not only in dining rooms, show lounges and the casino - areas where smoking is already prohibited on many cruise ships - but on open decks as well. The ban will even apply to the crew.

Then came tobacco. Liberals, who had developed a 39-year reputation for being soft on drugs and crime and polymorphous perversities that even Freud could not have imagined, all of a sudden became caped crusaders. . . After years of deriding conservative "moralizing," liberals now are playing catch-up. Hence, for example, their slavish, often comical, adoption of the language of "family values." Conservatives have made a political career out of showing concern for the soul. Liberals cannot quite bring themselves to support state regulation of the soul. (Indeed, by "family values," they mean not sexual morality but subsidized child care and a living wage.) So they have come up with their own alternative: not care for the soul but care for the body. Health is their religion, the body their temple. Laissez-faire? No concern about right behavior? Not us, say the liberals. We too believe in virtue. No smoking!

Increases in blood pressure and heart rate in smokers during winter may put them at greater risk of coronary heart disease during cold weather, according to new findings published in the journal Hypertension. The report by researchers from Tel Aviv University in Israel notes that blood pressure is usually higher in winter in both smokers and nonsmokers, but the average increase in systolic blood pressure seen in smokers is more than twice that found in nonsmokers. "Higher mortality from ischemic heart disease has been observed in winter, and it has been suggested that this may be caused in part by the adverse changes in risk factors for heart disease (such as higher blood pressure) during cold weather," says Dr. Estela Kristal-Boneh of the university's Occupational Health and Rehabilitation Institute in Raanana, Israel.

Judge Jose de Samuel Marques of the 38th civil court in Rio de Janeiro awarded 90,000 reais (or about $82,000), plus a monthly pension for 35 years, to the widow and two daughters of mechanic Nelson Cabral Alves, who died of a heart attack at age 41. . . "You could see the Brazilians coming out of the woodwork when they heard a factory worker got $82,000," [analyst Gary] Black said. "It's got some people nervous."

• 9/24/97 Brazil Souza Cruz Ordered To Pay Damages In Smoker Lawsuit AP/Dow Jones (pay registration)
  
  Judge Jose de Samuel Marques, of the Rio de Janeiro 38th Circuit Court, alleged that Souza Cruz failed to inform consumers about the ill effects of smoking. In the decision, the judge said company warnings about the dangers of smoking aren't as strong as the inducements to smoke cigarettes. Souza Cruz said in a statement that the decision was based solely on the wave of 'anti-tobacco sentiment which has been levelled against the cigarette industry.' The favorable ruling for Souza Cruz last Friday in Ceara determined that the company was in compliance with Brazilian law, which provides cigarette manufacturers the right to advertise within certain limitations. 'People are well aware of the alleged risks of cigarette smoking and smoking is a question of personal choice,' Souza Cruz said in its latest statement. 'For this reason, it is not legitimate to blame the company for selling a lawful product.'
• 9/24/97 SOUZA CRUZ Ruling Could Trigger More Lawsuits Reuters
  
  But its impact on the company's stock will be slight due to the relatively small damages awarded, Souza Cruz's plan to appeal the decision and the inconsistent nature of Brazil's courts, they added. "This opens a bad precedent but it will not have as big an impact as it would in the United States, where there is a stronger tradition of jurisprudence," said Lilyanna Yang of Caspian Securities in Brazil.
• 9/24/97 BRAZIL: BAT Off as SOUZA CRUZ Ruling Sparks Fears Reuters
  
  The fears were sparked by a ruling late on Tuesday in Brazil where a judge ordered B.A.T's subsidiary Souza Cruz (CRU.SA) to pay damages to the family of a smoker who died in 1995. "The fear is that this will trigger a spate of other claims. Although people have lodged claims before, this is the first time that any sort of court judgement has been reached against the industry outside the U.S.," said Schroders tobacco analyst Bruce Davidson. "So the fear is that there will be more claims in Brazil and people may pursue claims in other markets with a bit more vigour," he said.
• 9/23/97 SOUZA CRUZ Told to Pay Damages over Smoker's Death Reuters
  
  [Souza Cruz lawyer Luis Antonio Barroso] said Souza Cruz had been ordered to pay 90,000 reais ($82,568) plus a monthly pension to the widow of the dead man, a former factory worker in Rio de Janeiro. Souza Cruz won a similar case Friday when a judge in the northeastern city of Fortaleza rejected a claim for damages from a former smoker. Barroso said Souza Cruz would appeal . . . "Our concern now is that this decision might create a series of similarly wrong rulings," Barroso said. A further 12 cases brought by smokers or their relatives seeking damages against Souza Cruz are awaiting decisions in Brazilian courts, he said.

