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January 21st, 2012:

Smoker jailed for assaulting Tobacco Control Inspector

7thSpace Interactive (press release) – 30 Dec 2011

Hong Kong (HKSAR) – A 60-year-old man was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment in  30) upon conviction of assaulting a Tobacco Control Inspector (TCI).

http://7thspace.com/headlines/403026/smoker_jailed_for_assaulting_tobacco_control_inspector.html

Making Big Tobacco pay smokers’ health bills: lessons from the United States

http://theconversation.edu.au/making-big-tobacco-pay-smokers-health-bills-lessons-from-the-united-states-4691

16 December 2011, 2.10pm AEST

Reports that Nicola Roxon plans to encourage state governments to consider legal action to recover around A$31 billion in smoking-related health-care costs from the tobacco industry highlight the incoming attorney-general’s commendable commitment to reducing the impact of smoking-related illness and…

Author

Ross MacKenzie

Lecturer in Health Studies at Macquarie University

The legacy of the US Master Settlement Agreement holds significant lessons for policy makers in Australia. Razvan Caliman

Reports that Nicola Roxon plans to encourage state governments to consider legal action to recover around A$31 billion in smoking-related health-care costs from the tobacco industry highlight the incoming attorney-general’s commendable commitment to reducing the impact of smoking-related illness and mortality.

Such litigation is a potentially powerful way of countering the tobacco industry, but has been largely limited to the United States to date. As part of preliminary work on the proposal, Roxon has brought Matthew Myers, president of the leading US tobacco control organisation, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, to Australia to discuss litigation with state officials.

Myers, as The Australian points out, advised US attorneys-general during litigation against the tobacco industry in the late 1990s, and played a key role in negotiations that resulted in the controversial 1998 Master Settlement Agreement (MSA).

While a spokeswoman for Roxon stated that Myers had been brought in to “share his extensive experience in tobacco-related litigation” and that the minister was “heartened by the support of such an esteemed anti-tobacco expert”, the MSA has, in fact, had limited impact on the tobacco industry and effectively split the tobacco control community in the United States.

Probably best known for its requirement that Philip Morris and other leading tobacco corporations make payments of US$246 billion to those states party to the settlement over a 25-year period, the MSA remains controversial within US tobacco control and broader public health circles, and it’s imperative that Australian officials consider the circumstances surrounding its progress carefully.

The US Master Settlement Agreement

The MSA was the result of secret negotiations between the tobacco industry, and attorneys-general and members of the tobacco control community including Myers. Critics of the negotiations claim the tobacco industry was on the defensive in the late 1990s – facing a combination of dozens of state lawsuits, damaging insights into its long-standing knowledge of the harms of smoking, and falling stock prices – and that state lawsuits should have been allowed to go to trial. In effect, the negotiations let the industry off the ropes.

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Adam Mulligan

Under the terms of the MSA, the tobacco industry paid US$246 billion, agreed to fund a national initiative to reduce smoking and accepted limited restrictions on advertising. In return, outstanding litigation was dropped by the 46 states party to the settlement, and future state-level litigation was pre-empted.

The final terms have been described by Allan Brandt, professor of history of medicine at Harvard Medical School and author of the book The Cigarette Century, as “a pale reflection” of earlier proposed settlements. As many had predicted, tobacco corporations passed the costs of the MSA on to consumers through sharp price hikes essentially making the agreement, Brandt contends, little more than a new excise tax on cigarettes.

Settlement results

Ostensible marketing restrictions in the agreement contained so many loopholes that spending on cigarette advertising and promotion has, in fact, increased dramatically in the United States since 1998. Not only hasthe MSA had virtually no impact on tobacco industry income or marketing practice, signatory states have realised little benefit from it.

And while it may appear impressive, the agreed multi-billion dollar payment was insufficient to cover the costs of treating smoking-related illnesses and, more significantly, there were no assurances included in the settlement that monies received by the states would be dedicated to health-care and tobacco control programs.

In many cases these funds have disappeared into general revenues, making state politicians reliant on this unexpected income, and effectively making the states partners of the tobacco industry. As Brandt argues, any new legal challenges to the industry have become “threats to the states’ cash flow”.

Australia’s tobacco control legislation is considerably more advanced than that in the United States, so concerns that the MSA does little to curtail industry advertising are largely irrelevant here. But the legacy of the MSA does hold significant lessons for policy makers in this country assessing the advisability of mounting legal action to secure compensation for smoking-related health-care costs.

Most importantly, the MSA demonstrates that litigation, once launched, will have to be pursued diligently and without recourse to negotiated settlements with the industry.

The experience of US states also underlines the importance of installing a regulatory mechanism that ensures any monies recovered from the industry are used to underwrite health costs related to tobacco use. Given his central role in the MSA negotiations, Myers’ best advice to Australian policy makers may well be about what not to do in future litigation.

Big Tobacco vs Australia: Philip Morris scores an own goal

http://theconversation.edu.au/big-tobacco-vs-australia-philip-morris-scores-an-own-goal-4967

20 January 2012, 10.26am AEST

Big Tobacco vs Australia: Philip Morris scores an own goal

You may have missed it, but the stoush between Big Tobacco and the Australian government over the plain packaging legislation took an odd turn late last year. The government’s response to Philip Morris Asia’s attempt to challenge the legislation under the bilateral investment treaty with Hong Kong revealed…

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It appears as though Philip Morris Asia only acquired the Australian companies in order to be able to launch this claim under the Hong Kong BIT. AAP

You may have missed it, but the stoush between Big Tobacco and the Australian government over the plain packaging legislation took an odd turn late last year. The government’s response to Philip Morris Asia’s attempt to challenge the legislation under the bilateral investment treaty with Hong Kong revealed that Philip Morris may have acquired its Australian investments purely for the purpose of taking the action.

