Lorillard Recalls Certain Newport Non-Menthol Packs

Lorillard Inc., the third largest manufacturer of cigarettes in the United States, said that it voluntarily implemented a precautionary recall of certain Newport Non-menthol cigarettes. The company initiated the recall “out of an abundance of caution” following its discovery that some Newport Non-Menthol cigarettes manufactured June 29 and 30, 2011, could contain small pieces of plastic.

The company sought and received guidance from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) upon discovering the foreign substance.

No plastic has been found in any of the cigarettes. If burned, the plastic may create discomfort or irritation of the respiratory tract. The recall is limited to products distributed with the following code numbers, which are located on the bottom of the pack:
Newport Non-Menthol Box 80s: 1-O-29-750, 1-O-30-750.
Newport Non-Menthol Box 100s: 1-O-29-440, 1-O-30-440.
No other Lorillard products are affected, including Newport Menthol and other brands, said the company.

A letter provided to CSP Daily News that Lorillard sent to all direct-buying customers on July 19 said, “We are pleased to inform you that all involved Newport Non-Menthol Box 80s and Newport Non-Menthol Box 100s manufactured on 6/29/2011 or 6/30/2011 located in Direct Account locations have now been identified and segregated. As such, all Direct Account customers may resume retail shipments of all other on-hand inventories of Newport Non-Menthol products that were not segregated and discussed with you.”

A letter sent to all retail customers said, “All public distributing warehouses and our direct buying customers have already segregated this product and therefore, any future shipments you
receive have no issue. We are, however, now asking for your assistance in identifying any involved Newport Non-Menthol product that may have reached your retail outlet.”

The company added, “Should you identify any Newport Non-Menthol product in your retail outlet with the involved lot codes please hold them separately from your other Newport Non-Menthol products and arrange to have them returned to your wholesale supplier. We have authorized your wholesale supplier to accept returns of Newport Non-Menthol with the above lot codes. Also, if any of your customers have purchased any Newport Non-Menthol product with the above lot codes and returned them to you please provide them with a full refund of the purchase price and return the product to your wholesale supplier.”

Greensboro, N.C.-based Lorillard, through its Lorillard Tobacco Co. subsidiary, is the third largest manufacturer of cigarettes in the United States. Founded in 1760, it is the oldest continuously operating U.S. tobacco company. Lorillard’s flagship menthol-flavored premium cigarette brand is the top-selling menthol and second largest selling cigarette in the United States. In addition to Newport, the Lorillard product line has four additional brand families marketed under the Kent, True, Maverick and Old Gold brand names. These five brands include 43 different product offerings which vary in price, taste, flavor, length and packaging.

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Appeal Against Cigarette Companies

Jerry Weingart has been waiting more than a decade for the companies he believes killed his wife to be brought to justice. But at 89, the Boynton Beach man doesn’t have the stamina to spend the whole day in court. Holding a cane, he listened on Wednesday morning while one of his attorneys explained to a jury why three Pall Mall cigarette makers should be held responsible for his wife’s death. But Weingart headed home before tobacco attorneys launched their full counterattack

Like in the two other tobacco trials that have been held in Palm Beach County, millions of dollars are at stake.

The cases are among roughly 8,000 that were spawned statewide when the Florida Supreme Court in 2006 threw out a $145 billion jury verdict in a class-action lawsuit. While upholding the jury’s findings that cigarette-makers lied about the dangers of smoking, the high court ruled that each smoker had to prove how they were uniquely harmed by cheap cigarettes.

Weingart’s attorneys said they are seeking damages for the years smoking took off Claire Weingart’s life. Instead of spending their “golden years” together, Jerry Weingart became widower in 1997 when his wife of 54 years died at age 73, attorney Hardee Bass told jurors.

A heavy smoker for roughly 50 years, she didn’t stop smoking even when lung cancer spread to her brain, Bass said. She began smoking in the 1940s when no one suspected smoking posed any health risks. She was powerless to stop because cigarette-makers R.J. Reynolds, Philip Morris and Lorillard — the companies that produced her brands of choice — turned her into an addict, he said.

“This case is about a promise the cigarette industry made to a generation of people — the World War II generation,” Bass said during opening arguments. “It’s about the lies they told a generation of smokers. It’s about the truth they hid from a generation of smokers.”

Using company documents, he showed how the companies orchestrated a misinformation campaign to counter growing evidence that smoking kills.

“Claire Weingart was an industry success story,” he said.

Tobacco industry attorneys countered that there is no evidence Weingart was influenced by the documents. Attorney Kenneth Reilly acknowledged that tobacco chiefs made some “wrong-headed” decisions. But, he said, there is no evidence Weingart knew about the statements or used them to justify her decision to keep smoking. Like millions of other smokers, she could have quit.

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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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Smokers See Some Smoking Brands As Safer

One in five smokers believes some brands of Lucky Strike cigarettes are safer than others, a study has found. Smokers of ”gold”, ”silver” or ”slim” cigarettes were also more likely to think their brands were less harmful. The findings highlight the power that packaging can have on risk perception, and come as the federal government prepares to introduce its plain-packaging legislation.

As part of an international study, published in the journal Addiction, researchers surveyed more than 8000 current and former smokers, including more than 2000 Australians, about their smoking beliefs.