Mississippi, the first to settle, will get $3.6 billion over 25 years. Its first installment - $175 million - is gathering $25,000 a day in interest, while the Legislature and courts cobble together a spending plan. "There is already a proposal to buy fire trucks for communities to put out fires caused by cigarette smoking," says Marshall Bennett, the state treasurer. "That's a stretch."

Tobacco farmers need the continued protection of price supports even if cigarette companies agree to buy guaranteed amounts of leaf under a tobacco settlement, a top White House aide said yesterday. Kentucky farmers have included such minimum purchases on their wish list for the proposed $368 billion national tobacco settlement. But Bruce Lindsey, deputy White House counsel, said purchase guarantees won't do farmers much good if prices drop too low. "It's clear you need the price-support program to keep the price up," Lindsey said in a telephone interview with the Herald-Leader.

Democrat L.F. Payne Jr. championed tobacco during his nine years in Congress. Running now for lieutenant governor, Payne wants to make a big distinction about that. The millionaire businessman from Nelson County is framing his record as a defender of growers operating small, family-owned tobacco farms -- not as a defender of tobacco companies.

Tobacco farmers who want to branch out into fruits, vegetables and other crops could get some seed money from a new loan fund. Some farmers will get low- and no-interest loans of $5,000 to $15,000 in time for spring planting. Attorney General Ben Chandler yesterday announced the creation of the Tobacco Communities Reinvestment Fund against a backdrop of pumpkins, tobacco and apple trees on a Scott County farm.

Circuit Judge Harold Cohen selected R. William Rutter Jr., a former chief judge who has been a special master to mediate disputes in the lawsuit, as a facilitator. Cohen made the appointment Tuesday after talks broke down.

Premium Cigars International Ltd. (PCIG) signed an agreement granting it exclusive rights in North America to market Lockwood Publications Inc.'s Smoke Magazine in stores that participate in the PCI Cigar Program.

In "My Partners' Wives Are All Named Tanya," he recounts how he bought a series of time slots on Russian television at the rate of $3,000 for 30 seconds, and happily annoyed a nation of smokers by carrying on ("Excuse my pronunciation") about the dangers of tobacco.

Antismoking activists should proceed immediately to the booth of Linda and Howard Stein, where 68 smoking tables from the 1920s and 1930s are on display. A painted silhouette of a pop culture or kitsch icon -- from a life-size Airedale to turbaned Nubian boys to the battling cartoon couple Maggie and Jiggs -- holds aloft a shelf just large enough for an ashtray. "It's a collection I helped put together and am now helping disperse," Mrs. Stein said on Tuesday morning, as she arranged the tables in neat rows like a photographer readying a graduating class for its yearbook picture. Prices range from $450 to thousands of dollars.

SmithKline Beecham's smoking cessation brands, NicoDerm CQ and Nicorette, will sponsor a race car competing, not coincidentally, in this Sunday's Marlboro 500 . . . At the event, the marketer will launch the "NicoDerm CQ/Nicorette 'Race to Stop Smoking"' program, which will challenge racing car teams and fans to stop smoking.

New York-based knitwear company, 525 Made in America, is going to the dogs and is proud of it. This fall, the privately held manufacturer of men's and women's clothing and home accessories is repeating the memorable ad campaign, with dogs as models, that it began a year ago. This time around, it is quadrupling the budget, to $2 million, and introducing the ads to new markets. . . A second ad shows Jason, attired in a sweater while reading a newspaper and drinking coffee, spending "a relaxing Sunday morning dressed in his favorite 525 chenille sweater." A third ad, with Bernard wrapped in a throw, sipping brandy, smoking a cigar and reading a newspaper, says the dog is having "a quiet evening at home enjoying the warmth of a brandy and his favorite 525 chenille throw." The tagline for all the ads is "525 Made in America. For men, for women, for the home. (Dogs optional.)"

