MASSACHUSETTS - Town's First TOTAL Tobacco Ban?

QUESTION:  We should believe the tobacco industry that denied for decades that tobacco caused cancer?  Sure, fruit and candy flavored tobacco products are not to attract the young....

"Massachusetts town mulls nation’s first total tobacco ban" PBS NewsHour 11/16/2014

Excerpt

WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour):  The town of Westminster, Massachusetts — population 7,300 — is a small, quiet community about an hour west of Boston.

When the local health board holds meetings, it usually happens here in this room, where you can get advice about things like septic tanks and mosquito control.  But not on this day.  This meeting Wednesday night had to be moved to the local elementary school because the town is up in arms.

MAN:  You people make me sick!

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  Why so mad?  That Board of Health is proposing to make Westminster the first town in the entire country to completely ban the sale of tobacco.

ANDREA CRETE, WESTMINSTER BOARD OF HEALTH:  It can be argued that the Board of Health permitting these establishments to sell these dangerous products that, when used as directed, kills 50 percent of its users, ethically goes against our public health mission.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  The town’s proposal would make it illegal to sell any product containing nicotine within city limits.  So no cigarettes, chewing tobacco, cigars, vaporizers.  You’d still be able to smoke or use tobacco in town, just not buy it.

ANDREA CRETE:  If we can prevent children from having access and exposure to tobacco and nicotine products and reduce the chances of them smoking or using them, then we’ve essentially saved lives.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  While it’s already illegal for kids to buy tobacco, the health board says the tobacco industry makes products like these — shiny, fruit flavored cigars and tobacco products — in order to lure kids into a lifetime habit.  The industry denies targeting kids.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  The effort began when one of the three health board members suggested the tobacco ban, following the lead of other health boards in other Massachusetts towns that had limited where residents could smoke or what kind of tobacco products they could buy.  Westminster’s volunteer board then consulted a specialist to examine the pros and cons of a total ban.

THE SLEEZE FILES - One New York County and Toxic Tobacco Bonds

"How One New York County Fell Into the Tobacco Debt Trap" by Cezary Podkul, ProPublica 10/23/2014

Excerpt

As they met at The Shamus, a favorite local lunch spot, on a September day a year ago, Niagara County officials considered some good news.  Thanks to low interest rates, they might be able to refinance a big chunk of Niagara's tobacco bonds – debts payable from the county's share of a massive 1998 legal settlement with Big Tobacco.

Eager to lower costs by replacing the bonds with less-expensive debt, they decided to move ahead.  As a bonus, they figured the county could raise some new money for projects like fixing up Niagara's jail.

But when details of the transaction became public last month, the biggest winner wasn't Niagara County, which received $2 million from the deal, but investors of Oppenheimer Funds, a large mutual fund manager that held deeply distressed Niagara tobacco bonds that were last in line for repayment.

Oppenheimer investors got $6.9 million for the bonds, which had been expected to default.  That's more than triple the county's take and $5.1 million more than the value Oppenheimer carried on its books, according to data from Morningstar, which tracks mutual fund holdings.

Why did the last-in-line investors get a $5.1 million windfall while the county got a mere $2 million?

The answer lies in the shifting world of tobacco bonds, where big investors are pressing governments like Niagara to bail out bets that have turned bad, owing to a drop in smoking and a parallel decline in the settlement payments that underpin the bonds.

ProPublica reported earlier how states, territories and counties have exposed themselves to $64 billion in tobacco debt by selling $3 billion in high-risk securities called capital appreciation bonds, or CABs, as part of "securitization" deals that mortgaged their annual tobacco payments for immediate cash.

The CABs are particularly toxic because no payments are required until the bonds mature, usually in 40 or 50 years.  In the meantime, they pile up huge sums of interest owed – so much that Niagara and several other counties were told last year that some of their CABs would never pay off.

Niagara is the first county to engineer a bailout.  In March, New Jersey pledged $406 million from future tobacco settlement income to rescue CABs.  Oppenheimer has sued to block a refinancing plan in Rhode Island, and New York's Chautauqua County is pursuing a $34 million deal similar to Niagara's.

Wall Street has taken to calling these deals "investor-led refinancings," a label that invites questions about who's getting the most benefit — taxpayers or bondholders.

As Niagara's case demonstrates, money for the bailouts isn't free.  It comes from new debt deals, like refinancings, or from future tobacco payments that otherwise would flow to the governments.  That means taxpayers benefit less than they otherwise might, even when some upfront cash is thrown in.

"The banker who sold this deal to Niagara should be canonized," said Sylvain Raynes, co-head of credit research firm R&R Consulting, who reviewed the transaction at ProPublica's request.  Raynes was one of six experts who questioned the size of the payout to Oppenheimer given the firm's own low valuation of the bonds.

Niagara's banker, Susan Schmelzer of the investment firm Raymond James, declined to comment.  Oppenheimer also declined to comment or answer written questions.

Deals like Niagara's also challenge a major selling point for tobacco securitizations, which in the years following the legal settlement were pitched as a type of insurance to protect taxpayers.  The idea was that governments would secure money upfront while investors took the risk of payments shrinking over time.

Bailouts flip the calculus.  "There really wasn't any kind of a risk transfer," said Edward Grebeck, a Connecticut debt consultant.  At the end of the day, he said, bondholders "are coming to the party to take money which you would think the taxpayers of Niagara County would be entitled to."

Governments have no legal obligation to cut investors' losses.  The bonds are what's called "non-recourse" debt, meaning taxpayers aren't on the hook to repay them.  Bondholders are owed money only from the settlement, which is supposed to flow in perpetuity and so far has paid out $101 billion.

