From the start of production of Elita the cigarettes were produced in R ga, Latvia, in the factory at Miera st. 58 owned by the state by the company R gas Tabakas Fabrika, which was founded in 1887. The capacity of the factory was 5.6 billion cigarettes per year. Output was distributed into different types of the cigarettes, from which Elita took a notable place. In 1992 R gas Tabakas Fabrika was sold to the Latvian Denmark company House of Prince Latvia. In 1997 volume of production of Elita was about 24 million packs, a new variant of the cigarettes was introduced Elita Plus . 1 From 2002 Elita is produced on the new production line using king size (84 mm) tubes. In 2003 House of Prince was renamed into Scandinavian Tobacco and two years latter was sold to the British American Tobacco. Production at R ga factory was stopped in 2009 due to the 30% drop in sales and increase of illegal sales.

Advertisement edit

Elita was not actively advertised in the mass media, TV advertisement was only once, then the factory was closed. Also some influence to the mark was introduced in the 1970 es. The factory made a special edition of Elita for the users of Latvian National Film Festival and after 2005 issued different types of the packages with the depictions of the famous Latvian castles and palaces. On the packages was printed the following sights

  • Cesvaine Palace
  • Jaunpils Castle
  • Rund le Palace
  • Turaida Castle
  • Bridge through Venta in Kuld ga

Also was issued a special package dedicated to the 40 years of independent Latvia.

Varieties edit Variety Year Tar Nicotine CO Elita (white) 1967 n/a n/a n/a Elita (black) 1967 n/a n/a n/a Elita black with a GOST 1967 n/a n/a n/a Elita 1992 n/a n/a n/a Elita Gold 1992 n/a n/a n/a Elita De luxe 1992 n/a n/a n/a Elita Full Flavour 2001 12.00 0.9 n/a Elita Lights 2001 n/a n/a n/a Elita Lights Menthol 2001 n/a n/a n/a Elita Light 1992 n/a n/a n/a Elita Light De luxe 1992 n/a n/a n/a Elita Light Menthol 1992 n/a n/a n/a Elita Plus Lights 2003 9.0 0.8 n/a Elita Plus Super Lights 2003 5.0 0.4 n/a Elita Plus Super Lights 2004 6.0 0.5 n/a Elita Plus Full Flavour 2002 11.0 0.8 n/a Elita Plus Full Flavour 2003 12.0 1.0 n/a Elita Plus Blue 2004 8.0 0.7 n/a Elita Plus Menthol 2004 n/a n/a n/a Elita Plus Silver 2004 5.0 0.5 n/a Elita Plus Classic 2004 10.0 0.8 n/a Elita Flor Exclusive Tobacco 2004 n/a n/a n/a Elita Gold 2004 8.0 0.6 9.0 Elita Original 2004 10.0 0.8 n/a Elita Gold Special edition 2007 n/a n/a n/a Elita Original Special edition 2007 n/a n/a n/a Market share, price and volume edit

According to the data submitted by the Latvian State Revenue Service, Elita was the most sold brand of the cigarette with a filter in Latvia for the period of about twenty years, mostly because of affordable price. 4 Among the other most popular cigarettes were Wall Street and Winston. Market share of Elita is shown in the following table

Year Percent Volume (pack) Price Currency 1967 n/a n/a 0.30 RUR 1980 n/a n/a 0.30 RUR 1997 20 n/a 0.30 LVL 2002 14.39 27 460 000 2004 16.0 n/a 0.31 LVL 2005 26.9 103 000 000 n/a LVL 2007 16.0 n/a 0.38/0.55 (SE) LVL 2008 n/a n/a 0.95 LVL 2009 n/a n/a 1.35 LVL See also edit

Cnn interactive – tobacco under attack



(CNN) Tobacco was first used by the peoples of the pre Columbian Americas. Native Americans apparently cultivated the plant and smoked it in pipes for medicinal and ceremonial purposes.

Christopher Columbus brought a few tobacco leaves and seeds with him back to Europe, but most Europeans didn’t get their first taste of tobacco until the mid 16th century, when adventurers and diplomats like France’s Jean Nicot for whom nicotine is named began to popularize its use. Tobacco was introduced to France in 1556, Portugal in 1558, and Spain in 1559, and England in 1565.

The first successful commercial crop was cultivated in Virginia in 1612 by Englishman John Rolfe. Within seven years, it was the colony’s largest export. Over the next two centuries, the growth of tobacco as a cash crop fueled the demand in North America for slave labor.



