Word: tobacco
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Massachusetts state officials hoping to counter the effect of marketing ploys like "Marlboro Miles," in which consumers send collected labels in to get such popular items as CD players and hooded sweatshirts, have set up competing incentives. In April, Massachusetts tobacco-control officials persuaded 200 retailers, including McDonald's and Footlocker stores, to give discounts to teens who take a smoke-free pledge. So far, more than 25,000 children have signed up. The state has also spent $14 million on antismoking ads. Since 1994, cigarette sales to teens in the state have dropped some 40%. Said Dr. Lonnie Bristow...
...Findings such as these, combined with popular politics--polls show that even most adult smokers do not want their kids to pick up the habit--led President Clinton last week to instruct the Food and Drug Administration to draft a series of aggressive regulations to keep tobacco away from teenagers. His plan includes banning cigarette vending machines, outlawing tobacco billboards within 1,000 feet of playgrounds and schoolyards, restricting magazine advertising, requiring the tobacco industry to pour $150 million into a public education campaign and cracking down on underage cigarette sales...
Clinton's move cuts straight to the heart of the tobacco business. While the cigarette companies make some concessions to political pressure--last week, for instance, Philip Morris added the phrase UNDERAGE SALE PROHIBITED to its packages--the fact remains that they have a business motivation to replace the 2 million smokers who quit or die each year. The best way to capture new ones is to get them when they are young: of all adult smokers, 90% started smoking before the age of 20. This is why much of the tobacco industry's $6 billion worth of advertising contains...
Already feeling the government's hands around their throat, tobacco-industry leaders took immediate steps to thwart Clinton's plan. The five largest cigarette manufacturers filed a lawsuit claiming that the FDA has no jurisdiction over cigarettes and that the advertising restrictions violate their First Amendment rights. But Clinton has tried to entice the tobacco companies into backing a law that would directly impose the restrictions he seeks. California Democrat Henry Waxman, the leading antismoking figure in the House, predicts that the new Republican majority might pass these reforms rather than let their nemesis, the FDA, regulate the industry...
...greatest fear of the tobacco industry, of course, is that the new moves on teen smoking are just opening skirmishes in an assault on smoking by adults as well. Though Clinton denies this, the Administration is being lobbied to go even further. Officials at the A.M.A. would like to see a total ban on tobacco advertising. At the same time, they want politicians to refuse money from tobacco PACS and believe that medical schools and other research organizations should refuse all funding by tobacco companies. "No right-thinking individual can ignore the evidence" about nicotine addiction, an A.M.A. report proclaimed...