Tobacco Industry

Reporting from San Francisco -- Smokers may sue the tobacco industry once they develop a disease like lung cancer, even if they suffered different smoking-related ailments years earlier, the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday. The decision is likely to keep lawsuits alive that might otherwise have been thrown out because of expired legal deadlines and allow new suits to be filed, lawyers who filed the suit said. In the case before the court, Nikki Pooshs, a former smoker, was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in 1989 and a couple of years later with periodontal disease, both attributable to smoking.

As thoroughly awful as everyone knows cigarettes to be - still the No. 1 cause of premature death in this country - public officials walk a blurry line when they try to reduce smoking's terrible toll. As long as they lack the will to ban tobacco altogether, they face all sorts of ethical, legal and political problems in regulating a product that is, after all, perfectly legal. High tobacco taxes, critics say, unfairly punish smokers, who are disproportionately low income. Banning advertising of a legal product raises free-speech issues.

If the tobacco industry contained a puff of decency, it would extinguish itself and disappear into the butt-can of history. JACK PETERSON Santa Barbara

Sales of chewing tobacco and other such smokeless products rose sharply in California over the last decade, and officials are especially concerned about the increase in use among youths, state public health officials said Thursday. Smokeless tobacco use among high school students grew to 3.9% of students in 2010, up from 3.1% in 2004. Nearly $211 million in non-cigarette tobacco and nicotine products were sold in California in 2011, up from $77 million in 2001, according to a report released Thursday by the state Department of Public Health.

The state of Iowa has no legal right to collect money from tobacco companies to cover the cost of treating sick smokers, the state's Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. The tobacco industry hailed the decision as a major victory. But Iowa Atty. Gen. Tom Miller said the fight is far from over. "I consider this a setback, but only a temporary setback," Miller said. The decision upheld a lower court ruling that found nothing in Iowa law permitting the state to be compensated for treating smokers.

The tobacco industry would accept a ban on all cigarette vending machines, halt all outdoor advertising and pay $1 billion a year for anti-smoking campaigns as part of broad package of concessions offered in the hopes of settling virtually all legal claims against it, sources said. Details of the industry stance emerged as talks between the tobacco industry and its adversaries were about to resume over a critical hurdle--how much immunity the industry would get from lawsuits, sources said.

The tobacco industry, in newspaper ads running around the country today, touted a survey indicating that three of four Americans don't support workplace or restaurant smoking bans. The industry's counter-initiative through its lobbying organization, the Tobacco Institute, comes during the week marking the 25th anniversary of the first of the surgeon general's reports to declare smoking a health hazard.

The city of Los Angeles on Wednesday joined a lawsuit by San Francisco, 10 California counties and four health organizations accusing the tobacco industry of engaging in "deceptive and improper business practices," including false advertising. The lawsuit targets Phillip Morris Inc., R.J. Reynolds, Brown and Williamson and several tobacco industry organizations.

Daniel E. Provost III, 78, a tobacco industry executive who got Arthur Godfrey and Ronald Reagan to endorse Chesterfield cigarettes. Provost joined the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency in 1948 and was assigned to the Liggett account until his retirement in 1984 as the tobacco company's chief spokesman. He was a power in the early days of television when cigarette companies sponsored programs. People such as Godfrey and Perry Como were important Chesterfield spokesmen.

A probe of possible perjury charges against several tobacco executives has been expanded into a far-reaching Justice Department investigation, officials said. The probe will look into whether industry executives systematically made false or misleading statements to Congress and government agencies in 1994 about the addictive nature of tobacco and about industry practices. About a dozen tobacco company employees have been subpoenaed to testify before a Washington grand jury.

If you spend any time reading The Times, watching television or listening to the radio, you've been inundated with opinions and commercials against Proposition 29, the California Cancer Research Act -- commercials paid for by Philip Morris USA and other tobacco companies. Proposition 29, on the June 5 ballot, would add a $1 tax on each pack of cigarettes to generate more than $700 million annually for research on cancer and other smoking-related diseases, as well as rejuvenate California's crucial tobacco cessation and prevention programs.

Yes, our freeways and surface streets are crumbling. But the next time your front wheel hits an enormous pothole, you can remember with pride that California is the world leader in one form of highway maintenance: paving the road to hell with good intentions. The June 5 election will give the state's voters another opportunity in this vein. The vehicle is Proposition 29, which would jack up the state tax on cigarettes by $1 a pack, generating some $800 million a year mostly for cancer research, with some going to related health and anti-smoking programs.

Every day, about 3,800 American kids try a cigarette for the first time. A thousand of them will grow up to to have a daily smoking habit, and nearly 300 will wind up dead due to a smoking-related disease.  Those statistics would be depressing under any circumstances. But they are all the more so considering that states and the federal government collect billions of dollars every year in cigarette taxes and funds from the 1998 tobacco industry settlements. In 2010, that added up to almost $24 billion, according to a study in Friday's edition of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.  And how much of that $24 billion was used to fund tobacco prevention programs, smoking cessation services and other public health interventions?

In the 1970s it seemed like we had problems we could never fix - and I'm not talking about white polyester disco suits and the band Air Supply. The '70s presented America with the residue of a catastrophic war, soaring inner-city crime rates, runaway inflation and subjugation to Middle East oil. To punctuate the dismal vibe, everybody smoked, or so it seemed if you were sitting on an airplane at the edge of the DMZ between the smoking and nonsmoking sections,...

If smoking rates stay at current levels, smoking could create 18 million extra cases of tuberculosis worldwide and 40 million excess deaths from the disease by 2050, a study finds. Researchers produced mathematical models based on various smoking rate scenarios to estimate rates of tuberculosis disease and deaths in each World Health Organization region around the world. The baseline scenario used current smoking levels to come up with the 18 million and 40 million numbers; right now, almost 20% of people worldwide smoke tobacco, and that figure may rise in some poor countries, the study authors said.

Reporting from San Francisco -- Smokers may sue the tobacco industry once they develop a disease like lung cancer, even if they suffered different smoking-related ailments years earlier, the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday. The decision is likely to keep lawsuits alive that might otherwise have been thrown out because of expired legal deadlines and allow new suits to be filed, lawyers who filed the suit said. In the case before the court, Nikki Pooshs, a former smoker, was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in 1989 and a couple of years later with periodontal disease, both attributable to smoking.

Major League Baseball begins the 2011 season in two days,  and if public heath officials have their way it will be the last season during which players will be able to chew and spit smokeless tobacco on the field. The leaders of 15 public health departments in cities with professional baseball teams sent a letter Monday to MLB Commissioner Bud Selig and Michael Weiner, executive director of the union representing major league players, urging them to forbid the use of smokeless tobacco products.

Despite evidence that menthol cigarettes are a significant factor in the rise of smoking among adolescents, a federal advisory panel on Friday stopped short of recommending a ban on the cigarettes. Instead, it urged further study of the issue, which suggested that the Food and Drug Administration would ultimately pursue more modest action, such as marketing restrictions aimed at reducing access for the young. The panel's long-awaited report on menthol cigarettes was met with a collective shrug from several tobacco companies, whose potent political and legal power could delay any new restrictions for years.