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Malaysia lobbied to derail packaging laws  

A former ambassador to the World Trade Organisation has been lobbying Malaysia to oppose the Federal Government's plain cigarette packaging laws.

ABC1's Lateline can reveal former US ambassador Peter Allgeier met with a Malaysian government minister as part of his efforts to derail the plain packaging legislation.

It has also been revealed that a powerful US congressman has joined the fight against Prime Minister Julia Gillard's latest controversial plan to cut Australia's smoking rate, which is due to come into effect this year.

If the law is enforced, advertising will be replaced with dull olive green packages and large health warnings.

Mr Allgeier is the private face of the tobacco industry's campaign against plain packaging.

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WTO to rule on clove cigarette row 

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) will rule on a dispute brought by Indonesia against the United States over a ban on sales of Indonesian clove cigarettes, trade sources said on Tuesday.

A panel was established on Tuesday, sources said after a meeting of the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body.

Washington has banned the production and sales of clove cigarettes under a health act that also blocks the sales of other flavoured cigarettes such as grape, coffee or strawberry, in a bid to prevent the young from getting hooked on smoking.

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• WTO probes US ban on clove cigarettes 

The World Trade Organization has launched a formal investigation into whether U.S. tobacco control laws are illegally preventing imports of clove-flavored cigarettes from Indonesia.

The Asian country says the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's ban on manufacturing, importing, marketing and distributing candy-, fruit- and clove-flavored tobacco breaks trade rules because it exempts menthol cigarettes, most of which are made in the United States.

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Resolution of RP-Thai cigarette case hits a snag 

Trade and Industry Assistant Secretary Jose Antonio Buencamino told reporters at the sidelines of the turnover ceremony of the DTI reigns from Secretary Peter B. Favila to newly-appointed DTI Secretary Jesli A. Lapus that instead of end March deadline this would be moved to end April.

"This is a fact intensive case so the WTO panel has requested for a one month extension from end March to end April this year by which to come out with its interim report," Buencamino said.

Buencamino said that the one month delay is significant for the Philippines because the case has dragged on since August 2006 and the local cigarette exporter Philip Morris Philippines Manufacturing Inc. has been posting a bond to enable them to sell in the Thai market.

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• Smoking-ban bill leaves firm fuming 

To the irritation of Hong Kong's non- smoking advocates, a Japanese tobacco company says it is considering legal action against the government for allegedly breaching the Basic Law and the Bill of Rights over a proposed smoking ban.

Japan Tobacco, the maker of Mild Seven cigarettes, said Thursday the smoking-ban bill will force it to change the name of its popular brand because of a clause outlawing the use of descriptions such as "light" and "mild" on cigarette packaging.

But Hong Kong University chair professor of community medicine Anthony Hedley said it is just another complaint by tobacco companies.

"The industry will argue against every part of the legislation," he said, urging the government to push the legislation forward.

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Company Lobbies WTO Delegates in Cancun 

Last week, thousands of trade negotiators from around the world came to Cancun, Mexico for the 5th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Philip Morris was there, and so was Licensed to Kill, Inc!

While the trade negotiations ultimately collapsed, Licensed to Kill made the most of the opportunity to lobby WTO delegates face-to-face to protect the tobacco industry from public health advocates. Our message: More Trade, Less Health!

Below, please find links to photos of our lobbying efforts and press interviews.

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Health Care Groups Rip Rudy's Cuts 

Health care advocates blasted Mayor Giuliani's proposed budget cuts yesterday, saying the city's poorest communities will suffer the most.

The complaint focused on some of the $766 million in cuts the mayor intends to make to bridge a $1.2 billion gap in his final budget. The gap was caused largely by the economic aftershocks from the World Trade Center attack. Giuliani submitted a budget change plan to the City Council. . .

Other proposed cuts: $6.5 million from an anti-smoking program [This graph only]

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WHITBECK: ‘Terrorism’: the word itself is dangerous 

the word has been so devalued that even violence is no longer an essential prerequisite for its use. In recently announcing a multi-billion dollar lawsuit against 10 international tobacco companies, a Saudi Arabian lawyer told the press: “We will demand tobacco firms be included on the lists of terrorists and those financing and sponsoring terrorism because of the large number of victims smoking has claimed the world over.” If everyone recognized the word “terrorism” is fundamentally an epithet and a term of abuse, with no intrinsic meaning, there would be no more reason to worry about the word now than prior to Sept. 11. However, with the United States relying on the word to assert, apparently, an absolute right to attack any country it dislikes (for the most part, countries Israel dislikes) and with President Bush repeatedly menacing that “either you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists” (which effectively means, “either you make our enemies your enemies or you’ll be our enemy – and you know what we do to our enemies”), many people around the world must feel a genuine sense of terror (dictionary definition: “a state of intense fear”) as to where the United States is taking the rest of the world. [This graph only]

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Smokes smugglers slowed by Sept. 11 

Tightened border security has had one unanticipated benefit for the B.C. government.

That, said Provincial Revenue Minister Bill Barisoff yesterday, is an apparent decrease in tobacco smuggling.

Barisoff told an open cabinet meeting that it appears the B.C. treasury has been losing about $200 million a year to illegal tobacco smuggling -- bringing tobacco into the province without paying provincial taxes.

But since the border tightened up after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, "we've been seeing more revenue coming in," he said.

