Word: philip
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...years, Ian Uydess had finally had enough. Enough, he says, of seeing lawyers in the laboratory, his language vetted for such dangerously accurate words as "addictive." Enough too of not being able to do the job he believed he had been hired to do: develop a safer cigarette for Philip Morris, the world's largest tobacco company. Uydess, an associate senior scientist at Philip Morris for 11 years, quietly resigned from his job in 1989. Not until two weeks ago, however, when he witnessed the spectacle of his former employer playing hardball while cigarette maker Liggett worked out a settlement...
Last week the Food and Drug Administration released affidavits given by Uydess and two other former Philip Morris employees, William Farone and Jerome Rivers, that threaten to push the tobacco industry farther out on a legal limb. All three men directly contradict the testimony of former Philip Morris ceo William Campbell before Representative Henry Waxman's 1994 congressional subcommittee. At those hearings Campbell, along with six other tobacco ceos, swore that he did not believe nicotine was addictive, and that Philip Morris did nothing to manipulate or increase nicotine levels in its products...
...Waxman subcommittee that "nicotine levels in tobacco are measured at only two points in our manufacturing process: prior to the tobaccos' being blended, and then 18 months later when those leaves have been manufactured into finished cigarettes." But according to Uydess, "Nicotine levels were routinely targeted and adjusted by Philip Morris." Rivers, who was a shift manager at the Richmond plant where the company made reconstituted tobacco, stated that the nicotine level in the product was measured "approximately once per hour...
...that the state claims are targeted at children. The lawsuit is the first government action to claim the tobacco industry has violated federal mail and wire fraud statutes, as well as racketeering and conspiracy laws. Eight tobacco firms are named in the suit, including industry leaders R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris, along with public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, the Council For Tobacco Research - USA. and the Tobacco Institute. Philip Morris issued a statement saying it believes the state will lose after spending millions of taxpayer dollars and that Texas taxpayers should also be "deeply disappointed" by the waste of money...
...learned that even before news of the Liggett deal broke, other settlement feelers had gone out. Florida state senate minority leader Ken Jenne says that last Tuesday he was approached by Jon L. Shebel, president and ceo of the powerful Associated Industries of Florida, a lobbying group that includes Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds and the Tobacco Institute. Shebel confirms that a conversation took place in which actual dollar amounts were bandied about. He admits that he mentioned payments of $105 million a year, "for a long time, maybe indefinitely," to settle the state's $1.4 billion lawsuit. He says...