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The tobacco industry offers a compelling case study in the breakdown of democratic principles. Facing Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation of their deadly product in the US, tobacco giants Philip Morris and RJR Nabisco set the pace for the spending frenzy of 1996. Philip Morris was the #1 contributor overall in the federal election cycle, and spent over $12 million to lobby federal officials in just the first six months of the election year. RJR Nabisco was a top corporate donor, especially of unregulated ''soft'' money, and is a pioneer in ''astroturf'' lobbying to rally its consumers behind the corporate agenda.

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.

WASHINGTON, DC -- Governor Gray Davis and the California Legislature have done the tobacco industry a favor and cheated the state's kids and taxpayers by agreeing to a budget that slashes funding for the state's highly successful tobacco prevention program and fails to increase the cigarette tax. With this shortsighted budget, California will cease to be the nation's leader in tobacco prevention, and the state will pay a high price as a result. We urge California's leaders to reverse course by increasing the cigarette tax and using some of the revenue to restore funding for tobacco prevention.

Ottawa (May 13, 2002) -- Sluts Against Butts, a group of women bent on holding the tobacco industry responsible for the death, disease, and addiction it causes, today announced the launch of their website: www.slutsagainstbutts.com.

Negotiations on the world's first international tobacco control treaty, The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, are being held in Geneva, Switzerland, March 18-23, 2002. This is an excellent opportunity for public health and tobacco control advocates to voice their concerns over the Bush Administration's attempts to weaken the treaty.

The $145 billion punitive damage award against the tobacco industry in the Engle case in Florida should be celebrated as evidence of a civil justice system that works, proof of the value of juries and a major public health achievement.

India (and South East Asia) are a huge market for tobacco. Cigarette companies are also targetting youth between 15-25. Two countries where tobacco sales are expected to zoom up are India and Indonesia.

According to the World Health Organisation, tobacco use is set to cause an epidemic of heart disease and cancer in developing countries. Currently, 4 million people die each year from tobacco use, but that number is set to rise to 10 million a year by 2030. In addition to premature death, smokers suffer from an ongoing degradation of their health due to smoking.

When Tommy Chui failed to show up at the grand opening of his wife's new boutique in downtown Singapore, alarm bells rang 1,600 miles away in the offices of Hong Kong's Independent Commission Against Corruption.

As a new round of negotiations on an international treaty controlling the spread of tobacco use opens in Geneva, it is still unclear what the Bush administration's position will be. What is clear, however, is that international tobacco control will almost certainly not be a priority for the Bush administration.

An international conspiracy to poison millions of men, women and teenagers around the world is killing four million people a year. By 2030, it will take 10 million lives annually, 70 percent of them in developing countries. This ''conspiracy'' is run by Big Tobacco: companies like Philip Morris, British American Tobacco and R.J. Reynolds, to name just a few.

Policy making authority in the Bush administration on tobacco issues will rest largely with the Department of Health and Human Services, the Justice Department, the U.S. Trade Representative and, above all, the White House. Many key officials in these agencies have ties to the tobacco industry or have suggested sympathy for positions favored by the industry.

The government of New South Wales has made a large investment in the Altria Group, which owns Philip Morris. Critics say the government can't preach health and invest in tobacco simultaneously.

BOSTON (November 14, 2001) -- With the next round of negotiations for the world's first public health treaty set to begin next week in Geneva, the European Union position on key issues in the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) is being roundly criticized by NGOs around the world.

World Health Organization investigators say Philip Morris Co. and other multinational cigarette makers worked for years to discredit the agency and thwart its efforts to curb smoking around the globe.

Immediately after the Persian Gulf War ended in 1991, billions of Winstons and other American-brand cigarettes began turning up inside Iraq. Even now,the flow continues.Under U.S. trade sanctions, companies that make cigarettes in the U.S. can't knowingly sell them in the Iraqi market -- either directly or through intermediaries -- unless they obtain a license from the U.S. government.