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August, 2011:

Big tobacco’s argument is all smoke and mirrors

Aug 22nd, 2011
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http://blog.nj.com/njv_editorial_page/2011/08/big_tobaccos_argument_is_all_s.html

cigarette.jpg

Look who’s now casting itself as a First Amendment crusader: Big tobacco.

Yes, cigarette companies are making the case that their advertising may be unpopular, but it’s constitutionally-protected speech. Five of the big-name brands have filed a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration, claiming the 2009 legislation that allows the agency to require graphic warning labels on packs of smokes tramples their First Amendment rights.

Their attorney, Floyd Abrams, maintains it violates the right to free speech to require these makers of a lawful product to essentially urge the public not to buy it. The size of the government warning labels, with images such as a man blowing smoke through a gaping hole in his neck, unfairly chokes out the company’s own message, he argues.

Maybe so. But that doesn’t mean it’s a free speech violation.

A commercial product like cigarettes, after all, doesn’t fall into the same constitutional category as someone with an unpopular religion or belief. Accordingly, it’s not guaranteed as much protection under the First Amendment.

Commercial products and their speech are already regulated differently. With noncommercial speech, the government isn’t allowed to inquire whether it’s true or false: regulation must be content-neutral. But that’s not true for advertising. The government can ban ads that are false, or other types of commercial speech. Regulations on insider trading, for instance, forbid even casual remarks that might lead to abuse.

In the case of cigarettes, the government’s interest in protecting public health is substantial. And tobacco companies’ own advertising is clearly misleading, aimed at making people forget this product is lethal. With all the false imaging of youth and vitality that tobacco companies use to mask the danger of cigarettes and get people hooked, they should be thankful the government hasn’t banned their advertising campaign entirely, as Norway did.

Big tobacco doesn’t have a right to convey whatever messages it chooses. The First Amendment was intended to protect free expression by unpopular minorities — not the right of a powerful industry to sell a deadly, addictive product.

Tobacco Companies In Court

Aug 22nd, 2011
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http://cd989.com/2011/08/tobacco-companies-in-court/

Smoke&Lighter

Tobacco companies being sued by the Ontario government for 50  billion dollars are due in court today.

Anti-smoking advocate Michael Perley says he was told the 14 companies will argue the province has no jurisdiction to sue them because they’re controlled by foreign firms.

The cigarette makers — Imperial Tobacco Canada, J-T-I-Macdonald, and Rothmans, Benson and Hedges — are controlled by foreign parent companies.

In a statement released when the lawsuit was first announced Imperial called the suit a “cash grab.”

It also claimed it was “hypocrisy of the highest order” for the government to collect cigarette taxes and also sue tobacco makers.

The province says a law allows it to sue tobacco companies for any wrongdoing and lets it recover health-care costs linked to smoking-related diseases.

The 50  billion dollar figure covers the amount the province claims it has spent since 1955 on smokers who get sick

Complaint to the Ombudsman – Big Tobacco funded Reward Scheme

Aug 22nd, 2011
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Download PDF : Ombudsman

Tobacco_Association_of_Hong_Kong

Aug 20th, 2011
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ADVERTISING, PROMOTION, AND SPONSORSHIP

Aug 20th, 2011
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Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) promotes the view
that “firms should strive to make a profit, obey the law,
be ethical, and be a good corporate citizen.”2 Tobacco
companies, however, are not like other companies. Tobacco
is the only consumer product that kills one half of its users
when used as directed.1 The idea that tobacco companies can
be ethical while promoting a disease-producing product is
fundamentally contradictory. The Framework Convention
on Tobacco Control (FCTC), the world’s first global public
health treaty, establishes a policy framework aimed to
reduce the devastating health, economic, and social impacts
of tobacco.3 Article 13 of the FCTC requires Parties to
implement and enforce a comprehensive ban on tobacco
advertising, promotion, and sponsorship, including a complete
ban on CSR.4

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) promotes the viewthat “firms should strive to make a profit, obey the law,be ethical, and be a good corporate citizen.”2 Tobaccocompanies, however, are not like other companies. Tobaccois the only consumer product that kills one half of its userswhen used as directed.1 The idea that tobacco companies canbe ethical while promoting a disease-producing product isfundamentally contradictory. The Framework Conventionon Tobacco Control (FCTC), the world’s first global publichealth treaty, establishes a policy framework aimed toreduce the devastating health, economic, and social impactsof tobacco.3 Article 13 of the FCTC requires Parties toimplement and enforce a comprehensive ban on tobaccoadvertising, promotion, and sponsorship, including a completeban on CSR.4

Download PDF : APS_CSR_en

Tobacco firms sue US over graphic cigarette labels

Aug 20th, 2011
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gw_WYKQ9UEQv1TeZyHpNn9xWr1gg?docId=CNG.3404e18b09e683dd9aaf2d6e60f080df.451

WASHINGTON — Four tobacco companies filed a lawsuit against the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over what they say are unconstitutional requirements for warning labels on US cigarette packaging.

