- The Guardian
- Issue #2148
Big tobacco keeps scheming. In Britain, a Tory peer proposed delaying plans for a ban on heated tobacco after enjoying a paid-for trip abroad to a leading cigarette firm’s research facility.
Tory former minister – now Lord – Ed Vaizey put forward an amendment to the tobacco and vapes Bill six weeks after his two-day visit to Philip Morris International’s facility in Neuchatel, Switzerland.
The transnational tobacco giant’s Iqos product is the world-leading heated tobacco brand; the Bill proposes phasing out tobacco by gradually raising the minimum age at which consumers can buy cigarettes and other tobacco products.
The peer’s amendment could disrupt this timetable by requiring more research to be done into the “potential” harms that such products can cause relative to cigarettes.
Philip Morris paid for Lord Vaizey’s flights and accommodation, according to his own parliamentary disclosures, though the cost of the trip on 23 April was not revealed. Neither the peer nor Philip Morris said whether other British parliamentarians were there.
Last year, $2.718 trillion was spent globally on armaments, an increase of nearly 10 per cent compared to the previous year, according to calculations by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. That is the strongest increase since 1988. Military spending by European countries will rise to $693 billion. This is an increase of 17 per cent compared to 2023 and 83 per cent compared to 2015.
PARASITE OF THE WEEK: is the Crisafulli Queensland government. Its decision to release an additional 16,000 square kilometres of land for gas exploration in the Cooper, Bowen, and Surat basins will only benefit multinational gas companies, not the people of Queensland. The vast majority of Queensland’s gas is destined for export, not for domestic use.
Lock the Gate Alliance National Coordinator Ellen Roberts said, “There are more than 16,000 gas wells already drilled and pockmarking the Queensland landscape – many of them capped and abandoned as gas companies haven’t found the gas resource they wanted. These wells, some many kilometres deep, will stay in our landscape forever – risking the underground water resources that Queensland’s farms and regional communities rely on.
“Prior to the last election, the Crisafulli government recognised the damage that coal seam gas was having on some of Australia’s best agricultural land on the Darling Downs. The LNP made an election commitment to protect it. Now six months on and they’re yet to progress that election commitment – instead expanding the land available for gas.”
There are nearly 16,000 coal seam gas wells drilled in Queensland – with many of them on some of Australia’s best agricultural land. The government must act urgently to protect farmland and water from the impacts of coal seam gas, such as water contamination, subsidence of farmland, dumped waste products and methane pollution.
“We need an urgent moratorium on the gas expansions in Queensland to prevent further damage to land, water and our climate.”