AMERICA - CVS Stores Ending Tobacco Sales

IMHO a CEO with backbone.

"Considering the ethics and economics of CVS stores ending tobacco sales" PBS Newshour 2/5/2014

Excerpt

JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour):  Today’s announcement by CVS that it will stop selling tobacco products this fall resounded quickly and loudly in the world of business and public health.  CVS, which has 7,600 stores nationwide and is creating more in-store health clinics, said that it will lose about $2 billion annually.

But, in making the decision, the company’s chief executive, Larry Merlo, said — quote — “We have come to the conclusion that cigarettes have no place in a setting where health care is being delivered.”

For more on the significance of this decision and what was behind it, we turn to Dr. Ronald DePinho.  He’s the president of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas.  And Stephanie Strom, she’s a reporter with The New York Times.

WORLD - Smoking Booms in Developing World

"Where 'Smoke-Free' Isn't the Norm: Global Tobacco Use Booms in Developing World" PBS Newshour 8/20/2012

Excerpt

JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): Even as smoking declines in the U.S. and other countries, a new study published in the British medical journal "The Lancet" reveals that the use of tobacco in developing countries is booming.

The report titled "The Global Adult Tobacco Survey" looked at tobacco users in 14 developing nations and included data from the U.S. and the U.K. for comparison. It found that about half the men across the low- and middle-income nations use tobacco, mostly smoke products. The number was much smaller for women, 11 percent. But the survey found that women are start at younger ages than in the past.

Russia had the highest rates -- 60 percent of men and 22 percent of women used tobacco in some form. And China had the largest number of users, some 300 million.

In the meantime, health advocates in Australia, which wasn't included in the new study, scored a victory last week in their fight against tobacco use. The nation's high court upheld a new law requiring that cigarette boxes feature vivid images and warnings on them without company logos.

The World Health Organization says that if current trends continue, the global death toll from tobacco will reach eight million a year by 2030.

And we're joined now by Gary Giovino, the lead epidemiologist on the new study. He's the chair of the Department of Community Health and Health Behavior at the University at Buffalo in New York.

TOBACCO - Conspiratorial Behavior

"Industry Documents Expose Nordic Tobacco Companies' Conspiratorial Behavior" by Anne Landman, PR Watch 1/15/2012

In the 1970s, Nordic countries were among the first to adopt policies against tobacco, like bans on cigarette advertising, health warning labels and smoke-free laws, but U.S.-owned tobacco companies, and particularly Philip Morris, makers of Marlboro, became concerned such polices could spread to America and other developed countries where they sold cigarettes. Also, Europe's first product liability case against the tobacco industry occurred in Finland in 1988, when a smoker sued several companies claiming their products caused his illness, causing even more concern for global tobacco companies. To help escape product liability claims, Nordic tobacco companies -- like Amer Tobacco and Rettig, which distributed Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds brands, respectively -- long claimed to be ignorant of, and denied participation in the multinational tobacco companies' global strategies to undermine anti-tobacco policies, but industry documents reveal the truth -- that smaller Nordic tobacco companies did, in fact, participate in the multinational companies’ long-time conspiracy to deny the health dangers of smoking and undermine anti-tobacco policies, helping delay key effective tobacco control measures, and particularly smoke-free laws, for years.

IT'S ALL LIES! It's a world-wide conspiracy to harm hard-working job-creating companies from making more money! Tobacco does not cause cancer!!! The entire world's science is wrong or lying. - SARCASM OFF

RANT - Harry and Louise Health Care

"HARRY AND LOUISE HEATH CARE - Privatization is Theft" by Raleigh Myers

In general everything that has been privatized has been a disaster from water works to transportation. Why then are we putting up with the corporatization of health care = misery for profit. When Nixon began with the HMO crisis we should have used the rule of thumb: If the GOP wants it, it has to be bogus.

TOBACCO OWNED HMOs Harry and Louise should have been a tip off. The appeal to the superstitious has in essence out noised the fact that the creators of that 'your true choice' deception management campaign have been able to capture the ownership of the health care pie and now we have triage through arbitrage, greenshades deciding health care matters rather than doctors. Also you can pay a thousand dollars for a room that cost you one hundred dollars in a hospital that you used to own before privatization and your family doctor has been hijacked.

But we fall short of realizing the danger of this group of later day pirates controlling who lives or dies literally _ monopoly cartel food production and distribution, to tobacco owned health care systems for example, with the same stockholder, bond holder, arbitrageurs, Organized Usury owning the whole show. In other words their ideal is to get civilization to work for pesticide contaminated food(eugenics), get them addicted to tobacco and profit while they battle for their lives in a privatized health care system, triage through arbitrage. This is not so different from the morgue answering the phone with 'You stab em we slab em' while they get you to vote against your own self interests.

The Schwarzenegger Romney health care for profit. "Governor Schwarzenegger's proposal would make Californians pay tens of billions to insurance companies for defective coverage. What he forgot to mention was that most people bankrupted by illness had exactly the kind of faulty coverage he wants to force Californians to buy. "Then, the tipoff: 'You must let everyone make their profits,'he declared. "Come again? It's insurance companies' bloated overhead and record profits that are the biggest driver of health care cost increases. Of course, part of that bloat comes from the $3.5 million the health industry has contributed to Arnold's political campaigns.

The profits in the pharmaceutical war against the people are interesting.

AARP and Social Security Privatization our 70s version = Organized Usury's theft in real time.

Organized Usury or organized money as FDR put it, is the key to planet destruction.

Profit for some or care for all?

When it comes to Corporatism the only way out is to begin subtracting from it Gandhi style.

The macro mode is to change the way we interface with the planet.