McKenna claims win in tobacco advertising case

Washington's Division One Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that a cartoon image included in the Nov. 2007 ad campaign by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. in Rolling Stone magazine was in violation of the 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.

In doing so, the court overturned a June 2008 verdict in favor of the company, which ruled that the content didn't depict traditional cartoons and that the images were more thought-provoking than humorous. Tuesday's decision awarded the State attorneys fees and costs and remanded the case for damages.

Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna called the ruling a reminder of how committed the states are to enforcing the public health provisions of the MSA and prohibiting the illegal marketing of tobacco products.

"This lawsuit demonstrates, even 10 years later, states have not forgotten legacy of the Master Settlement Agreement," said the Republican AG, who recently served three years as co-chair of the National Association of Attorneys General Tobacco Committee.

"This is the kind of advertising that brought about the Master Settlement Agreement in the first place and this is one of the on-going legal commitments tobacco companies made to the states. We are holding them accountable."

Eight states - Maine, Ohio, California, Illinois, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Washington - sued R.J. Reynolds after the ad ran.

The Maine and Ohio judges sided with the company and California came back with a split decision. A Pennsylvania judge became the first to hold Reynolds liable, ordering the company to pay $302,000 or run a full-page anti-smoking ad in Rolling Stone. The other states' lawsuits are still pending.

"This is a significant decision in that it's the first appellate court interpretation of the use of cartoons in tobacco advertising," said Senior Counsel Rene Tomisser, who argued the case and was recently promoted to section chief of the attorney general's Complex Litigation Section.

As of now, R.J Reynolds has not said if they would plan an appeal.

Tobacco ban is premature

Well-intentioned Pentagon health experts are urging Defense Secretary Robert Gates to ban the use of tobacco by troops and end its sale on military property. It's an admirable goal, and achievable some day. But the proposal, or at least its announcement, is ill-timed, coming last week just days after the largest one-day death toll in months for U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

A plan to ban tobacco is something to announce during peacetime.

The Institute of Medicine study, requested by the Department of Veteran Affairs and the Pentagon, notes that one in three servicemembers use tobacco, compared with one in five adult Americans, USA Today reported. The study also found:

Tobacco use increased after wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began, and troops worn out by repeated deployments often rely on cigarettes as a "stress reliever."

The heaviest smokers are soldiers (37 percent) and Marines (36 percent), who have done most of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Combat veterans are 50 percent more likely to use tobacco than troops who haven't seen combat.

The study suggested the Pentagon consider gradually phasing out the subsidized sale of tobacco products on U.S. military bases and that it implement a series of tough anti-smoking measures, starting with new recruits. Well, with new recruits who aren't being sent off to war, anyway.

Focusing on smoking while troops are dying in combat has a missing-the-forest-for-the-trees feel. Studies and proposals don't happen in a vacuum. Or maybe they do, and that's the problem.

The military has a much more troubling health crisis right now -- and that is a record suicide rate among servicemembers. Like the smokers, the majority of military members who commit suicide saw combat, and served repeated deployments. And most were deployed repeatedly because the military has struggled at the same time to attract qualified recruits. Definitely a circular nightmare, and one in which cigarettes are not the villain.

When facing combat, fear, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, traumatic injury, stressful life events -- things military personnel and veterans can struggle with daily -- tobacco use isn't the problem. The military is working on suicide prevention programs, even as the trend continues upward, Military.com reported. More, urgent work is needed.

The study cites rising tobacco use and higher costs for the Pentagon and VA as reasons for the ban. And the rising tobacco use is tied to combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Which is maybe why the study's mixed-message recommendation is to phase-in the ban over years, perhaps "up to 20."

FDA's tobacco road

For most of the last 15 years, the Food and Drug Administration's authority to regulate tobacco has been either a thwarted promise or a fitful threat, depending on your point of view.

