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My friend the ghost of Tom Paine says that tobacco corporations are fronts for drug dealers that poison and addict people, and sabotage the Constitution. He does not believe that we should allow such corporations to exist. The only conclusion a reasonable Person can come to, he says, is that we should revoke the charters of these corporations, put their executives in jail, and divvy up the assets among their victims.

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

The case had been settled only minutes ago, and now jurors for Mendoza v. Contico were seated in a room outfitted with movie theater chairs and plugs for devices like VCRs. They were in the ''Ceremonial Court'' in El Paso, where victorious lawyers often hold post-trial press conferences.

Many individuals and organizations within communities of color in the United States are concerned about the content and form of negotiations that are currently underway between the tobacco industry and attorneys general and lawyers for victims of tobacco.

In honor of the United Nations General Assembly Special Session to mark the fifth anniversary of the Rio Earth Summit, this month's Greenwash Award goes to the World Business Council on Sustainable Development (WBCSD).

Berne Froese-Germain and Martia Moll, two researchers with the Canadian Teachers Federation, outline the scope of the problem.

On May 23, 1996, Mr. Tom Beanal, leader of the Amungme Tribal Council and principal in a $6 billion suit against Freeport-McMoRan, spoke at Loyola University, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.

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.

Gold is an intoxicating substance. Witness the rapidity with which investors threw their money into a relatively obscure Canadian mining corporation called Bre-X, when that company claimed to have discovered the largest single deposit of the metal in history.

Excerpted from the San Francisco's Forum On Global Tobacco Control Policies. Dr. Judith Mackay looks at the ''New Opium War.''