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Local governments will be nudged to go smoke-free in parks and some other public places  

Smoking is allowed at parks in Aberdeen, but a new federal grant will urge local officials to reconsider the policy.

Public health divisions across Grays Harbor, Thurston and Lewis counties have received a federal grant to push to create smoke-free environments in city parks, on library grounds and government campuses.

Grays Harbor is the lead entity for the $292,000 grant that will be partially split with Thurston and Lewis counties. Mason and Pacific counties may also qualify for the next round of Community Transformation Grants, which is spearheaded by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.

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Bele Chere board delays decision on tobacco sponsorships 

The board of volunteers that helps oversee Bele Chere, the city's annual, three-day summer street party, decided Wednesday to put off a vote on whether to drop tobacco sponsorships of the festival.

A group of local teens has been lobbying the Bele Chere Board of Directors, as well as the city's Parks, Recreation and Cultural Arts Department board, for months with impassioned pleas asking the boards to drop the sponsorships starting in 2013. A group of about 25 teens, parents and other anti-tobacco residents spoke again Wednesday.

"Even though youths aren't allowed into the booth, it still sends a message that it's OK,"

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• Row flares over charity's fag funding  

Controversy has been kindled over a leading disability charity’s choice of funding partner, with disabled people raising concerns at Leonard Cheshire Disability’s (LCD’s) decision to accept money from a tobacco company to fund an IT programme.

The charity said that the money from Japan Tobacco International (JTI), which owns brands including Camel, Benson & Hedges and Silk Cut, would enable it to continue to deliver its Discover IT programme in sites throughout the UK.

The programme provides mentoring and training opportunities, as well as opportunities for disabled adults to learn and gain new skills.

But one former LCD disabled employee said that she was “disgusted” and “horrified” at LCD’s partnership with JTI.

She said: “Tobacco companies do so much harm to people’s health and well-being that it’s hypocritical for an organisation that supports disabled people, some of whom are disabled by being smokers, to do this.”

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Colorado returns millions of dollars to fight tobacco, cancer 

A looser state budget will hand about $46 million back to cancer-fighting groups who had lost money for tobacco cessation and medical screening for the past three years.

Eroding state budgets pushed the legislature to confiscate Amendment 35 cancer-fighting money for emergency funds. The new 2012-13 state budget restores the money to the pots voters intended when they approved a higher cigarette tax in 2004.

The money will quickly boost tobacco "quit lines" for Colorado, and restore screening for breast, cervical and colorectal cancers, as well as treatments for the uninsured when those tests discover illnesses.

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• EDITORIAL: State Grabs Money Meant For Quitting Smoking 

When it comes to tobacco addiction, Connecticut's state government has been nearly as exploitative and venal as the tobacco companies it went after more than a dozen years ago.

The state led the nation in suing Big Tobacco, with then-Attorney General Richard Blumenthal demanding compensation for the high cost of Medicaid patients who are prone to smoke. The idea was that tobacco companies would give states money to care for the ill — and prevent others from becoming addicted.

The argument won the day. Connecticut and 45 other states won billions of dollars in 1998 as part of the historic tobacco settlement. But hypocrisy soon followed.

This income stream of $100 million-plus annually will end in 11 more years. It has become little more than a slush fund to pay for practically everything but quitting smoking. . . .

Between 2000 and 2009, according to an excellent Yankee Institute study (bit.ly/tobaccoct), of the $1.3 billion sent to Connecticut from the settlement, only $134 million went to the Tobacco and Health Trust Fund. But it gets even worse: The state government raided that "trust fund" of all but $9.2 million for other goals.

Mr. Blumenthal, now U.S. senator, says, "We should be embarrassed and ashamed that one of the nation's leading states in public health is failing to use the money to help people quit. "

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• State lawmakers use cigars to lure in funds 

State lawmakers still love a good cigar — especially when it helps them raise money.

Legislators and other candidates for state offices have spent more than $44,919 on cigars and other-tobacco-related items since 2008, according to a study of campaign records provided to the Daily News by the New York Public Interest Research Group.

The cigars were often used as gifts for fat-cat donors at cash bashes.

“The practice of politicians and donors meeting in smoke-filled rooms is apparently alive and well in New York,” said NYPIRG’s Bill Mahoney.

Republicans were easily the biggest cigar spenders, with more than a half-dozen GOP candidates and campaign organizations spending $500 or more on tobacco-related products.

The tobacco aficionados included Sen. Andrew Lanza (R-Staten Island), who spent more than $3,830 at Carmine’s Cigars on Staten Island during the past three years.

Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Nassau County) spent $1,333 at Habana Premium Cigars in Albany. And the Senate Republican Campaign Committee, which Skelos controls, spent more than $6,000 at the same shop.

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Research Tobacco Industry Funding 

As a result, based upon Office of the President (OP) guidance, the UCSD campus has established the following policy based upon a notice from the Chancellor dated April 29, 2008.

In accordance with RE-89, this policy requires that prior to submission of a proposal for research funding from the tobacco industry (or other tobacco entity):

* A scientific review committee composed of academic members with expertise in areas of science relevant to the proposal being submitted, will advise the UCSD Chancellor whether the proposed study uses sound methodology and whether it appears designed to allow the researcher to reach objective and scientifically valid conclusions.

* Also, please be aware that the Chancellor will issue a written determination approving or disapproving submission of the proposal, including a rationale of the determination. A copy of this determination will then be provided to the researcher, the UC President and The Regents.

OP has provided a preliminary list of companies and other entities that are considered part of and/or related to the tobacco industry.

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EDITORIAL: Our view: Smoking ban is good, or bad, for all  

• Big Tobacco backs Australian law opposers ($$) 

- FT.com PMI said the company was openly supporting governments that challenged Australia on plain packaging.

