Oh, no! Smoking's just awful. Smokers don't know how to live!
It's much more healthy to visit several wedding receptions each night!
;-)
Posted on 05/28/2004 10:48:17 AM PDT by wallcrawlr
Attorneys representing the state of Minnesota in its battle with Big Tobacco may have been subjected to unusual, and perhaps unethical, surveillance during visits to a British document depository under the control of British American Tobacco Co., according to a study released late Thursday.
Co-written by Dr. Richard Hurt, an addiction expert at the Mayo Clinic, the study in the Lancet, a British medical journal, says attorneys for British American Tobacco (BAT) kept track of documents requested during the period Minnesota attorneys were there and viewed the databases being searched.
The study says the surveillance continued after the Minnesota case went to trial in 1998, which resulted in a settlement that included a provision keeping the BAT depository in Guildford, outside London, open for 10 years.
Knowledge of what the plaintiffs' attorneys were reviewing could have provided BAT attorneys with insight into the strategies of their opponents, the study suggests.
Teams of attorneys from the Minneapolis law firm of Robins Kaplan Miller & Ciresi made numerous trips to Guildford on behalf of the state in the mid 1990s.
"We find it highly unreasonable for BAT to covertly monitor database searches," the study concludes.
BAT, which has a sizable international presence, also is accused of foot-dragging in producing internal company documents and making it difficult for the public, including academic researchers, journalists and other attorneys suing the tobacco industry, to have access to its documents.
Representatives of BAT's British headquarters could not be reached for comment.
Hurt, director of the Nicotine Dependence Center at the Mayo Clinic and the state's lead witness on nicotine addiction in the 1998 trial, co-wrote the study with Monique Muggli, an independent tobacco researcher and attorney Eric LeGresley.
The authors called for BAT to be removed as custodian of the Guildford depository.
A second and much larger depository remains in Minneapolis containing documents from U.S. cigarette manufacturers. Both were set up for attorneys in the Minnesota case and were opened to the public after the 1998 settlement. The Minnesota depository is run by a court-appointed third party.
Documents from the depositories are used in ongoing litigation against the tobacco industry and public health research.
"Given this new evidence, we assert that British American Tobacco is incapable of operating its depository in the spirit of the Minnesota settlement and should therefore be divorced from its operation," the three authors wrote in their study.
The authors also questioned the integrity of some of the records on file, noting revisions in documents and a missing audio tape that used less-than-complimentary descriptions of potential new smokers in a marketing meeting.
One of the altered marketing documents initially referred to potential new users as "illiterate, low-income 16-year-olds" but was changed to refer to 18-year-olds.
An audio tape reviewed in 2001 and again in 2004 about marketing in emerging countries was found to be missing several passages, including one in which an executive said: "If you just say, this is a cheap cigarette for you dirt poor little black farmers ... they're not going to buy it." A complete tape subsequently was produced upon request.
Newly produced documents indicate that during the period from 1996, when the Minnesota case was heavy in the discovery process, through 2001 a variety of surveillance techniques were used, including cameras and a two-way mirror to monitor the work of visitors, the study reported.
Documents uncovered during the study indicated that co-author LeGresley was physically tracked on camera outside of the depository and that use of his cell phone was observed.
Former Attorney General Hubert Humphrey III said one of the reasons Minnesota resisted attempts in the mid 1990s to be part of a multistate settlement was over the issue of document access, which would be restricted as part of the national settlement terms.
He said the BAT depository should be run like the Minnesota depository.
"This was a much more closed situation," Humphrey said. "Many of the most important documents are there and they have impact globally."
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
Knock on wood I don't get any of those type things around here.
The only time I ever turn a local station on is for the weather in the morning. Jax watches cartoon network or nickelodeon and I watch FNC or HGTV
But it's been demonstrated that a persistent ad campaign directed at teenagers is effective in lowering teen smoking rates. Few people start smoking after they reach adulthood. So it's not surprising that a high priority for the tobacco companies is to shut down these public ad campaigns, which tobacco companies are sometimes able to do using their often substantial influence on state legislatures.
According to the New York Times this morning, Surgeon General Dr. Carmona said that smokers typically lose 12 to 13 years of their life. By comparison, a recent study indicated that an average 20 year old homosexual male will lose 8 to 20 years of his life due to his sexual practices.
Enough weasel words in the first paragraph to preclude my reading the whole article.