It's too early to say just how much of the smuggling has been stopped by the closer checks at the border.

Much of the rest of the smuggling comes from eastern Canada where provincial taxes are lower, Barisoff noted.

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Drug, alcohol abuse on rise in U.S. after Sept. 11 

Exposure to trauma puts a person at four to five times greater risk of substance abuse, and stress is considered the leading cause of relapse to alcohol and drug abuse and addiction and smoking, the report said. . .

The study did not include cigarette smoking, but there are other indications that smoking also has been on the rise.

Thirty percent of people who were smokers prior to Sept. 11 increased the number of cigarettes they consumed, and more than 5 percent of people who said they had previously quit smoking relapsed, according to a separate report by the American Cancer Society and drug maker GlaxoSmithKline Plc [This graph only]

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ROEPER: We've come a long way from carefree days of TV 

I'm watching "Hollywood Palace," an hourlong variety series that is among the thousands upon thousands of programs and specials on file in the library of the Museum of Television and Radio in Manhattan. . .

This tape is from ABC's coverage of Sept. 11, and it consists mostly of unnarrated footage. . .

After a few minutes, I stop the tragedy footage and punch in the code that returns me to "Hollywood Palace" and the summer of 1964. The tape even includes the commercials, including ads for L&M cigarettes ("More taste, more flavor, more pleasure!") and Velvet pipe tobacco, touted as the ideal gift for Father's Day.

How reckless and naive we all were were back then. [This graph only]

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Pataki's Smoke Signals  

Two years after the state doubled its tax on cigarettes, Gov. Pataki is considering another hike to fill a budget hole created by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Pataki is weighing a 39-cent-a pack tax hike in his upcoming budget request, source said.

That would drive the state excise tax to $1.50 a pack - the highest in the nation.

While Pataki would not confirm he is considering the move - which would generate an additional $250 million to $300 million for the state - he did not rule it out yesterday.

"There's been no decision at this point," he said. "We're doing our analysis and we'll be making decisions over the course of the next few weeks."

With the state looking at a multibillion-dollar deficit resulting from the World Trade Center attacks, Pataki is looking for ways to cut costs and raise revenues.

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• Pataki Is Said to Weigh Increase in Cigarette Tax to $1.50 a Pack 

Facing an enormous revenue shortfall in next year's budget, Gov. George E. Pataki is considering raising the state's tax on cigarettes to $1.50 a pack, which would be the highest tobacco tax in the nation, several lobbyists speaking on the condition of anonymity say.

Asked about the proposal during a walking tour of downtown Troy today, the governor neither denied that the tax increase was an idea being batted about in his budget office nor directly acknowledged that he was considering it.

"No decision has been made at this point," the governor said of the tobacco tax.

No one knows precisely how much tax revenue the state government will lose as a direct result of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Mr. Pataki has estimated the drop-off could be $1.6 billion to $3 billion in this fiscal year, which ends on April 1, and $6 billion in the next.

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Iranian on Trial for Allegedly Disrupting Flight 

An Iranian businessman who allegedly vowed to ``kill all Americans'' on an Air Canada jet 16 days after the Sept. 11 attacks went on trial on Tuesday with a defense lawyer claiming that the flight crew ``overreacted'' to his client because he is Middle Eastern.

But prosecutors told the jury that 37-year-old Javid Naghani was belligerent and possibly drunk on Sept. 27, justifying the flight crew's decision to return to Los Angeles with an escort of fighter jets and turn him over to police.

Naghani, owner of a janitorial business called Cleaning Of America, is charged with one count of interference with a flight crew on the Boeing 767 with 148 people on board and could face 20 years in prison if convicted.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Yang told jurors during her opening statement that Naghani was smoking in the plane's lavatory just minutes after it left Los Angeles International Airport for Toronto, then called a flight attendant ``racist'' when she confronted him. . .

Naghani's attorney, Theodore Flier, portrayed his client as a nervous flyer and a heavy smoker who was mistreated by crew members who were deeply suspicious of people from the Middle East after the Sept. 11 hijacking attacks. . .

``He said, 'I'm the president of Cleaning Of America,''' Flier said. ``He never said 'I will kill all Americans.'''

Flier added: ``From that act of smoking in the bathroom, you get an (Air Canada) jet turned around with jet fighters ready to shoot it down, it lands and the SWAT team comes on and everybody is crazy.''

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U.S. Seeks to Use Canadian Wiretaps in Terror Case 

U.S. prosecutors urged a federal judge on Tuesday to allow them to use evidence gathered by Canadian intelligence agents in the trial of nine members of an alleged Hizbollah cell operating out of North Carolina.

The criminal trial, set to begin in April in a Charlotte, North Carolina, courtroom, has emerged as a test case for U.S. prosecutors as they seek to open a new front in the war on terrorism in federal court, attorneys on both sides said.

Defense attorneys, trying to block what prosecutors admitted was the linchpin of their anti-terror case, argued that a 117-page intelligence summary of wiretapped Arabic conversations was unreliable, in large part because the original tapes have been destroyed.

``We're hoping this will set good precedent for us,'' Assistant U.S. Attorney Ken Bell said of a ruling on the evidence, expected to be handed down in the coming weeks.

The case, which began as an investigation into cigarette smuggling, would be the first to come to trial under a 1996 law that makes it illegal to aid foreign groups designated by the U.S. government as terrorist organizations, prosecutors said.

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