A few very, very, very obvious ways to reduce the deaths of consumers world wide:

Almost nothing screams tobacco inside Philip Morris USA's new $350 million research and technology center in downtown Richmond.

Indeed, the nation's top cigarette company is allowing smoking only in designated areas of the building, a sleek structure dominating the skyline in the Virginia BioTechnology Research Park. But for the 100 people already working there, and the 400 others scheduled to move there in the next few months, tobacco and the harm it can cause is a top concern.

"The growth of this company is going to be driven by the development of innovative new products . . . and the work that we are doing to reduce the harm related to all of our tobacco products," company spokesman David Sylvia said yesterday during a tour of parts of the building for news media representatives. "The goal of building this facility here was to bring all of those people together so they could do that work in one place."

The people who are, or will be, working at the site include scientists, engineers, physicians and support staff, among others.

The building, attached to a 900-space parking deck by a skywalk, includes a fitness center, a cafeteria, a company store, a coffee shop and lots of common areas to stretch your legs and meet with colleagues. The company did not allow photography inside the building.

The center's first floor has a 50-seat lecture hall and a library designed mainly for electronic research, though its shelves include volumes on chemistry, neuroscience and cancer treatment and epidemiology, among others.

The design of the center and its amenities are aimed at fostering collaboration, creativity and innovative thought, Philip Morris officials said. The specifics of their work remains closely guarded. The company has provided little information about the kind of research it is doing, or the products it hopes to develop.

The new center will help Philip Morris USA accelerate its research, said Richard Solana, the company's senior vice president for research and technology. He would not comment on the company's research budget or when it might launch products.

"I am more confident that there will be a product on the market that reduces the harm from smoking," Solana said when asked how close the company is to introducing a reduced-risk cigarette. "Maybe it will be a cigarette, but maybe it will be something else."

Whatever the outcome, it is likely to face skepticism from public health groups and the wider scientific community.

"I think it's good that they are doing the research," said Thomas Eissenberg, an associate professor and behavioral pharmacologist at Virginia Commonwealth University whose research focuses on addictive substances such as tobacco.

"When they release research, they don't need to just release results, but we need to know every detail of the methods," he said. "That way the results could be replicated by nonindustry researchers."

Cigarette smoking causes cancer, heart disease and other illnesses, leading to more than 400,000 premature deaths a year in the United States. Tobacco companies have made numerous attempts at the so-called Holy Grail of the industry -- a cigarette that could be less harmful to health -- but those products have never gained consumer acceptance.

For that reason, some of the researchers working at the center are "sensory scientists," who study how consumers react to products. The building's third floor includes rooms for focus groups and consumer testing of products, using volunteers that company spokesman Bill Phelps said are older than 21 and tobacco users.

About one-third of the building's space is laboratories. Research also will focus on the health effects of tobacco products, but Phelps said there are no plans to have research subjects stay at the center overnight. The center also has the capability to do tests on rodents.

The Marriott Hotels had announced in 2006 that all their USA and Canadian hotels would be completely no-smoking, in rooms, lobbies, banquet halls, everywhere in the hotels.

Quoting from the Marriott's July 2006 news release:

Wonderful!  This new policy has allowed smokers and nonsmokers, customers and employees, to breathe smokefree air while in the hotels!

Bill Marriott stated in a February 2007 blog about the clean air move,

BUT -- then came a full page ad in the New York Times on September 18, 2007, and in later editions, announcing a November 2007 "Big Smoke" event of a cigar magazine, to be held in the banquet room of the New York City Marquis Marriott Hotel.

Contrary to their stated smoke-free policy, the Marriott WILL allow smoking -- cigar smoking -- in this banquet room for that cigar event on November 20, 2007, exposing all the Marriott employees, who must serve and clean that room, to cancer causing chemicals and hazardous particulate matter, and exposing employees and customers who use that room days and weeks after the event.

Persons who have called the Marriott have been told that the official policy is that the Marriott has hosted this event in the past, has a permit from the city of New York to allow it, and they will have air filter equipment set up.  HOWEVER such equipment is not sufficient to protect employees and customers from tobacco smoke.

PLEASE, call and/or write Bill Marriott and the Marriott board of directors
PHONE:  1-800-621-0999
FAX to Bill Marriott:  1-301-380-3734

EXCERPTS from The Denver [Colorado] Channel [7], June 1, 2007.

Hilton Oliver, executive director of the Virginia Group to Alleviate Smoking in Public, denounced the legislation [HB 2422] as a retreat from the public health safeguards of the 1990 Clean Indoor Air Act.

"All this says is we're revoking part of this state law as long as you put a sign on the door," Oliver said in a telephone interview. "It's idiocy."

Eight months into Colorado's statewide smoking ban, patrons and staffers say it's changing the look of the "sports bar"
at this popular time of year for the hoop-addicted.

"We sold about 15 percent more food at the restaurant, which is a pretty significant increase for any restaurant,
I would think," said Matthew Brown, manager of the Cherry Cricket in Cherry Creek North.

"A lot more families (are) coming in now. Which, sometimes smoking would curtail the families from coming in in the past. 
And so, it's a welcome environment for everybody now. (It's) Not just the bar crowd."

Up to 20 percent of women who develop lung cancer have never smoked, US researchers found in a study that suggests secondhand smoke may be to blame.

"Philip Morris USA and the University of Virginia are announcing a $25 million partnership that we believe has the potential to reduce the harm caused by smoking.

The remaining $5 million will support the expansion of Philip Morris USA’s relationship with the McIntire School of Commerce."

At page 1478 of Judge Gladys Kessler's August 2006 Final Opinion, Judge Kessler found that the tobacco defendants, including Philip Morris, and Reynolds American, "suppressed, concealed and terminated scientific research" and "destroyed documents including scientific reports and studies," over the course of approximately 50 years.  This conduct constituted a separate violation of the Federal anti-racketeering statute, RICO. 

Therefore, it is quite ironic indeed that the president of a university which is presumably dedicated to higher learning and valid scientific research, would enter into a partnership with an adjudicated racketeer to support "independent" research.

Justice Moreno writes:
We reject the proposition advanced by defendants, based on Soliman v. Philip Morris, Inc. (9th Cir. 2002) 311 F.3d 966 (Soliman), that the statute of limitations should have commenced on the physical injury claims as soon as Grisham discovered or should have discovered she was addicted to cigarettes.

Statement from the Tobacco Product Liability Project, and for updates on the Engle case, TPLP: 
"Few expected the $145 billion punitive damages award to survive appeal.  Yet the real key to understanding the decision lies in the Court's use of the Latin phrase res judicata, meaning that the issue has been judged.  The Court's findings that cigarette manufacturers are negligent and that their products are defective, unreasonably dangerous, addictive, and the cause of 16 major diseases will carry over to individual claims for compensatory and punitive damages by upwards of 100,000 class members.  At trial, these class members will need only prove individual medical causation and reliance on any acts of fraud that may be alleged.  We expect tens of thousands of streamlined cases to be filed in Florida by this time next year."