{"id":51978,"date":"2019-05-12T16:21:32","date_gmt":"2019-05-12T20:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=51978"},"modified":"2019-05-12T16:22:34","modified_gmt":"2019-05-12T20:22:34","slug":"opera-and-cigarettes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=51978","title":{"rendered":"Opera and Cigarettes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By: Frank Cadenhead. It was not just \u201cpolitically incorrect.\u201d The Belgian government has accused the Op\u00e9ra Royal de Wallonie in Li\u00e8ge of possibly violating a law by receiving financial support from a tobacco company. Support by Japan Tobacco International, whose brands include Winston and Camel, has not been hidden and the company\u2019s logo appears is on the home page of the opera\u2019s website, alongside those of other sponsors.<\/p>\n<p>In an article in the Belgian newspaper, <em>Le Soir<\/em>, Maggie De Block, the Federal Minister of Public Health, declared that the government will \u201ctake the necessary measures\u201d to investigate the infraction. The newspaper quotes the 1977 law for the protection of consumer health as prohibiting \u201cadvertising and sponsorship by tobacco\u201d in Belgium.<\/p>\n<p>Japan Tobacco International, however, asserted that this sponsorship was legal. The company maintains that this support is separate from any commercial purpose or activity. \u201cOur collaboration has never made any reference or publicity for tobacco products,\u201d they maintain.<\/p>\n<p>This potential violation of the law will be investigated by the inspection services of the ministry.<\/p>\n<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0;float:none;height:34px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/?p=51978\" send=\"false\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"450\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By: Frank Cadenhead. It was not just \u201cpolitically incorrect.\u201d The Belgian government has accused the Op\u00e9ra Royal de Wallonie in Li\u00e8ge of possibly violating a law by receiving financial support from a tobacco company. Support by Japan Tobacco International, whose brands include Winston and Camel, has not been hidden and the company\u2019s logo appears is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1637],"tags":[4562],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51978"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51978"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52017,"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51978\/revisions\/52017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}