THE tobacco industry has launched a backdoor attack on legislation to make plain packaging of cigarettes compulsory, using a regional free trade agreement to which Australia is expected to become a signatory. Philip Morris has used Australia’s plain-packaging laws, scheduled to come into effect next year, to argue the need for ”investor state” provisions in the upcoming Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. This would allow comp ... Jump to full article >>

Winston-Salem, NC — Reynolds American is reducing its workforce in the city by asking 1,400 manufacturing employees to take a severance package. Reynolds American is the parent company of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and announced the severance offer on Wednesday. Spokeswoman Maura Payne said the employees have until Jan. 31 to take the offer. In 2009, about 400 employees took a severance package offered by the company. Payne said the package ... Jump to full article >>

People under the age of 20 will be prohibited from purchasing cigarettes, while Tobacco manufacturers will only be allowed to import and sell fire-safe cigarettes once the Public Health Ministry amends the law and issues a ministerial regulation to control tobacco consumption. Public Health Minister Jurin Laksanawisit said yesterday the ministry would amend the 1992 Tobacco Products Control Act and prohibit the sale of tobacco products to peopl ... Jump to full article >>

A small, Virginia-based tobacco company said Tuesday that it will seek the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval to sell a new moist snuff tobacco as a “modified-risk” product with fewer cancer-causing agents. If its application is approved, Henrico County-based Star Scientific Inc. could be the first company to win an FDA designation of a tobacco product as potentially less hazardous to health. “I think (the toba ... Jump to full article >>

Federal Judge Jed Rakoff of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan has held that the New York City Health Department cannot adopt a rule which would require that gruesome photographs of smokers suffering from various forms of cancer be placed beside cash registers in more than 11,000 bodegas and convenience stores in the city. “Even merchants of morbidity are entitled to the full protection of the law, for our sake as well as theirs,” the ju ... Jump to full article >>

Bangalore: Bangalore police have arrested Syed Asgar, accused of supplying cigarettes stuffed with brown sugar to his customers for the past 10 years. The arrest was made on information provided by one of his accomplices who was nabbed by the Central Crime Branch (CCB) a few days ago. A police team led by ACP R Lakshman swooped down on Asgar and confiscated 60 gm of brown sugar worth Rs. 15 lakh, cash Rs. 5,000 and a mobile phone that had all ... Jump to full article >>

Japan Nov Core CPI -0.5% Y/Y, 21st Drop In Row, But Above Oct -0.6% Japan Nov Total CPI +0.1% Y/Y, 2nd Y/Y Rise in Row Central Tokyo Dec Core CPI -0.4% Y/Y Vs Nov -0.5%, 20th Drop In Row Japan CPI Shows Nov Energy Costs +3.9% Y/Y Vs Oct +4.0% Japan’s national core consumer prices fell 0.5% in November from a year earlier, posting the 21st straight y/y drop and indicating that the economy is still mired in deflation, data releasedTuesday ... Jump to full article >>

Health advocates won and health advocates lost Wednesday as the Ohio Supreme Court unanimously ruled that funds set aside a decade ago exclusively for smoking prevention efforts remained state money that could later be diverted to other purposes. “The question whether it is wise to enact legislation is not the same question as whether the legislation is constitutional,” wrote Justice Paul Pfeifer, noting that briefs had been filed from inter ... Jump to full article >>

ANTI-SMOKING campaigners are hopeful that last week’s 20 per cent increase in the price of cigarettes will finally push the 29 per cent of the population who smoke regularly into quitting. The bill that was rushed through parliament on December 10 may have been motivated by the need to increase annual revenue by an estimated €31 million, but Stelios Sikallides, executive secretary of the anti-smoking lobby of the Anti-Cancer Association Cypr ... Jump to full article >>

BOSTON (AP) — A tobacco company that had tried to hook black children on cigarettes was ordered Thursday to pay $81 million in punitive damages to the estate and son of a Boston woman who started smoking at age 13, in what an attorney said is one of the largest jury awards of its kind in the United States. The verdict came one day after jurors decided Greensboro, N.C.-based Lorillard Tobacco Co. should pay $71 million in compensatory damages t ... Jump to full article >>