At first, tobacco was produced mainly for pipe smoking, chewing, and snuff. Cigars didn’t become popular until the early 1800s. Cigarettes, which had been around in crude form since the early 1600s, didn’t become widely popular in the United States until after the Civil War, with the spread of “Bright” tobacco, a uniquely cured yellow leaf grown in Virginia and North Carolina. Cigarette sales surged again with the introduction of the “White Burley” tobacco leaf and the invention of the first practical cigarette making machine, sponsored by tobacco baron James Buchanan “Buck” Duke, in the late 1880s.



The negative health effects of tobacco were not initially known in fact, most early European physicians subscribed to the Native American belief that tobacco can be an effective medicine.

By the early 20th century, with the growth in cigarette smoking, articles addressing the health effects of smoking began to appear in scientific and medical journals. In 1930, researchers in Cologne, Germany, made a statistical correlation between cancer and smoking. Eight years later, Dr. Raymond Pearl of Johns Hopkins University reported that smokers do not live as long as non smokers. By 1944, the American Cancer Society began to warn about possible ill effects of smoking, although it admitted that “no definite evidence exists” linking smoking and lung cancer.

A statistical correlation between smoking and cancer had been demonstrated but no causal relationship had been shown. More importantly, the general public knew little of the growing body of statistics.

That changed in 1952, when Reader’s Digest published “Cancer by the Carton,” an article detailing the dangers of smoking. The effect of the article was enormous Similar reports began appearing in other periodicals, and the smoking public began to take notice. The following year, cigarette sales declined for the first time in over two decades.

The tobacco industry responded swiftly. By 1954 the major U.S. tobacco companies had formed the Tobacco Industry Research Council to counter the growing health concerns. With counsel from TIRC, tobacco companies began mass marketing filtered cigarettes and low tar formulations that promised a “healthier” smoke. The public responded, and soon sales were booming again.



The next big blow to the tobacco industry came in the early 1960s, with the formation of the Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health. Convened in response to political pressures and a growing body of scientific evidence suggesting a causal relationship between smoking and cancer, the committee released a 387 page report in 1964 entitled “Smoking and Health.” In unequivocal terms, it concluded that “cigarette smoking is causally related to lung cancer in men.” It said that the data for women, “though less extensive, point in the same direction.” The report noted that the average smoker is nine to 10 times more likely to get lung cancer than the average non smoker and cited specific carcinogens in cigarette smoke, including cadmium, DDT, and arsenic.

The tobacco industry has been on the run albeit profitably ever since. In 1965, Congress passed the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act requiring the surgeon general’s warnings on all cigarette packages. In 1971, all broadcast advertising was banned. In 1990, smoking was banned on all interstate buses and all domestic airline flights lasting six hours or less. In 1994, Mississippi filed the first of 22 state lawsuits seeking to recoup millions of dollars from tobacco companies for smokers’ Medicaid bills. And in 1995, President Clinton announced FDA plans to regulate tobacco, especially sales and advertising aimed at minors.



Tobacco has been around longer than the United States, and a causal relationship between smoking and cancer has been acknowledged by the U.S. government for over three decades. So why has it taken so long for the tobacco industry to be forced to settle lawsuits over the dangers of cigarettes?

Previous lawsuits went nowhere. Tobacco companies, with deep pockets for legal maneuvering, easily beat back early suits, including the first one, filed in 1954. Their most serious challenge before the 1990s came in 1983, when Rose Cipollone, a smoker dying from lung cancer, filed suit against Liggett Group, charging the company failed to warn her about the dangers of its products. Cipollone, who eventually died, initially won a $400,000 judgment against the company, but that was later overturned. After two arguments before the Supreme Court, Cipollone’s family, unable to afford the cost of continued litigation, dropped the suit.

Now, however, tobacco companies face a different legal environment. Over the past three decades, the law has changed considerably.

Today, state laws and legal precedents hold manufacturers more liable for the effects of their products. And the old legal defense of “contributing negligence” which prevented lawsuits by people with some measure of responsibility for their own condition is no longer viable in most jurisdictions. Instead, a defendant can be held partially liable and forced to pay a corresponding percentage of damages. Finally, the notion of “strict” liability has developed this means a defendant can be found liable whether or not they are found negligent. If a product such as tobacco causes harm, the company that produced it can be held responsible, even if it wasn’t aware of the potential danger.