Global Tobacco Industry Holds Conference on Assaulting Asia

The global tobacco industry is holding a marketing conference in Bangkok, Thailand called TabInfo Asia, that it is billing as "the hottest event on the Asia Pacific tobacco market's calendar." Scheduled workshops pose questions like "What if you were in charge of a country's health system -- what would you do about smoking?" and seminars promise to discuss "future innovations in nicotine delivery systems."

One workshop, about the global increase in restrictions on smoking and advertising, asks "are we in danger of state-sponsored behaviour modification?" The featured speaker for this event is John Luik, a tobacco industry consultant who taught philosophy at Nazarene College in Winnipeg, Canada from 1977 to 1985, at which time he was fired for misrepresenting credentials on his resume. In 1985 he started teaching applied professional ethics at Brock University, but in 1990, Brock similarly discharged Luik, citing "misrepresentation of his credentials" and saying he was unable to fulfill his duties there "since he has apparently engaged in a series of misrepresentations of his professional and/or academic qualifications to three separate employers, and had done so again, on several occasions, to Brock University."

TabInfo Asia's program promises that Luik will "challenge you ... to come up with ingenious ways of operating in an increasingly regulated, plain-pack, dark market. Promises to be a fun, productive workshop."