It has been pressed by anti-smoking crusaders and public health groups, put on hold by the Supreme Court and beaten back repeatedly by the tobacco industry and its political allies. Last year, the latest such proposal was left for dead after President Bush threatened he would veto a measure, passed by the House of Representatives, if it made its way to his desk.

But on June 22, a political resurrection occurred in Washington, D.C.: Flanked by lawmakers, anti-smoking advocates and even a tobacco industry executive, President Obama (himself a smoker who's struggled to quit) signed into law a measure giving the FDA all the authority over tobacco that it has periodically sought, and more. That's a measure not only of the doggedness of some lawmakers, but how the American landscape has changed for the makers of tobacco products.

Roughly one in five American adults still smokes cigarettes -- down from a pinnacle of 40% in 1965. Most of the nation's workplaces, public buildings and restaurants no longer allow smoking. Though an estimated 1,100 kids take up smoking every day, tobacco has neither the Hollywood glamour nor ease of access it once did for those under 18. Even tobacco farmers are a vanishing breed, with many states using funds from a $206-billion legal settlement with the tobacco industry to buy them out of the business.

Tobacco use, estimated to kill 443,000 Americans and cost $193 billion in lost productivity and added healthcare costs every year, is something that fewer and fewer politicians dare defend.

One of the oldest cigar makers shuts down its plan

Florida will fell short of one of its iconic cigar plants in later this summer when Hav-A-Tampa closes its factory, which has been working since 1902 and fires almost 500 employees.
Hav-A-Tampa revenues were hit dramatically by constantly increasing tobacco taxes and strict indoor smoking policies that have obliged smokers to go outside for a puff.
Altadis Inc, the owner of Hav-A-Tampa made public their decision to close the plant on Thursday during a special press-conference.
The major part of employees was involved in manufacture of legendary Jewel cigars, Hav-A-Tampa's top-seller. According to Kevin Barlow, head of plant’s human resources department, many employees have been working there for 15 years or even more, with even one worker who has been employed for 50 years.
Altadis made desperate efforts to keep the factory going, but was unable to overcome dramatic sales decline caused by the economic downturn and landmark tax on cigars.
The manufacture would be transferred to another plant owned by Altadis and situated in Puerto Rico. The owner also decided to keep the Florida distribution center open.
After hearing the news of plant’s closure, Hav-A-Tampa workers were trying to figure out if they would be able to get new work in an state where the unemployment rate reached 10 percent last month.
Debra Barker, a Hav-A-Tampa worker admitted that she has been working at the plant for 15 years and there have been people who have been there even more. She said that she would get another job since she had a higher education, but it would be very difficult to get a decent job for other people who had been working at the plant after graduating from school.
Atladis spokesman said that a combination of several factors affected Hav-A-Tampa revenues, among which were the economic downfall, growth of unemployment rates and implementation of smoking bans in enclosed public places. The strict smoking bans have essentially hit revenues in central and northern states, where it's impossible to go outside in order to smoke a cigar in the winter.

Tribal members plead not guilty to contraband cigarette charges

Four people who operated a smoke shop on the Swinomish Indian Reservation that was raided for untaxed cigarettes two years ago pleaded not guilty to federal charges Monday in Seattle.

Tribal members Marvin Wilbur, 71, and his wife Joan Wilbur, 72, along with their daughters-in-law April Wilbur, 44, and Brenda Wilbur, 49, were indicted by a grand jury in U.S. District Court last month on one count of conspiracy to traffic in contraband cigarettes and five counts of trafficking in contraband cigarettes.

The four remain free pending a trial set for September. The charges carry prison terms up to five years.

The Wilbur family ran the Trading Post at March Point, near Anacortes, which was raided in May 2007. Agents seized nearly four million unstamped cigarettes and about $120,000 in cash and bank accounts. It all has been forfeited to the government.

Prosecutors allege the Trading Post took in at least $13 million in revenue from contraband cigarettes and should have paid about $11 million in tobacco taxes.

