Tobacco Trouble

BusinessWeek has an article on the current woes of cigarette makers in the US. The US Justice Department is taking the big cigarette makers (Philip Morris, Inc., R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company, Lorillard Tobacco Company, Liggett Group, Inc., and American Tobacco Company), to court under the Racketeer-Influenced & Corrupt Organizations Act asserting that they have been illegally conspiring since 1953 [PDF]. The suit also names the Council for Tobacco Research as a defendant, claiming that the organization was created in a public relations effort by the cigarette companies to mislead the public. The government claims that the cigarette companies knew that cigarettes lead to disease and death; knew that their marketing was influencing kids, and were purposely targeting kids [PDF]; knew their product was addictive. The suit claims that in 1953, at the behest of Paul Hahn, President of American, the other cigarette companies met and determined that scientific research that warned of the dangers of cigarette smoking was "extremely serious" and "worthy of drastic action." Their response -- a public relations effort to counter the research findings. They decided to deny that cigarette smoking caused disease, and maintain that any danger was still and "open question" despite having knowledge to the contrary. Why? Accepting and admitting that cigarette smoking posed a serious danger to the public would have effectively ended their industry. The government is seeking to extract $280 billion from them -- almost all of their profits in last 50 years. Read more in Justice Department's 2,543 pages findings of fact. [PDF - 15.5MB] The Tobacco Control Archives also provides access to some interesting unpublished and once secret documents from the tobacco companies that were leaked.