The third largest cigarette manufacturer in the United States, Lorillard, Inc., said they were “challenging nine new cigarette warnings as an unconstitutional way of forcing tobacco manufacturers to disseminate the government’s anti-smoking message,” in a statement Tuesday.

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Commonwealth Brands, Inc., and Liggett Group LLC joined Lorillard in the suit, which was filed in a federal court in Washington.

Under recently announced FDA regulations, cigarette packs, cartons and all cigarette advertising must display graphic warnings by September 22, 2012.

“The regulations violate the First Amendment,” said Floyd Abrams, a partner at Cahill Gordon & Reindel, the law firm representing Lorillard.

The FDA, which routinely declines discussing pending litigation, could not be reached for comment.

In June the FDA unveiled the graphic images — including a lifeless body, a scarred mouth and a blackened lung — that will occupy the top 50 percent of the front and rear panels of cigarette packs sold in the United States and the top 20 percent of cigarette advertisements.

One of the images, which shows a man with his chest sewn up, bears the caption “Warning: Smoking can kill you.”

According to the FDA, smoking kills 1,200 people a day in the United States alone.

The label changes came about following a June 2009 law, signed by President Barack Obama about five months after he took office, that gave the FDA the power to regulate manufacturing, marketing and sale of tobacco products.

The nine images were picked from a group of 36 proposals issued several months ago, after health authorities analyzed results on their effectiveness from an 18,000-person study and took into account about 1,700 public comments, the FDA said.

Each warning label also contains a phone number to call for help in quitting.

Anti-smoking groups such as the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids said earlier this year that the move was “the most significant change in US cigarette warnings since they were first required in 1965.”

Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved. More »

Philip Morris International Charitable Contributions 2010 – area : Hong Kong

Aug 20th, 2011
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Hong Kong Disaster Relief Hong Kong Red Cross Providing disaster relief, rehabilitation and

disaster preparedness work in Haiti.

USD3,110

Hong Kong Education Crossroads Foundation Limited Sponsoring shipment of used computers

donated by PMAL IS Department to reach orphans and vulnerable youth in Kazakhstan & Uganda.

USD 6,452

Hong Kong Hunger & Extreme Poverty Senior Citizen Home Safety Association (SCHSA)

Funding an emergency aid service which provides 92 low-income elderly people with a

free, 24-hour Personal Emergency Phone Link to hospitals. The service also allows for

complementary care services, e.g. short-term counseling, home visits.

USD29,677

Hong Kong Hunger & Extreme Poverty SVHK Foundation Limited

Supporting a Barrier-Free Transportation Promotion Program which aims to make the

Hong Kong public transportation system wheelchair accessible.

USD30,000

Charitable Contributions 2010 : download PDF : 2010_Charitable_Contributions_Total

Another half-hearted attempt to attack China’s top health problem

Aug 17th, 2011
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17 August 2011

By Patrick Mattimore (chinadaily.com.cn)

According to a recent notice written by the China National Tobacco Corporation, cigarettes produced and sold in China will bear a new larger warning label, starting in April 2012. That’s a token pass at trying to do something about the country’s worst behavior/health related problem, but does anyone really believe that it’s a serious attempt to proactively wipe out smoking?

Although China ratified the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2005, the country has yet to ban smoking in public places as required by the WHO Framework.

As long as local governments realize enormous profits from the government-controlled tobacco industry, official attempts to change behaviors may prove fruitless. The fact that China has more smokers than any other nation and more deaths from smoking-related causes, 1.2 million people each year, will remain an abstract statistic for most people, while for those families losing loved ones, the nation’s smoking shame will be a tragedy.

A report published in January by a group of Chinese and foreign experts entitled “Tobacco Control and China’s Future” warned that tobacco is the No.1 killer of Chinese people, but unless that reality touches someone personally they are unlikely to hear that distressing message.

There is an answer, however, and it may be uniquely and personally Chinese.

