Jan. 11 (Bloomberg) -- U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair said his Labour Party lawmakers are free to vote as they wish on legislation to restrict smoking, paving the way for a ban in all offices, restaurants, pubs and clubs by 2007.

The move heads off a revolt by a fifth of Labour lawmakers who objected to exemptions proposed by Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt that would allow smoking in private members' clubs and pubs that don't serve food.

Hewitt herself had backed a full ban in all offices, pubs and clubs, before being forced in October by her predecessor as Health Secretary, Defence Secretary John Reid, to allow exemptions that Labour had promised in the May 2005 general election. In a parliamentary petition, 70 Labour lawmakers had called for a free vote, enough to defeat Blair in the House of Commons if they had rebelled against his party line.

``We recognize that the public debate has moved on,'' Blair's spokesman Tom Kelly told reporters. ``It's sensible to listen.''

Lawmakers are normally expected to vote as their party tells them. Kelly said all party members, including government ministers, would be free to vote as they wished when the legislation comes before them in February. He did not give a precise date, and refused to say how Blair would vote.

A parliamentary committee on human rights earlier today said exemptions to the ban may discriminate against poor people. Andrew Dinsmore, the committee's chairman, wrote to Hewitt asking her to spell out the legal justification she used in drawing up the legislation.

`Discriminatory'

``This may be indirectly discriminatory on the basis of lack of wealth or social condition,'' Dinsmore wrote. ``The evidence suggests that both pubs not serving food and membership clubs tend to be in the most deprived areas.''

U.K. pub owners including Mitchells & Butlers Plc and Punch Taverns Plc have criticized the proposed exemptions, saying they would disadvantage their businesses compared to private clubs.

In December, lawmakers on the all-party Health Committee said the plan would be ``unworkable.'' Committee Chairman Kevin Barron and nine other members of the panel yesterday proposed an amendment that if approved would ban smoking in all pubs and clubs.

The original proposals, introduced in the House of Commons in October, called for a smoking ban in offices, restaurants and most pubs from mid-2007. The main opposition Conservative Party has said it will give its members a free vote. Some support the ban on health grounds, while others oppose it on civil liberties grounds.

Northern Ireland, Scotland

In the U.K., Northern Ireland and Scotland have announced complete bans on smoking, and the Welsh assembly will be given powers to choose a similar move under the legislation. Norway, Finland, Sweden and Italy have restricted smoking in recent years.

The British Beer & Pub Association, which represents companies including Enterprise Inns Plc, Punch Taverns Plc and Mitchells & Butlers Plc, said the industry is moving toward smoke-free pubs by 2009, although it wanted to maintain separate rooms where customers can smoke if they want. It estimates a fifth of pubs will stop serving food if the proposed ban is implemented.

Good Manners and Signs

Cigarette makers including Imperial Tobacco Ltd. and Gallaher Group Plc have said pubs should have a choice about whether to allow smoking, arguing that research linking second- hand smoke to cancer is inconclusive. They say good manners and signs warning that a pub allows smoking are better answers than legislation.

The tobacco industry has shed 2,500 jobs since Blair took office in 1997 as companies closed cigarette factories in English cities including Manchester and Darlington.

At least 114,000 people in the U.K. die each year from smoking-related illnesses, accounting for a fifth of all deaths, and Blair's government estimates restrictions could save up to 3.8 billion pounds ($7 billion) by reducing sickness and death associated with smoking.

About 26 percent of British women smoke, the second-highest rate in the Group of Seven industrial nations behind Germany. Among men, 28 percent smoke in the U.K., trailing Germany, Italy, France and Japan in the G-7. About a fifth of the U.S. population smokes. About 70 percent of smokers in the U.K. say in surveys that they'd like to quit, the British Heart Foundation says. - bloomberg

Jan 2006 By Madeline Chambers LONDON (Reuters) - A complete ban on smoking in all English pubs and clubs looks increasingly likely after the government said on Wednesday it would allow its lawmakers to vote according to conscience and not along party lines.

The move averts a likely parliamentary revolt and possible defeat for Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose plans propose a smoking ban which would exempt pubs which do not serve food and private clubs.

A man seen smoking in a pub in central London in this October 26, 2005 file photo. A complete ban on smoking in all English pubs and clubs looks increasingly likely after the government said on Wednesday it would allow its lawmakers to vote according to conscience and not along party lines. (REUTERS/Toby Melville)

Many lawmakers in Blair's Labour party, including some Cabinet members, want a total ban and surveys show most Britons support smoke-free pubs and bars.

A partial ban would put England at odds with Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland which have either completely banned smoking in indoor public places or have announced plans to do so.

