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Big Tobacco Goes On The Offensive (MO)

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published

Altria_logoPhilip Morris USA, part of Altria Group Inc. (NYSE: MO), has filed a rather interesting lawsuit which could act to set the precedent for case law for years ahead. Big Tobacco asked a federal court to overturn a San Francisco ordinance which would effectively ban the sale of tobacco products in convenience drug stores.

The suit is asking the court in the Northern District of California todelay the enforcement of the ordinance and ultimately to declare itunconstitutional.

The ban was apparently passed by a divided Board of Supervisors and isapparently already the subject of a separate lawsuit pending in statecourt challenging its propriety.

Frankly speaking, there is no reason that these convenience drug storesshould be banned from selling tobacco products.  If you go to the drugstore to buy your cancer treatments, you might as well be able to buyyour cancer there ahead of time.

Jon C. Ogg
September 24, 2008

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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