After victory against Big Tobacco, Uruguay’s Vazquez takes aim at alcohol
Montevideo — Uruguay’s President Tabare Vazquez is taking his crusade against cigarettes to alcohol, while doubling down on tobacco regulation, after a court threw out a dispute with Philip Morris. The government will issue a decree next week requiring that all tobacco producers use the same plain wrapper, becoming the seventh nation to do so, the 77-year-old oncologist said on Thursday. Legislators could pass government-sponsored legislation to increase control over Uruguay’s loosely regulated alcohol industry as early as this year, he said. "We don’t want to implement prohibition like the one that failed in the US. We want a holistic law" that includes prevention measures, Vazquez said. "We got to the point where people on the boardwalk where selling alcohol from the back of their cars." The nation of 3.4-million people successfully fought units of Philip Morris International, which sought damages for regulations Vazquez imposed on the tobacco industry during his first term as pre...
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