[Intl-tobacco] World Conference: Ideas for Remaking Industry

[robert weissman]

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Activists target tobacco
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At convention in D.C., they discuss strategy for reducing its use

BY JOHN REID BLACKWELL
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

Jul 15, 2006


WASHINGTON -- If cigarettes can't be eliminated, then the profit motive
for selling them should be, some activists said this week at an
international tobacco-control meeting.




"The idea that a for-profit tobacco industry will always be out there is
not acceptable," said Ruth E. Malone, a nurse and associate professor at
the University of California at San Francisco. The comment drew applause
from attendees at the World Conference on Tobacco or Health.

About 4,700 activists from 130 countries are attending the four-day
convention in Washington that ends today to discuss ways to fight
tobacco use. This week, public health officials released a report
predicting 1 billion deaths this century from tobacco-related diseases,
prompting activists at the convention to call for more advertising
restrictions, higher taxes and larger warning labels on tobacco
products, and more assistance for smoking cessation.

Many of those proposals are included in a global tobacco-control treaty
that 133 nations have ratified. The United States has not.

Some speakers pitched more radical ideas. David Thompson, a lawyer from
Canada, said governments should turn tobacco companies into nonprofit
organizations by buying out shareholders and owners. He said that would
reduce tobacco use by removing incentives to find new customers, but he
argued it wouldn't hurt most tobacco-industry employees or farmers.

Tobacco companies have to maximize their profits, Thompson said. "If
they don't, they could be sued by their shareholders. That limits what
they can do in terms of social responsibility."

Michael Neese, a spokesman for Henrico County-based Philip Morris USA,
the nation's top ciga- rette maker, declined to comment specifically on
the conference. He said the company has put more than $1 billion into
its own youth smoking-prevention campaign since 1998.

Some activists at the meeting sharply criticized Philip Morris, saying
its efforts to improve its public image and its proposals for federal
regulation of the tobacco industry have been self-serving.

The company has paid about $30 billion since 1998 as its share of a $206
billion legal settlement with 46 states that sued major U.S. cigarette
makers to recover smoking-related health-care costs.

That deal got mixed reviews from some tobacco-control activists this
week. "Not a single [tobacco] company has engaged in fundamental change"
since the settlement, said Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign
for Tobacco-Free Kids. "What we have seen is a doubling of
tobacco-industry marketing."


Contact staff writer John Reid Blackwell at jblackwell@timesdispatch.com
<mailto:jblackwell@timesdispatch.com> or (804) 775-8123.