11:09
societynews[dot] org
SYDNEY – tobacco giant Philip Morris has launched legal action against the Australian Government Monday on the country's plans to strip company logos from packages of cigarettes and replace them with gruesome pictures of cancerous mouths and protruding, sickly children, blind the eyes.
The Government believes that the new rules will make it less attractive packages for smokers and transform the country harder Australia in the world on tobacco advertising. Various manufacturers of cigarette outraged they threatened legal action, claiming that the illegal move decreases the value of brands. Philip Morris is the first of these companies to submit a claim for damages.
"Would we expect that the compensation would amount to billions," a spokeswoman for Philip Morris Anne Edwards told the Associated Press.
The legislation, which will be introduced to Parliament in July, would ban cigarette manufacturers to print their logos, promotional text or colored pictures on cigarette packets. Brand names instead will be printed in a small, uniform and have large warnings and gruesome images, the colors of the consequences of smoking. The Bill would gradually in more than six months, from January 2012.
Hong Kong-based Philip Morris Asia Limited, which owns the Australian affiliate of Philip Morris Limited, filed a notice of claim on Monday, arguing that the law violates a bilateral investment treaty between Australia and Hong Kong.
Tobacco company says that the Treaty protects the ownership of companies, including intellectual property such as trademarks. The proposed packaging plain severely diminishes the value of the brand of the company, said Edwards.
"Our brands are really a precious heritage that we have absolute keys as company — is what helps us to compete, is what allows to distinguish our products," said Edwards. "This move ... essentially amounts to confiscation of our brand in Australia."
The Government denied the plane breaks laws and said he wouldn't back down.
"Our Government is determined to take every step, we are able to reduce the harm from tobacco," said Health Minister Nicola Roxon. "We won't be discouraged from tobacco companies or make threats of legal action."
Prime Minister Julia Gillard also brushed aside threats of Philip Morris. "We're not going to be intimidated by big tobacco's tactics," he told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Legal notice filed Monday, opening a period of three months of negotiations between the two parties. Philip Morris has said that if by the end of three months is not achieved a satisfactory result, try arbitration.
Similar steps are taken in the United States, where cigarette packages will soon be featuring new warning labels with graphic images of health effects of smoking, including lung and the corpse of sewing up a smoker.
The labels have phrases like "Smoking can kill" and "Cigarettes cause cancer". They occupy the top half — both front and back — a packet of cigarettes and being featured in advertisements.
Labels are a part of a campaign by the US Food and Drug Administration that seeks to convey the dangers of tobacco, which is in charge of about 443.000 deaths in the United States annually. The warnings must appear on packs of cigarettes in the autumn of 2012.
United States and Australia are following the example of other countries.
Government of Uruguay requires that 80% of the front and back of cigarette packages dedicated to warnings. In Brazil, labels have graphic images of dead fetuses, hemorrhages, brains and feet gangrened.
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