The report grew out of a study the FTC conducted last year on cigar sales and expenditures for advertising and promotion. The agency required five major cigar makers to file "special reports" on sales and ad costs for 1996 and 1997, a time when cigar smoking took a huge jump in popularity.

The study found substantial increases in advertising and promotion expenditures in that period. Total expenditures increased 32 percent, from $30.9 million in 1996 to $41 million in 1997.

Conventional advertising was up 51 percent; magazine advertising was up 49 percent; and newspaper advertising jumped 254 percent. Internet advertising rose 180 percent, from $78,000 in 1996 to over $218,000 in 1997.

The study also revealed that over 75 percent of the cigar industry's marketing costs were for "nontraditional" forms of promotion such as discounts to retailers, celebrity endorsements, and product placements in movies and television shows.

Other sections of the FTC report discuss the increased prevalence of cigar smoking; the National Cancer Institute's report on the health risks of cigar smoking; consumer perceptions of the health risks; and legislative recommendations that include three rotating warnings on cigar labels.

The cigar makers furnishing data to the FTC were Consolidated Cigar Corp.; Swisher International, Inc.; General Cigar Co., Inc.; Havatampa Inc.; and John Middleton Inc.

Federal Court Agrees With Realtors, Strikes RI Law Barring Use of Public Records for Commercial Purposes A section of a Rhode Island law prohibiting the use of public records "to solicit for commercial purposes" violates the First Amendment, a federal district court judge has ruled.

The Rhode Island Association of Realtors sought a declaratory judgment against the law, contending it violated the group's commercial speech right to obtain records on recently licensed real estate brokers to solicit new members.

U.S. District Court Judge Ernest Torres, after devoting much of his analysis to standing issues, analyzed the law under the U.S. Supreme Court's 1980 Central Hudson test.

Because the parties agreed the speech at issue concerned lawful activity and was not misleading, the court proceeded to the second prong of Central Hudson -- whether the government had asserted a substantial interest to justify the regulation.

The state attorney general argued that the prohibition against the use of public records for commercial solicitation served the substantial interest of protecting the privacy rights of the state's citizens.

However, the court found that "the Attorney General has failed to articulate the State's interest in protecting the privacy of its citizens as a justification for the limitations" in the law.

The court also noted that the attorney general failed to show how the statute served the purported privacy interest and "why that interest could not be equally well served by private or proprietary information from the Act's definition of 'public records.'"

The court cited three federal appeals court cases -- United Reporting, Speer, and Innovative Database Systems -- for the proposition that "attempts to prohibit the use of public records for solicitation purposes consistently have been held to violate First Amendment guarantees."

The state attorney general's office has appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

The ruling comes in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision to review the Ninth Circuit's ruling in United Reporting over the constitutionality of a law that discriminates against the commercial usage of public records.