Why Big Tobacco’s attempts to rehabilitate its image are so dangerous

Source: theconversation.com Author: staff In September, Imperial Tobacco Canada, the Canadian subsidiary of British American Tobacco, was awarded the “Great Place to Work” certification, one of the leading authorities on workplace culture. Since then, Imperial Tobacco Canada representatives have met with graduate students across the country, including at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, York University’s Schulich School of Business and McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management, urging students to “come join us as we build a better tomorrow.” As of May 2022, Imperial Tobacco Canada was listed as a Presidents’ Circle Member on the University of Toronto website, to acknowledge their “vital financial support at the leadership level.” Despite Big Tobacco’s efforts to renormalize itself, we should all be very wary of engaging with the self-described “Bold, Fast, Empowered” corporate culture. Suppressing incriminating evidence British American Tobacco and other big tobacco companies have known about the clear links between smoking and a host of diseases, including cancer, since at least the 1950s. Despite this, they did not disclose their internal damning evidence. Instead, they aggressively undermined mounting scientific evidence of the public health risks associated with their products through a sophisticated array of deceitful strategies and tactics. These included funding dubious research, relying on allies that did not disclose their links to the industry, along with other forms of aggressive lobbying and marketing. Fast forward 70 years, and tobacco remains the leading cause of cancer worldwide today. Epidemiologist Prabhat Jha estimates that one death results from each [...]

2022-12-05T08:30:51-07:00December, 2022|Oral Cancer News|

Anti-smoking plan may kill cigarettes–and save Big Tobacco

Date: January 19, 2018 Author: Matthew Perrone Source: www.apnews.com WASHINGTON (AP) — Imagine if cigarettes were no longer addictive and smoking itself became almost obsolete; only a tiny segment of Americans still lit up. That’s the goal of an unprecedented anti-smoking plan being carefully fashioned by U.S. health officials. But the proposal from the Food and Drug Administration could have another unexpected effect: opening the door for companies to sell a new generation of alternative tobacco products, allowing the industry to survive — even thrive — for generations to come. The plan puts the FDA at the center of a long-standing debate over so-called “reduced-risk” products, such as e-cigarettes, and whether they should have a role in anti-smoking efforts, which have long focused exclusively on getting smokers to quit. “This is the single most controversial — and frankly, divisive — issue I’ve seen in my 40 years studying tobacco control policy,” said Kenneth Warner, professor emeritus at University of Michigan’s school of public health. The FDA plan is two-fold: drastically cut nicotine levels in cigarettes so that they are essentially non-addictive. For those who can’t or won’t quit, allow lower-risk products that deliver nicotine without the deadly effects of traditional cigarettes.   US health officials are pushing ahead with an unprecedented plan to make cigarettes less addictive and provide lower-risk alternative products to US smokers. (Jan. 19) This month the government effort is poised to take off. The FDA is expected to soon begin what will likely be a years-long process [...]

2018-02-06T14:58:15-07:00January, 2018|Oral Cancer News|

Big tobacco fuels nicotine replacement addiction, UCSF study shows

Source: http://www.sfgate.com Author: Lizzie Johnson Date: August 17, 2017 Nicotine patches, lozenges, inhalers and gum have long been marketed as ways of helping addicts break the habit. But such products by themselves won’t do the job — something tobacco companies themselves have taken advantage of to boost their profits, new research from UCSF says. Nicotine replacement therapy products, which have been sold over the counter at drugstores since 1996, are effective only when paired with counseling, according to a UCSF study released Thursday. Without that, relying on such products can actually make it harder to kick tobacco, the study found. UCSF researchers who reviewed millions of pages of internal tobacco company documents said the firms have long known that such products by themselves don’t wean users off cigarettes, and market their own smokeless nicotine to keep users addicted. “Those products should not be used unless they are done in the proper way,” said Stanton Glantz, an author of the study, professor of medicine at UCSF and the director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. “The problem is, without the behavioral support, they actually inhibit quitting,” he said. “Unfortunately, a lot of people think they are making progress and quitting when that’s not so. That’s what tobacco companies have known for decades. They’re developing products under the guise of nicotine replacement therapy.” Some of the biggest tobacco companies, including RJ Reynolds, Philip Morris and British American Tobacco, have developed nicotine accessories. Many corner stores stock the products, some [...]

2017-08-18T08:14:58-07:00August, 2017|Oral Cancer News|

Are e-cigarettes dangerous?

