WHAT'S NEW ?

I have posted an essay on the history of thoracic surgery.

Items are posted in this section with the most recent first. Many of these items come from the Los Angeles Times which has done a brilliant job of investigative reporting on tobacco issues during the past year.
For a much more timely and extensive news information resource on tobacco, try the Smokescreen Daily News. It is a great source of information. You can subscribe for free at this address.
News Summaries provided by Advocacy Institute 202-659-8475
Distribution by Smokescreen Consulting, 202-NO-SMOKE
For news, action alerts, calendar of events, smokefree restaurants, and more, visit http://www.SMOKESCREEN

May 6, 1997RJ Reynolds was found not liable in the death of Jean Connor in Jacksonville FLA.
May 3, 1997 LA Times reported that Judge Robert May dismissed Lt. Gov Gray Davis' suit against the tobacco industry.
Multiple news articles this month report an astounding development, as tobacco company officials are reported to be meeting with lawyers and politicians to reach an agreement by which the tobacco companies will agree to provide a fund, possibly as large as $300 billion and agree to limit advertising in return for immunity against suits. Anti-tobacco activists are so far being left out of these meetings. Spokesmen , including Henry Waxman, Stanton Glantz and George Dessart, speaking for the American Cancer Society, argue against a settlement at this time, since it would appear to benefit lawyers, politicians and tobacco companies more than victims. Irregardless, it appears that the heretofore impregnable bastion of the tobacco industry has been breached!
"This is a Faustian bargain. We don't pay polluters not to pollute, we don't pay drug dealers not to sell drugs, and we shouldn't have to offer immunity and regulatory relief to tobacco companies to get them to stop addicting our children" Henry Waxman
David Savage of the LA Times reports that a decision by the US Supreme Court clears the way for the city of Baltimore Maryland to bring down cigarette billboards in that city. Similar legislation is in process in other cities around the country.
Reuters reported that Democratic Senators Harkin, Lautenberg, Durbin, Wellstone and Wyden have urged Attorney General Janet Reno to follow the example of 25 state attorney generals and sue the tobacco industry to recover the $20 billion lost to the federal government as a consequence of the health damage caused by cigarette smoking.
From the "poetic justice" department, $750,000 damage was sustained to the house of RJ Reynolds President Andrew Schindler in a fire caused by a cigarette.
April 26, 1997 A federal court decision gave the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the right to regulate nicotine as a drug. This decison was a shocker, as many considered North Carolinian, US District Judge William Osteen to be a tool of the tobacco industry. On the negative side, Osteen struck down legislation regulating tobacco advertising.
In California, State lawmakers voted 59-11 to amend the states' law to allow product liability suits against tobacco companies. Speaker Bustamante who has taken money from tobacco in the past made some amends by proposing this legislation. This action should force Rep Attorney General Lungren into a suit against the tobacco industry. Lungren took $41,000 from tobacco interests since 1993 (Vanzi and Weinstein LA Times April 4, 1997. This legislation will reverse the infamous "napkin law" written by tobacco toady Bill Lockyer at Frank Fat's restaurant and supported by $500,000 beneficiary Willie Brown. Lockyer and Brown have each subsequently turned on their former paymasters. It's amazing what a little public indignation can accomplish!
The legal battle over tobacco control by the Federal Drug Administration began this week in Greensboro N.C..
BAT Industries, an English cigarette maker executives discussed the possibility that they would be willing to settle legal claims.
In the continuing battle over control of anti-tobacco advertising, California governor Pete Wilson and Curt Pringle, ex-speaker of the California Assembly dropped three members of a state anti-tobacco section. Neither Wilson nor Pringle announced the new appointments, claining that the letter was "lost" one of the new appointments is a restauranteur interested in people's right to smoke. LA Times Dan Morain 2/11/97
Herb Caen, newspaper columnist, died of lung cancer in San Francisco this week.
Philip Morris had a 4th quarter profit up 15.6% from last year.
Democrat Don Perata of Alameda CA introduced a resolution urging stockholders of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco to discontinue use of Joe the Camel in advertising.
U.S. District Judge G.O'Toole rejected an attempt by tobacco lawyers to overturn a new Massachusetts law that forces tobacco companies to reveal all additives to their products. Myron Levin LA Times.
The National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids reports that 5 million kids, alive today, will die prematurely if current smoking trends continue. To learn more try calling 1-800-284-KIDS
The State of California Dept of Health Services has rehired ad agency Asher/Gould, which had made a controversial commercial pointing out the hypocrisy of the tobacco industry, whose insurance units give discounts to non-smokers. The ad "Insurance" was blocked by tobacco friendly governor Pete Wilson.
Canada: the federal government recently raised taxes on cigarettes and banned most types of cigarette advertising. We can take an example from our neighbor to the north.
California State Senator Quentin L. Kopp (I) introduced legislation to overturn the 1987 statute that holds big tobacco immune from product liability lawsuits called the "napkin bill". Kopp called this bill "an egregious example of special interest legislation". Senate President Pro-Tem Bill Lockyer (D) who supported the napkin bill and takes large amounts of financial contributions was out of town an unable to comment. He will undoubtedly oppose Kopp's legislation to repay his friends in North Carolina.
The FDA is considering approval of the drug Bupropion (Wellbutrin) as an aid to smoking cessation.
Myron Levin of the Times reports on the law firm of Shook, Hardy and Bacon, the legal muscle of the tobacco industry. The company has been named as co-conspirators with the tobacco industry in multiple lawsuits. The Oklahoma attorney general has called them S,H+B an "aider and abettor" of fraud. Dec.15, 1996
12/14/96 Henry Weinstein of the Times reported that a Florida judge OKed a state suit against the tobacco industry for racketeering under the RICO act usually aimed at the Mafia. State attornies maintain that "the tobacco industry for more than 40 years has engaged in a scheme to defraud the American public and state and federal regulators". Other states will probably follow suit.
