Contents & Links

2012 legislation in Virginia mentioned with link on home page

2011 legislation in Virginia

2010 legislation in Virginia

2009 legislation -- only surviving bill is NOW IN EFFECT -- passage of no-smoking in restaurants, bars effective Dec. 1, 2009
signed by Governor Timothy Kaine on Monday, March 9, 2009, 2:00 pm EDT

2009 Excerpted Legislative news, editorials, letters on legislation

Other History:

*** 2008 legislation and Excerpted News reports and Editorials, Letters to the Editor
***2008 RIP (Reduced Ignition Propensity) legislation,
excerpted news reports including Kentucky lawsuit

Virginia 2008, USA -- History

***Norfolk, VA City Council in October, 2007 supported no-smoking in all city restaurants 7-1, but as of March 25th has rejected that; in April 2008 they considered tobacco industry supported legislation, following the lead of state Delegate Terrie Suit who led the charge to defeat 12 state no-smoking bills in February at the state level.
***Norfolk, VA September 29, 2008 -- at a retreat will reconsider idea of having restaurants that allow smoking to post a "Smoking Permitted" sign.
***Terrie Suit announced in late summer, 2008, that she would exchange her House of Delegates job in mid-stream for a lobbyist's hat. The state held an expensive special election to fill her spot.

***2008 state No-Smoking Legislation was blocked by 8 people: chief dictator Speaker of the House William Howell, willing servant Chairwoman Terrie Suit, and their six little dictators in subcommittee: Thomas Gear, David Albo, Thomas Wright, John Cosgrove, Watkins Abbitt, Danny Bowling. All of these are Republicans, except for Bowling, who told the press he received "orders" from the Republican leadership to fall in line or else. There were 12 no-smoking bills (8 in the House, 4 in the Senate) -- sponsored both by Republicans and Democrats, and with wide bi-partisan support in the Virginia Senate.
A Letter to the Editor, Virginia Beach Beacon, April, writer, Hilton Oliver, begins:

In a democracy, voters have every right to be furious when elected representatives place their personal ambitions ahead of their constituents. Such is the case with Delegate Terrie L. Suit, who is personally responsible for killing all of the bills last session which would have banned smoking in restaurants and other public places. Surveys have shown that seventy-five to eighty percent of her constituents support such a ban.

Philip Morris apparently using other groups to help defeat health care reform nationally

Newest 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010 Entries of General News

including a press release from the US Surgeon General on secondhand smoke

Newest Entries of General News, 2008-2009
Newest Entries on Virginia Legislation in 2009
Review of 2007 Entries

Secondhand Smoke
Restaurants
Some smoke-free Restaurants, Apartments, USA

    Questions and resolutions on this have been presented at tobacco company shareholder meetings
    There was legislation on this in Virginia in 2008

Litigation

Snus -- starter to addiction for kids, poisonous to children

World Health Organization

Other web sites

Nicotine Cartel, including
     Tobacco company Shareholder Meeting reports

FDA Legislation -- 2009

Advertising

Dr. K. Heinz Ginzel on secondhand smoke, tobacco, and related subjects
After Some 100 Million Deaths -- What's Next?

Comments regarding the Philip Morris stand on continuing to make addictive and lethal products

   Can Children Stop Big Tobacco?, A School Project
       Workplaces and Public Places Must be Made Smoke-free
       Protein, An Alternative Tobacco Crop
        Commenting on The Philip Morris web site

John worked effectively, and compassionately, to provide smoke-free air for everyone to breathe, to help addicted persons to free themselves of the addiction, and to help prevent the tyranny of the tobacco industry from smothering us all.

Secondhand smoke, passive smoke, Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS):
December 2010, Press Release on Report from the US Surgeon General
Articles, 2010-2011, linked to tuberculosis; Virginia musicians suffer from cancer brought on by secondhand smoke where they performed. Waitresses died from secondhand smoke where they worked.

Fact sheets:
Secondhand Smoke Fact Sheet
Secondhand smoke can increase the chances of stroke and other life threatening conditions including fatal asthma attacks, causes immediate impacts on health, lowers test scores, kills via several types of cancers, respiratory diseases, and cardiovascular diseases.

