Thirty-five years after the Surgeon General's warning, in October 1999, the world's largest tobacco company, Philip Morris, acknowledged that tobacco smoking causes lung cancer, emphysema and heart disease, and that tobacco smoking is addictive. Philip Morris did it in the modern way, on the Internet.
Click up www.philipmorris.com and there it is:
Cigarette Smoking: Health Issues for Smokers
Cigarette Smoking and Disease in Smokers: There is an overwhelming medical and scientific consensus that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema and other serious diseases in smokers. Smokers are far more likely to develop serious diseases, like lung cancer, than non-smokers. There is no "safe" cigarette. These are and have been the messages of public health authorities worldwide. Smokers and potential smokers should rely on these messages in making all smoking-related decisions.
The Philip Morris site even included a link "for information about quitting smoking," which is like Coca-Cola throwing in the towel and telling its customers to switch to Pepsi.
Is Philip Morris being a good corporate citizen? Or is this dramatic about-turn a colossal instance of buyer beware? Did the tobacco giant admit their products are poisonous and addictive to thwart future lawsuits by diseased or dying smokers and their heirs? Asked this question, Philip Morris communications director Peggy Roberts said, "No, I wouldn't say that's true. I think what we are trying to do is reach out and be open and accessible to people in every way possible."
A year ago, the U.S. tobacco industry, faced with class-action lawsuits from all 50 states, agreed to a settlement of $206 billion (US) to go toward the cost of treating smoking-related diseases, the money to be paid out over 25 years. This does not mean that new class-action lawsuits can't be launched against the tobacco industry by individual smokers.
An ongoing landmark case involves 500,000 Florida smokers in a class-action against the tobacco industry. It could result in a mammoth punitive damage award against U.S. tobacco companies, enough to bankrupt the industry. In October, 1999, a Florida appeals court ruled that punitive damages can be awarded in a single lump sum instead of deciding cases one smoker at a time.
Last July, the jury in the Florida case found that the top five cigarette-makers in the U.S. produce a "defective" and "deadly" product. The jury is expected to set a figure for punitive damages in November, and the figure may be enormous - perhaps crippling to the tobacco industry.
"The stakes have suddenly become humongous," said Richard Daynard, a law professor at Northeastern University in Boston. "The fate of the industry rests on this jury that has already found that the (tobacco) industry has behaved outrageously." The response from Dan Webb, top lawyer for the tobacco companies, is if the Florida award is as big as people expect it to be it would cause an "enormous amount of irreparable harm to the industry."
Could such a lawsuit bring the tobacco industry to its knees? A World Health Organization report in the mid-1990s says the tobacco industry worldwide makes $168 billion, more than the economies of 180 of the world's 205 countries. The report also says, "Tobacco causes more deaths than all other forms of substance abuse combined," killing three million people a year (one every ten seconds).
The admission by Philip Morris of the dangers of smoking, and its addictive nature, raises the issue of whether cigarettes should be declared an illegal substance. However, even many vehement opponents of cigarette smoking are reluctant to go this far, fearing the same consequences that resulted from the prohibition of alcohol.
In Canada, British Columbia is the first province to take on the tobacco industry. In November, 1998, the province enacted the Tobacco Damages and Health Care Costs Recovery Act, which allows lawsuits against tobacco companies to recover costs of treating diseased smokers. One of the lawyers representing the province is former B.C.Supreme Court Justice Thomas Berger.
Ontario announced early in 1999 it is planning a $40 billion (US) lawsuit against U.S. tobacco manufacturers selling cigarettes in Canada. The money would be used for health-care costs for the treatment of diseased cigarette smokers. In announcingthe planned lawsuit, Ontario Health Minister Elizabeth Witmer said, "We're going to sue the tobacco industry for damages, based on the allegations of a criminal conspiracy."
In October, 1999, a coalition of anti-smoking groups in Canada urged Ottawa and five provinces to raise taxes on cigarettes by at least $10 a carton. The coalition released a study that said since tobacco taxes were cut in 1994, the federal government has lost $2.87 billion in revenue, and the five provinces (Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island) that cut taxes lost about $2 billion. The coalition also argued that the cutback in taxes on cigarettes in Canada has encouraged more young people to start smoking.
