November 28, 2012
On November 27, 2012 Federal Judge Gladys Kessler took another step in implementing the “remedies” in the landmark case the US Department of Justice brought against the major US cigarette manufacturers under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act for creating an illegal “enterprise” to defraud the public about a wide range of issues related to smoking (including secondhand smoke) and health. (Sharon Eubanks, the lawyer who led the DOJ effort through the trial, and I wrote a book, Bad Acts, that gives the political and legal history of the case, which started in 1999 when Bill Clinton was president.) Judge Kessler ordered the tobacco company defendants -- Altria, BATco, Brown & Williamson, Lorillard, Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds – to publish “corrective statements” informing the public that the companies lied about the dangers of smoking, secondhand smoke, nicotine addiction, and the fact that “light” and “mild” cigarettes are just as dangerous as “regular” cigarettes and providing truthful information about these issues.
November 25, 2012
November 25, 2012
Eric Crosbie and I just published a paper in Tobacco Control, Tobacco industry argues domestic trademark laws and international treaties preclude cigarette health warning labels, despite consistent legal advice that the argument is invalid. This paper should embolden governments to pursue strong graphic warning labels and plain packaging. The tile speaks for itself.
Here is the abstract:
November 16, 2012
The Department of Health and Human Services just launched BeTobaccoFree.gov, to provide be a "one-stop shop" for information on smoking and other products. While it has a reasonable description of the health effects of smoking and secondhand smoke, it completely ignores two central conclusions of the 2012 Surgeon General's report, Preventing Tobacco Use Among Youth and Young Adults on why kids start smoking:
- Advertising and promotional activities by tobacco companies have been shown to cause the onset and continuation of smoking among adolescents and young adults.
- The evidence is sufficient to conclude that there is a causal relationship between depictions of smoking in the movies and the initiation of smoking among young people.
All the site says on these important issues is the rather lame "Although you may see people using tobacco in movies, tv, and advertisements, most teens, adults, and athletes don’t use it."
November 9, 2012
We worked with the CDC to report the amount of smoking in movies in 2009 and 2010 in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, then for 2011 in Preventing Chronic Disease. The first two reports showed that consistent drops in the amount of onscreen smoking between 2005 and 2010. The 2011 showed that this improving trend reversed and there was an increase in onscreen smoking in 2011.