Taiwan suggests `Longevity' is no name for a smoke (fwd)

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

ASSOCIATED PRESS 

01-Jul-1999 Thursday 

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- A Taiwan health official says the country's most popular
brands of cigarettes -- Longevity, President and Paradise -- might have to
be renamed because they give smoking too good an image. 

The National Health Administration plans to propose a law that bans
cigarette names suggesting "positive values," said department head Chen
Tsai-chin. 

Taiwan needs to tighten its smoking laws because surveys show that 47
percent of males and 5 percent of females smoke cigarettes regularly, Chen
said. 

An official at the government-run Bureau of Wine and Tobacco Monopoly,
maker of Taiwan's leading cigarette brands, said that such a law could even
require the banning of foreign brands such as Virginia Slims.