Tobacco Companies

A FEW MONTHS ago, the prospects of strong political support for increasing taxes on cigarette packs by $1.50 or more would have seemed unlikely. Indeed, many observers considered the $368.5 million agreement negotiated with tobacco companies a huge victory for the anti-smoking movement.Maybe it was -- then. But public opinion is shifting against tobacco, and that landmark agreement is now all but dead.After weeks of ambivalence on the tobacco deal, President Clinton weighed in this week with a call for much stiffer payments and penalties for tobacco companies.

In Wednesday's column disparaging Maryland's life-saving 2007 tobacco tax increase ("Did cigarette tax increase do more harm than good?" March 17), Marc Kilmer neglects to mention that this increase, along with other policies such as Maryland's smoke free workplace law also encated in 2007, have combined to make Maryland's smoking rate the fourth lowest in the nation, saving thousands of lives and hundreds of millions of dollars that would have been...

Peach, mango, and chocolate are not just some of our favorite ice cream flavors. Rather, they are the new generation of smokers' favorite cigar flavors. Who are these smokers? More likely than not, they are kids. What should be done about the growing trend of kids using flavored tobacco products? Recognizing that tobacco companies target and entice teenagers by offering products in sweet and sassy flavors, Congress passed a law last June banning the sale of flavored cigarettes and allowing the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

Peach, mango, and chocolate are not just some of our favorite ice cream flavors. Rather, they are the new generation of smokers' favorite cigar flavors. Who are these smokers? More likely than not, they are kids. What should be done about the growing trend of kids using flavored tobacco products? Recognizing that tobacco companies target and entice teenagers by offering products in sweet and sassy flavors, Congress passed a law last June banning the sale of flavored cigarettes and allowing the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

THOSE WHO DECIDE to run with the hounds have no complaint when they catch fleas, and those who think they can strike happy bargains in the public interest with tobacco companies ought to expect to get fleeced.This is the lesson being learned as Congress, the president and the attorneys general of 39 states and the commonwealth of Puerto Rico dither about whether to go ahead with a $368.5 billion settlement. It's offered as a sort of weird treaty by which the Tobacco Republic agrees to become America's staunch ally against the evil of smoking.

WASHINGTON -- Ron Martelle would have thought he was watching a scene from "The Untouchables" had the mayor of Cornwall, Ontario, not been looking out his own front door: Rival gangs with automatic weapons were battling in the streets to corner the market on $1 million worth of contraband streaming through town every night, by car, by truck, even by snowmobile.For a year, he recalls, his town cowered under a "reign of terror" that drove residents off the streets, inviting organized crime groups, prostitutes and drug lords to fill the void.

Just when you think the War on Smoking cannot possibly get any more entertaining, up pops a new batch of lawyers to save the day. Before I tell you about the latest legal wrinkle, let's review the key points in the War on Smoking so far: POINT ONE: Cigarettes are evil, because smokers smoke them and consequently become sick or dead. POINT TWO: The tobacco companies are evil, because they make and sell cigarettes. POINT THREE: Therefore, in 1998 there was a big settlement under which the tobacco companies, by way of punishment for making and selling cigarettes, agreed to pay more than $200 billion to 46 states and numerous concerned lawyers.

FROM THE tobacco companies' standpoint, settling litigation filed against them by states and individuals is an economic imperative -- even if it costs $300 billion or more. But a settlement is an even more urgent imperative for public officials intent on gaining monetary relief for smokers whose health has been damaged by tobacco as well as curbing youth smoking.Negotiations under way between the largest tobacco giants and state attorneys general could lead to a proposed settlement that would put an end to tens of thousands of lawsuits.

FROM THE tobacco companies' standpoint, settling litigation filed against them by states and individuals is an economic imperative -- even if it costs $300 billion or more. But a settlement is an even more urgent imperative for public officials intent on gaining monetary relief for smokers whose health has been damaged by tobacco as well as curbing youth smoking.Negotiations under way between the largest tobacco giants and state attorneys general could lead to a proposed settlement that would put an end to tens of thousands of lawsuits.

LIFE OVER the course of the last half-century has bee confusing for those people who manufacture and sell cigarettes. Their product went from being an accepted part of daily life to a suspected carcinogen to the most reviled legal substance in America.But now their position should be quite clear. Tobacco companies fall into a separate and distinct category of business because they produce and market a product that has no redeeming value and that causes serious illness and death.Five years ago, when the American Bar Association considered -- and rejected -- a proposal that it endorse a ban on all tobacco advertising, one member described cigarettes as "uniquely perilous."

