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As more than 160 nations prepare to sign a landmark treaty to control tobacco, the Bush administration is waging a last-ditch effort to gut the accord of its strongest provisions, including a worldwide ban on tobacco advertising.

The nation's tobacco companies should forfeit $289 billion in profits for a scheme to deceive and defraud smokers and the general public, the Justice Department says in court filings.

LEXINGTON, Ky., Feb. 26 The tobacco patches that cover the hilltops near here are dusted with snow, their sheds locked up till the spring thaw. But what is occupying farmers and politicians across Kentucky, the Carolinas and the rest of tobacco country seems as improbable as a blizzard in August.

>"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.