Patches, inhalers and tablets that reduce smokers' addiction to nicotine are treated in many countries as prescription drugs and subject to heavy consumer-protection regulations. Cigarettes, cigars and other products are exempted from those laws, thanks to lobbying by cigarette manufacturers, said scientists and lawyers meeting for a three-day conference in Geneva. Some 8,000 people worldwide die each day from smoking-related illnesses, a number they said could be reduced if regulations on nicotine substitutes were eased. "The insanity of it is that the products which are least harmful are the ones that face the greatest marketing constraints," said Sweanor.

"Although cancer remains undefeated, defeatism is simply not supported by recent research, which provides abundant evidence of unanticipated breakthroughs," according to Drs. Barnett Kramer and Richard Klausner of the NCI. . . Their review of the federal agency's anti-cancer strategy appears in this week's issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. Critics of NCI policy have contended that government research focuses too much on an elusive 'cure' for cancer, while largely underfunding prevention efforts. . . Kramer and Klausner admit that funds directly aimed at prevention (for example, getting Americans to stop smoking, or eat better) comprise just 10% of the current NCI budget. "But prevention is impossible without some understanding of the risk factors for cancer," they point out. When this type of research is added in, overall expenditure on 'prevention' efforts rises to a full 38% of the NCI annual budget, they say. . . "even if all tobacco use stopped today and even if we all adopted 'perfect' diets overnight... we would still be confronted with an enormous number of people who have cancer."

Walgreen drug stores are recalling about 53,000 disposable cigarette lighters because some of them may not be child-proof, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced Wednesday. The child-resistant mechanism on some of the lighters may fail to reset themselves, the commission said. No injuries have been reported because of the problem The lighters came inside a vinyl pouch sold as part of a "Perfection Smoke Tote" set that included a matching cigarette case. Both the lighters and the cases were sold in various colors under a label that read "Perfection Smoke Tote -- Free Child Proof Lighter and Fashion Case."

Cigarette makers engaged in crime or fraud by promoting a false controversy about the risk of smoking and by giving industry lawyers control over research, according to excerpts of a judicial officer's sealed findings. The excerpts, filed in court Monday by a British tobacco company, offer the first glimpse at the reasoning behind a Minnesota special master's Sept. 10 recommendation to release an unprecedented 834 tobacco industry documents shielded by lawyer-client privilege. . . By disclosing Gehan's findings, the British tobacco firm appeared to be distancing itself from the U.S. cigarette makers and the industry organizations created in the 1950s, after researchers linked smoking to cancer. The British company denied it participated in a "Gentleman's Agreement" among major tobacco companies concerning industry research. The company also objected to the special master's conclusion that B.A.T was a "driving force behind the direction and the suppression of scientific research."

he special master reviewing confidential documents in Minnesota's massive lawsuit against the tobacco industry has found that the major cigarette companies "acted in concert to create a false controversy about the health risks of smoking" and made repeated misstatements to the citizens of Minnesota "denying or diminishing the health effects of smoking," according to a court document filed Tuesday. Among Special Master Mark W. Gehan's findings was that the companies acted in concert to create the false controversy when they published the so-called Frank Statement in 1954, pledging to engage in independent scientific research about smoking's impacts on health.

"Although production increased in August, manufacturers had to draw down inventories to meet shipment demand," Statistics Canada said.

The Food and Drug Administration said it had contracted with six more states to enforce the new FDA youth smoking rules. That brings the number of states to 10, the amount the FDA planned for the first phase of enforcement. More states will be added later as part of the national drive to crack down on underage smoking.

In the study, being reported Friday in the journal Science, Dr. R. Dean Hautamaki, Dr. Steven D. Shapiro and their colleagues showed that in mice that developed emphysema after repeated exposure to cigarette smoke , it was a substance made by immune-system cells that attacked the molecule giving lungs the ability to expel air. If the same mechanism is discovered in people, researchers may be able to find a way to suppress the action of the renegade substance. "This is a landmark paper," said Dr. Gordon L. Snider, chief of medicine at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Boston.

With the help of some heavy-smoking mice, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered that lungs lacking a certain enzyme are apparently immune to emphysema. The discovery, described in the Sept. 26, 1997, issue of Science, throws serious doubt on conventional theories of the disease, and researchers are already using the finding to search for potential new drugs. Steven D. Shapiro, M.D., associate professor of medicine and of cell biology and physiology at the School of Medicine, and colleagues found that mice genetically engineered to lack an enzyme called macrophage elastase showed no signs of emphysema even after inhaling the smoke of two unfiltered cigarettes a day, six days a week for six months. Such heavy smoking invariably causes emphysema-like symptoms in normal mice. "There hasn't been a new drug for emphysema in 20 years, and that was oxygen," Shapiro says. "Blocking this enzyme or related enzymes might give us a way to halt the disease."

