Tobacco

Tobacco Report Reveals Global Retreat

A secret report reveals that three of the world's biggest tobacco companies -- British American Tobacco, Japan Tobacco and Philip Morris -- are considering a new set of self-imposed, international advertising restrictions including curbs on print ads, TV, outdoor, product placement and promotional events. Many of these restrictions are already being forced on the tobacco industry as a result of growing international pressure to reduce cigarette consumption.

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PR Week Offers Free Advice to Philip Morris

Now that Philip Morris has apologized for its role in commissioning a report claiming that the Czech Republic benefits from the premature deaths of smokers, the August 6 issue of PR Week asked PR pros, "How can Philip Morris regain PR ground following the publication of the Czech report?" Advice from the experts included:

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Starr Returns to His Roots

Now that he is done prosecuting Bill Clinton, former independent counsel Kenneth Starr has gone back to work as an attorney for the tobacco industry. On Monday he represented Philip Morris in Los Angeles, asking a judge to overturn a jury's $3 billion punitive damage award to a smoker with incurable lung cancer.

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Slam the Can for Dare to Care a Hoax for Smokes

The Weber Shandwick PR firm created "Slam the Can for Dare to Care," a basketball-themed food drive designed to put a charitable face on the Brown & Williamson tobacco company. "The 16 B&W employees donating the largest number of canned goods during the two-and-a-half week collection period participated in a series of wacky basketball contests at a downtown shopping mall, with the winner receiving two tickets to the NCAA championship games," Shandwick stated in The Holmes Report, a PR industry trade publication. Shandwick declared the program an "unqualified success. ...

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Phillip Morris Says It Regrets Death Study

Steven C. Parrish, who is senior VP/corporate affairs at Philip Morris Cos., has apologized for a company-funded report calling cost savings from smokers' early demise one of the "positive effects" of cigarette consumption. According to O'Dwyer's PR, Parrish said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that it was a "terrible mistake" as well as wrong. "To say it's totally inappropriate is an understatement," Parrish said.

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Smoking Can Help Czech Economy says Philip Morris

The Wall Street Journal reports: "Philip Morris Cos. officials in the Czech Republic have been distributing an economic analysis concluding that cigarette consumption isn't a drag on the country's budget, in part because smokers' early deaths help offset medical expenses. The report, commissioned by the cigarette maker and produced by consulting firm Arthur D. Little International, totes up smoking's 'positive effects' on national finances, including revenue from excise and other taxes on cigarettes and 'health-care cost savings due to early mortality.'"

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Justices Say States, Cities Can't Limit Tobacco Ads

The same five US Supreme Court Justices who last year ruled that the FDA didn't have the authority to regulate tobacco products as drug delivery devices (and who then chose George Bush as President) preempted yesterday States from protecting children from cigarette advertising. The five conservative Justices (Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy & O'Connor) ruled that regulations restricting tobacco advertising within 1000 feet of school and playgrounds were preempted by federal law and violated the tobacco industry's right to free speech.

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Tobacco Lobby Powerful Presence in State Legislatures

The British Medical Association's journal "Tobacco Control" recently published Michael Givel and Stan Glantzs' article entitled: "Tobacco lobby political influence on US state legislatures in the 1990s." This article examines in great detail from previously secret tobacco cartel documents obtained through litigation, how the powerful tobacco cartel has exerted considerable political influence over tobacco control and public health legislation in all U.S. state legislatures in the 1990s.

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Keep America Beautiful and Cigarette Litter

Keep America Beautiful is probably the best-known litter awareness group in the United States, yet they have flatly refused to touch the issue of cigarette litter, the most prolific form of litter in the world. KAB has a joint program in cooperation with Philip Morris that blames the cigarette litter problem on a lack of ashtrays -- a way of spinning the issue that Philip Morris favors. Some Philip Morris employees have even boasted that more public ashtrays serve as a subtle advertisement for the popularity of their product.

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