In 2003, Marvin and Joan Wilbur unsuccessfully sued to try to stop a cigarette-tax compact between the state and the tribe that requires the tribe to collect the same tobacco taxes from on-reservation smoke shops that the state would collect.

Prosecutors say the Wilburs didn't get a tribal license to sell cigarettes and didn't pay tribal tax.

More Cigarettes More Health Problems

A recent study found that smokers have more migraine attacks than non-smokers. But a research published in The Journal of Headache and Pain indicated that smoking could ameliorate migraines by reducing anxiety, one of the main factors that spark an attack.
One advantage of this study is that the sample used, 361 medicine students from the University of Salamanca, were fully informed about what a migraine was. Most surveys which studied the migraine in smokers are done in people without knowledge of the illness, but this recent study tried to found about the presence or absence of migraine and whether or not they smoked in people knowing everything about this disease.
At the end of the investigation was found that 16% of students fulfilled migraine criteria, while 20% smoked. But the percentage of smokers was higher (29%) in those who were also migraine sufferers and migraine frequency in those students who were migraine sufferers and smokers was clearly higher than in those who were non-smokers and migraine sufferers.
According to this last study, smoking is a precipitating factor of this type of headache, as the influence of active smokers is one third higher in migraine sufferers and there is a direct relationship between the number of cigarettes smoked and the frequency of migraine attacks.
At the end of the study researchers became more stressed, because they assure that the tobacco dosage play a very important role in migraine sufferers. The study results detected that the migraine sets in after five daily cigarettes.
Moreover, although the percentage of those who smoked was higher in people with migraines, they smoked less than those who did not suffer migraines. This is because they knew that if they will smoke more than five cigarettes a day, they would be more likely to have a migraine attack.
The neurologists argued that in no case should a migraine sufferer be advised to smoke thinking that it is going to improve their migraines.

Tobacco lay

Because an injunction “prohibits conduct under threat of judicial punishment, basic fairness requires that those enjoined receive explicit notice of precisely what conduct is outlawed.” Under this standard, we have held injunctions to be too vague when they enjoin all violations of a statute in the abstract without any further specification, or when they include, as a necessary descriptor of the forbidden conduct, an undefined term that the circumstances of the case do not clarify.
Indeed, we must always apply the fair notice requirement “in the light of the circumstances surrounding entry: the relief sought by the moving party, the evidence produced at the hearing on the injunction, and the mischief that the injunction seeks to prevent.”

Tobacco use

In conformity with 2002 edition of World Tobacco Atlas published by the WHO, in the region of the Caribbean Sea and Central America, every year local smokers consume from 500 to 1,200 cigarettes each. Although the smoking rates among men tend to drop in recent years, this decline is very slow-going.

Moreover, generally, more educated men from the Caribbean countries do not smoke or have quit lighting up, being aware of all the negative health consequences related to smoking. Therefore, smoking is more likely to be widespread among the non-educated lower- income men.

Smoking star

Movie showing smoking - Part II

A spokesperson for 20th Century Fox, where all four series of the X-Men movie were filmed including the latest Wolverine movie, declared that Jackman's character was showed with a cigar only two times during the movie; moreover, the cigar was not ever lit.

She stated that despite the Wolverine character smokes a cigar in nearly each edition of the comic magazine, film director decided to avoid frequent showing of smoking in the movie.

The Medical Association of America, seeking to attract Hollywood tycoons' attention, recruited a truck carrying a billboard around the studios.

"Our designers have invented a poster showing an adolescent thinking, 'Which movie studios will cause me to smoke this summer?'” said the Medical Alliance executive.

Pamela Ramirez, the communications manager for Motion Picture Association declared that they have been rather delicate with the worries of parents regarding the aim of the rating systems.

She stated the Association started giving R rating to the films two years ago, responding to the changes in mentality and health complications related to teen smoking.

"Smoking has been rated similar to the factors like nudity or violence," she added.