Roxon Gazes Down Big Tobacco

Health Minister Nicola Roxon has weathered an attack over her attempt to solicit funds from big tobacco in 2005 and vowed to push ahead with plans to introduce plain packaging for Hilton cigarettes. Ms. Roxon says even if cigarette makers win compensation for the loss of trademark rights, the commonwealth would be ahead because plain packs would cut smoking rates and therefore health spending.

The federal government wants Australia to be the first country in the world to force cigarettes to be sold in packets devoid of branding.

“The billions of dollars we currently spend in our health system fixing up problems that are caused by tobacco will absolutely dwarf the amount of money that will be spent on a legal challenge, even if that challenge was successful, which I very much doubt,” the health minister told Macquarie Radio on Wednesday.

It was revealed on Tuesday night that in 2005 Ms Roxon asked three executives at Philip Morris to support her re-election by attending a $1500 a table fundraiser.

The Labor Party had banned political donations from big tobacco a year earlier under then leader Mark Latham.

“Obviously it’s an embarrassment for me,” Ms Roxon told ABC TV.

“Obviously you don’t want to make these sorts of mistakes.

“But it does need to be kept in perspective. Six years ago an invitation was sent that was not accepted – a donation was not made.”

Ms Roxon accused big tobacco of “playing the man and not the ball”.

She’s previously come under fire for attending the 1999 Australian Open tennis while a guest of Philip Morris.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott was quick to sink the boot in on Wednesday.

Ms Roxon has been attacking the coalition in recent weeks for continuing to accept political donations from big tobacco.

She has repeatedly called on Mr Abbott to “kick the habit”.

“Certainly, she has been remarkably shrill on this issue,” the opposition leader told reporters in Canberra.

“It must be a pretty embarrassing thing to have been caught out on this.”

But the coalition didn’t press the issue in Question Time – perhaps because that would inevitably raise fresh questions about the millions big tobacco still donates to the Liberal and National parties.

The coalition has received more than $1.5 million from Philip Morris and British American Tobacco since the ALP banned donations in 2004.

Ninety-seven per cent of BAT’s worldwide donations in 2010 went to the Australian Liberal and National parties.

Opposition health spokesman Peter Dutton was asked about the wisdom of attacking Ms Roxon when the coalition still accepted donations.

In response, he suggested his party’s policy could be reviewed.

“We’ve been up front saying that we accepted donations from a legal company,” Mr Dutton told ABC Radio.

“Now, we may well review that policy into the future.”

A United States business group on Wednesday warned that Australia’s move to mandate plain packaging meant it was in danger of breaching international obligations.

But Ms Roxon is confident the law is on the government’s side.

“We’re not taking away their logos and trademarks to use them somewhere else,” she told Macquarie Radio.

“We’re (just) restricting the use of those logos.”

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Renault Colour Scheme Link to Tobacco Companies

The Renault Formu-la One team has been cleared to race in its black-and-gold colours in Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix after fears that it would fall foul of antitobacco advertising laws. Principal Eric Boullier said in a statement that the Lotussponsored team, which has no connection with the tobacco industry, had contacted the Quebec authorities recently to discuss the livery and the legislation.
“We’re delighted to be able to race in Montreal in our usual colour scheme,” the Frenchman said.
“The Quebec authorities noted that the current livery makes a reference to images from the 1980s when the car was sponsored by the tobacco industry, but it has also accepted the fact that Lotus Renault GP receives no direct or indirect financing from the industry in question.”
The team’s 2011 black-andgold livery harks back to the days when the old Lotus team was sponsored by Marlboro cigarette brand John Player Special.
Boullier said Renault was fully aware of Quebec’s stringent legislation on promotional associations with tobacco and would “use all means available to dispel any misconceptions that our identity and that of our partners is somehow associated with this industry.”

