WASHINGTON - A federal judge ruled Thursday that the nation's top cigarette makers violated racketeering laws, deceiving the public for years about the health hazards of smoking, but said she couldn't order them to pay the billions of dollars the government had sought.
U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler did order the companies to publish in newspapers and on their Web sites "corrective statements" on the adverse health effects and addictiveness of smoking and nicotine.
She also ordered tobacco companies to stop labeling cigarettes as "low tar," "light," "ultra light" or "mild," since such cigarettes have been found to be no safer than others because of how people smoke them.
In her ruling, the judge said, "Over the course of more than 50 years, defendants lied, misrepresented and deceived the American public, including smokers and the young people they avidly sought as 'replacement smokers,' about the devastating health effects of smoking and environmental tobacco smoke (second-hand smoke)."
Kessler said that adoption of a national stop-smoking program, as sought by the government, "would unquestionably serve the public interest" but that she was barred by an appeals court ruling that said remedies must be forward-looking and not penalties for past actions.
The government had asked the judge to make the companies pay $10 billion for smoking cessation programs, though the Justice Department's own expert said $130 billion was needed.
So U.S. District Judge Kessler claims that the tobacco companies have deceived American smokers for the past fifty years about the dangers of smoking to their health, so that the big tobacco companies could continue to make huge profits from legally selling an addictive drug. But this same judge claims she can't do anything to punish the tobacco companies because of a previous ruling by an appeals court saying the companies must pay for forward-looking remedies, rather than paying penalties for past actions. What I would have to wonder is that if the big tobacco firms deceived smokers for profit, would this open up the tobacco companies to a new deluge of personal lawsuits from individuals asking to recoup their own health care costs, or even the costs needed to make them quit smoking? And what of the states? Are they going to sue to force the tobacco companies to pay for anti-smoking programs or programs to allow citizens to quit smoking? Or will the states try to force the tobacco companies to pay for current and future health care costs that is attributed to current smokers?
It certainly is interesting speculation here.
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