Eleven years after a federal court ordered the country’s biggest cigarette producers to produce a series of warning ads informing people about the dangers of their products, Big Tobacco is finally preparing to publish those “corrective statements” in TV ads, newspapers, online, and in cigarette packaging. [More]
cigarettes
Big Tobacco Will Admit In New Ads That All Cigarettes Are Bad For You, Intentionally Addictive
By 10.4.17
FDA Considering Lowering Level Of Nicotine Allowed In Cigarettes To Reduce Addiction
By 7.28.17
Could your future cigarette purchase come with a little less nicotine? It’s possible, as the FDA revealed today a new multi-year roadmap intended to protect kids and reduce tobacco-related disease and death. [More]
Beware Scams Promising Payouts From Tobacco Settlement
By 6.15.17
If you’ve seen ads promising to set you up with payments from the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement — a Nov. 1998 accord that requires tobacco companies to pay $10 billion annually to 46 states and Washington, D.C. — don’t fall for it. These ads are just a big, fat scam. [More]
Federal Appeals Court: After 11 Years, There’s No More Reason For Big Tobacco To Delay Warning Ads
By 4.25.17 — Updated: 5.9.17
It’s been more than a decade since a federal court ruled against the tobacco industry and ordered the nation’s largest cigarette producers to produce a new series of warning ads. Those warnings have yet to happen, as Big Tobacco has repeatedly appealed just about every aspect of the ruling. Today, one federal appeals panel handed the industry some very minor concessions while basically telling the companies to quit it already with all the legal butt-dragging. [More]
Walgreens Still Not Kicking Cigarette Habit, But Makes Some Products Less Visible
By 1.26.17
Three years after Walgreens said it would evaluate whether or not to continue selling cigarettes, and a year after it said it needed a bit more time to come to a resolution, shareholders for the drugstore chain are questioning the company’s choice to continue selling these cancer-causing products. [More]
Man Says E-Cigarette Explosion Destroyed 7 Of His Teeth
By 1.18.17
A fiery explosion anywhere on your body will never feel good, but one Idaho man says he suffered what we can only imagine to be an intense pain when his e-cigarette exploded inside his mouth, obliterating seven of his teeth and leaving him with second-degree burns. [More]
British American Tobacco Actually Buying Reynolds For Real This Time, For $49 Billion
By 1.17.17
It looks like the end of a months-long, will they-won’t they saga is finally drawing to a close: North-Carolina based R.J. Reynolds American has finally agreed to let British American Tobacco buy out the remaining part of the company it doesn’t already own for $49 billion. [More]
Are Cigarette Warnings That Show Actual Harm More Effective At Getting People To Quit?
By 12.13.16
Imagine you’re holding a package of cigarettes you’re thinking about buying. Which would encourage you to quit: a label with a written warning, or a label with a photo of a throat cancer patient and former smoker who’s had a larygnectomy? According to a new study, labels with photos that show the harm done by smoking are more effective at dissuading people from lighting up. [More]
We Have Sugar To Thank For The American Tobacco Industry
By 12.9.16
If you’ve ever tried to give up eating sugar, you know that the sweet stuff has a strong hold on our brains. What you may not realize, though, is that sugar’s addictive and delicious power also is part of another common addiction that we’ve perfected and exported: tobacco. [More]
Philip Morris CEO: We Might Stop Making Traditional Cigarettes Someday
By 11.30.16
After decades of making money off brands like Marlboro, Philip Morris is looking to shift its focus away from traditional cigarettes and toward smokeless products. As part of that effort, the company’s CEO says it may stop making cigarettes altogether — eventually. [More]
British American Tobacco Offers $47B For Reynolds American
By 10.21.16
More than a decade after British American Tobacco bought a roughly 42% stake in tobacco biggie R.J. Reynolds American, the London-based company is back for the rest, offering $47 billion to create the world’s largest tobacco company. [More]
Pediatricians, American Cancer Society Take FDA To Court Over Delayed Graphic Warning Labels On Cigarettes
By 10.4.16
It’s been more than seven years since the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act became law, directing the Food and Drug Administration to bolster warnings on tobacco labels and to create graphic warning images to be printed on cigarette packaging. Even though the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the tobacco industry’s challenge to these labels in 2013, they have yet to materialize. In an attempt to force the FDA’s hand, a coalition of doctors, public health advocates, and anti-smoking groups have filed a lawsuit against the government. [More]
Philip Morris Wants Smokers To Heat Up Tobacco, Not Burn It
By 9.29.16
Tobacco giant Philip Morris is working on the future of smoking, and it’s not cigarettes or vaping. The company is investing heavily in a product with the baffling name IQOS, a device that lets users heat up and inhale mini stacks of tobacco, without actually setting them on fire. Will “reduced harm” products like this catch on with the public all over the world? [More]
Could Using The “World’s Ugliest” Color Stop People From Smoking?
By 6.21.16
Opaque Couché, described as looking like “death,” “filth,” and “lung tar,” is widely considered the world’s ugliest color. With a reputation like that you wouldn’t expect the hue to be used much, but it is — as a way to deter consumers from purchasing cigarettes in some areas of the world. [More]
Is It Inevitable That Big Tobacco Will Shift To Big Marijuana?
By 4.20.16
Four states and Washington, D.C., have already legalized recreational marijuana use, while medical marijuana use is currently legal (or about to become legal) in around 20 states — not to mention the many states that have decriminalized the drug. At the same time, tobacco use continues to decline and the few remaining cigarette giants can only merge with each other so many times. So is Big Tobacco destined to become Big Marijuana? [More]
California Could Be Second State To Raise Minimum Smoking Age To 21
By 3.4.16
Just days after the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors voted to increase the legal smoking age from 18 to 21, the state’s Assembly passed a package of tobacco bills, including a measure that would raise the state smoking age to 21 and ban the use of electronic cigarettes in public places where traditional smoking is prohibited. [More]
San Francisco Could Raise Smoking Age To 21
By 3.1.16
The city of San Francisco could become the latest municipality to increase the minimum age to buy tobacco products to 21 today as city officials are poised to vote on a measure that would do just that. [More]
Walgreens Refuses To Kick Its Cigarette Habit
By 1.27.16
Nearly two years ago, CVS announced it would finally be giving up tobacco once and for all, leading Walgreens to say it was “evaluating” its future with the cancer-causing products. Now that the country’s biggest drugstore chain has had some time to kick back and ruminate on the matter, it’s decided… well, it’s decided to continue selling cigarettes while it thinks some more. [More]