This fact sheet also gives information on the tobacco industry's efforts to undermine research and public opinion on secondhand smoke.

A unanimous decision by the California Air Resources Board listed secondhand smoke as a toxic air contaminant, January, 2006. The most significant new finding is that young women exposed to secondhand smoke increase their risk of developing breast cancer between 68% and 120%. Breast cancer kills about 40,000 women in the United States each year. You may access the report at http://www.arb.ca.gov/toxics/ets/finalreport/finalreport.htm

New findings in this report, Part B, include:

-- a causal link between secondhand smoke exposure and pre-term delivery;
-- asthma induction in adults;
-- breast cancer in younger, primarily premenopausal women; and
-- altered vascular properties.

Part A of the report contains the first ever outdoor monitoring of secondhand smoke exposure near designated smoking areas in California.
The report has gone through an extensive, four-year scientific review process, including public comment and independent peer review.

Secondhand smoke case -- settled favorable to the plaintiff, January 19, 2006 shortly before it was due to go to trial, and 10 years after Larry Ray Thaxton had filed the case. A life-long non-smoker, Thaxton died of lung cancer at the age of 40, and his widow continued the case.

Nations either 100% no-smoking, or with few exceptions smoke-free including restaurants and bars:

Bhutan, Demark, England, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norhern Ireland, Hong Kong, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Scotland, Slovenia, South Africa, Sweden, Tasmania, Uganda, Uruguay, Wales

Parts of: Australia, Germany

Under consideration: Czech Republic, Turkey

Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, North West Territories, Nova Scotia, Nunavut, Ontario; Quebec considering this.

Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland (Feb.1 all workplaces), Massachusetts, Montana , Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington

Smoke-Free Environments Law Project in Michigan addresses the problems of secondhand smoke seeping from one apartment or condominium into another one. This presents problems for immediate and long range health, as well as the hazard of fire, and also the fact that if smoke can seep into your apartment, so can other toxic fumes.

Testimony from dying non-smoker on smoking in restaurants

Virginia (tobacco state in the USA) Indoor Clean Air Act;

Attempts to pass smoke-free restaurant legislation in
    Virginia,
          2010
       2009 -- passage of no-smoking in restaurants and bars effective Dec. 1, 2009
         2008,
         2007, and
         current Virginia law;
            Philip Morris lobbied against the Virginia legislation
            despite promises not to do this
    North Carolina, 2007, RJ. Reynolds lobbied against NC legislation

Movies -- Does the tobacco industry promote smoking in movies & tv in order to "normalize" smoking around other people?

Articles
Further information, see Smoke Free Movies

Tobacco Scam: How Big Tobacco Uses and Abuses the Restaurant Industry, available at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine.

Montana State Univeristy
http://www.montana.edu/wwwcxair/facts_smoke.html

The Burning Brain Society, India
http://www.burningbrain.org/

"It really means a logjam has been cleared," said Edward Sweda, senior staff attorney for the Tobacco Products Liability Project at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston. "Many of these cases were on hold," he said, "waiting for a definitive ruling one way or the other on the question of whether the 1997 settlement had a provision, as the plaintiffs were claiming, that the companies agreed to the fact that secondhand smoke causes a variety of diseases."

Secondhand Smoke Lawsuit settled favorable to plaintiff one week before trial date. Larry Ray Thaxton died at age 40, his wife continued suit begun in 1996.
For current information on these suits, please see the Public Health Advocacy Institute of Northeastern University.

For up to date information, please see The Tobacco Product Liability Project.
For background information, also
see 2010-2011 Newest Entries ,
see Newest Entries for 2009 ,
and Newest Entries 2009, 2008 ,
and individual listings such as
Patricia Henley and others,
as well as the cases related to the Engle class action suit in Florida.

Evans v. Lorillard, 2010

The $152 million award in Evans v. Lorillard is nearly 10 times larger than 2009’s top verdict of $15.7 million in a patent case. The historic win against the third-largest cigarette maker in the nation came after thousands of working hours and late nights at the attorneys’ downtown Boston law firm. Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, January 20, 2011.

