[Intl-tobacco] Tobacco companies under siege (fwd)

[Robert Weissman]

Tobacco companies under siege
by Amira Segev
Source: Ha'aretz Daily Newspaper, Friday, 2/25/00

Four different legal actions are currently underway in Israel against the
Israeli cigarette manufacturer Dubek, other cigarette manufacturers and
American tobacco companies. At the same time, a commission has been
appointed by the health minister to reduce damage to health from
smoking.The commission is headed by Judge Alon Gillon, the director of the
courts, and himself a victim of smoking. After years in which he smoked
heavily, he was diagnosed with cancer of the throat and jaw. His father,
who was also a smoker, died at age 52 of lung cancer. The Gillon
commission was established following a recommendation by the State
Prosecutor's Office in connection with a petition submitted to the High
Court of Justice by the Israel Medical Association against the minister of
health, Dubek and the manufacturers and marketers of tobacco and tobacco
products. The IMA asked the court to order the health minister to declare
nicotine a dangerous drug and to set a policy involving oversight and
restrictions on the growth, manufacture, sale, import and use of tobacco
and related products.

Dubek announced that it did not recognize the committee and would not send
representatives to appear before it. "The composition of the commission,
together with its true character and the reasons for its establishment,
attest to its being a panel on which the opinions of its members and its
recommendations are uniform and preconceived," Dubek stated in a letter to
Health Minister Shlomo Benizri three weeks ago. Last week Benizri informed
Dubek's lawyer, Dr. Yoav Ben Dror, that he will be ready to consider
imposing a secrecy order on incriminating documents from Dubek, as he put
it, if the company makes them available to the commission.

At the end of 1997, 15 smokers who suffer from lung and throat cancer and
from heart, blood and lung diseases and their relatives filed suit in the
Tel Aviv District Court against Dubek and the Ascot tobacco company. Their
contention was that their illnesses were caused by smoking. Later, the
judge in the case, Dr. Gavriel Kelling, permitted another 65 individuals
to join the suit. He rejected Dubek's request to hold a separate hearing
on each case. Dubek's appeal to the Supreme Court against that ruling was
also rejected. The suit was recognized as the first class action in
Israel.

Last week the judge gave the cigarette companies 60 days to disclose all
the documents related to the case. He also ruled that 12 consecutive days
of hearings will be held this December.

The Kupat Holim Clalit HMO has been engaged in a legal battle against
Dubek and four cigarette manufacturers from Britain and the United States
since September 1998. The HMO wants compensation of NIS 7.6 billion in
damages it claims to have sustained in treating smokers. This organization
takes pride in the fact that Israel is the first country outside the
United States in which American tobacco firms have been sued. Those firms
include Philip Morris, R.G. Reynolds, Brown and Wlliamson and Ligget and
Meyers.

The cigarette companies are accused of enlarging their profits by duping
the public as well as health authorities, legislators, the media and
others. The gist of the suit is that the cigarette companies knew that the
products they manufactured and sold would cause serious illness and
terrible suffering, and in some cases death, in large numbers of people.

Currently pending in the Supreme Court is an appeal submitted by Kupat
Holim Maccabi against a decision by Tel Aviv District Court Judge Adi Azar
in a preliminary hearing. Azar rejected a request by the HMO to force
Dubek and other cigarette manufacturers to pay compensation for medical
treatment, hospitalization and drugs administered to Maccabi members who
suffer from the pernicious effects of smoking. Azar ruled last September
that the suit must be filed by the patients themselves and not by the HMO.

Maccabi claims that the total cost of the damage it sustains in one year
as a result of smoking is in excess of NIS 3 billion. One of the experts
Maccabi enlisted in its cause, Prof. Eliezer Kaplinski, the director of
the Cardiac Institute at the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, wrote
in his opinion to the court: "I can state with certainty that Kupat Holim
Maccabi has medical expenditures of a very considerable sum for its
treatment of illness caused by smoking among its insurees, and this as the
result of the manufacture, sale and distribution of cigarettes." Kaplinski
added that smoking is the major cause of morbidity in Israel. (Haim Shadmi