Conference vaxcat::ef97

    AP 27-Feb-1997 20:13 EST   REF5965

    Copyright 1997. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

    Calif. Tobacco Suit Thrown Out

    By RICHARD COLE

    Associated Press Writer

    SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Tobacco companies won a victory in federal court
    Thursday when a judge threw out a lawsuit filed by a dozen California
    counties seeking damages for treating victims of smoking-related
    illnesses. 

    U.S. District Judge Lowell Jensen in Oakland said the counties cannot
    use statistics on smoking to prove their case. He said the counties can
    refile parts of the lawsuit by March 31, but must document that each
    smoker's injuries were caused by smoking. 

    The case is similar to lawsuits filed in at least 17 states that seek
    reimbursement for Medicaid funds spent to treat smokers. 

    Dan Webb, a lawyer for Philip Morris USA, called Jensen's decision
    "pretty much a stake through the heart of the entire plaintiffs' theory
    that supports these lawsuits." 

    But Elizabeth Laporte, a lawyer in the San Francisco city attorney's
    office, the lead counsel among the dozen California counties that sued
    six tobacco companies, said Jensen still approved many of their legal
    arguments and left the door open for the suit to be refiled. 

    "On first reading, it looks like we'll be going forward," she said. "He
    sustained the basic theories of fraud and special duties." 

    Richard Draynard, a Northeastern University law professor who has
    criticized the industry as head of the Tobacco Products Liability
    Project, said it was ludicrous for Jensen to ban statistical arguments
    because studies on the relationship between cancer and smoking are
    based on statistics. 

    "It's a throwback to some of the thinking done by judges in the 1980s
    when the impulse to blame the smoker made them unable to wrap their
    minds around the greater responsibility of the tobacco companies," he
    said. 

    Tobacco lawyers said they would use the ruling to ask that similar
    lawsuits be dismissed. 

    When a dozen counties filed the lawsuit in June, San Francisco City
    Attorney Louise Renne said tobacco companies had to be held responsible
    for the "staggering" costs of medical treatment for smokers. One lung
    cancer case alone cost the city $500,000, her office said. 

    Along with Philip Morris, the defendants included R.J. Reynolds Tobacco
    Co.; Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp.; B.A.T. Industries P.L.C.;
    Lorillard Tobacco Co. and the Liggett Group. 

    AP 27-Feb-1997 18:00 EST   REF5831

    Copyright 1997. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

    Low-Tar Smokes Linked to Cancer

    By TARA MEYER

    Associated Press Writer

    ATLANTA (AP) -- Smokers who switch to low-tar cigarettes are
    increasingly victims of a different type of cancer -- one that reaches
    deeper into the lungs, according to a study published by the American
    Cancer Society. 

    Tobacco companies have argued that nicotine levels naturally drop with
    the lower tar in cigarette brands such as Vantage, Merit, Carleton and
    True. But federal health officials suggest people smoke them
    differently, taking more and deeper puffs to satisfy their cravings. 

    "This is not good news for tobacco producers or for public health,"
    said Dr. Fabio Levi, professor of epidemiology at the University of
    Lausanne in Switzerland. "We must be very firm about the dangers of
    these new types of cigarettes. They are not so light." 

    The Tobacco Institute in Washington, a lobbying arm of the industry,
    would not comment, and Philip Morris Inc., which makes Merits, referred
    calls about the study to the institute. The Liggett Group Inc. also
    would not comment. 

    But the effects researchers found among smokers in Switzerland confirms
    a trend health officials have already seen in the United States. 

    Squamous cell carcinoma and small cell carcinoma, which attack the main
    trunks of the lungs, are the two types of lung cancer most strongly
    linked to cigarette smoking. 

    But as people have switched to "light" low-tar cigarettes,
    adenocarcinoma, which attacks the tiny outer branches of the lungs, is
    becoming the more common pattern. 

    Levi's study, in the March edition of the journal Cancer, looked at
    7,423 cancer cases in Switzerland between 1974 and 1994 found that
    adenocarcinoma increased in men and women more than two-fold: 13.3 out
    of every 100,000 men had the cancer between 1990-94, up from 5.5 per
    100,000 between 1974-79. 

    The study said five out of every 100,000 women had the cancer in
    1990-94, up from 1.9 per 100,000 in 1974-79. 

    Low tar, filtered cigarettes largely replaced unfiltered cigarettes and
    had become the most commonly sold in Switzerland between the mid-1950s
    and mid-1980s, the study noted. 

