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>"It's a lot easier to sell cigarettes around the world when you have the US government on your team." Tell the U.S. Government to support the Tobacco Control Treaty and stop spreading cigarette deaths around the world

Kenneth Clarke, former chancellor and deputy chairman of British American Tobacco, faces severe embarrassment today over revelations that he criticised companies investing in Burma -- where BAT has a joint venture with the military junta.

LONDON -- Legislation to ban tobacco advertising in Britain cleared its last parliamentary hurdle on Monday and is set to become law.

GENEVA (October 16, 2002) -- The United States delegation negotiating the proposed tobacco treaty, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), today continued to take positions that protect the interests of the tobacco industry rather than public health around the world. The delegation spoke out during the negotiations against a provision of the treaty that would allow a ban on the advertising of tobacco in nations whose constitutions allow one.

GENEVA -- Warning that delay means more deaths, World Health Organization chief Gro Harlem Brundtland urged governments Tuesday to agree to sweeping anti-smoking restrictions and tighter controls on the tobacco industry.

Anti-tobacco campaigners argue that profitable alternatives to tobacco exist but have received little attention. Through their development aid programmes, industrialised countries have helped developing countries to increase their output of tobacco, rather than help them switch to suitable alternatives. Through the imposition of structural adjustment programmes, the World Bank has encouraged governments to support farmers who grow crops for export. While the Bank no longer lends directly to tobacco production projects, its adjustment policies have encouraged additional output.

Tanzania, a country twice the size of California, is located in East Africa, just south of Kenya. Last year I was there for 3 months researching the impact of World Bank and IMF economic policies on the country's small farmers who make up the overwhelming majority of the population. Recently, Tanzania overtook South Africa to become Africa's third biggest producer of tobacco, after Zimbabwe and Malawi.

The Tobacco Free Coalition sponsored a ground breaking forum to set an agenda for global tobacco control policies in San Francisco on Monday May 19, 1997. At the Forum the Coalition presented its Global Tobacco Control Policy Framework which outlines actions that can be done locally to address the global impact of tobacco.

Here are some facts about the effects of smoking and tobacco on Asians and Pacific Islanders.

Sent approximately February 6, 1997 -- giving RJ Reynolds 30 days to withdraw Camel mentholated cigarettes. As a result, RJ Reynolds met with Rev. Brown and NAAAPI. The issue is still under debate.

Asian community leaders -- mindful of ''World No Tobacco Day'' on May 31 -- say their battle to reduce high smoking rates among Asian Americans is making inroads but can't succeed as long as cigarette advertisers keep targeting their neighborhoods.

While the tobacco settlement in the US is termed, ''a landmark agreement once unimaginable'' and a ''turn around'' we here in Asia cannot remotely share in the rejoicing. On the contrary what it means is we have to brace ourselves for a further onslaught of more aggressive marketing of American cigarettes here.

''The unheralded scandal of the tobacco industry is the damage to land in developing nations'' was the message of a presentation delivered at the Fifth World Conference on Smoking and Health in Canada on July 12, 1983.(1) This discussion paper will adddress, in more detail, the links with tobacco and deforestation, pesticide use, land use, environmental degradation, fires, litter and pollution.

According to the World Health Organization, in 25 years tobacco related disease will kill 8.4 million people annually -- more than 3.5 times the number of people it kills today. Most of this increase will occur in developing countries where the Tobacco Industry has been working hard to open markets to promote its product, especially to women and youth, to ensure its profits.

Here is a statement from John R. Garrison, the CEO of the American Lung Association on the global tobacco bailout.

The next step in the national Say No to Menthol Joe Community Crusade is to apply pressure to the Walgreens Pharmacy chain to get them to stop carrying Camel menthols. Remember we are not going against all Camels in this action because the other versions have loyal followings. We are going against Camel menthols and menthol lights to get a clear victory against Big Tobacco.