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• Annual cigarette sales volume falls below 200 billion for first time 

The number of cigarettes sold in Japan in fiscal 2011 dropped 6 percent from the previous year to 197.5 billion, dropping below 200 billion for the first time since statistics were first kept in 1990, the Tobacco Institute of Japan has announced.

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Transcript: THE ANSWERS WE SEEK (roh74e00) 

NARRATOR One controversial aspect of the stressful lives we lead is tobacco and its use-particularly in cigarettes. For the next few minutes we will be looking into this. And we will call on world-renowned scientists and experts from several disciplines to help us. . . .

DR. OBER Lung cancer is predominantly a disease of people who live in large cities or in industrial areas, whereas people who live in rural communities have a much lower incidence of lung cancer.

DR LEVINE There are substances in the air in every city in the United States-and I suspect in every city in the world--which are known to produce cancer.

NARRATOR Lung cancer has been found to be increasing among ducks at the Philadelphia Zoo-located in a typical city air pollution area. . . .

NARRATOR Some headlines reflect the smoking adversary view that there is a cause and effect relationship between smoking and health. But conclusions based on simple statistics do not satisfy many. They feel that more meaningful research should focus on the smoker rather than the smoke. Do smokers differ from nonsmokers?

DR SELTZER Smokers tend to be more aggressive, out-going, extroverted people: hard-driving, full of tension. They tend to marry more often, divorce more often, move their homes more often, change their occupations more often than do nonsmokers.

DR SELYE The human being smokes only because he likes to smoke. Nobody smokes because he has to smoke. Nobody can command you to smoke. . . .

DR OBER I think we have a great deal to learn and I think far too many people have rushed to a premature judgment based upon; very inadequate evidence, chiefly because of the tremendouseniotional need to oversimplify and make things easy and palatable for the public, for medical students as well as for legislators.

NARRATOR The tobacco industry is concerned about the implication for its products. It believes informed discussion is essential to the public interest.

Its dollar commitment to independent scientific research in the area of smoking and health exceeds the combined support of the cancer society and the heart and lung associations and is growing yearly as we seek the answers that we need.

DR FURST The biggest thing we need is a good idea. We need more good ideas and we need more good quality research.

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• Day 15 - “We weren’t people with horns on our heads.” 

The third day of Anthony Kalhok's testimony was scheduled to be his last appearance at the Montreal tobacco trials, but it became apparent by mid-day that the pace of questions and answers would bring this witness also into "overtime".

As she had throughout the week, Mr. Kalhok's wife, Barbara Kalhok, sat at the back of the courtroom. Other family members were present, at least in the testimony. Tony Kalhok explained that (although he grew up on a tobacco farm) his mother warned him that smoking would stunt his growth, and laughed at his own lack of height. He also revealed that when he spoke of pressure on smokers from children taping closed their parents cigarette package, he spoke of his own daughter's response to his smoking.

The answers we seek: A tobacco industry film

Mr. André Lespérance started his examination by picking up where he left the day before - trying to put on the record a film giving an industry perspective on smoking issues. This film, "The answers we seek" had been the subject of a discussion between Mr. Kalhok, when he was Vice President of Marketing for Imperial Tobacco and his colleagues in the research and internal public relations departments.

The fact that it was produced by the U.S. Tobacco Institute was only one of the concerns of the industry lawyers who objected to the film being allowed into evidence.

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ALEC and the Tobacco Industry  

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is an influential, under-the-radar organization that facilitates collaboration between many of the most powerful corporations in America and state-level legislative representatives. Elected officials then introduce legislation approved by corporations in state houses across the U.S., without disclosing that the bills were pre-approved by corporations on ALEC task forces.

ALEC has had a long relationship with the tobacco industry. . . .

ALEC's relationship with the tobacco industry started after 1979, when ALEC Executive Director, Kathleen Teague, first wrote the Tobacco Institute seeking financial support. Shortly after, Institute members started participating in ALEC events. The industry's relationship with ALEC showed its worth quickly after ALEC provided Tobacco Institute members with face-to-face access to highest-level federal elected officials. In 1981, Tobacco Institute President Samuel Chilcote accepted an invitation to attend an ALEC "Exclusive White House and Cabinet Briefing" meeting with none other than the president of the United States, Ronald Reagan and his cabinet. . . .