As I wrote in a January China Daily Online column, smoking is largely a gender-related problem in China. About 53% of adult men in China smoke; less than 3% of women smoke. Contrast that with the US where the Centers for Disease Control reports that 24% of men smoke and 18% of women smoke.

Relatively little attention has been paid to the social norms which encourage smoking or how to utilize social norms to develop successful campaigns to wipe out smoking. Those norms are a central predictor in individuals’ decisions to smoke.

Social norms are behavioral expectations or cues within a society or group. So, for example, the fact that restaurants still allow diners to smoke and may encourage that behavior by leaving ashtrays on tables means there is both an expectation that people should enjoy smoking with their meal and a social cue to light up. The Chinese government should honor its WHO pledge to outlaw smoking in public places.

In addition to anti-smoking laws, societies must establish social norms which make smoking anti-social.

One solution might be for women to begin a grass roots Internet campaign using social media in order to convince their fathers, sons, brothers, husbands, and lovers, to give up smoking. Women could organize smoke-out days, provide helpful messages to males, or suggest behavioral alternatives. In the extreme, girls could organize “kiss-off” campaigns where they don’t allow guys to kiss them after they’ve been smoking. An old American cigarette campaign targeting women proclaimed, “You’ve come a long way, Baby.” Maybe, it’s time for Chinese women to demonstrate just how far they’ve come and go after the smoking scourge.

The author formerly taught Advanced Placement Psychology in the US and is now an adjunct Professor in the Temple University Masters of Law program at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Copyright By chinadaily.com.cn. All rights reserved

Tobacco ruling has a financial side

Aug 15th, 2011
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swissinfo.ch

15 August 2011

Following a Federal Court ruling, the Federal Health Office has concluded that nicotine addiction can be considered an illness.

Basic compulsory insurance, which currently does not reimburse any anti-tobacco medication, will have to pay up. The health office made its decision on August 9. Criteria have yet to be fixed.

“This ruling is historical because it gives prevention the right place,” Jean-Charles Rielle, a doctor at the Information Centre for Tobacco Addiction Prevention in Geneva (CIPRET), told public radio on August 9.

Rielle, also a parliamentarian, welcomed the “financial boost” for smokers who want to give up.

On August 4 the Federal Court underlined that alcohol and heroin addiction could be considered an illness and that “under certain conditions” so could dependence on nicotine. In this case, insurance companies would have to reimburse medicines to treat smoking addiction.

The court partially agreed with drug maker Pfizer which wanted its Champix (or Chantrix) medication included in the list of medicines reimbursed by basic insurance.

Pfizer’s demand had previously been dismissed by the health office in 2008 and then in 2010 by the Federal Administrative Court. The federal court ruling meant the health office had to reconsider its position, which it has since August 9, confirmed the health office’s spokesman Daniel Dauwalder.

“Negative message”

For their part, health insurance companies have denounced the “negative message.”

“We only cover risk of illness and not prevention, which is not a risk. Prevention is down to individual responsibility and can’t be carried by everyone. This would be putting all types of behaviour under state control,” explained Yves Seydoux, spokesman for Groupe Mutuel.

But if alcohol addiction is considered an illness, why not tobacco dependency?  Seydoux argues that tobacco addiction’s effects are not as great as those for alcohol.

Addiction to the bottle can “affect behaviour and create sometimes grave side effects, whereas it’s the consequences of tobacco addiction that are harmful to health”, he said. “It’s a question of free choice.”

Jacques de Haller, president of the Swiss Medical Association, does not quite agree. “From a medical point of view the two pathologies are different, but both are a dependency.”

“A smoker is addicted to tobacco which makes him lose his free will and can considerably shorten his life,” he said. In addition, there is “the real problem of passive tobacco addiction”.

Economic side

The health office must now decide when smoking addiction can be considered an illness through the treatment needed. Then it must pronounce on the second fundamental factor: the economic side of the treatment.

For de Haller this latter point makes the federal court’s ruling a positive one.

“The issue of non-recognised treatments by insurance companies affects those who need it the most – the lower economic classes – who are already penalised on a social level,” he said.

CIPRET says Champix can double the chances of heavy smokers giving up in three months. But Gianfranco Domenighetti, professor of health economics at Lugano University, warns that the controversial medication needs to be well tolerated.

“According to a Canadian study, this medicine increases cardiovascular risk by 73 per cent,” he said.