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Mexico’s Tobacco Growers Used as Lobbyists

On October, in chaotic Mexico City, a small army of protestors, sporting placards and shouting into bullhorns, worsened the usual traffic snarl around San Lazaro, the nation’s congressional office complex. Television news accounts showed screaming-mad tobacco farmers, some of whom had boarded buses and traveled 500 miles to warn federal legislators that new taxes on Winston cigarettes would put them out of business.
Inside, lawmakers were in a tug-of-war over a landmark excise tax law that eventually added about 50 cents to a pack of cigarettes and—anti-tobacco activists hoped—would make tobacco less attractive to consumers.
It was not the first time these farmers had traveled far to protest in Mexico. Like tobacco growers around the world, Mexican campesinos—farmers and farmworkers—for years have been deployed to send a message to the public and politicians: Jobs are at stake in the effort by public health advocates to eliminate tobacco ads and limit smoking.
As the global fight over smokers moves from the United States and other countries where tobacco consumption is on the decline, Big Tobacco has drawn a line around developing nations that account for an increasingly important share of their revenues.
From Jakarta in Indonesia to Mexico City, farmers have been reliable street-level lobbyists in the industry’s fight against smoking limits. Farmers say they’re defending their jobs, even though experts insist that the buying habits of multinational companies have more impact on the fortunes of growers than anti-tobacco rules designed by the World Health Organization and public health officials who seek to shrink the human and fiscal costs of tobacco-related disease.
Between 2005 and 2030, 135.1 million people will have died worldwide in developing nations because of smoking-related illness, according to the World Lung Foundation. Tobacco consumption is the globe’s leading preventable cause of death.
In Mexico “the anti-tobacco campaigns didn’t hit farmers as hard as the companies’ global strategies have,” said Javier Castellón, a senator representing western Mexico’s Nayarit state, a swath of humid terrain once known as the Gold Coast because of the value of its tobacco crops.
In Mexico City protests in recent years, farmers have been vocal and proud to stand up for their business, even if some who attended the marches said they’d received stipends for doing so.
In interviews with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, farmers in Nayarit state recalled getting about $20 a day and restaurant and hotel stipends for trips to the nation’s capital. “Many of the ‘farmers’ there were not ,” said one grower, who asked that his name not be used because he fears economic reprisal from tobacco companies.

Big Tobacco in the Third World
Similar relationships between farmers and Big Tobacco are repeated in country after country throughout the developing world—where the industry is seeing impressive revenue growth. British American Tobacco said last year that “some two-thirds of our revenue comes from developing markets.”
One of the industry’s strongest political avatars in developing nations has been the International Tobacco Growers Association. It works in Mexico through local farmers associations. And around the world, ITGA activities mirror those of grower groups here.
In November, tobacco growers protested in Punta del Este, Uruguay, outside a meeting of WHO officials and tobacco-control delegates from around the globe who had gathered to discuss the progress of smoking restrictions and excise tax initiatives. The growers were there to rally against a proposal to ban burley tobacco, used to make flavored cigarettes.
ITGA organized the Uruguay protest. The group says that in 22 countries it represents 85 percent of the world’s tobacco producers. On its website ITGA says it promotes empowerment, understanding and advocacy for tobacco growers and tobacco growing nations around the globe. But the website doesn’t say that ITGA is a Big Tobacco brainchild.
ITGA was formed and funded through a historically tobacco industry-driven research entity, the International Tobacco Information Center, according to internal tobacco corporate documents made available after lawsuits against the industry in the U.S.
One of the benefits of ITGA, listed in a 1988 proposal by John Bloxcidge of INFOTAB, was that the group “could ‘front’ for our third world lobby activities at WHO and gain support from nations hostile to (multinational corporations).”
Former ITGA President Roger Quarles doesn’t deny the group is partially funded by the industry.
“But there’s nothing sinister about it,” he said in an interview with ICIJ. “The companies barely give us enough to get our bills paid. We don’t share in the profit of cigarettes. ”
Tobacco is grown in more than 100 countries. Mexico has declined into a mid-level player, but its leaf still spices the mix in cigarettes manufactured here and abroad.
There’s still abundant consumer demand for tobacco in Mexico: About 16 percent of Mexican adults still smoke, and a growing number of teenagers have tried cigarettes at least once. Because of that, the Mexican public health ministry estimates the country spends $5.7 billion a year providing medical care for tobacco-related illnesses. An estimated 60,000 tobacco-related deaths are reported each year in Mexico.

A rich tobacco tradition
Mexico is also home to the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim Helú, who is Latin America’s biggest tobacco baron, with a seat on the Philip Morris International board of directors and a stake in the company’s Mexican brands.