ALEC has taken the cigarette makers' side in virtually every debate between the industry and public health. A 1987-89 R.J. Reynolds strategic plan describes ALEC as an ally who could help "create an atmosphere of tolerance and fairness in the public's attitude toward smoking and smokers." RJR considered ALEC a friendly group of elected officials who would be willing "to tell our story in such a manner that it becomes their [other legislators'] position."

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ARCHIVE: PUSHING CIGARETTES OVERSEAS 

Watching Koop pound home his statistics, surrounded by a phalanx of America's top health officials -physicians from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and its Office of Smoking and Health - one would think he was leading a unified campaign toward what he likes to call ''a smoke-free society.'' He is not. Less than a mile away, just across Washington's long, grassy Mall, men and women at the Office of the United States Trade Representative are energetically pursuing a very different goal: to open foreign markets to American tobacco.

Working with the Departments of Commerce and State as well as leaders in Congress, the trade office has chalked up a string of victories in recent years that have forced the governments of Japan, Taiwan and South Korea to level a playing field that for years was pitched to discourage competition from cigarettes manufactured in the West. To civil servants at the trade office and the Commerce Department, who slog daily through the mire of international trade negotiations, tobacco is not a health issue. Rather, the export of American cigarettes is legitimate and lucrative, earning approximately $2.5 billion annually in export revenue. In a decade where American goods - from sweet corn to stereo components to semi-conductors - are losing ground in Asia, cigarettes represent a rare and fiercely defended success story. Tobacco exports to the region rose by 76 percent last year alone.

But the trade office's breakthroughs have lent new urgency to a formerly benign question: Should the United States Government be promoting tobacco use abroad when, for health reasons, it is laboring to wean its citizens of tobacco at home? Two weeks ago, Canada passed laws that ban all tobacco advertising and require cigarette packs to carry a detailed warning of the dangers of smoking. American anti-smoking groups hope the measures, which far exceed United States restrictions on tobacco, will prompt similar legislation from Washington.

The United States is not the only nation finding it increasingly awkward to tolerate a Janus-faced policy on smoking. An increasingly vocal minority of anti-smoking activists in Asia interpret the staggeringly high percentages of male smokers (63 percent in Japan, 90 percent in China), and accelerating rates of smoking among Asian women and minors, as long-term threats to public health. . . .

Gladstone locked his sights on the dubious morality of foisting an addictive drug on the Chinese. The government of China had every right to mobilize against the shipments, he argued, adding that the current crisis was so ''unjust in its origin'' and ''calculated in its progress'' as ''to cover this country with permanent disgrace.'' . . .

If there are any direct parallels to be drawn between the bureaucratic infighting over tobacco and the original Opium War, one might describe Peter F. Allgeier as the present-day Peel. Allgeier is Assistant United States Trade Representative for Asia and the Pacific -our Government's point man in prosecuting 301 actions against Taiwan and Korea. A veteran of grinding, hundred-hour negotiating deadlocks in Washington, Taipei and Seoul, Allgeier is proud of the trade office's recent victories and bridles at anti-smoking activists who ''over-simplify a very complicated issue.''

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Illicit cigarette trade on the rise 

Bangalore: Illicit cigarette trade in India has increased from 11.1 billion sticks in 2004 to 17.5 billon sticks in 2009, an increase of 57.7 per cent in the volume.

India emerged as the sixth largest market for illicit cigarettes in the world and the fourth largest in the Asia Pacific region, according to latest edition of Tobacco Institute of India (TII) News.

China topped in the list of illicit cigarette trade in the world with 193.1 billion sticks followed by Brazil (31.6 billon sticks), U.S. ( 23.3 billion sticks), Pakistan (21.5 billion sticks) and the Philippines (20.7 billion sticks).

The TII News said high taxation on cigarettes was the primary cause for the growth of the illegal cigarette trade.

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Tobacco Stipulates it Has not Duplicated the Functions of CTR or TI. 

IT IS HEREBY STIPULATED AND AGREED, by and between the undersigned counsel for the parties, that the following statement shall be entered into the record relating to that portion the Court’s Order #1015 permanently enjoining “Defendants, Covered Persons and Entities . . . from participating in any way, directly or indirectly, in the management and/or control of any of the affairs” of the Council for Tobacco Research, Inc. (“CTR”) and the Tobacco Institute (“TI”), which will be referred to as the “Management Injunction”:

• CTR: On October 21, 1998, the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York, approved the Plan of Corporate Dissolution and Distribution of Assets of the Council for Tobacco Research – U.S.A., Inc. (the “Plan”). Pursuant to that Plan, CTR’s activities have been limited to non-operational functions such as retention of documents, maintenance of document websites, and litigation defense, in coordination with and subject to the direction of employees of those Defendants who previously constituted CTR’s members. The Department of Justice and the Defendants agree that non-operational functions, including litigation defense, may continue with the assistance of and in coordination with those Defendants who previously constituted CTR’s members, and should not be considered to violate the Court’s Management Injunction.

