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08/31/09
Tobacco Firms Sue to Block Marketing Law

New York Times
By Duff Wilson

Most of the nation’s largest tobacco companies filed a free-speech lawsuit on Monday in Kentucky to try to stop a landmark federal law from curtailing their marketing or forcing them to print graphic warnings on the top half of cigarette packages next year.

The first lawsuit against the new law, which was signed in June by President Obama, is likely to end up before the United States Supreme Court, lawyers on all sides of the issue said on Monday. In 2001, the Supreme Court rejected outdoor advertising restrictions in tobacco regulations in Massachusetts, ruling 6-3 that it violated free speech rights.

“The case is likely to proceed quickly,” Floyd Abrams, a constitutional lawyer who is representing the Lorillard Tobacco Company, said in a phone interview on Monday. “Tobacco is a legal product for adults, and the Supreme Court has said that the industry has an interest which the First Amendment protects to communicate information about its products, and adults have the right to receive that information.”

Anti-tobacco lawyers said the federal legislation was carefully worded to withstand just such a legal test. ...

Mr. Abrams said the lawsuit is not challenging the government’s right to regulate cigarette contents, but focuses on speech and marketing restrictions. ...

The parts of the law that are at issue restrict tobacco marketing after decades of revelations about how the industry hid health hazards, secretly manipulated nicotine levels to hook smokers, advertised to children and falsely claimed low-tar or light cigarettes were safer.

The law requires new warnings by June 22, 2010, to cover the top half of the front and back of packages and to contain “color graphics depicting the negative health consequences of smoking.” The companies in their lawsuit said “shocking color graphics” would force them “to stigmatize their own products through their own packaging” and leave no room in display cases to show their desired branding. ...

Further, the suit challenges the curtailing of advertising in magazines, retail stores and direct mail by restricting much of it to black text on a white background. Cigarette companies could still print color ads in adult publications under the law. ...

The law also bans sponsorship of many events and product samples. Further, the suit said, the law is already preventing company scientists from talking about reduced-harm products in public forums because the government has not ruled whether those products reduce harm to society as a whole, as required in the new law.

... The new law mostly defined the government interest as reducing youth smoking.

“The government has great power to protect children from certain products, including cigarettes, but tobacco is a legal product for adults,” Mr. Abrams argued. “When you cut back their ability to speak to their potential lawful purchasers, you do start running into serious legal issues.” ...

Clifford E. Douglas, a lawyer and ... director of the University of Michigan Tobacco Research Network, countered, “If there’s any commercial speech that it is constitutional to restrict, it’s the type of marketing covered in this legislation.” ...

Events

Ongoing
Tobacco and Public Health: From Theory to Practice
Description: Administered by the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit, this free online course features accessible, comprehensive and evidence-based Canadian content that is geared to individuals working in tobacco control. It includes easy-to-read Canadian content citations, a glossary and key resources, interactive quizzes and videos and
voiceovers to provide emphasis. You will learn about: • Smokefree environment initiatives in Canada, including policies, legislation, programs, and resources; • Tobacco industry opposition to smokefree environments; • Efforts to counter opposition; • Future directions for protecting people from secondhand smoke.

12/17/09
Tobacco Treatment Training "Webinar"
11:00 am - 12:00 noon
The Michigan Department of Community Health Tobacco Section and the Michigan Health and Hospital Association, in conjunction with the Michigan Smokefree Hospitals Grant, will hold a series of six free, one-hour tobacco treatment webinars in 2009. Primary target audience: MI hospitals and hospital clinical staff. Secondary target audience: Anyone working with people who desire to quit using tobacco.
Contact: Elaine Lyon at LyonE@michigan.gov or call 517-241-1195.

02/07/10
American Academy of Health Behavior Conference
February 7-10, 2010
Sheraton Sand Key Resort
Clearwater Beach, FL
Description: The theme of the conference is "Translating Evidence-Based Health Behavior Research to Practice."

08/18/10
2010 World Cancer Congress
August 18-21, 2010
Beijing, China
Description: The objectives of the congress include translating scientific and behavioral research into relevant prevention, early detection, treatment, psychosocial support, palliative care, etc.; understanding the economic implications of cancer control interventions in both developed and developing settings and determining which interventions produce the best results; promoting the development of national cancer plans as building blocks of a comprehensive anti-cancer strategy worldwide; stimulating capacity-building among UICC member organizations and cancer NGOs; strategic planning and sharing and exchanging best practices; implementing effective tobacco control and public health programs; engaging donor organizations in cancer control effort; and developing north south partnerships.