For the 14 lawmakers and nine congressional aides who went to Prague for six days last August, the trip seemed to be a wonderful opportunity to see the sights and talk some policy. . And the sponsor listed on the disclosure forms as footing the bill -- the Ripon Educational Fund, the think tank of the moderate GOP group -- was beyond reproach. But what the forms did not show -- and under congressional rules did not have to -- was that the trip was entirely paid for by corporations and trade associations. . . Tobacco maker Philip Morris alone sent five representatives, including four from its Washington office, and underwrote the opening dinner for 230 guests in the historic Prague Castle. . .

Philip Morris spokeswoman Darienne Dennis said the company participated because of its extensive business interests in the area and tradition of supporting organizations with compatible philosophies. "The fact that they've invited members of Congress is certainly secondary, if it was important at all," she said.

onsumer activist Ralph Nader has asked the Justice Department to investigate recent across-the-board price increases by the cigarette industry, contending they appear to "constitute a conscious case of price-fixing." Nader made the request in a letter to Joel Klein, assistant attorney general in charge of the antitrust division. Nader's letter notes that late on Friday, Aug. 29, Philip Morris, the nation's leading cigarette manufacturer, announced it was raising its price by 7 cents a pack. Later that weekend, R.J. Reynolds and Brown & Williamson, the second- and third-largest domestic cigarette firms, announced they would raise their prices by the same amount. Soon thereafter, Lorillard and Liggett followed suit.

Big Tobacco is drawing a line in the sand here on the Texas-Arkansas border. Unwilling -- for now -- to settle any more lawsuits by states seeking to recoup public expenses linked to smoking, and with a national tobacco accord unlikely anytime soon, tobacco companies are marshaling hordes of lawyers for a titanic court fight in this remote Bible Belt town.

A coalition of union health care funds has filed class-action lawsuits across the country charging tobacco companies with racketeering and conspiring to mislead the public about the health risks of smoking. The companies also are accused of manipulating nicotine levels to keep people addicted to cigarettes. The 21st such suit was filed in federal court in West Palm Beach on Sept. 11, on behalf of a fund serving three union locals

Six private sector labor-management (Taft-Hartley) health care funds representing several thousand New Jersey blue-collar workers and their families, today filed a class action suit against eight major tobacco companies seeking to recover tens of millions of dollars spent treating The plaintiff funds, which represent workers throughout the state, are New Jersey Carpenters Health Fund; United Food & Commercial Workers Union Local 56 Health & Welfare Fund; United Food & Commercial Workers Union and Participating Food Industry Employers Tri-State Health & Welfare Fund; Laborers International Union of North America Local 415 Health and Welfare Fund; United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry Local 322 Health & Welfare Fund; and Cement Masons Local 699 Health & Welfare Fund.

The Senate, where the bill died last year, was widely viewed as the last major hurdle the measure would have to clear before it could become law. The House passed the bill in July, and Acting Governor Paul Cellucci said last week that he would sign it. Over the past two years pension boards in several other states - including New York, Maryland, Texas, Florida, and Vermont - have voted to divest their tobacco stocks. But no states have adopted the policy as law.

A 2.2 percent increase in cigarette consumption in fiscal 1997 reverses a five-year decline in overall smoking in Wisconsin, and shows a continuing among underage smokers, according to the latest statistics and officials. "We have begun a backslide in the rates of smoking both here in Wisconsin and nationwide," said Michael C. Fiore, director of the Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention at the University of Wisconsin.

"White Bear Lake really started the ball rolling in 1989," Weigum said. "That city was out in front when nobody else was out there." Roseville, Shoreview and Chanhassen followed, before the federal government eventually brought up the rear. Weigum, a St. Paul resident who is president of the nonprofit Association for Nonsmokers-Minnesota, was referring to the national news recently about the efforts of Clinton and the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate the sale of tobacco to minors. She said the new FDA regulations on tobacco, which have been challenged in federal court by the tobacco industry, were put together from a package of local ordinances her organization sent to Washington, D.C.

French tobacco company Seita SA (F.STA) said Thursday it is implementing cost-cutting measures to boost its profit margins because there is no sign of an end to a government freeze on cigarette prices.