Tobacco Product Liability Project
2010 -- Juries in Florida say tobacco companies must pay for their actions.

December 8, 2010
Attorney James Gustafson has just finished up a huge and historic wrongful death suit against R.J. Reynolds. A Florida jury awarded $8 million in compensatory damages and another $72 million in punitive damages to Diane Webb, whose father, James Cayce Horner, smoked up to two packages of cigarettes a day until he died of lung cancer.

November 20, 2009
Florida jury says Philip Morris must pay $300 million for addicting ex-smoker who has severe respiratory problems from smoking. Web editor's note: It would seem that the least Philip Morris could do is to pay immediately for the lung transplant and all associated medical costs of the woman who is suffering from being addicted to and smoking Philip Morris products. She may not live through the appeals.

October 19, 2009
Massachusetts' high court today rewrote state law and ruled that cigarette maker Philip Morris may have to pay for diagnostic chest exams so smokers can get early warning they have developed lung cancer. ...

Justice Francis X. Spina of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in allowing a 2006 lawsuit filed against Philip Morris to move forward, noted, "Our tort law developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries …We must adapt to the growing recognition that exposure to toxic substances and radiation may cause substantial injury which should be compensable even if the full effects are not immediately apparent."

March 16, 2009: Light cigarette case -- Aspinall, et. al. v. Philip Morris, et al.
Comments by Edward L. Sweda, Jr., Senior Attorney, Tobacco Products Liability Project:

Today’s opinion by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) provides a green light for the plaintiffs who are suing Philip Morris for its light cigarette scam. The consumer protection lawsuit, Aspinall, et al. v. Philip Morris, et al., can proceed toward trial after the company’s summary judgment motion was denied. Following the December 2008 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that a similar light cigarette lawsuit from Maine was not pre-empted by the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act, the SJC was left to consider the argument by Philip Morris that, because the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) had allegedly permitted the use of the descriptors “light” and “low-tar,” the lawsuit should be dismissed. Philip Morris had argued that its conduct had been “permitted” by the FTC and, thus, was exempted pursuant to Mass. General Laws chapter 93A, section 3.

The SJC firmly rejected Philip Morris’ argument, ruling that the “defendants have failed to meet their burden of showing that they were given affirmative permission to use the descriptors at issue here and therefore the statutory exemption applies.”

I am delighted that we are closer to the day here in Massachusetts when Philip Morris will be held accountable at trial here for its reprehensible misconduct regarding its light cigarette scam.

ENGLE Trial, Spin Offs from Engle, Bond Cap Protection, etc.
November, March, 2009:

November 20, 2009
Florida jury says Philip Morris must pay $300 million for addicting ex-smoker who has severe respiratory problems from smoking.

A Vector Group unit (Chesterfield cigarettes) must pay about $700,000 to the family of a retired trucking company supervisor who died of lung cancer after smoking for 55 years, a Florida jury ruled.

A Floria Republican Senator has introduced a bill to place a $100 million appeals-bond cap on all collective lawsuits filed against all tobacco companies -- making what opponents call a free gift to tobacco companies.

February, 2009:

A Florida jury in Fort Lauderdale decided in favor of Elaine Hess, widow of Stuart Hess, and against Philip Morris USA. Hess died of lung cancer in 1997, aged 55, having smoked 40 years, addicted to cigarettes manufactured by Philip Morris. PMUSA is appealing this verdict, in the first of potentially thousands of cases to go to trial in Florida.

Judge David Miller ruled that the Rosenblatts should receive $218 million for their work over several years in fighting for sick smokers against the tobacco industry.

Earlier update, October 2007, Decision handed down from the United States Supreme Court, rejecting tobacco industry pleas to "prevent smokers in potentially thousands of Florida lawsuits from taking advantage of jury findings against the industry." [Bloomberg]
         July 6, 2006, Decision from Florida Supreme Court
         Page 1
         Page 2
         Page 3
         Bond Cap Protection background

Philip Morris lost bid to have Lights cigarette lawsuit filed in federal, rather than state court, June 11, 2007.

