STATEMENTS

#1 (1:26:36)
CASEY GAUL: Good morning Mr. Chairman. My name is Casey Gaul. I represent the youth and adults in the meeting and outside. Globally, every 6 seconds someone dies a tobacco-related death. That's ten people dead from contributions of your product in just the minute I will be speaking with you. Outside, as I said, at this moment, youth and adults are keeping a running count of people killed during this meeting alone. That's moms…[6 second pause]…Dead. Dads…[6 second pause]…Dead. Brothers and sisters…[6 second pause]...Dead. Already today, 6,000 people have died. How are you holding yourself accountable for these deaths and what do you have to say about your marketing techniques to market an addictive and deadly product?

LOUIS CAMILLERI: Well, thank you for your question and thank you for coming. We recognize that our product causes a variety of diseases and is harmful and is also addictive. So our responsibility that we really take very seriously has three key components to it. The first one, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, is that we support regulation that is based on the principal of harm reduction -- one, that we believe has improved over the years around the world. The second one that I believe is really important is to ensure that youth does not smoke. We try to do everything in our power to curtail youth smoking, with I would say quite a lot of success in numerous jurisdictions. The key to our programs is to ensure that youth does not have access to cigarettes, and we do a lot in markets across the world to curtail youth access to cigarettes and work very hard with our retail partners to ensure that is the case. I think you'd be surprised to know that many countries around the world don't actually have minimum age laws for cigarettes and we have been lobbying very hard across the world to ensure that there are indeed minimum age laws so that we can put in place the access restrictions that are so important. And finally we come down to the product, because ultimately if you want to reduce harm you have to address the product and we are investing a lot of human and financial resources to try come up with a product that will have the ability to reduce the risk and the harm caused by cigarettes. So we take our responsibility seriously, and we focus very hard on the issue. So thank you for coming, and thank you for your question.

#2 (1:29:48)
KYLE PEAVLEY: Good morning. My name is Kyle Peavley. I'm with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. As you know every six seconds someone is killed by tobacco products. These people are mothers, fathers, cousins, wives, sisters and brothers, and grandparents who were addicted to your deadly product, and their lives were cut short. Please join me in honoring them with an action worth a thousand words, a moment of silence: [moment of silence continues until 1:30:59, when Camilleri ends it and moves on to next question]

CAMILLERI: Are you talking about the lawsuits we've starting…To the best of my knowledge we have instated lawsuits in Uruguay, as was mentioned earlier, in Norway on display bans, in Ireland on display bans, and in the United Kingdom more recently. We were joined in that with retailers who suffer the brunt of those misguided regulations. I think we've explained why we think display bans don't make any sense. There's a perfect example north of the border here - it's Canada. It's a perfect example of both display bans and plain packaging. They've instituted some of the most severe regulations anywhere in the world. Result: illicit trade is more than 30 percent of consumption in Canada, and most of that illicit trade is sold in what is called baggies: plastic bags with unbranded cigarettes. They sell it at a very cheap price and youth smoking is rising because of those products. So again, you know, we continue to be targeted by people who come to this meeting and elsewhere that we somehow interfere with the process. That's just not true. We think our interventions are constructive and in those instances where we are shut out of the debate we will look at the court, because ultimately I think we get a fair hearing in the courts.

Note: He did not fully answer the question. He did not address legal complaints or discuss meetings with government officials.

#7 (1:44:46)

CORA PRUTSPIN, LICENSED TO KILL