Dragonfly owner Howard Chapnick said tobacco companies are dangling offers worth in the "hundreds of thousands"--a considerable jump from the current $50,000-plus deal Dragonfly has to help peddle Camel and Red Kamel, both R.J. Reynolds Co. brands. "A lot more money has started flooding into the clubs," said Chapnick, whose warehouse-style venue draws wall-to-wall crowds of tattooed, body-pierced young adults.

The spot was one in a series of humorous TV commercials from the New York agency Wells Rich Greene about the supposed disadvantages of Benson & Hedges 100s.

A U.S. senator asked baseball players Friday not to use chewing tobacco during the first inning of all postseason games. "My goal is to work with you to send a signal to America's youth -- those who follow baseball closely and seek to emulate their baseball heroes -- about the dangers of smokeless tobacco," Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., wrote to the player representatives of the postseason.

Michael Shull, a pediatrician in Garden City, Kan., is one of thousands of doctors taking continuing-medical-education courses on the Internet these days. Recent study for Dr. Shull, 44, includes teenage smoking and children's development. . . The American College of Chest Physicians puts 30 lessons in pulmonary and critical care on its Web site.

George Cook, the oldest man in Britain, has died at the age of 108, his relatives said Monday. He died in his sleep Saturday night at a retirement home in Dorking, Surrey. Cook, who was born on June 17, 1889, fought in the trenches at Ypres in World War I and was wounded twice in the battle of the Somme. He fathered six children. By profession he was a gardener. He smoked heavily for 85 years before giving up tobacco at the age of 97. He readily admitted that when he had no tobacco he would smoke anything including oak leaves and even shoe laces.

A new wave of research, while not yet conclusive, appears to be adding weight to the argument that secondhand smoke poses serious risks at high levels. "The science continues to reinforce the harm of secondhand smoke," said Michael P. Eriksen, head of the Health and Human Service Department's Office on Smoking and Health. "The weight of the evidence is clear to everybody except those who have a vested interest in denying science."

A few months ago, the tobacco industry might have taken top honors. . . An effort to slip a $50 billion industry credit into this summer's tax bill proved a huge error and was overturned with near unanimity. Legislators who once championed the interests of tobacco giants now claim to speak only for farmers. The companies are left to savor a tired but true adage: If you need a friend in Washington, get a dog. That leaves the broadcast industry free to claim the crown. . .

Koop has signed with a group of prominent educators seeking a tobacco divestment by the Teachers Insurance & Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund. Koop says the nation's college faculty members should "get out of the lethal tobacco business" and stop giving cigarette makers "respectable college camouflage."

True, Fortune magazine's cover story about IBM's chairman and chief executive, Louis Gerstner Jr., described Gerstner as arrogant, brusque and obsessed with status. But it also hailed him for doing the job at IBM "better than anyone expected" and repositioning the company "against all odds." Apparently, though, the chief did not like the piece. And in perhaps the most extreme example of what many magazine executives see as a troubling trend toward heavy editorial pressure from big advertisers, IBM has struck back. In the months since the April article, IBM and its software subsidiary Lotus have pulled all their advertising from Fortune, business worth an estimated $6 million a year. The company has also refused to return phone calls from reporters at the magazine. Fortune is frozen out.

The following is the list of "the people's attorneys," private trial lawyers hired by the state on a contingency basis to represent Florida in the lawsuit against cigarette makers: *Bob Montgomery, of Montgomery and Larmoyeux, West Palm Beach. *Sheldon Schlesinger of Fort Lauderdale . . .

Edward DeHart, a tobacco industry consultant credited with helping develop the warning label printed on all cigarette packs sold in the United States, has died of lung cancer. He was 71. DeHart helped craft the first surgeon general's warning in 1962, when as a public affairs consultant with Hill & Knowlton, he worked with the Tobacco Institute, an industry trade group. He was a smoker but quit in 1987 when cancer forced his doctors to remove part of his lungs. The cancer recurred and led to his death on Wednesday.

Alligator gar is more than the name of a big fish in this town. John Cross' Alligator Gar Cigar Co. wholesales his hand-rolled products as far away as Seattle. Cross has an exclusive deal with two tobacco farms in the Dominican Republic for fine cigar tobacco leaves. He also has exclusive deals with 10 Dominican rollers and another six Cuban rollers in the Little Havana section of Miami. These deals are what he counts on to give him an edge in a very competitive market.

