Gates, Bloomberg Create $4M Fund to Fight Big Tobacco

[misskit]

LONDON—
Developing countries facing potentially pricey legal challenges from big tobacco firms are to get help from a new $4-million fund created by the philanthropists Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg.

Announcing the creation of the anti-tobacco trade litigation fund on Wednesday, Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said countries with limited resources should not be bullied into making bad health policy choices.

"This new fund is going to help countries who are sued by the tobacco industry fight back in court and win," Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York and one of the world's richest people, told reporters in a telebriefing.

Bloomberg and Gates, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, cited examples such as Uruguay, which since 2010 has been fighting a legal challenge by the cigarette-maker Philip Morris International against the use of graphic health warnings on tobacco products.

Australia also has been fending off a World Trade Organization challenge and a legal challenge by Philip Morris against its anti-tobacco laws.

The tobacco industry's use of international trade agreements to threaten and prevent countries from passing tobacco control laws was unacceptable, Bloomberg said.

"This is not about trade," he said. "No one is a stronger supporter of capitalism and trade than I am. This is about sovereignty and whether a country has the right to set its own public health policies."

More here: Gates, Bloomberg Create $4M Fund to Fight Big Tobacco

[harrybarracuda]

John Oliver did a great pisstake of them a few weeks ago....

[thaimeme]

Ahhh.....
Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, et al.
Champions of the people.

Indeed.

[BobR]

Last time I checked, smoking was voluntary, they can no longer advertise so there are no ads directed at children, and children under 18 are not allowed to buy cigarettes.

What is there to fight?

[harrybarracuda]

Last time I checked, smoking was voluntary, they can no longer advertise so there are no ads directed at children, and children under 18 are not allowed to buy cigarettes.

What is there to fight?

Suggest you watch the video I posted.

[BobR]

^ Great video, but there is only one thing more stupid than someone who smokes; it's a government that allows itself to be sued by a tobacco company.

"we assert sovereign immunity and refuse to answer, discuss or litigate this claim."

What I did get out of that video was that the trend towards one World government and corporatism is frightening. That's what NAFTA, EU and ASEAN are steps towards.

Thanks, that guy is quite talented an funny. He has some great writers too.

[harrybarracuda]

^ Great video, but there is only one thing more stupid than someone who smokes; it's a government that allows itself to be sued by a tobacco company.

"we assert sovereign immunity and refuse to answer, discuss or litigate this claim."

What I did get out of that video was that the trend towards one World government and corporatism is frightening. That's what NAFTA, EU and ASEAN are steps towards.

Thanks, that guy is quite talented an funny. He has some great writers too.

He's on the second season of an HBO show called "Last Week Tonight".

[Paddy Whackery]

LONDON—
Developing countries facing potentially pricey legal challenges from big tobacco firms are to get help from a new $4-million fund created by the philanthropists Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg.

More here: Gates, Bloomberg Create $4M Fund to Fight Big Tobacco

The smoking laws in the US were considerably stricter in the US than in Europe. When i arrived in nyc in 1994 i had a good chuckle when i saw the looks on the faces of the office workers. (If their office was on the top floor of a skyscraper then they probably had about five minutes of smoking time and they looked incredibly disgruntled). I had years of arguing with co-workers and you got a straight F-you in your face every time. The anti-smoking regulations killed a lot of the bar trade in Ireland but smokers only have themselves to blame for that...They treated it as a worker safety issue just as Bloomberg did.

Bloomberg really irritated people in his self-appointed third term with all of the usual social engineering bullshit...He decided that hot-dog vendors should not be permitted to cook potato knishes without an awning covering said hot-dog stand, as if it could be a crime against humanity. They still had them under wraps but only if they trusted you...So i'd show up with my size 13 shoes and thick Irish accent and my pleas of "i'm not a cop - honest!" fell on deaf ears...

Herr Giuliani his predecessor also had a passion for so-called 'quality of life' issues...I never had much time for his campaigns against street music or panhandlers, or whatever. Admittedly, there was one sob of a Jamaican who's tuneles saxophone playing used to interrupt my slumbers on my nightly subway ride home...Then one night years later, i had occasion to get on the subway after years of driving to work and nearly sharted myself laughing...the same sob was tooting on one of those cheesy melodicas - kind of like a little keyboard thing you play into...Apparently, he had fallen afoul of noise ordinances in the subway...

[BobR]

^ Great video, but there is only one thing more stupid than someone who smokes; it's a government that allows itself to be sued by a tobacco company.

"we assert sovereign immunity and refuse to answer, discuss or litigate this claim."

What I did get out of that video was that the trend towards one World government and corporatism is frightening. That's what NAFTA, EU and ASEAN are steps towards.

Thanks, that guy is quite talented an funny. He has some great writers too.

He's on the second season of an HBO show called "Last Week Tonight".

Thank you, he's great, even approaches the level of Jon Stewart formally of the Daily Show. Watched quite a few of his shows last night on Youtube, really enjoyed them. I love genuinely intelligent humor.

[Boon Mee]

Last time I checked, smoking was voluntary, they can no longer advertise so there are no ads directed at children, and children under 18 are not allowed to buy cigarettes.

What is there to fight?

It's just another example in the long line of behavioral patterns Liberals want to impose upon the entire population.

[harrybarracuda]

^ Great video, but there is only one thing more stupid than someone who smokes; it's a government that allows itself to be sued by a tobacco company.

"we assert sovereign immunity and refuse to answer, discuss or litigate this claim."

What I did get out of that video was that the trend towards one World government and corporatism is frightening. That's what NAFTA, EU and ASEAN are steps towards.

Thanks, that guy is quite talented an funny. He has some great writers too.

He's on the second season of an HBO show called "Last Week Tonight".

Thank you, he's great, even approaches the level of Jon Stewart formally of the Daily Show. Watched quite a few of his shows last night on Youtube, really enjoyed them. I love genuinely intelligent humor.

He used to do a spot on the Daily Show. I think that's why HBO hired him.