Judge orders tobacco companies to say they lied
Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images
WASHINGTON A federal judge on Tuesday ordered tobacco companies to publish corrective statements that say they lied about the dangers of smoking and that disclose smoking's health effects, including the death on average of 1,200 people a day.
U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler previously had said she wanted the industry to pay for corrective statements in various types of advertisements. But Tuesday's ruling is the first time she's laid out what the statements will say.
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Each corrective ad is to be prefaced by a statement that a federal court has concluded that the defendant tobacco companies "deliberately deceived the American public about the health effects of smoking." Among the required statements are that smoking kills more people than murder, AIDS, suicide, drugs, car crashes and alcohol combined, and that "secondhand smoke kills over 3,000 Americans a year."
The corrective statements are part of a case the government brought in 1999 under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations. Kessler ruled in that case in 2006 that the nation's largest cigarette makers concealed the dangers of smoking for decades, and said she wanted the industry to pay for "corrective statements" in various types of ads, both broadcast and print. The Justice Department proposed corrective statements, which Kessler used as the basis for some of the ones she ordered Tuesday.
Tobacco companies had urged Kessler to reject the government's proposed industry-financed corrective statements; the companies called them "forced public confessions." They also said the statements were designed to "shame and humiliate" them. They had argued for statements that include the health effects and addictive qualities of smoking.
Kessler wrote that all of the corrective statements are based on specific findings of fact made by the court.
"This court made a number of explicit findings that the tobacco companies perpetuated fraud and deceived the public regarding the addictiveness of cigarettes and nicotine," she said.
A spokesman for Altria Group Inc., owner of the nation's biggest tobacco company, Philip Morris USA, said the company was studying the court's decision and did not provide any further comment. A spokesman for Reynolds American Inc., parent company of No. 2 cigarette maker, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., said the company was reviewing the ruling and considering its next steps.
The statements Kessler chose included five categories: adverse health effects of smoking; addictiveness of smoking and nicotine; lack of significant health benefit from smoking cigarettes marked as "low tar," "light," etc.; manipulation of cigarette design and composition to ensure optimum nicotine delivery; and adverse health effects of exposure to secondhand smoke.
Among the statements within those categories:
"Smoking kills, on average, 1,200 Americans. Every day."
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There are little used laws on the books that allow the government to shut down a factory or even a whole industry. The decades long cover up by Big Tobacco certainly justifies such a corporate "death penalty".
Note I did NOT say ban all tobacco use. Closing down S.J. Reynolds and the others doesn't mean you can't use tobacco nor does it mean farmers can no longer grow it.
But if one wants to smoke, he (she) will have to buy the tobacco direct or grow it and then roll their own.....
This judge is full of crap. LEAVE the tobacco companies alone. If your stupid enough to smoke with all the information we have today, you pay the price.
That is why 90% of Americans (at least in the past) eventually become addicted.
I also find it interesting that the average citizen can spend prison time simply for lying to law enforcement officers (FBI) and yet Tobacco CEO's lied to congress and was never even called on it.
I guess the difference is that the average citizen cannot afford to "buy" congress or a political party.
You do realize that Hitler died in 1945? And BTW, there were many lawsuits filed against tobacco companies in the 1950's.
The fact that the tobacco companies knowingly and despicably lied to my mother's generation, while adding additives to addict the smokers even more strongly...makes me wish they would all rot in hell.
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The general public didn't know but tobacco companies knew exactly how addictive Nicotine is/was, That is why they designed cigarettes to deliver nicotine in the most effective way possible, and later even added more nicotine or made it stronger.