Source: CNN Published: January 7, 2014By: Harold P. Wimmer  http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=EqvlxEQaQnE   Editor's note: Harold P. Wimmer is the president and CEO of the American Lung Association. (CNN) -- For the makers of electronic cigarettes, today we are living in the Wild West -- a lawless frontier where they can say or do whatever they want, no matter what the consequences. They are free to make unsubstantiated therapeutic claims and include myriad chemicals and additives in e-cigarettes. Big Tobacco desperately needs new nicotine addicts and is up to its old tricks to make sure it gets them. E-cigarettes are being aggressively marketed to children with flavors like Bazooka Bubble Gum, Cap'n Crunch and Cotton Candy. Joe Camel was killed in the 1990s, but cartoon characters are back promoting e-cigarettes. Many e-cigarettes look like Marlboro or Camel cigarettes. Like their old-Hollywood counterparts, glamorous and attractive celebrities are appearing on TV promoting specific e-cigarette brands. Free samples are even being handed out on street corners. A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows the promotion of e-cigarettes is reaching our children with alarming success. In just one year, e-cigarette use doubled among high school and middle school students, and 1 in 10 high school students have used an e-cigarette. Altogether, 1.78 million middle and high school students nationwide use e-cigarettes. The three largest cigarette companies are all selling e-cigarettes. Because tobacco use kills more than 400,000 people each year and thousands more successfully quit, the industry needs to attract and [...]

2014-01-08T17:59:22-07:00January, 2014|Oral Cancer News|

Big Tobacco Spending More Than a Super PAC to Defeat Cancer Research

Source: Livestrong.org My job requires me to be online all day keeping an ear to the ground on major issues related to cancer. I knew the Prop 29 fight in California was going to be fought against Big Tobacco, but I didn’t realize the scale of their funding machine. Why are LIVESTRONG, American Cancer Society, Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, American Heart Association, American Lung Association and many other health organizations for this proposition? Because it keeps kids from smoking, funds much needed cancer research and prevention programs. So it won’t surprise you that Big Tobacco is the driving force against the cancer research prop. Although it is not surprising, the amount of money they are pumping into California is unreal. To date, Big Tobacco has funneled 40 million dollars into their anti cancer research initiative compared to Yes on 29 Coalition’s 8 million raised. What I find most telling is when it comes to where these funds are from. Check out this visualization from MapLight.org – a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization that reveals money’s influence on politics. This news story was resourced by the Oral Cancer Foundation, and vetted for appropriateness and accuracy.

2012-05-17T09:52:34-07:00May, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

$27 Million Verdict Against R.J. Reynolds for Cancer Victim

Source: JDsupra.com A Florida man was awarded $27 million in compensatory and punitive damages against tobacco company R.J. Reynolds last month after doctors told him that 44 years of smoking caused his lung cancer. Plaintiff had lung removed due to cigarette addiction Thousands of lawsuits pending against big tobacco companies First payouts by big tobacco expected to be made today Addictive Habits Emmon Smith, a minister in Mariana, Florida, started smoking when he was a 13-year-old boy in 1944. Despite numerous attempts to quit, he couldn’t kick the addictive habit until he was forced to in 1992 by a cancer diagnosis and subsequent removal of one of his lungs. Smith sued tobacco company R.J. Reynolds in 2008, and in March of this year a jury awarded him $10 million in compensatory damages and $20 million in punitive damages; however, they found the plaintiff 30 percent at fault so he will receive only $7 million of the compensatory award, for a total of $27 million. Smith’s suit was led by attorney Richard Diaz  as well as a team of attorneys from Crabtree & Associates and Ratzan Law Group. The Smith case was just one of more than 8,000 lawsuits against tobacco companies stemming from a 1990s class action known as the Engle case. In 2000, a Florida jury awarded class members a stunning $145 billion in punitive damages, finding that cigarettes are dangerous, addictive, carcinogenic, and most importantly, that tobacco companies knew all this and lied about it. “They found that [...]

2012-05-01T10:35:58-07:00May, 2012|Oral Cancer News|

Big Tobacco led throat doctors to blow smoke

Source: http://med.stanford.edu Author: Tracie White Tobacco companies conducted a carefully crafted, decades-long campaign to manipulate throat doctors into helping to calm concerns among an increasingly worried public that smoking might be bad for their health, according to a new study by researchers at the School of Medicine. Beginning in the 1920s, this campaign continued for over half of a century. “Tobacco companies sought to exploit the faith the public had in the medical profession as a means of reassuring their customers that smoking was safe,” said Robert Jackler, MD, the Edward C. and Amy H. Sewall Professor in Otolaryngology. “Tobacco companies dreamed up slogans such as, ‘Not one single case of throat irritation with Camels;’ then, to justify their advertising claims, marketing departments sought out pliant doctors to conduct well-compensated, pseudoscientific ‘research,’ which invariably found the sponsoring company’s cigarettes to be safe,” Jackler said. “The companies successfully influenced these physicians not only to promote the notion that smoking was healthful, but actually to recommend it as a treatment for throat irritation.” Jackler is the senior author of the study, which was published in the January issue of The Laryngoscope. Hussein Samji, MD, a recent Stanford residency graduate, was his co-author. Using internal documents from tobacco companies from the Legacy Tobacco Document archives, the study’s authors reviewed a wealth of correspondence, contracts, marketing plans and payment receipts that shed light on the industry’s multifaceted, highly effective campaign. Jackler’s ongoing research into the history of tobacco company advertising has resulted in several [...]