Blair's government bowed to pressure from its Members of Parliament after several of them put forward an amendment to remove the exemptions in the law, which is due to take effect in mid 2007.

"Following discussions ... it is the government's intention to allow its Members of Parliament -- including ministers -- a free vote on the amendment," Blair's spokesman told reporters. The spokesman said the decision on the vote, which will take place in February, reflected a change in the public mood. But it also means Blair, who has seen his authority wane since announcing he would stand down before an election due by 2010, will avoid a potentially embarrassing defeat.

Fewer than 40 Labour lawmakers can defeat Blair by siding with opposition parties after last May's election more than halved his majority. He suffered his first ever parliamentary defeat last year, on anti-terrorism laws.

Pub chain J.D. Wetherspoon Plc has been outspoken in its preference for a total smoking ban in pubs. It believes a full ban is inevitable so argues it makes sense to introduce it sooner rather than later. "We've always said that a complete ban, without exceptions, would be the best option," said a Wetherspoon spokesman.

Wetherspoon, which runs around 650 managed pubs in Britain, plans to bring in more non-smoking pubs in addition to the 50 it already has, although trading in them has suffered.

Others in the pub industry have been more cautious, warning a ban may hit trade.

MPs have voted by a huge margin to ban smoking from all pubs and private members' clubs in England. Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt said the change, expected to take effect in summer 2007, would "save thousands of people's lives". Ministers gave a free vote amid fears Labour MPs could rebel against plans to exempt clubs and pubs not serving food. The Commons decided by a margin of 200 to impose a ban on smoking in all enclosed public spaces.

Cabinet votes

The Cabinet was split on how far restrictions - set out in the Health Bill - should go, with Conservatives calling government policy a "shambles". Prime Minister Tony Blair, Chancellor Gordon Brown and Home Secretary Charles Clarke all voted for a blanket ban. But Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, Defence Secretary John Reid and Education Secretary Ruth Kelly opposed it.

Smoking is already to be banned in pubs and clubs in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Health Bill gives the Welsh Assembly the right to decide for itself whether to implement a ban it has already twice approved in principle.

Ms Hewitt, who voted for a total ban for England, told the BBC: "I'm absolutely delighted. This is really a historic day for public health." She added: "This is going to save thousands of people's lives."

'Illiberal'

Elspeth Lee, of Cancer Research UK, said: "This is really going to affect generations to come and make the nation a lot healthier."

However, Simon Clark, director of smoking support group Forest, said: "This is a double whammy and an unnecessary and illiberal piece of legislation that denies freedom of choice to millions of people.

"The Government should educate people about the health risks of smoking but politicians have no right to force people to quit by making it more difficult for people to consume a legal product."

About one third of people who smoke more than 20 cigarettes a day will have their first within five minutes of waking

Earlier, health minister Caroline Flint said fines for failing to stop people smoking in restricted areas would go up by more than ten times from £200 to £2,500. She said: "I am confident that these increased fine levels will result in better compliance with smoke-free legislation, which of course, will make enforcement easier."

The Cabinet originally proposed prohibiting smoking only in pubs serving food, in line with Labour's election manifesto. A free vote was offered after many Labour MPs, fearing a partial ban could increase health inequalities among customers and staff, threatened to rebel. Ministers came up with three choices: a total ban; exempting private clubs; or exempting clubs and pubs not serving food.

Many MPs opposed a smoking ban on civil liberties grounds.

'Good news'

The government predicts an estimated 600,000 people will give up smoking as a result of the law change.

Conservative MPs were offered a free vote on the issue. Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley said ministers had "put forward proposals which their own backbenchers thought were completely unworkable". But it was "a very important step", he added there "had to be a culture that encourages better health".

Liberal Democrat health spokesman Steve Webb said: "This legislation is good news for tens of thousands of bar staff up and down the country. "The key issue has always been the health and safety of people who work in public places."

Tory leader David Cameron missed the vote following the birth of his third child, a son, earlier on Tuesday. In a recent report, the Commons health select committee said a total ban was the "only effective means" of protecting public health. - BBC

U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge, D-2nd, told an international tobacco-marketing group yesterday that he took up the issue with Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman when Glickman visited Raleigh last week, asking him to insist that China accept American leaf. ''We've got to get beyond the phony issue of blue mold,'' Etheridge told members of Tobacco Associates Inc. ''I think they're just using that . . . to protect their farmers. When and if they get admission to the WTO, that has to go.''