“We have been in contact with many of these countries, including on the trade and legal issues associated with the [plain packaging] policy,” it said. “It is commonplace for affected industries to support countries in WTO disputes and we are open to supporting governments that challenge Australia on plain packaging.”

BAT said the company was happy to provide legal support to member states, but it was “up to them” to accept it.

However, the news drew a sharp response from anti-tobacco campaigners.

“It is very concerning that tobacco companies are using legal action as a delaying tactic against a government that is trying to protect the health of its citizens,” said Robin Hewings, tobacco control manager for Cancer Research UK.

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of the London-based Action on Smoking and Health, accused the tobacco companies of “getting others to do their dirty work”.

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Taxpayer-funded charity sparks outrage by handing out free cigarettes as part of ANTI-SMOKING campaign  

• GLANTZ: Prop 29 opponents California Taxpayers Assn and California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce have financial ties to Philip Morris  

The California Taxpayers Association (CalTax) and the California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce, which signed the "No on 29" ballot arguments have long histories of working with the cigarette companies, including "donations" from Philip Morris over the years.

You can see the documents in the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library on them by clicking on these links for CalTax and California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce.

Without much looking, I found payments totaling $30,000 to CalTax from Philip Morris in 2000 and 2001 and totaling $35,000 to the California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce in 1998 and 1999. My guess is with a little more looking one could find lots more.

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• Merseyside anti-smoking campaign under fire for giving away cigarettes as part of health campaign  

A MERSEYSIDE taxpayer-funded charity is promoting an anti-smoking campaign - by giving away free cigarettes.

Tobacco Free Futures sent out the packs as part of its campaign about how packaging is alluring to children and can lead them to become hooked on smoking. The charity said it had only sent packs out to a small number of people in the media in the North West to try to highlight the dangers of smoking to "people with influence, including MPs".

But the move has been slammed by leading city politicians, who are demanding answers of the city's Primary Care Trust - and Westminster - as to why public money was being put into the pockets of big tobacco firms.

It is not known how many packs the charity sent out, but each mailing cost around £20 a time.

The organisation, which used to be known as Smoke Free North West, today defended its decision, but opponents of the scheme said the idea of an ant-smoking charity giving out free cigarettes was "beyond parody".

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Tobacco-control office cuts 35 jobs 

EDITORIAL: As We See It: Vote yes on 29: tobacco tax measure would save lives, fund research  

Should there be a limit on tobacco taxes?

Not when the tobacco industry will go to any lengths, spend any sum, to sustain its primary mission: Getting people to either start smoking, or continue in the habit, no matter the health consequences.

That's why we're supporting Proposition 29, one of only two statewide ballot propositions on the June 5 primary ballot.

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• Independent and Principled? Behind the Cato Myth 

Fact: The Cato Institute is one of the leading manufacturers of toxic corporate propaganda, cynically undermining science and scholarship to serve the interests of tobacco companies, oil and gas, chemicals, health insurance, financial industry and other Cato donors.

Cato chairman Robert Levy, who today accuses the Kochs of turning Cato into “a mouthpiece of special interests,” once faithfully served the tobacco industry as a leading tobacco-death denialist. In his article, “Lies, Damn Lies & 400,000 Smoking-Related Deaths”, Levy claimed, “children do not die of tobacco-related diseases” and “there is no credible evidence that 400,000 deaths per year—or any number remotely close to 400,000—are caused by tobacco.” (In fact, tobacco use kills more than 5 million people a year worldwide.) . . .

Philip Morris listed Cato VP David Boaz as one of its “National Allies” in a 2000 memo.

In 2001, a British-American Tobacco executive sent a thank-you letterto Levy and the Cato Institute, noting: “I was also pleased to learn after our meeting that our subsidiary company, Brown & Williamson, provided the Cato Institute with funding in 2000.”

So there you have it: a brief look at the Cato Institute’s factual record, which reads nothing at all like the heroic fairytales spun by Cato and its allies about its principled opposition to the Bush Administration’s imperial presidency, or its opposition to the Republican Party, or whatever else Cato’s minions tell us to win our hearts rather than our minds.

In fact, it’s hard to know what, if anything, to believe about Cato —PR and spin are so ingrained in their thinking and their breathing, one wonders if Cato’s own flaks can tell the difference themselves between reality and spin. Lately, they seem to have a hard time keeping track of their numerous and rather careless flip-flops, particularly when it comes to how they characterize their longtime benefactors, the Brothers Koch. Most of the same libertarians who attacked the Kochs as unprincipled GOP usurpers of the Cato Institute only yesterday defended the same Kochs as principled patrons of purist libertarian scholarship. What started as a rather arcane legal dispute between the Koch brothers and their longtime lieutenant, Cato president Ed Crane, quickly transformed into a PR-manufactured Washington melodrama: The famed and revered (in some quarters) Cato Institute has turned against its Dr. Frankenstein, Charles Koch, attacking its maker with the full range of PR-weaponry that has served Cato effectively over these past four decades. The same pundits who only yesterday fell over themselves defending the billionaire Koch brothers as principled libertarians now denounce their benefactors as venal Republican Party warmongers out to crush the Cato Institute’s “nonpartisan” “independent” “scholarship” for the crime of being, yes, principled libertarians.

It would all be good for a laugh, if the spin hadn’t succeeded in conning the media and confusing the public, even roping in some well-meaning progressives like Common Cause, who defended Cato’s “independence.”

But in order for progressives and others to make an honest and practical assessment about the Cato Institute and its battle with the Kochs, we need to first set the record straight about some of the claims being spun.

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