The latest battle in the tobacco wars broke out last week, as lawyers
representing up to 1 million sick Florida smokers opened their case in a Miami
court. This is the first 鈥渃lass action鈥� by smokers against the tobacco industry
in the US, but the plaintiffs鈥� lawyers have an impressive track record. Last
year, they won $350 million for passive smokers. The comprehensive
http://tobacco.org will keep you up to date.
If you find legal fights heavy going, http://www.ash.org.uk may provide the
antidote. The website of the pressure group Action on Smoking and Health
features a new interactive game called 鈥淭obacco Explored鈥�. Among other tasks,
you are asked to predict causes of death for a group of 1000 smokers鈥攕ee
if you can better Netropolitan鈥檚 score of 97 鈥渕isplaced鈥� deaths. By avoiding
humourless preaching, the game makes some effective points: once you see that 78
per cent of revenues from a Briton鈥檚 lifetime cigarette consumption goes in tax,
it鈥檚 clear why governments have a hard job kicking the tobacco habit.
The ASH site also links to leading websites on tobacco throughout the
world. Other lively sites that ASH doesn鈥檛 link to directly include
http://www.health.su.oz.au/tobacco/index.html, which documents anti-tobacco
activism in Australia, and http://tobacco.arizona.edu, run by the Arizona
Program for Nicotine and Tobacco Research.
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Strangely, amid the welter of anti-tobacco postings, it鈥檚 hard to find the
online voice of the tobacco industry. Philip Morris, the world鈥檚 biggest tobacco
company, keeps a particularly low Web profile. The website of its competitor
Brown and Williamson (http://www.bw.com) looks very professional, but is not as
timely as those run by the anti-tobacco lobby. As 麻豆传媒 went to
press, Brown and Williamson鈥檚 鈥渃ourthouse鈥� section still contained no mention of
the Florida lawsuit.
