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...

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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,...

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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...

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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...

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