Thursday, May 24, 2012
Global Tobacco Control on FaceBook
There's a good resource for US and international news from, and for, the tobacco control community on FaceBook. Go to
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GlobalTobacco/ to join. While it won't quite replace the fantastic GlobaLink edited by Stan Shatenstein, it is a good way to keep up with news.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Personal Confidential Redactions
What is a “personal confidential redaction” and is there a way to request that information?The Legacy Tobacco Documents Library contains a number of documents with "redactions," a black or white box or black highlighting that makes the original text unreadable. Sometimes these are redactions of personally identifiable information that has been withheld from public view based on a purported privacy concern. There are two ways you may be able to identify such a redaction. First, in or near the portion of the document that is redacted, you may find the notation “personal confidential redaction” or something similar. However, particularly for older documents, the information may simply be redacted. In that case the only way to know it is a personal confidential redaction is to look in document codes under the redaction field, which may indicate that there has been such a redaction.
In December 2011, several U.S. tobacco companies entered into Consent Orders in the
United States vs. Philip Morris, et al. lawsuit mandating certain document disclosure obligations (specific covered websites are listed below). With regard to personal information in particular, the Orders allow these companies to redact the following:
- Information about any individual: social security numbers, home addresses, personal phone numbers, financial account information, driver’s license numbers, date of birth, mother’s maiden name and names of minors.
- Information about the tobacco companies’ own employees or employees’ families, or consumers in their capacity as consumers: the same information as above, and in addition, personal email addresses and names where the document also links the person to certain kinds of information (e.g. sexual orientation, medical information, certain kinds of employment-related information).
The Orders further provide that the United States government and Public Health Intervenors (six public health groups -- the Tobacco-Free Kids Action Fund, American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, American Lung Association, Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights and National African American Tobacco Prevention Network) may request that certain personal confidential redactions be lifted in whole or in part where they are broader than the limited list of allowable redactions provided in the Orders. If you come across a personal confidential redaction that you would like to see in unredacted form, you can
contact us to request that we inquire whether the redaction can be lifted.
The following document collections available at this website are covered by these Orders:
- American Tobacco
- Brown & Williamson
- Lorillard
- Philip Morris
- R. J. Reynolds
Thursday, May 10, 2012
42,000+ New Documents Posted
42,504 documents added to the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library today!
This includes:
- 42,485 RJ Reynolds public and confidential documents
- 19 documents in the new special collection, "Plain Packaging." This is a small Research Collection of internal documents, disseminated by an anonymous whistleblower in 2010, detailing communication between Philip Morris in Melbourne, Australia, and a PR/ad agency hired by PMI to work on a campaign against plain packaging.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Opinion and Order in the RJR v FDA Warning Labels Lawsuit
Visit the UCSF Library's Tobacco Control Archives Litigation section for newly posted court documents from the RJR v. FDA lawsuit on graphic warning labels. Judge Leon's Opinion and Order regarding plaintiffs' (RJ Reynolds, et al.) motion for summary judgment is now up -
http://www.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/litigation/fdaLeon upheld the earlier preliminary injunction and found the FDA's proposed textual and graphic warnings constituted compelled commercial speech and thereby violated the First Amendment.
Monday, April 16, 2012
Follow the Historic $27B Canadian Tobacco Lawsuit
A $27-billion class-action lawsuit on behalf of an estimated 1.8 million Quebec smokers against Canada’s three largest tobacco companies began on March 12, 2012.
Documents have already been entered as evidence and you can follow the trial on the following blogs:(updates are daily,
Monday-Thursday, during the first three weeks of every month) The companies, Imperial Tobacco Canada, JTI-Macdonald Corp and Rothmans Benson & Hedges, are named in the class-action suit by a group of current and former smokers in the province of Quebec.
It's the first time tobacco companies have gone to trial in a civil suit in Canada and the central question is whether the companies adequately warned smokers of the dangers of cigarettes.
The case will likely produce at least 1 million documents over the course of this year and next!
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Formerly Confidential Documents Available!
RJ Reynolds released on its document
website 12,000 formerly confidential documents. Judge Gladys Kessler, in her ruling in the Department of Justice's case against the major US tobacco companies, required the companies to review their claims of confidentiality (usually based on trade secrets) every three years. And RJR has finally started to do just that. Some of these documents
may contain interesting information.
We will add these documents to LTDL in the not-to-distant future but thought some of you might be interested in looking at them as soon as possible. To find these documents, go to the website and enter "20120312" without the quotes in the Date Loaded query box, and click the Search button.
Have fun! Let us know if you find any startling revelations.
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