February 14, 2012
Mindful of the fact that the media companies will be coming back to the California legislature to renew (and maybe even expand) their $100 million/year subsidy program, much of which goes to providing taxpayer support to movies that promote smoking, Jonathan Polansky and I recently completed an analysis of the public health impact of these subsidies.
We hope that this report will contribute to a broader discussion of the real costs of these subsidies in terms of damaging public health. I am pleased that the California Medical Association and American Heart Association (Western States) have both voted to take positions of “oppose unless amended” on the issue of film subsidies unless they exclude films with smoking and other tobacco use. (As far as I know, no bill has yet been introduced).
The report, “California film subsidies and on-screen smoking: Resolving the policy conflict,” , available on the UC eScholarship website at http://escholarship.org/uc/item/0t9099dr , concludes that:
February 13, 2012
Eric Crosbie just published a paper in Salud Publica Mexico (2012 Feb;54(1):28-38) that uses tobacco industry documents, key informant interviews, and other materials to describe how the tobacco industry has dominated and continues to dominate tobacco policy making in Costa Rica.
During the mid-to-late 1980s, Health Ministry issued several advanced (for their time) smoking restriction decrees causing British American Tobacco (BAT) and Philip Morris International (PMI) to strengthen their political presence there, resulting in passage of a weak 1995 law, which, as of August 2011, remained in effect. Since 1995 the industry has used Costa Rica as a pilot site for Latin American programs and has dominated policymaking by influencing the Health Ministry, including direct private negotiations with the tobacco industry which violate Article 5.3's implementing guidelines of the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC).
The Costa Rica experience demonstrates the importance of vigorous implementation of FCTC Article 5.3 which insulates public health policymaking from industry interference.
February 9, 2012
February 8, 2012
The recent news that the Obama Administration and some attorneys general are trying to push through a quick deal with the banks to settle state lawsuits against the banks for a wide range of mortgage fraud in which the banks would get immunity from further liability exchange for around $20 billion reminds me of the "global settlement" of tobacco lawsuits that the Clinton Administration tried to push through to end litigation against the tobacco industry in the mid-1990s.
Then, as now, a group of state attorneys general (as well as private attorneys) were pressing lawsuits against a major industry with legions of lawyers and there was pressure from the national government and some of the attorneys general to settle the cases before the full range of industry misbehavior was understood. The deal then was a trade that effectively granted Big Tobacco immunity from further litigation in exchange for some money, some voluntary agreements on marketing, and a form of FDA regulation.
Almost everyone got on "the train that was leaving the station" on the grounds that the global settlement was inevitable, and they did not want to be left behind.
February 6, 2012
A new UCSF analysis has found that a state ballot initiative to increase the cigarette tax would create about 12,000 jobs and nearly $2 billion in new economic activity in California.
The study found that the new tax would have a significant effect on the state’s overall economy because Californians would smoke less and spend their money in other ways.
The initiative, the California Cancer Research Act (CCRA), is on the statewide June 5 ballot. If the measure is approved, state cigarette taxes would rise by $1 a pack, generating an estimated $855 million a year for anti-smoking education programs, medical research, and tobacco law enforcement.
“The primary impact to the California economy, besides the effect on health care, is that people will smoke less and send less money out of state,’’ said study author Stanton A. Glantz, PhD, a professor of medicine at UCSF and director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education based at UCSF.
Currently, approximately 80 percent of money spent on tobacco products is exported to out-of-state tobacco manufacturers and farmers. No tobacco is grown in California and no cigarettes are manufactured here.