Most people would prefer not to invest in mutual funds that own tobacco stocks. There is a new web site that allows you to research mutual funds to see if they invest in such stocks-This is a fabulous web site that also will help you to convince the investment group at your work that investing in cigarette companies is both immoral and bad business. http://www.calvertgroup.com.
The Republican are out in the California Assembly, but new Speaker of the Assembly Cruz Bustamante is also a taker reports the LA Times 12/8/96. Bustamante has taken $30,000 from tobacco companies and voted against the ban on smoking in the workplace in California.
Archivists combing through old records of tobacco companies continue to find new damning evidence that the companies have known that their product is dangerous. Joseph Bumgarner and 25 others were fired by R.J. Reynolds in the "mouse house massacre" in 1970 after their research showed that cigarette smoke causes emphysema in mice, reported Myron Levin and Henry Weinstein of the LA Times. J.E. Lincoln, Philip Morris vice president for research, advised that the carcinogen benzopyrene be removed or reduced in Marlboros. (LA Times 10/23). Most people "smoke for the narcotic value that comes from nicotine" reported Philip Morris marketing executive Al Udow in 1972. (Weinstein and Levin).
November 26- Claire Chasles-Kelly died today. Her terminal illness with lung cancer and her daughters nicotine addiction had been followed in a series of feature articles in the LA Times.
November 14- The Washington Post reported that a group of advertising executives launched a national campaign to "shame the U.S. advertising industry into eliminating cigarette ads that are attracting teenagers."
Also on this date, researchers from the University of Alabama reported a decrease in age adjusted cancer mortality for the first time. There was a decrease in deaths from lung cancer in men, but an equeal increase in deaths in women. These deaths are attributable to increased smoking in women, the so-called "Virginia Slims effect".
AP Smoking is down in California. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has reported that the number of regular smokers is down from 26% in 1984 to 15.5% this year. The decrease is attributed to a sharp increase in cigarette taxes by John Banzhaf, director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).
October 29- The LA Times reported the following amounts of tobacco money taken by California politicians Democrat Senate President Bill Lockyer $55,000; Republican Speaker Curt Pringle $102,000; Republican Steven Kuykendall who took $125,000 in one day from Phillip Morris was recently reelected.
Two important new studies in this weeks Journal of the American Medical Associaiton have shown that cigarette smoking more than doubles the risk that an individual will become blind due to macular degeneration, an untreatable condition that has damaged the eyes of 1,700,000 Americans.
The Washington Post reported that tobacco companies cut back to 19% in tobacco marketing and promotions in 1994 to a mere $4.83 billion.
October 18, 1996 An important new study by Gerd Pfeifer of the City of Hope and and Moon-Shon Tang of M.D. Anderson have demonstrated direct damage to the important cancer preventing gene p53 by the chemical benzo(a)pyrene found in tobacco smoke.
Also this week, two favorable judicial decisions aided anti-tobacco cases in Florida where tobacco attornies had attempted to delay by requesting the ability to depose thousands of smokers. The presiding judge has denied the request. The appellate court denied the request of Brown and Williamson Corp. to depose CBS executives in their suit to pillory whistle blower Jeffrey Wigand.
Eric Harrison LA Times reports October 14 that the number of acres of tobacco farmland in North Carolina is down from 650,500 in 1950 to only 261,100 acres this year. The tobacco crop there has been badly damaged by tropical storms this year. Farmers net $2205 on an acre of tobacco that cost $1885 to grow. Durham NC has changed it's name from City of Tobacco to City of Medicine.
"smoking is addictive/habituative in addition to being an additional (health)risk and many smokers would like to give up the habit if they could." admitted an unknown British American Tobacco Corp executive in a 1980 memo revealed today Minnesota attornies in their state's legal proceedings against the tobacco industry reports Henry Weinstein LA Times October 8, 1996.
One down! American Brands Inc. has sold out of it's tobacco business in response to the legal and regulatory climate in the U.S..
Chest Soundings October 1 1996 reports that there are now 14 states: Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas, Washington and West Virginia that have filed suit against the tobacco industry. Senators Frank Lautenberg D-NJ and Paul Wellstone D-MN have introduced S1892 in an attempt to recover Medicaid costs from the tobacco industry. Be sure to not how your senator votes on this bill. (The Republicans in the Senate will probably kill this bill before it comes to a floor vote as they do with almost all anti-tobacco legislation.)
August 23, 1996 was a banner day as President Clinton empowered the FDA to prevent the tobacco companies from targeting children with predatory advertising. (LA Times Sheryl Stolberg) The FDA regulations will ban vending machines, tobacco billboards near schools, magazine advertisements and brand-name sponsorship of sporting events. President Clinton was quoted as saying that "Joe Camel and the Marlboro man will be out of our children's reach forever." To see two blatant examples of the type of advertising to be banned, try these two links "Say It Ain't So---Goofy!" and What steps can we take to prevent the continued proliferation of the smoking habit?. Another blatant example is the photo in the LA Times Sports section Friday August 23, 1996 of "The Smoking Joe's Ford Thunderbird".
August 9, 1996. A Florida jury handed down a $750,000 verdict against the Brown and Williamson Tobacco Co. (they of the Cigarette Papers). This is the first guilty verdict against the industry since the Cipollone trial verdict, later overturned on appeal.
The following day, tobacco stocks plummeted with Philip Morris plunging more than $14 per share. This may mean that divestiture of tobacco company stocks from individual and institutional portfolios is a common sense, as well as a moral issue.
Class action liability suits were filed in the states of Pennsylvania, Alabama and (believe it or not!) North Carolina. This brings such suits to a total of nine states.
Governor Weld of Massachusetts signed into law a bill requiring tobacco companies to list all of the ingredients in their product. The tobacco companies are appealing, undoubtedly uneasy about their customers finding out that they are not consuming a "pure natural product".
Jessica Mitford died this week July, 1996 of lung cancer. Mitford has been quoted as saying "You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty."
I will try to follow this good advice in this page.