Obama hits Big Tobacco over labels opposition

Source: www.cbsnews.com Author: staff President Obama — pronounced tobacco-free in his latest medical checkup — has tough words for cigarette makers. Some tobacco companies, he says in a new White House web video, are fighting new cigarette warning labels because "they don't want to be honest about the consequences." The video, provided to The Associated Press in advance of its release, observes Thursday's 36th "Great American Smokeout" by the American Cancer Society. Mr. Obama says the country has made progress in reducing the number of Americans who smoke, but notes that 46 million are still addicted. "The fact is, quitting smoking is hard," he says. "Believe me, I know." Mr. Obama has fought the habit by chewing nicotine gum, and his last medical report, issued Oct. 31, declared him tobacco-free. "Tobacco remains the leading cause of preventable early deaths in this country," Mr. Obama says in the video. "We also know that the best way to prevent the health problems that come with smoking is to keep young people from starting in the first place." In 2009, Mr. Obama signed legislation to help keep young people from lighting up. In June, the Food and Drug Administration approved new warning labels that companies would have to place on the top half of cigarette packs. Some of the labels are powerfully graphic and include images of a man exhaling cigarette smoke through a tracheotomy hole in his throat, the corpse of a dead smoker, diseased lungs and a smoker wearing an oxygen [...]

2011-11-18T09:13:15-07:00November, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

Florida ruling Big Tobacco won comes back to bite it

Source: seattletimes.nwsource.com Author: Curt Anderson A Florida Supreme Court ruling that threw out a $145 billion award against cigarette makers is biting Big Tobacco back, making it dramatically easier for thousands of smokers to sue and turning the state into the nation's hot spot for damage awards. The 2006 ruling has helped generate more than $360 million in damage awards in only about two dozen cases. Thousands more cases are in the pipeline in Florida, which has far more smoking-related lawsuits pending than any other state. Though the justices tossed the $145 billion class-action damage award, they allowed about 8,000 individual members of that class to pursue their own lawsuits. And in a critical decision, they allowed those plaintiffs to use the original jury's findings from the class-action case. That means the plaintiffs don't have to prove that cigarette makers sold a defective and dangerous product, were negligent, hid the risks of smoking and that cigarettes cause illnesses such as lung cancer and heart disease. The plaintiffs must mainly show they were addicted to smoking and could not quit, and that their illness - or a smoker's death - was caused by cigarettes. Jurors have sided with smokers or their families in about two-thirds of the 34 cases tried since February 2009, when the first Florida lawsuit following the rules set by the Supreme Court decision went before a jury. Awards have ranged from $2 million or less to $80 million, though tobacco companies are appealing them all. The successes [...]

2011-02-19T10:02:14-07:00February, 2011|Oral Cancer News|

10 years after settlement, tobacco rebounds in US

Source: www.google.com/hostednews/ap Author: Bruce Schreiner and Emery P. Dalesio Lindsay Pasley is an eager young man in what used to be an older man's game — tobacco farming. He recently took 20 tons of his early prepared leaf to Clay's Tobacco Warehouse in Mount Sterling, due east of Lexington in the Appalachian foothills, where he said he earned enough to "have a nice Thanksgiving and Christmas." The auctioneer's singsong chant still rings out at Clay's and a few other tobacco-selling sites stubbornly hanging on with limited sales, but not nearly as often. Clay's is the last tobacco warehouse standing in Mount Sterling, once home to four. Owner Roger Wilson, who has watched as longtime growers have switched crops or quit farming altogether over the years, hopes to sell more than 2 million pounds this season, comparable to last year but down about half from the days before Congress pulled the plug on a Depression-era buyout program. Yet Pasley, 28, wants to quadruple his acreage. He has a contract to sell 10 times as much to R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. as he did at the auction. A decade ago, tobacco seemed destined to wither as cigarette companies shelled out tens of billions to settle lawsuits with states. Smoking bans then swept the country and — worst of all for the small-time grower — Congress cut off the quota system four years ago. As a rebound in production this year shows, however, Big Tobacco and individual growers alike have proven as resilient [...]

2008-11-30T12:04:20-07:00November, 2008|Oral Cancer News|
Go to Top