''If only 1 percent of the cigarettes smoked in China used American flue-cured tobacco, the stocks of Stabilization would be cleaned out and quotas would rise,'' he said.

source

Dan Glickman Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. (board member); The Hain Celestial Group Inc. (director) formerly Secretary of Agriculture

what are Glickmann / Leows / carlyle links? corporatist censorship?

Big Tobacco pusher

In addition to Slater, two former cabinet colleagues have spun the revolving door, advising and representing clients in the areas they regulated while in office. Agriculture Secretary Glickman, who is now the director of the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School at Harvard, is also a senior advisor at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer Feld LLP, one of the biggest law and lobby firms in the country. Glickman advises clients on food and agriculture, health, biotechnology and international trade, among other issues, according to the firm's Web site. The scores of clients the firm represents include supermarket chain Food Lion and Farmland & Grassland Protection Coalition (which includes the Nature Conservancy), according to lobbying disclosure reports.
Center for public integrity

The New enforcer

THE new supremo elect of the MPAA, Dan Glickman, has promised no let up in the trade association's war against online pirates. Glickman, who was a former Agriculture Secretary, replaced Jack Valenti as head and said there will be no changes in the film industry's policy on pirates. The movie and record industry has been tackling pirates by taking users and file sharers to court.
BNN

Public Company Public US
Stock Symbol LTR/NTSE

Per Cent of Revenue from Tobacco Products: 12% (1997)
Per Cent of US Market: 9%

Tobacco Markets: United States

Operating Income from Tobacco Sales: $363M (1997)

Tobacco Brand Names: Subsidary Lorillard Inc produces Newport, Kent, True, Old Gold, and Maverick

Loews' Non-Tobacco Companies:
Loews Hotels (100% owned) Including the House of Blues Hotel (Chicago) and the Hard Rock Hotel (Orlando)

CNA Insurance and Financial (85% owned)

Diamond Offshore Drilling, Inc. (52% owned) Operator of offshore oil drilling rigs

Bulova Corporation (97% owned) A watch and clock maker:

Sources: Loews Corporation SEC Form10K SEC conscientious consuming

Ontario Sues Group Of Tobacco Companies

British American Tobacco, the world's second-largest multinational tobacco company, for decades secretly encouraged tax evasion and cigarette smuggling in a global effort to secure market share and lure generations of new smokers, internal corporate documents reveal.

Senior personnel of the parent company and its subsidiaries sought to control and exploit smuggling as part of a worldwide marketing strategy to increase revenue. More than 11,000 pages of documents from BAT and its subsidiaries, including the U.S. company Brown & Williamson, were analyzed over a six-month period by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a project of the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C.

[snip]

In some cases, tobacco industry executives actively played various gangs off against each other and solicited and received millions of dollars in kickbacks or bribes in return for selling to preferred criminal syndicates, according to court records and sources.

The Center investigation also shows that when senior or mid-level executives have been charged criminally with aiding and abetting smuggling, tobacco companies often dont cooperate with investigators. In a Louisiana case, for example, lawyers for one tobacco company used their connections in the administration of former President Bill Clinton to force the removal of a prosecutor pursuing a Brown & Williamson sales executive for smuggling into Canada.

The major tobacco companies all vigorously deny any involvement in the smuggling of their products. In a statement to the Center, BAT also said it knew of no evidence "to substantiate allegations that some of our employees or distributors have worked with criminal organisations and/or organised crime."

Companies such as BAT have stated that they cant be expected to keep track of their 90,000 employees, even though in many cases those named in smuggling are senior managers. The companies also argue that they sell a legal product to wholesalers over whom they exercise no control. Kenneth Clarke, BATs deputy chairman and the former Conservative chancellor of the exchequer, told the British House of Commons health select committee on Feb. 16, 2000, that "there is no evidence I have ever seen that BAT is a participant in this smuggling. We seek to minimize it and avoid it."

Public i [Canada]

Probative Production

09.07.2004 - 16:32 CET | By Sharon Spiteri

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Tobacco giant Philip Morris will pay the EU 1.25 billion dollars (1.0 billion euros) over 12 years following an agreement between the two sides on the fight against contraband and counterfeiting of cigarettes.

In return, the EU on Friday (9 July) dropped its legal case against the tobacco company.

This agreement was signed by the European Commission, Philip Morris International and 10 of the 25 Member States which had supported the Commissions legal action against the firm.

"We have ended all disputes between the parties in this area today. We look forward to moving forward with PMI in our fight to combat smuggling and counterfeit cigarettes effectively", budget Commissioner Michaele Schreyer said on Friday.

eu observer

24.01.2001 - 08:55 CET | By Lisbeth Kirk

The American tobacco giant Philip Morris has given financial support to several doctors acting as medical advisers in the EU Commission, reports the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten.