10/06/10
APACT 2010
October 6-9, 2010
Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre
Sydney, Australia
Description: The APACT conference is the premier tobacco control conference for the Asia Pacific, with the 2010 conference focusing on Change, challenge and progress: FCTC in the Asia Pacific. APACT 2010 aims to encourage tobacco control and public health advocates, researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and especially youth leaders, to share experiences and discuss strategies for implementation of the FCTC.

News

06/22/09
President Obama Signs Historic Tobacco Legislation; UMTRN Director Cliff Douglas in Attendance
On June 22, 2009, President Barack Obama signed into law legislation that will, for the first time, subject tobacco products and tobacco product marketing to comprehensive regulation designed to protect the health and safety of the American public. For the past 10 years, members of the University of Michigan Tobacco Research Network have engaged in a wide variety of invaluable work - in disciplines ranging from scientific and medical research to legal and policy analysis - that has contributed to the effort leading up to the signing of this historic legislation.

(To watch a video of President Obama's remarks on signing of the legislation, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjYSWmnZ0Sg.)
_______________________

News release from the University of Michigan School of Public Health

URL: http://www.sph.umich.edu/news_events/168press.html

WASHINGTON, D.C. — When President Barack Obama signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act into law on June 22 in a Rose Garden ceremony, Cliff Douglas was there for the historic moment.

Douglas, a University of Michigan lecturer in Health Management and Policy at the School of Public Health and director of the UM Tobacco Research Network, made the trip from Ann Arbor to witness what he called "an awesome event — the culmination of a decades-long battle to regulate tobacco products and tobacco marketing for health and safety."

"With effective implementation, this should mark a major turning point in our efforts to combat the leading cause of preventable death and illness in our society," Douglas said.

Douglas was responsible for the investigative news expose on ABC News in 1994 that informed the public for the first time that the tobacco industry was manipulating nicotine to cause and enhance addiction in millions of consumers. That led to historic congressional hearings (e.g., the seven tobacco CEOs) and prompted the FDA to seek to regulate tobacco. He has worked since then with Congress, the FDA, tobacco company whistleblowers, and leading public health organizations on further investigations and on advocacy efforts to grant the FDA regulatory authority over tobacco.

Significance of the Legislation

The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009 will let the FDA lower the amount of nicotine in tobacco products, block labels such "light," and eliminate candy flavorings. The Associated Press referred to the bill's passage as a significant legislative victory for Obama, providing unprecedented authority to regulate tobacco.

During the signing, President Obama spoke of his own struggles to quit smoking, and he criticized the tobacco industry for marketing its products to kids.

"I know—I was one of these teenagers," Obama said. "I know how difficult it is to break this habit when it has been with you for a long time."

06/12/09
Senate Approves Tight Regulation Over Cigarettes
New York Times
By Duff Wilson

WASHINGTON — More than four decades after the surgeon general declared smoking a health hazard, the Senate on Thursday cleared the final hurdle to empowering federal officials to regulate cigarettes and other forms of tobacco for the first time.

The legislation, which the White House said President Obama would sign as soon as it reached his desk, will enable the Food and Drug Administration to impose potentially strict new controls on the making and marketing of products that eventually kill half their regular users. The House, which passed a similar bill in April, may vote on the Senate version as soon as Friday.

“This is a historic step changing the nature of tobacco in society forever,” said Clifford E. Douglas, the director of the University of Michigan Tobacco Research Network, which has extensively studied the health effects of smoking and was one of many groups that have long pushed for tobacco regulation. ...

The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, as it is called, stops short of empowering the F.D.A. to outlaw smoking or ban nicotine — strictures that even most antismoking advocates acknowledged were not politically feasible and might drive people addicted to nicotine into a criminal black market.

But the law would give the F.D.A. power to set standards that could reduce nicotine content and regulate chemicals in cigarette smoke. ...

The law would also tighten restrictions on the marketing and advertising of tobacco products. ...

And cigarette makers will be required to stop using terms like “light” and “low tar” by next year and to place large, graphic health warnings on their packages by 2012.

“This is a bill not for a one-year or two-year splash, but for a long-term impact,” said Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a Washington advocacy group that took a lead in coordinating support for the legislation. ...

The law would be the first big federal step against smoking since the 1971 ban against tobacco advertising on television and radio and the 1988 rules against smoking on airline flights — but potentially much more sweeping than either of those moves. ...

Although the nation’s smoking rate has gradually declined in recent years, an estimated one in five people in this country still smoke. And more than 400,000 of them die each year from smoking-related disease.

For decades, though, despite influential studies in the early 1950s linking smoking to cancer and even after the surgeon general’s report in 1964, Congressional efforts to regulate tobacco met stiff opposition from lawmakers from tobacco-growing states and their political allies.