Disney, Baseball and Cigarettes: The Disney Corporation is now advertising cigarettes. "Say It Ain't So---Goofy!"

The LA Times reported 7/12/96 that Morton Downey Jr. a board member of the National Smokers Alliance (NSA) and a strident tobacco apologist, has come down with lung cancer. He now admits that he was "a sucker" and "a fool". Downey also revealed that the National Smokers Association is a "total front" for the tobacco industry. NSA is supported financially by money from Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds and Brown and Williamson Tobacco Corp. Downey a "television tough guy who knew cigarettes could never hurt me", admitted that NSA is a "nothing organization" with minimal grass roots support. "It was designed to frighten Congress into thinking" it had millions of members, when in fact there are few. Downey now says "What really bothers me is that I won't be around to see my 2 1/2 year-old say, 'No to smoking.' The 8/24/96 LA Times reports that Downey has announced that he will sue the tobacco industry and Shook, Hardy and Bacon, the legal muscle for the industry. It should be interesting to see these sleazy tobacco lawyers try to defend their outrageous past conduct in a public forum.

Peter Jennings one hour expose on ABC television Thursday night June 28 was a brilliant expose of the tobacco industry. If you missed it, watch for a re-run or try and get a copy of the tape.
As Jennings reported, California politicians in the pocket of the tobacco industry are trying devious end runs around Proposition 99, the most effective anti-tobacco legislation yet passed in the U.S.
As if on cue, on June 27, 1996, Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle (Rep. Garden Grove CA) announced a push for legislation that will gut Prop 99 by putting funding under the control of Governor Pete Wilson and the Republican controlled Assembly. Pringle ($16,500 in 1995) and Wilson have taken large amounts of tobacco industry money. For more information on this topic from Stanton Glantz try here.California corruption

Important new information has been derived from The Lung Health Study as reported in Pulmonary Perspectives June 1996;13:1-3. which clearly demonstrated that early identification and intervention can prevent chronic lung disease. Patients who had pulmonary function testing and special smoking smoking cessation instructions had a higher rate of abstinence after 5 years (22%) than did those who received standard medical care (5%). Sustained quitters had much less deterioration in Forced Vital Capacity in 1 Second (FEV1) over the five years of the study. Other important facts found in the study. More than 100 of the 5887 patients enrolled developed lung cancer. Lung cancer caused more deaths in the study than all other causes combined ! This study reinforces the previously known risk of lung cancer in smokers but offers encouragement that the relentless progressive lung damage caused by emphysema (COPD) can be prevented by smoking cessation. It also demonstrated that effective intervention can increase the chance of a patient's kicking the cigarette habit.