But the articles do not explain,nor does the SG, where that number comes from. For decades the figure has been set at about 7 years.
IMO, the SG deserves to lose his job over that so-called report. No, not because I am a smoker, but because of blatant lies in it. It states smoking causes cervical cancer....wrong. Even non-physicians know that 98-99% of cervical cancer cases are caused by a virus or STD. Smoking is neither.
Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane
ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!
"The pr budgets of those companies has got to be mind boggling."
Lobbying budget is quite large too, you can be sure.
Gabz, they are totally disgusting. One shows a boy and the mom handing a birthday cake to the father to blow out the candles. He goes to blow and then he racks his head off. This Nanny voice comes on:
"You KNOW you want to QUIT! HERE'S HOW!"
Then it shows a gal standing on a street corner in the cold wind trying to have a cigarette. Here comes that Nanny voice:
"You KNOW you want to QUIT! HERE'S HOW!"
I can just put my foot through the screen!
Your sadly misinformed.
I love that song. LOL!
It's tough to evaluate the Surgeon General's claims from a newspaper article, which of course offers no detailed explanation, much less the actual data or statistical arguments the claims are based on. I suppose we could obtain the original paper or papers detailing the research. But my own knowledge of biostatistics is a bit sketchy. As a scientist, I'm inclined to respect peer-reviewed research by workers in other disciplines.
For decades the figure has been set at about 7 years.
I recall reading some years ago that the loss of life expectancy for one-pack-a-day smokers is 6 years but for two-pack-a-day smokers, it's 20 years. I don't know what fraction of smokers smoke one pack a day, or some two packs a day.
Anyway, I'm sorry if I sound like an anti-smoking Nazi. I don't smoke but I hang around with friends and colleagues who do (in the local brew-pub up the street). But I do support public health efforts to discourage kids from smoking.
I'd be on the phone and the email loudly complaining to the station, the cable provider and anyone else I could think of.
I actually got an ad pulled from the air last year. it wasn't about smoking, it was about violence. I emailed the outfit that was promoting it, my cable company and the ADCouncil. the group who's ad it was answered my email full of apologies......according to the woman who responded to me the ad was not supposed to be aired on children oriented channels nor during "children friendly" hours. She thanked me for my concern and said she would contact my cable company...........I only saw the ad once after that.
One person CAN make a difference.
Oh I have. :( It's still running...........
metesky and Madame Dufarge should know the ones I'm talking about. They live down south of me.
You got that right, Mears.
They've pathologized childhood, the rebellious must be drugged into submission.
But you don't find it unreasonable for a business in a "free system" to dictate it's own policies within it's own confines?
Kerry may be the king of double speak however he doesn't stand alone.
I agree with you. The problem with most of the anti-smoker stuff is that it is rarely peer-reviewed before the press releases and the ensuing headlines show up.
I'm sorry to sound so cynical, but I have seen so many of these studies, the conclusions of which state they show no statistically significant results, be blown up in headlines declaring they are the definitive proof.
I'm no scientist, nor am I an expert on statistics or epidemiology, yet I have made a point of studying both in recent years because of this particular subject.
But it doesn't take a media, PR, or political expert to see most of this stuff is just that - stuff. I am not an expert, but I have spent the past 20 years in media, PR and politics.
But I do support public health efforts to discourage kids from smoking.
I don't know anyone that doesn't, including myself. However, telling kids lies is not the way to go about it.....kids aren't stupid and they see through the lies.
My 20 year old niece is a former anti-smoker.....she doesn't smoke, and would rather not be around it, but she got disgusted with the propaganda she was getting fed in HS. A friend of mine's (then) 9 year old daughter came home from school one day and informed her father there were dead rats in his cigarettes and that he was a child abuser because he smoked. She was taught this in school.
Keeping kids from smoking is one thing, lying to them is another.
I'm sorry for my long-winded rant.
I'm so thankful for the school district we moved to..........rebelliousness is dealt with the way it should be....privileges taken away and numbers (what we all called demerits) given.
I can tell which of the kids on my daughter's school bus went to Head Start - they are the ones that have told my daughter her mommy is stupid.............I was smoking a cigarette while doing some yard work when the bus pulled up one afternoon. The next day that is what some of her little "friends" told her. To save her from that kind of grief (she was very upset) I make sure I do not have a cigarette when I'm waiting for the bus.
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