Word: tobacco
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Alabama, rather than adopting penalties, is offering discounts on state workers' $70 monthly premiums. To get $30 off for not using tobacco, participants have to sign a form under penalty of perjury. (An audit of relevant medical records could result in back-billing and a recall of claims.) Since the plan started giving such a discount in 2005, it has seen a 4% decline in the number of smokers...
...archipelago, hangs out with Pacquiao all the time. He styles himself a kingmaker but is unclear whether Manny can be a king. "He is so humble," Singson says. "He's a simple person." Singson, however, may be a role model for Pacquiao. The governor amassed his fortune as a tobacco-plantation owner and travels in a private plane and in a bulletproof Hummer. He is an epitome of Philippine politics, where power grows out of barrels of patronage. Political reformers worry that that is the style Pacquiao has been learning during his decade of kingdom-building and distributing wealth...
...Billed as "the biggest tobacco exhibition in Asia," Tabinfo 2009 has been years in the making. Nonetheless, the meeting apparently caught Thailand's government by surprise. Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, who has said he was unaware of the conference until two weeks before it started, ordered government and tourism agencies not to do anything to promote or support it after activists presented him with a petition opposing the conference that contained more than 82,000 signatures. Thailand's state-run tobacco monopoly withdrew its exhibitions and sponsorship of a buffet breakfast for industry representatives just days before the conference began...
...Most countries in Asia have signed on to the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which calls for price and tax measures to discourage demand for tobacco, along with measures to regulate or restrict tobacco advertising, sales to minors, packaging and product content. "The tobacco industry says it supports [the FCTC], but in fact they are working to undermine the framework in countries across the region," Bangorn says. The conference agenda, she says, includes presentations like "Operating in a World of Bans" and a regulatory workshop that "invites participants to wipe the regulatory slate clean...
...leave. Conference organizers refused to meet with the protesters and locked the meeting-room doors to members of the media without making a statement, except to say the conference was private. Churit Tengtrisorn of Thailand's Ministry of Public Health said that the ministry opposed Tabinfo 2009 and the tobacco industry in general. "The tobacco industry has been pushed out of the developed world, and now it is trying to exploit the developing world. We are certain that it will try every trick in the bag to penetrate the Asian market," says Hatai Chitanondh, a public-health activist. Says Bangorn...