    "This study is important because the implications of low-yield
    cigarette advertising is that cigarettes with lower tar are less
    hazardous," said Dr. Neal Benowitz, a researcher at the University of
    California at San Francisco who has studied nicotine levels in low-tar
    cigarettes. 

    "With low-yield cigarettes, you're still getting cancer," Benowitz
    said. 

    Richard Daynard, president of the Tobacco Control Resource Center at
    Northeastern School of Law in Boston, said the study also debunks the
    industry's claims that adenocarcinoma isn't linked to smoking. 

    "They have defended it based on old literature that it's not the kind
    of cancer smokers get," said Daynard. "This demonstrates that it is the
    kind of cancer smokers get and it's because of something companies have
    done to the cigarette." 

    AP 2-Mar-1997 12:02 EST   REF5139

    Copyright 1997. The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

    Study: Secondhand Smoke Kills

    SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- Secondhand smoke kills at least 4,700
    nonsmoking Californians each year and causes respiratory illnesses in
    tens of thousands of children, according to a new state study. 

    The California Environmental Protection Agency's report details the
    health effects of breathing smoke from other people's cigarettes, pipes
    and cigars. 

    Opponents of smoking describe the study, which the state commissioned
    four years ago, as the most extensive compilation of evidence of the
    health effects of secondhand smoke since the surgeon general issued a
    study in 1986. 

    The state EPA report concludes that there is sufficient evidence from
    the body of existing research to conclude that secondhand smoke is
    responsible for a wide variety of health problems, including premature
    births, sudden infant death syndrome, lung cancer and heart disease. 

    The report estimates that secondhand smoke caused between 35,000 and
    62,000 deaths nationwide from heart attack and stroke, and between
    4,200 and 7,440 such deaths in California alone. In comparison,
    environmental tobacco smoke is responsible for lung cancer that kills
    3,000 Americans each year, 360 of them Californians. 

    Among the findings of the California study is that secondhand tobacco
    smoke hits the children of smokers especially hard. The study blames
    secondhand smoking for up to 3,000 new childhood asthma cases in
    California each year and for as many as 188,000 doctor visits for
    middle-ear infections. 

    International News Electronic Telegraph Monday 3 March 1997 Issue 647

    US puts fire into campaign against teenage smokers
    
    By Hugo Gurdon in Washington 

    AMERICA'S anti-smoking zealotry hit new heights at the weekend with a
    free-phone spy line, teenage informers and an e-mail denunciation page.

    Smokers and tobacconists have found themselves chivvied as never before
    following the introduction of a law that allows shopkeepers to check
    the identity and age of anyone buying a packet of cigarettes who
    appears to be under 27. It is legal to buy cigarettes at 18, but to
    make sure that mature 16- and 17-year-olds are caught out, the new law
    sets a wide margin of error. The result is that youthful adults - in
    one case a 33-year-old father of four - are having to show their
    driving licences at checkout tills.

    In Maryland, vice squads are sending children into shops in sting
    operations. The teenagers buy cigarettes, then leave the store and hand
    the packet and receipt to officers of the Federal Drug Administration
    hiding outside. Armed with the evidence, the officers confront the
    shopkeepers, handing them either a ticket for a $250 (�150) fine or a
    statutory warning.

    Lacking sufficient officers, the FDA has set up a free-phone line and
    an e-mail address at its Web site so that members of the public can
    report tobacconists who break the law.

    But many retailers are outraged that they have to alienate adult
    customers by demanding ID or face fines and criminal records. In
    Virginia, James Gilmore, the attorney general, at first vowed not to
    implement the law. He has since backed down, but Virginia, North
    Carolina and other states are going to court to roll back what they see
    as an officious and unconscionable extension of federal authority.

    Militant groups such as Action on Smoking and Health have already begun
    to send adolescent spies into shops all across the Land of the Free.
    The sting operations began minutes after the law came into effect on
    Friday.

    President Clinton said the price of intrusion was worth paying. "More
    Americans die every year from smoking-related diseases than from Aids,
    car accidents, homicides, suicides and fires combined," he said.

    Some 4.5 million children under the age of 18 smoke, but it is adult
    smokers who are most on the retreat. In some towns it is illegal to
    light up anywhere in public, even outside. Elsewhere, public smoking
    outdoors is legal only if you keep moving and do not stand in one place
    fogging a locality.

	Whilst I'm waiting for a collegue, I'd just like to brag about the
	fact that in a few days, I'll have been stopped smoking for five
	months -   still a way to go, but not bad, under  the circumstances.

R. 

Well Down Richard.

Keep it up (fnarr fnarr)

Simon