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Also in this section:
San Carlos city council hears arguments about dams
University scandal deepens, rector lashes out at Bernal
Gas price protests
The city and the cigarette lobby
Panama News Briefs
 

Photo by Eric Jackson

The city and the cigarette lobby

Panama is and has been for the most part a nation of non-smokers. However, the international tobacco industry has been making great efforts to change that, and has had a lot of success among the youth. In the Moscoso administration, the cigarette industry scored a coup when Phillip Morris was brought into the public schools for an "anti-drug education" program, a central theme of which was that smoking is a grown-up thing to do. That pro-smoking campaign no longer had a place in the public schools when the Torrijos administration took office, and the national government has passed anti-smoking legislation, for example prohibiting smoking in most enclosed areas of buildings open to the public. But it seems that British American Tobacco has gotten its foot into one of this country's public doors. As in this anti-littering poster, a collaborative effort between BAT and Panama City's alcaldia.