• TI: On September 1, 2000, the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York, approved the Plan of Dissolution and the Certificate of Dissolution of the Tobacco Institute, Inc. Pursuant to that Plan, TI’s activities have been limited to non-operational functions such as retention of documents, maintenance of document websites, and litigation defense, in coordination with and subject to the direction of employees of those Defendants who previously constituted TI’s members. The Department of Justice and the Defendants agree that nonoperational functions, including litigation defense, may continue with the assistance of and in coordination with those Defendants who previously constituted TI’s members, and should not be considered to violate the Court’s Management Injunction.

The foregoing agreement does not involve any change in the status of CTR and TI since this Court’s entry of Order #1015. Defendants represent that each of these entities remains dissolved and has not been reconstituted or revived in any respect. Defendants also represent that they have not created or participated in any trade association or research organization that succeeds to the functions previously performed by these entities.

FULL TEXT:

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

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• CIVIL DOCKET FOR CASE #: 1:99-cv-02496-GK USA v. PHILIP MORRIS USA, et al 

12/22/2010 5846 ORDER that by consent of the Parties, Defendant Council for Tobacco Research-USA, Inc. and Defendant Tobacco Institute are dismissed; the Government shall file its Motion to Compel BATCo to comply with Order #1015 by December 28, 2011 (see order for details on briefing dates); by consent of the parties Brown and Williamson Holdings is deemed not to be a defendant and therefore not subject to Order #1015; the Government shall continue preparation of its Corrective States to be submitted by February 3, 2011, Intervenors and Defendants shall respond thereto by March 30, 2011; see Order for dates for the filing of the Motion to Compel, etc.; a furtber Status Conference shall be held on February 22, 2011, at 10:00 a.m. Signed by Judge Gladys Kessler on 12/22/10. (CL, ) (Entered: 12/22/2010)

12/22/2010 Set/Reset Deadlines/Hearings: Motions to Compel due by 12/28/2010. Status Conference set for 2/22/2011 10:00 AM in Courtroom 26A before Judge Gladys Kessler. (CL, ) (Entered: 12/22/2010)

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Welcome to The Tobacco Institute Document Site 

This website is designed to provide the public with access to documents produced by The Tobacco Institute in Attorney General reimbursement lawsuits and certain other specified civil actions, and to documents produced after October 23, 1998 through June 30, 2010 in smoking and health actions, and includes certain enhancements, all as provided for by paragraph IV of the Attorneys General Master Settlement Agreement (MSA).

The enhancements include an expanded index to documents on the Tobacco Institute's website, with up to twenty-two searchable fields of information, and enhanced viewing and navigational tools, including full image zoom and rotate functions, a larger viewable area for documents, and a return button to allow efficient preview of documents, and return to search results. Extensive help instructions have also been provided which further describe these enhancements.

This Website is intended for informational, educational, and non-commercial use only.

This Website includes the following information: (1) the specific provisions of the MSA concerning the posting of documents on this Website; (2) a description of documents on this Website; (3) extensive instructions on how to use this Website; and (4) a link to the Tobacco Industry websites.

Additionally, the website includes a copy of Tobacco Institute privilege logs provided to the Attorney General of New York

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Tobacco Institute hails Agra stand on SICPA proposal  

Cigarette makers commended the Department of Justice for stopping the Bureau of Internal Revenue from pursuing the unsolicited proposal of SICPA Products Security SA.

In a statement, they lauded Justice Secretary Alberto Agra for favoring the industry's objection to the SICPA proposal and directing the Department of Finance and the BIR to stop all talks with the Swiss firm.

SICPA proposed to monitor makers of cigarette and alcoholic beverages so that each product that comes out of their factories can be accurately meted with the excise stamp tax.

"We commend Secretary Agra on his ruling against SICPA. His opinion is based on solid grounds," Rodolfo Salanga, president of the Philippine Tobacco Institute (PTI), said.

"The DOJ opinion is consistent with the report issued by the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives which found the costly tax stamp deal violative of legal requirements and full of anomalies," Salanga added.

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Tobacco institute told: Just follow the law 

STOP being stubborn.