And when the F.D.A. tried on its own to start regulating nicotine as a drug, the Supreme Court struck down that effort in 2000, saying the agency could not take such a step without Congressional authority. Cigarettes remained less regulated than cosmetics or pet food.

But this time the antitobacco forces came into alignment, with broad bipartisan support in Congress, where Mr. Obama — himself a smoker who has acknowledged his trouble in quitting the habit — had been a sponsor of the legislation when he was still in the Senate. The Senate passed the bill Thursday by a vote of 79 to 17. The only Democrat voting against it was Kay Hagan of the North Carolina, the leading tobacco-growing state. ...

Under the law, new smokeless tobacco and other products pitched as having lower health risks could be approved only if makers could demonstrate health benefits to society as a whole — meaning the products would not induce too many nonsmokers or would-be quitters to try them, rather than abstaining. ...

Yet, even Altria said Thursday the legislation, while “an important step forward,” was “not perfect.” The Association of National Advertisers says the act’s “unprecedentedly broad advertising restrictions” violate First Amendment protections for commercial speech. Legal experts say a court challenge on that ground is virtually certain.

03/27/09
As New Lawyer, Senator Was Active in Tobacco’s Defense
New York Times
By Raymond Hernandez and David Kocieniewski

The Philip Morris Company did not like to talk about what went on inside its lab in Cologne, Germany, where researchers secretly conducted experiments exploring the effects of cigarette smoking.

So when the Justice Department tried to get its hands on that research in 1996 to prove that tobacco industry executives had lied about the dangers of smoking, the company moved to fend off the effort with the help of a highly regarded young lawyer named Kirsten Rutnik.

Ms. Rutnik, who now goes by her married name, Gillibrand, threw herself into the work. She traveled to Germany at least twice, interviewing the lab’s top scientists, whose research showed a connection between smoking and cancer but was kept far from public view. ...

Now in the Senate seat formerly held by Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ms. Gillibrand plays down her work as a lawyer representing Philip Morris, saying she was a junior associate with little control over the cases she was handed and limited involvement in defending the tobacco maker.

But a review of thousands of documents and interviews with dozens of lawyers and industry experts indicate that Ms. Gillibrand was involved in some of the most sensitive matters related to the defense of the tobacco giant as it confronted pivotal legal battles beginning in the mid-1990s. ...

[W]ith the industry facing other lawsuits around the country, Philip Morris turned to a committee it established to handle issues surrounding disclosure of other documents. In some instances, the committee sought to determine if certain documents had been improperly shielded under attorney-client privilege rule. But the committee also worked to protect other industry documents from being released, a practice that drew harsh criticism from lawyers and others who took on the industry.

Clifford Douglas, who served as a lawyer for the Congressional task force that looked into the tobacco industry’s practices, said, “The crime fraud committee was charged with preventing plaintiffs or the government from seeing sensitive documents that Philip Morris wanted to keep secret.”

Some of the nation’s most prominent tobacco lawyers from several prestigious law firms had seats on the committee, known as the Philip Morris Crime Fraud Issues Committee. And so did Ms. Gillibrand, who was already seen as a rising star among her colleagues at Davis Polk. ...

01/22/09
Quitting Smoking Before Age 50 Cuts Risk Of Death
National Public Radio
By Allison Aubrey

President Barack Obama has promised that he'll obey the federal no-smoking policy and not smoke in the White House. But he has also acknowledged that he has had difficulty quitting cigarettes and has fallen off the wagon at times.

If Obama were to quit smoking — even the occasional cigarette — it would reduce his risk of tobacco-related diseases. In fact, one expert says people who kick the habit before age 50 can substantially cut their risk of dying in the next 15 years. ...

The good news is that giving up cigarettes altogether seems to drastically cut the risk of many tobacco-related diseases.

Kenneth Warner, dean of the University of Michigan's School of Public Health, says that within about three years of quitting, "the risk of heart disease associated with smoking reverts to that of a never-smoker."

Quitting reduces not only the risk of heart attack, but also the risk of strokes, blood clots and chronic bronchitis. For lung and other forms of cancer, Warner says the risk reduction is not as dramatic.

"Cigarette smokers are exposing themselves to more than 50 known causes of cancer every time they're sucking on a cigarette," Warner says.

The Sooner, The Better

There's no way to completely undo the damage that comes from inhaling so many toxic chemicals. But one thing experts agree on is that it's never too late to quit — the sooner, the better.

"People who stop smoking before the age of 50 cut the risk of dying in the next 15 years in half," says Michael Thun, of the American Cancer Society. This is compared to those who continue to smoke.

So if you happen to be, say, 47, take note: There is a benefit in quitting. And experts say living in a house with a no-smoking policy may help enforce the commitment.