Tolerance and effectiveness issues have also been raised for other treatments such as nicotine substitutes or Zyban, an antidepressant used against addiction. But most of all, according to de Haller, “their effectiveness is not 100 per cent guaranteed”.

Other measures?

Seydoux hopes that the federal court’s ruling will be applied “rigorously”.

“The health office has enough room for manoeuvre to ensure that a free market does not develop and that the notion of individual responsibility over tobacco’s consequences remains in people’s minds,” he said.

Some voices, notably in parliament, have suggested that anti-smoking drugs should only be reimbursed if the treatment is successful. De Haller is sceptical about “making people pay in relation to the therapy’s success, when the effectiveness is not 100 per cent guaranteed”.

Do insurance companies intend to penalise smokers by raising premiums? “No, it’s impossible to ‘police’ people. Society has to accept deviances [from the norm] and that it can only curb the consequences of the deviances,” Seydoux said.

De Haller concludes that the solution is in any case “more political than health-based”.

“The most efficient measure is increasing the price of a packet of cigarettes. Each time, the number of smokers drops,” he said.

Isabelle Eichenberger, swissinfo.ch
(Translated from French by Isobel Leybold-Johnson)

Swiss pictures

Smoke Signals

Despite a ban on smoking in public places, tobacco is still grown in Switzerland.

Key facts

29 per cent of the Swiss population aged 14-65 smoke. The proportion of smokers is highest among those aged 20-24.

About 8,300 people die from tobacco consumption in Switzerland annually.

There are around 16,000 cases of disability attributable to smoking.

The consumption of tobacco costs the Swiss economy SFr10 billion a year (SFr1.2 billion on medical treatment, SFr3.8 billion on invalidity costs, loss of quality of life is estimated at SFr5 billion). Income from tax on tobacco amounts to just over SFr2 billion a year.

In Switzerland, 20 cigarettes currently cost SFr7.40 ($9.30).

(source: Federal Health Office’s National Programme Tobacco 2008-2012)

Second-hand smoke

There is no safe level of second-hand tobacco smoke. Smoke-free laws protect the health of non-smokers, are popular, do not harm business and encourage smokers to quit.

Second-hand smoke causes 600,000 premature deaths a year globally, of whom around 1,000 are in Switzerland.

Almost half of children – whose organs are damaged by passive smoke more than adults – regularly breathe air polluted by tobacco smoke. In 2004, children accounted for 28% of the global deaths attributable to second-hand smoke.

In adults, second-hand smoke causes serious cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, including coronary heart disease and lung cancer. In infants, it causes sudden death. In pregnant women, it causes low birth weight.

(source: WHO and Federal Health Office)

URL of this article

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss_news/Tobacco_ruling_has_a_financial_side.html?cid=30904316

Tobacco industry responses to global tobacco control

Aug 13th, 2011
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A new study published in Tobacco Control examines how Philip Morris (PM) and British American Tobacco (BAT) interpreted the relationship between tobacco control non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the policymaking process that ultimately resulted in the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).  It also examines how the companies have responded to global tobacco control policymaking.  Findings are based on analyses of 506 internal tobacco industry documents released from U.S. litigation and posted online at the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library.

Findings:

  • ·         A prominent public relations firm advised PM to seek access to treaty negotiations through pro-industry and non-tobacco control NGOs.  The firm also advised PM that influencing the development of FCTC implementation protocols was more important than derailing the treaty.
  • ·         PM and BAT used several strategies, including cultivating relationships with tobacco-friendly governments, to try to weaken the FCTC before its ratification.
  • ·         PM and BAT have used national- and regional-level strategies, including use of free-trade agreements, to undermine the FCTC since its ratification.
  • ·         PM and BAT use corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs to counter their negative image and enhance their credibility as responsible corporate citizens.

Key Messages:

  • ·         There is a fundamental and irreconcilable conflict between the tobacco industry’s interests and public health policy interests.
  • ·         FCTC Article 5.3 requires Parties protect public health policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry.

Additional resources:

Full citation: Gonzalez M, Green LW, Glantz SA. Through tobacco industry eyes: civil society and the FCTC process from Philip Morris and British American Tobacco’s perspectives. Tobacco Control. 2011 Jun 8.

A link to the article abstract [English only] can be found at: http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2011/06/08/tc.2010.041657

Tobacco Control is an internationally peer-reviewed journal covering the nature and consequences of tobacco use worldwide. The journal is for health professionals and others in tobacco control and is a publication of the British Medical Journal.

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