Females were more likely to believe some brands might be less harmful while older individuals considered their cigarettes brand was safer.

More than a third of respondents falsely believed nicotine was linked to cancer, and 41 per cent believed light cigarettes were better for them.

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Tobacco Company to Develop Products without Tobacco

British American Tobacco (BAT) PLC announced their plans to create a new company called Nicoventures Ltd. which will produce products made without tobacco and with only pure nicotine in an effort to offer a safer alternative to smokers. Even though a spokeswoman of the organization said the products the company is considering aren’t on the market yet and declined to give any more details, we do know that two subsidiaries of Altria Group are testing spit-free tobacco-coated toothpicks in an effort to offer tobacco in a less socially scrutinized way.

If successful, the products of Nicoventures could help wean smokers off cigarettes. It is the hope of BAT that Nicoventures will be a highly profitable business that will help make up for the loss in profits due to the decrease in cigarette sales and the scrutiny faced by tobacco companies. “Nicoventures could be a hugely positive development from the public health point of view, in reducing the harm from smoking”, said David Sweanor of the University of Ottawa in Canada. However, he did admit he was a bit skeptic, saying that nothing currently on the market had the ability to match the sensational and psychological effects of a cigarette that smokers crave for.

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Plainly put, cigarette packaging matters

This week our government committed itself to the removal, albeit slowly, of cigarette displays in shops. But plain packaging on cigarettes has been delayed for further consultation.

The Unite union is unimpressed. It represents 6,000 people in tobacco production and distribution, and put out a statement: “Switching to plain packaging will make it easier to sell illicit and unregulated products, especially to young people.” This, the union added, “may increase long-term health problems”.

Tory MP Philip Davies said: “Plain packaging for cigarettes would be gesture politics … it would have no basis in evidence.”

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not, sadly, their own facts. Cigarette packaging has been used for brand-building and sales expansion, and that is bad enough; but it has also been used for many decades to sell the crucial lie that cigarettes which are “light”, “mild”, “silver”, and the rest, are somehow safer.

This is one of the most important con tricks of all time: people base real decisions on it, even though low-tar cigarettes are just as bad for you as normal cigarettes, as we have known for decades. Manufacturers’ gimmicks, like the holes on the filter beside your fingers, confuse laboratory smoking machines, but not people. Smokers who switch to lower-tar brands compensate with larger, faster, deeper inhalations, and by smoking more cigarettes.

The collected data from a million people shows that those who smoke low-tar and “ultra-light” cigarettes get lung cancer at the same rate as people who smoke normal cigarettes. They are also, paradoxically, less likely to give up smoking.

So the “light”, “pale” and “mild” packaging sells a lie. But do people know this? In data from two population-based surveys, a third of smokers believed incorrectly that “light” cigarettes reduce health risks, and were less addictive (it’s 71% in China (pdf)). A random telephone-digit survey of 2,120 smokers found they believed on average that “ultra lights” convey a 33% reduction in risk. A postal survey of 500 smokers found a quarter believed “light” cigarettes are safer. A school-based questionnaire of 267 adolescents found once again, as you’d expect, that they incorrectly believed “light” cigarettes to be healthier and less addictive.

Where do all these incorrect beliefs come from? Careful manipulation by the tobacco industry, as you can see for yourself, in their internal documents available for free online. They explicitly planned to deter quitters with “mild” products, which were made to seem safer and less addictive.

But more than 50 countries, including the UK, have now banned a few magic words like “light” and “mild”. So is that enough? No. A survey of 15,000 people in four countries (pdf) found that after the UK ban, there was a brief dip in false beliefs, but by 2005 we bounced back to having the same false beliefs about “safer-looking” brands as the US.

This is because brand packaging continues to peddle these lies. A street-interception survey (pdf) from 2009 of 300 smokers and 300 non-smokers found that people think packages with “smooth” and “silver” in the names are safer, and that cigarettes in packaging with lighter colour, and a picture of a filter, were also safer.

Of course tobacco companies know this (pdf). As the Philip Morris tobacco company said in an internal document, entitled Marketing New Products in a Restrictive Environment: “Lower delivery products tend to be featured in blue packs. Indeed, as one moves down the delivery sector, then the closer to white a pack tends to become. This is because white is generally held to convey a clean, healthy association.”

If you’re in doubt of the impact this can have, “brand imagery” studies show that when participants smoke the exact same cigarettes presented in lighter coloured packs, or in packs with “mild” in the name, they rate the smoke as lighter and less harsh, simply through the power of suggestion. These illusory perceptions of mildness, of course, further reinforce the false belief that the cigarettes are healthier.

But these aren’t the only reasons why banning a few words from packaging isn’t enough. A study of 600 adolescents, for example, found that plain packages increase the noticeability, recall, and credibility of warning labels.

There’s no real doubt that the extended, complex, interlocking branding and packaging machinations of cigarette companies play a big role in misleading smokers about the risks, by downplaying them, and sadly nothing from Unite – for shame – or some Tory MP will change that.

If you don’t care about this evidence, or you think jobs are more important than people killed by cigarettes, or you think libertarian principles are more important than both, then that’s a different matter. But if you say the evidence doesn’t show evidence of harm from branded packaging, you are simply wrong.

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