Just before Christmas, the Australian Government formally responded to the claims of Philip Morris Asia Ltd (PMA), a Hong Kong company, that the legislation for plain packaging of cigarettes breaches the Agreement between the Government of Hong Kong and the Government of Australia for the Promotion and Protection of Investments (the “BIT”).

Briefly, PMA owns all the shares in Philip Morris (Australia) Ltd, which, in turn, owns all the shares in Philip Morris Ltd. Philip Morris Ltd owns or has a licence to use some tobacco trade marks that are certainly worth a lot of money. PMA’s argument is that the plain packaging legislation constitutes an expropriation or deprivation of its investments in the two Australian companies because of its detrimental impact on the value of those trademarks.

Much has already been written on whether the legislation could constitute a breach of the BIT, even if everything that PMA claims about the facts of the matter are correct. PMA will struggle to show that there has been any expropriation within the meaning of the BIT.

But, even more significantly, PMA did not state in its documentation one further key fact that seriously affects the strength of its argument.

The Australian government’s formal response to PMA makes the point that PMA did not have any interest in the Australian companies until February 23, 2011. The Australian government had made its policy position very clear and public well before that date, in April 2010. In addition, it received submissions from Philip Morris about the proposed legislation well before that date, so none of the Philip Morris companies can seriously claim that they were not aware of the impending action by the Australian Government.

It appears as though PMA only acquired the Australian companies in order to be able to launch this claim under the BIT. It also seems that PMA acquired assets in Australia knowing that they would be adversely affected by the forthcoming legislation.

The company’s own documentation in the dispute alleges that it is entitled to compensation “in an amount to be quantified but of the order of billions of Australian dollars”. So PMA acquired assets knowing that, according to it, the value of those assets was about to be reduced by “billions of Australian dollars”.

Article 6 of the BIT specifically refers to how compensation should be calculated. It states that the compensation shall amount to “the real value of the investment immediately before the deprivation or before the impending deprivation became public knowledge whichever is the earlier”.

The investment is defined in Article 1 of the BIT as the investment of the Hong Kong investors, that is, PMA. So what was the value of the “investment” that PMA had before the impending “deprivation” became public knowledge? It seems that it did not have any investment at all at the time that the impending “deprivation” became public knowledge.

No doubt PMA will have some argument on the point but, as a general rule, the value of nothing is nothing.

It appears that PMA’s claim for “billions of Australian dollars” has about as much life as the parrot in the famous Monty Python sketch. It will be interesting to see whether PMA argues that its claim is just resting or, perhaps, just temporarily stunned by the Australian government taking it out of its cage and giving it a good hard whack with the facts

http://theconversation.edu.au/big-tobacco-vs-australia-philip-morris-scores-an-own-goal-4967

FIS – Worldnews – Tobacco dust protects farmed fish from predators

http://www.fis.com/fis/worldnews/worldnews.asp?l=e&country=0&special=&monthyear=&day=&id=49215&ndb=1&df=0

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Tobacco dust used as molluscicide in milkfish farming. (Photo: nta.da.gov.ph/SEAFDDEC/FIS)

Tobacco dust protects farmed fish from predators

PHILIPPINES
Thursday, January 19, 2012,
01:50 (GMT + 9)

Research by the National Tobacco Administration (NTA) demonstrates that tobacco dust acts as a molluscicide by battling head lice and decimating snails living in fishponds and fish cages, Chief Edgardo D Zaragoza said this week.

Tobacco dust acts quickly to protect milkfish and its eggs from snails and other predators roaming in ponds and fish pens. Its efficacy has been proven by studies run by a team from the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Centre (Seafdec) in Tigbauan, Iloilo under Dr Joebert D Toledo, he went on.

Tobacco dust has already been applied as a pesticide in vegetable farms in Ilocos Sur, and growers have seen higher yields and significant cuts in production costs.

Now, the NTA has introduced a scheme to promote the use of tobacco dust in Sto Tomas, La Union to show how it benefits organic aquaculture, Manila Bulletin reports.

At a demonstration farm in the town, Zaragoza led a “show and tell” activity on how tobacco dust can work to tackle the degradation of fishponds caused by highly toxic chemicals. He discussed Tobacco Dust Plus, a scientifically tested, standardized, pure tobacco dust formulation created as a molluscicide to curb the presence of snails and other predators in fishponds.

He added that tobacco dust also works as a fertilizer to foster the growth of the natural fish food “lablab” and as a soil conditioner.

“The product intends to replace the long-banned, highly toxic, cyanide-based, inorganic chemicals being used in the preparation or sterilization of fishponds before the stocking of fingerlings,” Zaragoza explained.

Other institutions joining Seafdec that assessed tobacco dust were the Iloilo School of Fisheries in Iloilo, the Philippine Council for Aquaculture and Marine Resources Research and Development and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR).

Field testing was conducted in fishponds in Bulacan, Pampanga, Bataan, Pangasinan and Ilocos Sur and confirmed the findings of the scientific studies.

The studies showed that following recommended production technologies demonstrated in the farm led to a notable drop in the mortality rate of fingerlings — from 20 to only 5 per cent – and savings of about PHP 20,000 (USD 456.44) on production cost per ha per grow-out cycle.

By Natalia Real
editorial@fis.com
www.fis.com