Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Point-of-sale displays

The district court ordered each Defendant with a retail merchandising program—whereby retailers agree to use the manufacturer’s in-store advertising—to design countertop and header displays containing the corrective statements and “require retailers who participate in such program” to display them for two years.
 The freestanding countertop displays must be at least thirty inches high and eighteen inches wide, and retailers must place them on their counters “within the line-of-sight of any customer who is standing in line for the register.”
The header displays must be of at least equivalent size to Defendants’ other brand advertising headers and placed “in an equivalent position with any other brand advertising header” at the top of the 75 cigarette display case. Under the injunctive order, each Defendant must “suspend from its Retail Merchandising Program for a period of one year any retailer that fails to comply with this provision.”
Posted by cigarea at 15:08:04 | Permalink | Comments Off

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Aspects of Defendants addiction and nicotine

The government presented evidence regarding the aspects of Defendants’ scheme, such as addiction and nicotine. A few examples cannot adequately present the volumes of evidence underlying the district court’s findings of fact, but the following provide a fair sample: A 1991 Reynolds Research and Development report acknowledged that “[w]e are basically in the nicotine business.”
Dr. Farone testified that during his time at Philip Morris there was “widespread acceptance internally throughout the 35 company—among executives, scientists, and marketing people” that nicotine was primarily responsible for addiction to smoking. Id. at 858. Indeed, the district court found that “internal documents and testimony from former company employees affirmed that within their corporate walls, Defendants openly recognized the addictiveness of cigarettes.” Id. Regarding light cigarettes, internal research reports and memoranda at the Defendant companies revealed that they understood the phenomena of smoker compensation and studied how to manipulate it in order to make their light brands appealing to addicted smokers while continuing to be able to advertise the brands as low tar. For example, a 1978 BATCo memorandum about that company’s internal research acknowledged that “a majority of habitual smokers compensate for changed delivery” and explained that if smokers “choose [a] lower delivery brand . . . than their usual brand” they “will in fact increase the amounts of tar and gas phase that they take in, in order to take in the same amount of nicotine.”
As these examples and hundreds more findings in the district court’s opinion demonstrate, the court had before it sufficient evidence from which to conclude that Defendants’ executives, who directed the activities of the Defendant corporations and their joint entities, knew about the negative health consequences of smoking, the addictiveness and manipulation of nicotine, the harmfulness of secondhand smoke, and the concept of smoker compensation, which makes light cigarettes no less harmful than regular cigarettes and possibly 36 more. The government presented evidence indicating that specific high-ranking corporate officials were directly informed about these matters, as well as evidence of pervasive knowledge and acceptance of these propositions throughout the Defendant organizations. The overwhelming indirect and circumstantial evidence was sufficient to allow the district court to reasonably infer that the high level executives, including “CEOs, Vice Presidents, [and] Heads of Research & Development” for Defendants knew about their respective companies’ “internal research, public positions, and long term strategies,” id. at 897, that is, the “internal knowledge and practice” of the company, id. at 853. These executives then made, caused to be made, and approved public statements contrary to this knowledge.
Posted by cigarea at 13:15:14 | Permalink | No Comments »

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Green smoke

Posted by cigarea at 14:49:56 | Permalink | No Comments »

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Staffing levels of tobacco control programmes

Low-income countries with available information, having a population of two billion, collect US$ 13.8 billion in tobacco tax revenues (about US$ 7 per capita) and spend about US$ 1.5 million for tobacco control (less than one tenth of one cent per capita), a ratio of more than 9100:1. Middle-income countries with available information, having a population of 1.9 billion, collect US$ 52.7 billion (about US$ 28.40 per capita) in tobacco taxes and spend about US$ 12.5 million for tobacco control (just over half a cent per capita), a ratio of nearly 4200:1. High-income countries collect US$ 110 billion total tobacco tax revenue (about US$ 205 per capita) and spend about US$ 321.3 million on tobacco control for 536 million people (60 cents per capita), a ratio that is still indefensibly high – about 340:1 – but still much lower than the ratio in low- and middle-income countries.
Staffing levels of tobacco control programmes are equally dismal. Among the 174 countries that submitted data on staffing, 129 (75%) have a national/federal agency or technical unit with responsibility for tobacco control. No such agencies exist in 45 countries (25%). Of the countries that have established a tobacco control agency, 86 countries (67%) provided staffing data showing a total of about 604 full-time equivalent staff. However, a single country, Canada, accounts for 179 of those (30% of the global aggregate total), and five other countries account for another 153. That leaves 272 full-time equivalents for the remaining 80 reporting countries, or about 3.4 full-time equivalent staff per country. Overall, low- and middle-income countries reported an average of five staff per country, and high-income countries reported an average of 18 staff per country.
Although several high-population countries with large numbers of smokers did not provide staffing data, these figures clearly show that many national governments could benefit from stronger commitment to tobacco control. An effective, well-staffed tobacco control programme can lead efforts to implement effective interventions that can reduce the number of tobacco users and save millions of lives.
Posted by cigarea at 13:54:45 | Permalink | No Comments »