Danish MEP, Torben Lund demands that the accusations are investigated. He wants the names of all members of the advisory committees during the last 15 years to be publicised and the alledged economical relations between the EU advisers and the tobacco industry to be clarified.

eu observer

Excerpts from: Honduras, Belize Claim Tobacco Firms Evading Taxes

By Michael Connor Honduras, Belize Claim Tobacco Firms Evading Taxes [05/08/01]

MIAMI (Reuters) - Honduras and Belize, already trying to force U.S. cigarette makers to pay the healthcare costs of sick smokers, on Tuesday claimed in lawsuits that the companies systematically smuggled tobacco to avoid duties and taxes.

The U.S. lawsuits seek unspecified billions of dollars in damages and allege that Philip Morris Cos. Inc., the maker of Marlboros, and the No. 2 U.S. cigarette group, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings Inc., participated in rings organized to avoid taxes. The suits also ask that the practices stop.

The suits allege the defendants violated laws by participating in a smuggling ring that shipped tobacco products from the two Central American nations as tax-free exports and then re-imported them as a way of beating taxes and duties.

``We are seeking uncollected taxes that are many billions of dollars,'' said Steven Marks, a Miami attorney representing Honduras, Belize and Ecuador, which has a similar suit pending against big tobacco companies.

Both Camels-makers Reynolds and Philip Morris, the world's biggest cigarette company, are already targets of a tax-avoidance suit filed in New York brought by the 15-nation European Union. Canada and Colombia have also filed similar suits.

A spokesman for Philip Morris, whose other businesses include Miller beer and Kraft packaged foods, was not immediately available to comment on the new lawsuits filed in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court.

In addition to the new tax claims by Honduras and Belize, which have health-costs suits against tobacco companies pending in Florida courts, 14 Brazilian state and city governments also filed suits that seek damages from the cigarette makers for treating sick smokers.

Drawing on allegations and legal theories used by state governments in the United States that yielded a stunning $206 billion settlement in 1998, the lawsuits brought by Rio de Janeiro and other Brazilian governments accuse the companies of hiding the health risks of cigarettes.

Other defendants named in the suits were Brown & Williamson, a unit of British American Tobacco Plc of Britain, and the Lorillard unit of Loews Corp., Marks said.

Marks said in an interview that similar lawsuits filed in past years in U.S. courts on behalf of foreign governments in Venezuela and Russia were withstanding court challenges by tobacco lawyers and were likely to come to trial in late 2001 or early 2002.
no-smoking.org

[excerpt]

How could America Tonight put out such a one-sided, deceptive piece promoting the perspective of the cigarette industry? One is reminded of the fact that the Loews corporation, which has a controlling stake in CBS, also owns Lorrilard tobacco.

The segment also calls to mind the time that America Tonight co-host Deborah Norville appeared at a 1989 Philip Morris convention in Hawaii, paid to be the co-host of a mock TV news program called P.M. in the A.M. "Norville tossed soft questions at Philip Morris executives and read promotional copy," the New York Times later reported (6/10/90), reading lines like, "We'll be taking a look at Marlboro's efforts to try to maximize its growth in market potential and check out what's happening with price-value brands."

Long before Norville's performance in Hawaii, she had pointed out the ethical dilemmas such conflicts pose (quoted in the Chicago Tribune, 11/21/89): "If, for personal financial reasons, a reporter finds it important to work an outside job, I think he or she should certainly refrain from reporting on subjects connected with the outside job."

The fake news show for which Norville was paid by Philip Morris could not have been more pro-tobacco than the real news show that she co-hosted for CBS. Like Forbes MediaCritic's defense of second-hand smoke, America Tonight leaves one wondering just who these journalists are working for.
FAIR

Tobacco firms face damages fight

[excerpts]

Florida's Supreme Court has agreed to a case review that reopens the prospect of five cigarette makers paying damages totalling $145bn (82bn).

Tobacco shares dived after the court's decision: shares in Philip Morris owner Altria fell 8%, while RJ Reynolds' stock was down 6% on Wall Street.

A jury awarded the huge damages in July 2000 after anti-smoking campaigners brought a class action lawsuit.

The five firms successfully appealed to reduce the damages last year.

Known as the Engle case, the original lawsuit claimed damages on behalf of up to 700,000 Florida residents suffering from smoking related illnesses.

The five firms in the case are Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds, Loews unit Lorillard Tobacco, Brown & Williamson, which is owned by British American Tobacco, and Liggett, which is part of Vector Group.

BBC