Dan Walters: Taxes fed illegal sale of smokes
California's bad habit of settling political conflicts with blockbuster ballot measures began in 1978 with Proposition 13, the property tax limitation whose impacts continue to reverberate nearly three decades later. By 1988, a decade later, the syndrome was in full flower, with several dozen high-profile measures proposed. Not all qualified for the ballot, but tens of millions of dollars -- bi...
Philip Morris didn't deliberately boost nicotine
The recent Harvard University report that concluded Philip Morris USA and other tobacco companies have deliberately increased the amount of nicotine that smokers get from cigarettes over the past seven years, if true, raises legitimate public and scientific concerns. ("Help is smoke screen for global profit," by Allan M. Brandt, March 1). News of this report has increased the volume of those vo...
Chips to fish out the fake cigarettes
Every cigarette pack made in the UK will contain an electronic chip in future allowing Customs and other law enforcers to distinguish between legal and counterfeit cigarettes. The main tobacco companies, British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco and Gallaher are paying for the initiative including providing hundreds of hand-held electronic readers to Customs. The industry estimates that som...