This was the appeal of health advocates to the tobacco industry which has been questioning a DOH administrative order requiring graphic health warnings on cigarette packs.

In a statement, the Coalition for Health Accountability and Transparency (CHAT) called on the Philippine Tobacco Institute (PTI) to respect the Philippine government and the Filipino people in the same way that they respect the governments of other countries’ and their people.

The coalition noted that some PTI members have been placing graphic warnings on cigarette packs that they export to Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia.

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• Jesse Kornbluth: In Merchants of Doubt, the Same Scientists Who Lied About Tobacco Also Lied About Global Warming 

I have read many books that infuriated me, and I was glad for the experience. It's good to get pissed off at injustice, fictional or real, and come away energized, eager to do your small part in correcting whatever wrong the book exposed. But although Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming is brilliantly reported and written with brutal clarity, it has left me with a different reaction -- frustration that lobbyists and "experts" have blocked all meaningful steps to avert environment disaster. And will continue to do so, not just until millions are afflicted with skin cancer and the wheat fields are bone dry and the poor are fighting in the streets for water. No. In the very last minute of the very last hour of humanity's very last day on earth, a scientist on the payroll of an oil or coal company -- most likely a scientist who has no expertise in environmental matters and whose scientific contributions ended decades ago -- will be saying there's "still doubt" about global warming. . . .

The real shocker of this book is that it takes us, in just 274 brisk pages, through seven scientific issues that called for decisive government regulation and didn't get it, sometimes for decades, because a few scientists sprinkled doubt-dust in the offices of regulators, politicians and journalists. Suddenly the issue had two sides. Better not to do anything until we know more.

Truth in science is a process: research, followed by scientific writing, followed by peer review. In this way, mistakes are corrected, findings refined, validity confirmed. But the interests of scientists on the payroll of, say, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco wasn't truth. "They were not interested in finding facts," Oreskes and Conway write. "They were interested in fighting them."

Here's the absolute stunner -- some of the scientists who were on the payroll of tobacco companies turn out to be the very same scientists now working for oil and coal companies to create confusion about global warming.

Why you may ask, would scientists who once had impressive reputations pose as "experts" on topics which they have no history of expertise?

Frederick Seitz and Fred Singer -- the most visible of the tobacco-causes-cancer and man-causes-global-warming deniers -- were both physicists. . . .

both were beneficiaries of the strategy that John Hill, Chairman and CEO of the Hill & Knowlton public relations firm, laid out for tobacco executives in 1953: "Scientific doubts should remain." The way to encourage doubt? Call for "more research" -- and fund it. . . .

I'm just dancing on the surface of this book's revelations. There's so much more, and it's all of a piece -- as the director of British American Tobacco finally admitted, "A demand for scientific proof is always a formula for inaction and delay, and usually the first reaction of the guilty." . . .

I now think there really is such a thing as Evil. In their book, Oreskes and Conway do a great public service -- they give us their names of the villains and tell us their stories.

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LANDMAN: Why Facts No Longer Matter 

Cause marketing works, which is why its use is spreading like wildfire. The operative word that the whole idea turns on is "emotion," because the ability to manipulate people depends completely on generating an emotional connection that the company can exploit. . . .

In 1998, California's Proposition 10, a measure to raise cigarette taxes, made it onto the ballot was headed for a statewide vote. Naturally, the tobacco industry opposed it.

To influence the election, Tobacco Institute consultants did careful studies using focus groups to find specific themes that resonated with specific blocks of voters. In an internal strategy memo, an Institute consultant discusses how to influence gay and lesbian voters in California to oppose Proposition 10. . . .

Accordingly, industry consultants crafted messages designed to manipulate the emotions of gay and lesbian voters to convince them to oppose the cigarette tax. One of the themes they developed was the following:

"Wrapped in a cloak labeled 'health,' this initiative tries to legislate a change in behavior by encroaching on an individual's freedom of choice. This argument will appeal to ... gay/lesbian groups concerned about politicians trying to achieve 'social engineering' through a tax." . . .

Emotional manipulation cannot exist in a culture where people ask questions and delve beyond the superficial. We at PRWatch urge you to be wary and observant of attempts to emotionally manipulate audiences. Be skeptical of messages and marketing techniques that try to get you to feel and not think. Insist on investigating any entity delivering an emotionally-loaded message before you buy into it. Ask questions about cause marketing campaigns, too, since they are designed to manipulate as well.

Democracy depends on an inquisitive and informed public that resists being hoodwinked.

