No Tobacco Money Grab

The federal government's case against the tobacco industry seems all but dead now that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has ruled out "disgorgement" of $280 billion in allegedly ill-gotten gains as a remedy under the RICO act's civil provisions. In light of today's ruling, the most likely outcome is a settlement that includes some token concessions on marketing practices. As I've said, you needn't think cigarette manufacturers are paragons of honesty to recognize the implausibility of the Justice Department's case and welcome its well-deserved demise.

Comments

[Jor]

How about also funding R&D on lung cancer / COPD?

[Gilbert Martin]

The states have already extorted enough money out of the tobacco companies - no need for the Feds to get in on the act too.

[lockjaw02]

Jor, How about having the American Lung Association, American Cancer Society, all those anti-smoking orgs, and other similarly organized tax-exempt "non-profits" (like the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation) fund cancer research instead of spending their money to hold lavish conferences to brainstorm ways to support their environmental tobacco smoke propaganda, and buy researchers (like Stan Glantz and James Repace) advertising (like the American Legacy Foundation) and lobbists to demonize smokers and push for smoking ban legislation?

[American Lung Association]

Locjaw02 - Because we're evil, money grubbing, scam artists!

[Fabius]

At Penn there is a building called the Johnson Pavillion. Near the entrance is a portrait of Robert Wood Johnson. In his right hand is a cigarette.

I thought they might have painted it out by now - Penn is not exactly smoker friendly - but it was still there last summer.

I could go for a Gauloise right about now.

QFMC cos. V

[Michael J. McFadden]

Gilbert wrote: "The states have already extorted enough money out of the tobacco companies"

Wrong. The money is stolen directly from smokers. The TC's and the States designed the MSA so that smokers would pay it all... an invisible and unlegislated tax on a minority that it's OK to hate.

American Lung Assn wrote: "...we're evil, money grubbing, scam artists!"

Correct. That's exactly what the Antismoking Lobby and Big Pharmaceuticals are. According to Arthur Caplan, chair of U of PA's Dept. of Medical Ethics, reviewing three recent books documenting the corruption of the Pharmaceutical Industry, the difference between the two enterprises is simply that "Big Pharma, unlike Big Tobacco, is not selling inherently evil products." If Big Tobacco should be sued under RICO and smokers forced to pay another "tax" doubling or tripling the basic cost of their product, then Big Pharma should be sued as well and consumers forced to pay a "tax" doubling or tripling the basic cost of prescriptions. I wonder how "American Lung Association" would feel about THAT?

Michael J. McFadden
Author of Dissecting Antismokers' Brains
http://cantiloper.tripod.com/index.html

[lockjaw02]

LOL, I wouldn't have quite put it that way. Money grubbing and scam artists may be two descriptions that fit, but not necessarily evil. Misguided or maybe ignorant would be better terms.

It's not well advertised, but it is a fact that very little money goes into actual lung cancer research compared to the huge amounts funding the enormous tobacco control industry.

http://www.lungcancercoalition.org/webabca.html

There are many things that cause lung cancers, but not many people are out there looking for other real causes because over the past 30 years the anti-tobacco propaganda machine has so successfully convinced nearly everyone that tobacco is the primary or just about the only culprit (other than asbestos) that it is commonly accepted as fact.

The same situation was true not long ago about prevailing thought on the cause of stomach ulcers. The established medical community used to attribute practically all ulcers to an overproduction of stomach acids. This is until Dr Marshall finally identified h pylori bacterial infections as being a more likely culprit in the early 1980's. Before then, the pharmaceutical industry was happy to continue to produce and doctors unwittingly willing to prescribe antacids as the only Rx. They "knew" the "cause" (but not the mechanism(s) behind it) so the prevailing thought was there was no need to waste the expense on research to look for other causes. Now, thanks to Dr Marshall, many ulcer sufferers are being cured with antibiotics rather than forced to live with the painful and sometimes deadly condition.

Does anyone really think that if all tobacco use were ever totally eradicated that lung cancer would virtually disappear in the next generation who wouldn't inhale even so much as a picogram of tobacco smoke over the course of their lives?

[Agammamon]

Ya know, Kyle Mills had a pretty good book (Smoke Screen) dealing with the whole extort money from tobacco idea.

The gist was the tobacco companies came out and said
"hey, we make a product you asked for. You hate us for it but can't stop buying it. No one forces you to use it, yet you vilify us as the greatest mass murderers of the modern age. Fine - starting, oh, right now we are not going to manufacture a single cigarette. Right now we've got people pulling 'em off the store shelves."

[JonBuck]

Agammamnon:

The problem here is that for decades they denied that smoking was hazardous to your health and suppressed evidence to the contrary. How could anyone make an informed choice about smoking in those circumstances? As libertarians, aren't we all about choices?

[Larry A]

JonBuck: [The problem here is that for decades they denied that smoking was hazardous to your health and suppressed evidence to the contrary.]

Well, yeah. And they were naughty for doing so. But:

1) No one believed them. Hence the slang terms like "coffin nails." Just like the current "We think smoking is awful" ad campaign smacks a little of hypocracy.

2) Over the same period of time the firearm industry told the unvarnished truth about their products, and ended up just as vilified and subjected to their own round of lawsuits.

You can't win against the nannykins.

[Memnon]

When u start selling poisonous and lethal chemicals to the gen pop, you have to roollll with the punches. Cause a lot a-punching it gonna be. Unless all contracts are not only legal but moral.

[The Heretik]

The Heretik applauds anyone willing to look through the smoke to hold up a mirror to the ugly face of commerce as we know it.

Now get back to work.

[kevrob]

Re: Dan Lee's passing

There is at least one situation where damage from environmental tobacco smoke is not malarkey. Non-smokers who live and/or work at close quarters to smokers for a long time can be harmed. From what I know of "art school" types, smoking is still part of the whole cool pose. It would not surprise me if Dan spent many of his years hunched over a drawing board in a small, poorly ventilated studio, rebreathing his studiomates' clove ciggies, and maybe sharing a flat with smokers.

Of course, he might have worked in a smoke-free environment, and lived in a smoke-free home, and fallen prey to some other carcinogen. I know that some art supplies used in the recent past have been toxic.

Kevin