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. has agreed to end its Camel Farm marketing campaign and pay $150,000 to settle a lawsuit by Maryland, which had accused the tobacco giant of using cartoons and brand-name trinkets in advertising to target young consumers, the Maryland attorney general's office announced Wednesday. Maryland's regulator contended that the marketing campaign violated the 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement that states reached with major tobacco companies when it used cartoons and brand-name giveaways to promote cigarettes.

Holliday H. Obrecht Jr., a retired executive of his family's wholesale tobacco and candy business who was active in service organizations, died Aug. 29 at the Levindale Center of complications of a fall he suffered in April outside his home. The Timonium resident was 83. Born in Baltimore and raised on Kentucky Avenue and in Guilford, he attended McDonogh School. He and fellow students talked its headmaster into letting them complete their final graduation studies early so they could enlist in the Army's Air Forces before they were drafted.

WASHINGTON -- Landmark legislation that would give the federal government the power to regulate cigarettes and other tobacco products passed an early hurdle yesterday. The House Energy and Commerce Committee approved the bill, 38-12. The measure would allow the Food and Drug Administration to review new tobacco products before they could go on sale, limit advertising and restrict sales to youths. It would also enable the agency to regulate levels of tar, nicotine and other ingredients.

WASHINGTON - Federal prosecutors alleged yesterday that the nation's tobacco companies colluded for half a century to addict Americans to nicotine in cigarettes that the industry knew caused cancer. Opening the largest civil racketeering trial ever, Justice Department attorneys used the cigarette companies' own internal documents to show how the industry set up sham research groups to counter medical evidence that smoking causes cancer and other diseases, even after industry scientists had secretly conceded the harmful effects on health.

Tobacco companies and their allies have contributed $443,325 to candidates for elected office in Maryland since 1995, and those donations have generated favorable votes for the industry, according to a study released yesterday by the Common Cause Education Fund. The study found that six large tobacco companies -- including Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds and Brown & Williamson -- have spent an additional $1.7 million on lobbying fees and expenses since 1997. "This industry has so much power and so much influence," said Eric Gally, a lobbyist who has represented anti-smoking interests in Annapolis and is the principal author of the report.

ZURICH, Switzerland - It is nearly impossible to find a no-smoking table in a restaurant in Switzerland, a country where one in three people over age 15 lights up. Despite Switzerland's high cost of living, cigarettes are cheaper here than in any other Western European country, and the number of cancer deaths is rising. But Switzerland is also the home of the World Health Organization, and delegates from 191 countries are gathering in Geneva this weekend to work on the final text of a treaty to control tobacco and its devastating effects on public health.

THE ANNOUNCEMENT that a tobacco company has broken ranks with the industry and agreed to acknowledge that smoking is addictive and causes cancer is dramatic enough. But the part of the settlement reached by 22 states with the Liggett Group Inc. that may prove most threatening to the rest of the industry involves Liggett's admission that some tobacco marketing has been directed toward minors. This charge is one that tobacco officials have steadfastly denied, even under oath in congressional hearings.

THE tobacco companies say no. They won't agree to the new bill now moving through Congress that will require the industry to pay $506 billion over 25 years. It's too much, they say. And, besides, the bill won't give them immunity from lawsuits claiming damages to health. They'd rather fight than switch to bankruptcy.Congress and the president can still enact the law, of course. But if the tobacco companies choose to fight it, the law could be tied up in the courts for years. That's big tobacco's big threat.

John Pershing Woods, a retired tobacco company foreman, died of complications from a stroke Oct. 15 at Stella Maris Hospice in Timonium. He was 83. Mr. Woods, a Cockeysville resident since 1980, was born and raised in Durham, N.C. After graduating from high school in 1937, he began working for American Tobacco Co. in Durham. During World War II, he served in Europe as an infantryman in Gen. George S. Patton's 3rd Army. He was discharged with the rank of private in 1945 after he was severely wounded in combat.

Peter G. Angelos' law firm has filed a $100 million lawsuit against cigarette giant Philip Morris Inc. on behalf of a Baltimore County widow whose husband died of lung cancer in January. The lawsuit comes a little more than a year after Maryland's highest court ruled that the Angelos firm could not pursue a class action lawsuit against the tobacco industry on behalf of smokers and their survivors. The court said sick smokers would have to sue individually. However, an attorney working on the case indicated in a statement yesterday that the new lawsuit was not necessarily the first of many such individual claims.