Beginning with this today's Marlboro 500 at the California Speedway and on into next season, Vitolo will drive a Reynard sponsored by SmithKline Beecham's NicoDerm CQ patches and Nicorette gum, both products intended to help people stop using tobacco. According to the company, it is the first quit-smoking involvement in major league auto racing, which faces the loss of multimillion-dollar tobacco sponsorship under proposed federal rules.

The car will be emblazoned with the NicoDerm and Nicorette logos, a first in the auto-racing world, which draws heavily from tobacco brands like Marlboro and Winston. The sponsorship includes an off-track challenge for competitors: SmithKline promises to donate $500 to the American Cancer Society for each member of Championship Auto Racing Teams who quits smoking. As for car driver Dennis Vitolo? He stopped smoking the day he took up racing.

In addition to the free cigarettes in the "C" rations, we received "supplement packages" on a regular basis while on operations in the bush. And one of my varied responsibilities as senior combat medic in a company of infantry soldiers was to break down the cartons of cigarettes, plugs of chewing tobacco, candy bars, etc., and distribute them to the troops, along with their mail from home. . . Mr. Spanogle's suggestion is right on target. Congress should divert some of the tobacco money to provide for the care of veterans who became addicted to nicotine while in the military.

THE Government is to press for a Europe-wide ban on tobacco advertising and sports sponsorship in a move that could speed up a ban in this country. Health ministers are optimistic that they can get agreement for a new directive at Luxembourg in December, which could result in outlawing tobacco advertising in Britain by next autumn.

Windhom tears down the old barns and uses the wood to make custom flooring. He's finding plenty of demand for the unusual planks, some of which come from huge trees cut 150 years ago.

Q Judging by current data on tobacco-related illnesses and deaths, how many units of blood could be saved if the number of people who smoke was cut in half? A Can't tell, says Laura Gondolfo of the American Red Cross. The Red Cross tracks statistics on blood-related illnesses such as sickle cell anemia, leukemia and other blood disorders, she said, but nothing on tobacco-related illness and death.

The House by voice vote Friday moved to restrict the use of U.S. government funds to promote the sale or export of tobacco products overseas. After only limited debate lawmakers passed an amendment to an annual spending bill for the Commerce, Justice and State Departments that also bars the government from using funds in the measure to remove or reduce marketing restrictions on the export of U.S. tobacco products to other countries. Before approving the amendment, lawmakers agreed to an exception that would allow the federal government to intervene in cases where a foreign nation was importing tobacco but discriminating against American products.

Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.) has made himself available to any and all in search of a pithy sound bite on the evils of tobacco. "Stay ahead on the tobacco news," intones one release from Lautenberg's office. "Interview Sen. Frank Lautenberg." If you cannot get him on the phone right away, check out his Web site. "From legislation . . . to tips on quitting smoking . . . to constantly updated briefings on lawsuits . . . Tobacco Control Central is your one-stop shop on the World Wide Web," declares yet another news release. "Bookmark it today."

Even as smokers have become social pariahs, kiddie "cigarettes" have apparently lost none of their appeal. For decades, sales of "tobacco look-alike" products have made up a small but steady percentage of the $21 billion confection industry. And the recent vogue in cigar smoking has reportedly resulted in an uptick in purchases of bubble gum cigars by kids. . . The 2,000 7-Eleven corporate stores haven't stocked candy cigarettes for at least a decade, according to a spokesperson, because they "don't want to send the wrong message." And several states have tried unsuccessfully to outlaw the candy.

It seems the Globe's "credibility will be immeasurably enhanced" by divesting your pages of tobacco-related advertising - if you believe the same will occur for the state's investment funds.

But the Winthrop Board of Health - which proposed the ban earlier this month - counters that since state law allows them to control the pollution and emission of smoke, they may also regulate the sale of tobacco. "We have the power to regulate anything that is a nuisance to the public health. A town has the right to say they don't want to sell liquor and I think we have the power to do this.... Hopefully, we will become a leader in the ban of tobacco products throughout the state," said Ralph Sirriani, the board of health member leading the proposal. The board of health, which unanimously approved the measure this month, will hold a public hearing on Oct. 15.

Tobacco prices in North Carolina are improving halfway through the sales season as better quality leaf is brought to auction, but market watchers say they doubt last year's top price will be reached.

