Tobacco Industry News

Reports

Big tobacco’s ‘other’ products catch fire
While cigarette sales have dropped in recent years, sales of other tobacco products have been trending upward. A Harvard School of Public Health study found that sales of snuff, snus, roll-your-own tobacco, and cigars have increased enough to compensate the tobacco industry for one third of their lost revenues from waning cigarette sales. The Harvard researchers explain that Federal taxes on non-cigarette tobacco products remain low, which makes them attractive alternatives to cigarettes. To make matters worse, under the rules of the Master Settlement Agreement, the American Legacy Foundation is prohibited from advertising against tobacco products other than cigarettes. As tobacco companies attempt to popularize new tobacco products, public health organizations are working to strengthen tax laws and government regulations on these items. Read more here. Click here for an extract of the article, “Trends in the Use of Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products, 2000-2007,” which was published in the June 11 edition of JAMA.

Tobacco giants' cash incentives under fire (Australia)
The Australian Health Ministry is investigating the tobacco industry’s practice of providing stores with financial incentives to stock their products. According to the Association of Convenience Stores, retailers have received “standard trade rebates” from tobacco companies in exchange for stocking the companies’ products. A 1990 smoke-free law prohibits gifts or cash rebates to reward retailers for tobacco marketing or sales. The executive director of the Association of Convenience Stores claims that the rebates were legal, since the money was tied to retailers making the products available in their stores, rather than to marketing. Meanwhile, the Health Ministry is examining at the related issues of whether tobacco displays are a form of advertising, and whether the displays should be banned from stores. For more information, click here.

Waking a sleeping giant: The tobacco industry’s response to the polonium-210 issue
According to a review of tobacco industry documents, tobacco companies have been aware for over forty years that radioactive polonium-210 is present in cigarettes at hazardous levels, yet this knowledge has been carefully hidden from the public. Although the companies performed research studies on PO-210, company lawyers kept the results out of scientific publications. Tobacco industry scientists tried various approaches to reduce the radioactivity in their tobacco, but none were effective. Tobacco industry documents and a review of recent public relations materials suggest that despite these considerable research efforts, the tobacco industry minimized and denied knowledge regarding PO-210 to avoid provoking public concern. Click here for the full article in the American Journal of Public Health. Click here for a response from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids that urges FDA regulation of tobacco products.

Tobacco giant 'breaks youth code' (Africa)
A BBC investigation has revealed evidence that the British American Tobacco company’s marketing practices defied company policies and broke laws in several African countries. Despite a law against tobacco marketing and promotion in Malawi and similar restrictions in the BAT company policy, the BBC found evidence of a BAT-sponsored music event where celebrities appeared wearing items that displayed tobacco branding. The BAT marketing code and company policy discourage selling individual cigarettes, as they are often attractive to youths; however, the BBC found that BAT provided posters advertising the price of single cigarettes and containers to display them to stores in Malawi and Nigeria. These findings were presented on the BBC 2’s This World program. For more details, click here.

Project Cerberus: Tobacco industry strategy to create an alternative to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control
A review of tobacco industry documents has revealed that several major tobacco companies collaborated between 1999 and 2001 to create a regulatory code to rival the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. In creating and promoting Project Cerberus, the tobacco industry actively undermined the authority of the FCTC. The existence of multiple regulatory codes could be confusing to policymakers, particularly in developing countries. Furthermore, the tobacco industry’s regulatory plan did not include an independent body to oversee the policy, so enforcement of their regulatory policy could be flimsy. Because of the tobacco industry’s extensive effort to deceive policymakers on this front, the writers of the research paper recommend that decisionmakers avoid working with the tobacco industry. Find out more here.

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