Patricia Henley defeated Philip Morris! March 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Philip Morris, and had to pay more than $16 million to Patricia Henley, who has lung cancer, and planned to give much of the money to help children not smoke, and to help those children with respiratory diseases.

"This is a good day for the children," said [Patricia] Henley, who had long complained that her case would never end. "This is punishment money from the tobacco industry, but it needs to be turned into money that's going to help people."

Richard and Judy Boeken defeated Philip Morris! On March 20, 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider the appeal of Philip Morris to overturn the decision against them. In July, 2007, the son, Dylan, won against Philip Morris which sought a trial on all issues. The judge, David L. Minning, noted, "This court concludes that (Philip Morris) has not demonstrated that relitigation of issues, other than issues of causation and damages, is appropriate in this case." The court case of Dylan Boeken is scheduled for January 7, 2008.

Jesse Williams defeated Philip Morris -- Oregon Supreme Court

January 31, 2008, The case was sent by the U.S. Supreme Court back to the Oregon Supreme Court , which upheld the jury's original punitive damages decision of $79.5 million against Philip Morris, and noted the lower court judge was correct in not issuing the jury instruction in question due to Oregon law, etc.

2006: "In an opinion expressing contempt for the lethal business practices of Philip Morris, the Oregon Supreme Court today [February 2, 2006] affirmed an appeals court ruling restoring a 1999 punitive damages award of $79.5 million in the lung cancer wrongful death trial of Jesse Williams."

Betty Bullock defeated Philip Morris! On April 21, 2006 the Court of Appeal of the State of California upheld a $28 million punitive damages award in the case of Betty Bullock v. Philip Morris U.S.A., Inc., concluding "that the refusal of Philip Morris's proposed jury instructions on punitive damages was proper" and also held that "the extreme reprehensibility of Philip Morris's conduct justifies a ratio of punitive damages to compensatory damages significantly greater than a single-digit."

Leslie Whiteley and her husband defeated Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds!
October 15, 2009, a victory for the Whiteley family in their long battle for justice. The Appeals Court upheld a California jury's multi-million dollar verdict against R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris.

Illinois Trial, Philip Morris

Kansas

Smuggling -- Tobacco linked with terrorism

Excerpt from the Postgraduate Medical Journal 2004; 80:477, article entitled: Tobacco is a "weapon of mass destruction". Should western countries be invaded for that? Article by P. Chaturvedi, Department of Surgery, Tata Memorial Hospital, Parel, Mumbai, India.

The abstract and full text may be found at http://pmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/extract/80/946/477?eaf

April 2007, New Jersey

Resolutions, all opposed by Philip Morris/Altria, included ones on informing children of their rights to seek legal relief from secondhand smoke, getting out of the tobacco business by 2010, and campaigns to stop youth from using tobacco products.

April 2006, New Jersey

Resolutions, all opposed by Philip Morris/Altria, included ones on fire-safe cigarettes, medical diagnostic code on secondhand smoke which PM secretly worked to eliminate, and more.

Philip Morris, Altria, April 2005, New Jersey

           2000 - Philip Morris 2000 shareholders' meeting
           1999 - PM
             1995 - Philip Morris

The 2012 meeting

The 2011 meeting, May 6, again at the headquarters', and No Smoking in the meeting.

The two resolutions presented and the opposing statements of Reynolds are given on the linked page.

No smoking in the meeting.
The text of the three Health resolutions presented at the 2008 meeting, and the opposing statements of Reynolds are given at the linked web page.

-- Human Rights Protocols for the Company and its Suppliers
-- Endorsement of Health Care Principles
-- Two Cigarette Approach to Marketing

May 11, 2007, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Questions posed to the CEO

        May 2006, Norh Carolina
        Resolutions, all opposed by Reynolds American, include ones on flavored cigarettes
        attracting youthful smokers, and the company opposition to
        no-smoking laws and cigarette tax increases.

        Reynolds American, May 2005, North Carolina

RJ Reynolds 2000 shareholders' meeting
1996 - RJR