California Gov. Pete Wilson signed a bill on Monday allowing individual smokers in the nation's most populous state to sue tobacco companies. The new state law removes tobacco from the list of "inherently unsafe" consumer products whose manufacturers were shielded from product liability actions under a 1987 law. . . "This bill removes the statutory protection from product liability laws that had been granted to tobacco companies. From now on, all tobacco-related injury claims can be decided by the courts based on the merits of the case," he added. The bill's author, state Sen. Quentin Kopp, an independent, has said the legislation would make California smokers eligible to submit claims for reimbursement from the proposed $368.5 billion national settlement between the tobacco industry and the state attorneys-general.

THE Labour government's threat of a total ban on tobacco advertising has prompted Maiden, the outdoor advertising group, to dramatically reduce its dependence on the industry. The tobacco sector used to account for 21pc of Maiden's sales in 1993 but has since been cut back to 7.4pc for the six months to June 30.

The arrangers of the loan are State Bank of India, Natwest Bank and Daiichi Kangyo Bank. The funds will be used for the general operations of the company.

7-Eleven, the first name in convenience, is now the first name in premium cigars. The convenience store company is offering premium cigars at more than 3,000 of its stores in the United States. "Quality premium cigars are scarce and, up until now, customers looking for a good cigar didn't have many places to go," said Tom Bonfiglio, 7-Eleven category manager, tobacco. "We've changed that. Now premium cigars are as close as the nearest 7-Eleven."

New data add to the growing body of evidence that cigarette smoking may lead to the development of nuclear lens opacities. In the Archives of Ophthalmology this month, Rita Hiller of the National Eye Institute and the Framingham Eye Study I and II investigators report . . . a "...significant positive association with increasing duration of smoking and number of cigarettes smoked daily was found for nuclear lens opacities, alone or in combination."

Smoking cigarettes alters levels of chemicals in the brain that can ultimately affect mood, feelings and emotions, suggests a new study in mice. The findings may explain why people with schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders are more likely to pick up the nicotine habit, as well as shed light on how smoking affects the aging brain. In the new study, mice were genetically engineered to lack an enzyme called MAOB, or monoamine oxidase B -- which is known to be reduced in smokers compared with nonsmokers and those who have kicked the habit. The mice appeared normal but had eight times the brain level of phenylethylamine (PEA), suggesting that MAOB is an inhibitor of the mood- and emotion-influencing compound, according to the report in Nature Genetics.

The excerpts can be downloaded from Mealey's web site at www.mealeys.com.) Tucker represented B&W at a meeting of tobacco industry representatives in December 1953. . . Wilner also showed Tucker's response to the following question: "How many people out of 70 million would need to die before you would conclude that the product wasn't safe?" Answer by Tucker: "I would say 50 percent."

How many of us would allow someone to smoke in our home today? 32%.

• Smokers Get Less Sympathy from Nonsmokers
  
  The public has become sharply less tolerant of smoking in public and more than half favor banning all cigarette ads, says the latest USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup poll. On several questions respondents indicated less sympathy toward smokers and less willingness to allow smoking around them if given a choice. However, the nation is split almost evenly on whether government policies can reduce teen smoking.
• This Link covers feelings on federal tobacco policy.

In terms of smoking status, smoking more than five cigarettes per day before pregnancy increased the risk for GDM by 43%, compared with nonsmokers. Ex-smokers did not appear to have an increased GDM risk.

Women who smoke cigarettes or gain weight in early adulthood increase their risk of developing diabetes during pregnancy, a study said on Tuesday. Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School said they based the conclusion on a study of 14,613 women who delivered babies between 1990 and 1994 and who had no pre-pregnancy history of diabetes. The study, published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association, said women who smoked more than five cigarettes a day before pregnancy had a significantly higher risk of developing diabetes during pregnancy than non-smokers did.

Once the papers had said no to the campaign, the Leo Burnett agency decided to weigh in. It produced a statement calling itself a "passionate defender of the freedom of commercial speech. However," the statement went on, "we believe the media ...have a responsibility to be fair and accurate. The ad sponsored by The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids is neither fair nor accurate. The decisions by the newspapers not to run this ad were made independent of us, and we applaud them." I asked a Burnett spokesman what specifically was unfair or inaccurate about the campaign's squelched ad. "We are not going to elaborate further," she said. "It's just engaging in a debate."

Winston-Salem - A warehouse fire destroyed an estimated $40 million worth of tobacco, an R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. spokesman said. Investigation continued into the Monday night blaze.