Tobacco industry

FDA To Require Tobacco Companies Report Dangerous Chemicals

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Matthew Perrone – March 30, 2012

Tobacco companies in the USA will be required to report the levels of dangerous chemicals found in cigarettes, chew and other products under the latest rules designed to tighten regulation of the tobacco industry.

The preliminary guidance issued Friday by the Food and Drug Administration marks the first time tobacco makers would be required to report quantities of 20 chemicals associated with cancer, lung disease and other health problems. The FDA will release the information in a consumer-friendly format by next April.

Historic tobacco suit hits Canadian courtroom; up to $27 billion at stake

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Sidhartha Banerjee – March 10, 2012

In the country next door, tobacco companies have been convicted in a landmark racketeering case and been forced because of other lawsuits to pay out at least US$206 billion over a quarter-century — a sum bigger than the annual GDP of most countries.

The legal skies have been somewhat less stormy here than in the United States.But that could change next week. A class-action lawsuit from smokers who claim they were duped for years by big tobacco companies as they became addicted to cigarettes, then suffered from serious health problems, will have its day in court.

Jeffrey Wigand's 1996 Interview With "60 Minutes"

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The CBS program "60 Minutes" re-broadcast its historic interview with tobacco-industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand. This is the famous 1996 interview that was cancelled by CBS when it caved in to legal threats from the industry.

Ironically, this action – suppression of an important public interest story – made headlines when exposed by the print media, and some months later CBS broadcast the interview.

The unstoppable march of the tobacco giants

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Indonesia child smoker

How the industry ruthlessly exploits the developing world - its young, poor and uneducated

Emily Dugan – May 29, 2011

More than half a century after scientists uncovered the link between smoking and cancer – triggering a war between health campaigners and the cigarette industry – big tobacco is thriving.

Despite the known catastrophic effects on health of smoking, profits from tobacco continue to soar and sales of cigarettes have increased: they have risen from 5,000 billion sticks a year in the 1990s to 5,900 billion a year in 2009. They now kill more people annually than alcohol, Aids, car accidents, illegal drugs, murders and suicides combined.

Big Tobacco's nightmare

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Jeffrey Wigand
Tobacco marketing specifically preys on children for future sales growth and more recognise the Camel mascot than Ronald McDonald, says Jeffrey Wigand.

By Anthony Hubbard - June 20, 2010

Jeffrey Wigand, the tobacco industry whistleblower made famous when portrayed by Russell Crowe in the movie The Insider, is coming to New Zealand in a coup for the anti-smoking lobby. He gives a preview of his powerful message.

HE IS one of the most famous whistleblowers in the world, but his face is relatively unknown. Jeffrey Wigand, the scientist who revealed Big Tobacco's dirtiest secrets and found a bullet in his letterbox, says he's "an ugly old man with white hair". But the world knows him as the fattened-up but still handsome Russell Crowe in a celebrated film.

Tobacco firms to pay $550M over smuggling

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CBC News – April 14, 2010

A decade-long legal battle pitting Big Tobacco against the federal and provincial governments drew to a close Tuesday, with two cigarette makers agreeing to pay more than half a billion dollars in connection with a massive smuggling operation set up in the 1990s to dodge taxes.

North-Carolina-based R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. will pay the two levels of government a total of $325 million to settle claims related to the smuggling.

Health group condemns tobacco smuggling settlement

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TORONTO, April 13, 2010–The health association that led the campaign to persuade the federal government to sue tobacco companies over tobacco contraband condemned the settlements announced today by the federal government and Big Tobacco.

"The tobacco smuggling in the early 1990s was, at the time, the largest and most destructive fraud in the history of Canadian business and public health," said Garfield Mahood, executive director of the Non-Smokers' Rights Association (NSRA). "In court papers from 2005, the federal and provincial governments filed claims for nearly $10 billion against JTI-Macdonald Corp. and related companies over contraband. The settlement today for $550 million with the companies involved is a complete sell-out amounting to about 6 cents on the dollar."

Canadian anti-tobacco group loses Gates grant

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Kristi Heim – April 12, 2010

The Gates Foundation took the unusual step of terminating a grant, this one for a Canadian group engaged in tobacco control, after the chair of its board was exposed as a director of Canada's largest cigarette maker.

The foundation said today it has severed a $5.2-million grant to the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) after it was informed that the group's chair, Barbara McDougall, was also a director of Imperial Tobacco Canada, a subsidiary of British American Tobacco. McDougall served as Secretary of State under Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

The Insider

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The Insider (1999)
Jeffrey Wigand is played by Russell Crowe
An Oscar-nominated thriller about Jeffrey Wigand's struggle to expose the tobacco industry's calculated deception of the public, and to thwart the industry's attempts to intimidate, discredit and silence him.

Tobacco whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand

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Dr. Jeffrey Wigand testifies about his ordeal as a whistleblower at a Workforce Protections subcommittee hearing on whistleblower protections on May 15, 2007. Wigand's story was dramatized in the 1999 movie The Insider.

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