Presidential candidate Bob Dole this week was parroting tobacco industry claims as pay back for the almost $400,000 he has taken in contributions from that source. Dole stated that nicotine is not necessarily addicting, and that "Some people even claim that milk is addicting." This together with Dole's position on gun control indicate that he has little concern for the health and safety of Americans.

Myron Levin, LA Times reports that all seven tobacco executives currently under investigation in four separate grand jury probes for perjury, have left the industry. The seven are thought to have lied to a congressional subcommittee in testimony regarding the addictive nature of nicotine. A tobacco industry spokesman said of the departure of the seven "I think it's a coincidence."

Also this week, Washington state and the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles joined a number of other states in a massive lawsuit to collect damages from the tobacco industry to pay for the many hundreds of millions of dollars spent by cities and states caring for patients with tobacco related diseases.It will be interesting to get the reaction of SF mayor Willie Brown who has taken even more money from big tobacco than Dole.

In related news, (LA Times June 20, 1996 H. Weinstein and M. Levin reporters) There is finally a Republican, Attorney General Grant Woods of Arizona, who is taking a responsible position on tobacco. Woods has said that he will file suit against the tobacco industry to recover $300,000,000 in damages for money spent since 1988 to treat smoking related illness in the state of Arizona. It should be interesting to see how his party reacts to this news.

Also in California, statistics revealed that the percentage of California citizens who smoked has increased from 15.5% to 17.9%. Douglas Shuit, Times staff writer noted that critics of Gov. Pete Wilson link the rise to diversion of money from the state's anti-smoking campaign by the governor. Coincidentally (?) a high level advisor of Wilson during his recently aborted (no pun intended) presidential campaign was a Philip Morris VP.

The Los Angeles Times also reported recently, that Republican Conference Chairman John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) was caught distributing campaign checks from a tobacco PAC to fellow Republicans on the House floor! "It sure doesn't look good" said Boehner.
You can be sure that Boehner will go back to passing out dirty money the good old fashioned way (under the table) in the future. For more information on corruption of politicians away from their responsibility to safeguard the health and safety of their constituents, read the material in this link.More information on epidemiology For information on how to find out just how sleazy your elected representative is, go to the question "What can I do to help?" in the frequently asked section below and follow the links.

Also this month in the LA Times, it was announced that Los Angeles Dodger center-fielder, Bret Butler has cancer of the tonsil, probably caused by a prior habit of chewing tobacco. For more information on smokeless tobacco, read the information in the question "What about smokeless tobacco?" in the FAQ. Fortunately, the recurrent cancer was able to be surgically removed.

Pulitzer prize winning San Francisco columnist Herb Caen announced May 30 that he has inoperable lung cancer. The LA Times reported that Caen smoked cigarettes for 40 years and quit 25 years ago.

Two new books have been published this year. Each is a great reference on cigarette smoking and related diseases.
Ashes to Ashes by Richard Kluger, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1996, is a comprehensive history of the tobacco industry, in particular, Philip Morris and the (so-far) ineffective struggle to contain the international damage done by their products.
The Cigarette Papers by Stanton A. Glantz et al, U. of California Press, Berkeley, 1996 is a summation of the information contained in the papers left to Glantz by "Mr. Butts". Glantz is probably the most effective adversary of the tobacco industry in the United States. His federally funded research into the politics of tobacco political contributions drives the industry into apoplectic rage.
If you are interested in what you read in this web page and would like to get more in-depth information, you can do no better than read these two wonderful new books. I would suggest starting with Ashes to Ashes which provides a fascinating overview of the tobacco industry and it's history for the general reader. The shocking facts contained in The Cigarette Papers will make a lot more sense with this background information.
A third interesting new book Smoke Screen by Philip J Hilts, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Reading , MA 1996. This is a shorter, less ambitious work than the two cited above, but is a valuable chronicle of the response of the tobacco industry to scientific evidence that their product causes cancer and other illnesses..
Frederic W. Grannis Jr. MD
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