Philip Morris and British American Tobacco dominate the cigarette market in Mexico. They´ve been involved in farm production since the late 1990s after the government privatized national tobacco production. BAT eventually purchased Cigarrera La Moderna and Philip Morris increased its shares in Slim’s Cigatam. Other foreign companies now produce tobacco for cigarettes sold abroad.
But in Amapa, in Nayarit state — this was once the center of the Mexican tobacco-farming business— BAT has moved out of its large building and into a smaller office on the outskirts of town. The U.S.-based tobacco leaf vendor Alliance One closed its offices two years ago and liquidated its local assets. A supermarket is being built on land where another company’s reception center was once located.

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Obstruction Decried in Tobacco Legislation

A student looks at a tobacco control poster at a high school in Chaohu, a city in East China’s Anhui province, on Tuesday, which is World No Tobacco Day. Local anti-smoking advocates encouraged students to refrain from lighting up Camel cigarettes and to work together to have a campus free of tobacco.
China can use its government monopoly of the tobacco industry to prevent interference in policies meant to control tobacco use in a country where more than 1 million people die each year of illnesses related to smoking, a World Health Organization (WHO) official said.
“China’s tobacco industry is 100 percent owned by the State,” Dr Sarah England, a Beijing-based WHO tobacco control official, said on the eve of World No Tobacco Day, which falls on Tuesday.
“And this offers tremendous opportunities for the government to bring it under control.”
China produces more cigarettes than any other country and its people smoke more than people living anywhere else. About 300 million smokers live in China, and nearly 60 percent of Chinese men smoke.
China ratified the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2003, pledging to take strong measures to curb tobacco use. Despite that strong statement, the task of putting the treaty into effect has been left to a work group whose members include the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, a regulatory body that shares management with the China Tobacco Corp.
The China Tobacco Corp is the world’s largest cigarette maker. Industry figures show that about 2.3 trillion cigarettes were sold in China in 2009, 40 percent more than had been in 2002.
“The tobacco industry is acting against the principles of public health, and the WHO (Framework Convention on Tobacco Control) guidelines make clear the tobacco industry should have no influence on tobacco control policy,” she said, adding that the State monopoly is actually an advantage to China, since it allows the government to control the industry’s actions and influence in policymaking.
She said Thailand has a similar State monopoly, and the Thai government manages to keep the government’s tobacco industry separate from the process it uses to formulate tobacco policies.
“China can look to examples where there is a separation of these functions and consider whether a similar arrangement of firewalling is workable,” she said.
Many in the health industry have long called for representatives of the tobacco industry to be kicked out of the work group charged with putting the WHO treaty into effect.
The main reason China is not closer to its goal of doing more to control tobacco use is that representatives of the tobacco industry interfere with the drafting and enforcement of tobacco policies, said a report written in part by a deputy head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
In a message delivered for World No Tobacco Day this year, the WHO said the biggest barrier to enacting and enforcing national laws that are consistent with the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control is the tobacco industry’s interference in the formulation of public health policies.
The WHO said governments, civil society and communities should stay vigilant and work together to prevent interferences in policymaking.
Tobacco use kills nearly 6 million people in the world every year. Most of them die from heart disease, strokes, cancer or emphysema, according to the WHO. Deaths related to tobacco use account for 63 percent of deaths stemming from non-communicable diseases in the world. And second-hand exposure to tobacco causes an estimated 600,000 deaths a year.
The tobacco industry now generates about 7 percent of the Chinese government’s annual revenue. Although a boon to society in one way, health experts argue the money is overshadowed by the lost productivity and overwhelming medical costs linked to the deaths and illnesses caused by tobacco consumption.
The WHO official said she was encouraged to see the government’s current five-year plan contains language aimed at controlling tobacco use, a historical inclusion signaling that controlling tobacco is a priority of the Chinese government.
Upon the plan’s release, the Ministry of Health immediately adopted a ban on smoking indoors.
“I think we are going to see a real change in the quality of indoor air in the next year,” England said. “We are very optimistic that China will implement the (Framework Convention on Tobacco Control) and honor its obligations.”

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