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ARCHIVE: Fighting for Safety  

Since its inception, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has grappled with how to reduce the number of deaths and injuries from accidental fires. It chose to tackle the problem by crafting a regulation to make upholstered furniture less flammable. A record 14 years later, a rule is heaving into sight, with a final vote possible later this year.

If the regulation is approved, it will end a protracted battle among a far-flung set of interests. The story behind the rule and why it took so long offers a glimpse at the constraints under which the CPSC operates. Hemmed in by jurisdictional dictates and sometimes hampered by a lack of clear scientific evidence, the commission became caught in the middle of warring industries. It became increasingly preoccupied with finding a compromise, and, at times, not able or inclined to impose its will on the voices shouting to be heard.

Those voices included fire marshals recruited to fight fire-safe cigarettes, a Berkeley biochemist who suspected her couch poisoned her cat, a group of Mississippi furniture makers, and an energetic ex-tobacco lobbyist who relished hardball tactics.

"I never felt any of the companies I worked with in this had the interest of the consumers at heart," former CPSC chairman Ann Brown said. . . .

For years, there has been an obvious way to address accidental fires: requiring tobacco companies to make cigarettes, which are the leading cause of fatal fires, self-extinguishing. But tobacco was exempted from CPSC jurisdiction when the agency was created in 1972, and a 1994 attempt to give the agency authority over cigarettes failed. Catching Fire

The alternative was to focus on the furniture that was catching fire. And the tobacco industry, which wanted to avoid further regulation of cigarettes, did its best to steer the CPSC in that direction.

The industry's agent was a former insider named Peter Sparber. Sparber, now in his early 60s, started out as a newspaper reporter in New Jersey and became a vice president of the Tobacco Institute, the industry's lobbying arm, in the 1980s. There, he built a national network of tobacco-friendly fire marshals to call on in the fight against fire-safe cigarettes. To win their loyalty, the industry gave out hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to fire departments across the country, according to internal documents released under the 1998 multi-state tobacco settlement.

By the late 1980s, Sparber had set up his own firm and was a volunteer lobbyist for the National Association of State Fire Marshals. In 1994, the group petitioned the CPSC to require furniture manufacturers make upholstered furniture so it would resist ignition by a smoldering cigarette and small open flames.

Unknown to the CPSC at the time, Sparber was still on the tobacco industry payroll, working on a variety of issues. In a 1993 strategy memo on combating indoor smoking restrictions, he suggested the industry find "third parties" to portray restaurant workers as carriers of disease. "It may be hard to generate public concern over restaurant exposure to [second-hand smoke] when the public is more concerned about contracting rare, Central American strains of tuberculosis," he wrote.

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Nick Minchin was a sceptic on tobacco  

THERE must be something in the acronym ETS that makes leading climate change sceptic Nick Minchin see red.

In the mid 1990s, the letters ETS stood for environmental tobacco smoke or passive smoking, as evidence around the world increasingly linked side-stream smoke to lung cancers in non-smokers and respiratory illnesses in children. Medical scientists and health professionals lobbied for tougher anti-smoking laws.

They came to Canberra armed with research that rang alarm bells for the majority of the 1995 Senate committee investigating the cost of tobacco-related illnesses. The majority report favoured a raft of regulatory measures to reduce smoking in the community.

Two Liberal dissenters, Senator Minchin and the former West Australian senator Sue Knowles, opposed many of the recommendations, claiming the tobacco industry was over-regulated. . . .

But Senator Minchin went further, distancing himself from scientific facts that are now accepted as medical orthodoxy.

"Senator Minchin wishes to record his dissent from the committee's statements that it believes cigarettes are addictive and that passive smoking causes a number of adverse health effects for non-smokers," the committee's minority report says. "Senator Minchin believes these claims (the harmful effects of passive smoking) are not yet conclusively proved. . . there is insufficient evidence to link passive smoking with a range of adverse health effects."

To support his claims, Senator Minchin drew on a study commissioned by the Tobacco Institute of Australia that "concluded the data did not support a causal relationship between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and lung cancer or heart disease in adults". . . .

Simon Chapman, professor of public health at Sydney University, who appeared before the Senate committee, yesterday recalled other witnesses reeling with disbelief at Senator Minchin's "troglodyte" views.

"It was like going into a timewarp, because the case against the tobacco industry was so well-established by then," Professor Chapman said. "Minchin represented the far end of antipathy towards any intervention in the tobacco industry."

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