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Big Tobacco Loses 11-Year Fight, Forced To Broadcast 'Dangers of Smoking' Ads (nbcnews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes NBC News:
Smoking kills 1,200 people a day. The tobacco companies worked to make them as addictive as possible. There is no such thing as a safer cigarette. Ads with these statements hit the major television networks and newspapers this weekend, but they are not being placed by the American Cancer Society or other health groups. They're being placed by major tobacco companies, under the orders of the federal courts. "The ads will finally run after 11 years of appeals by the tobacco companies aimed at delaying and weakening them," the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, American Lung Association, Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights, National African American Tobacco Prevention Network and the Tobacco-Free Kids Action Fund said in a joint statement.
"It's a pretty significant moment," the American Cancer Society's Cliff Douglas said. "This is the first time they have had to âfess up and tell the whole truth." The Justice Department started its racketeering lawsuit against the tobacco companies in 1999, seeking to force them to make up for decades of deception. Federal district judge Gladys Kessler ruled in 2006 that they'd have to pay for and place the ads, but the companies kept tying things up with appeals. "Employing the highest paid lawyers in America, the tobacco companies used every tool at their disposal to delay and complicate this litigation to avoid their day of reckoning," Douglas added.
The ads will inform Americans TV viewers that "More people die every year from smoking than from murder, AIDS, suicide, drugs, car crashes, and alcohol, combined," according to one of the ads." Besides $170 billion every year in medical costs -- plus another $156 billion in lost productivity -- roughly one in five deaths in America are smoking-related, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with cigarettes killing 480,000 Americans every year.
"It's a pretty significant moment," the American Cancer Society's Cliff Douglas said. "This is the first time they have had to âfess up and tell the whole truth." The Justice Department started its racketeering lawsuit against the tobacco companies in 1999, seeking to force them to make up for decades of deception. Federal district judge Gladys Kessler ruled in 2006 that they'd have to pay for and place the ads, but the companies kept tying things up with appeals. "Employing the highest paid lawyers in America, the tobacco companies used every tool at their disposal to delay and complicate this litigation to avoid their day of reckoning," Douglas added.
The ads will inform Americans TV viewers that "More people die every year from smoking than from murder, AIDS, suicide, drugs, car crashes, and alcohol, combined," according to one of the ads." Besides $170 billion every year in medical costs -- plus another $156 billion in lost productivity -- roughly one in five deaths in America are smoking-related, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with cigarettes killing 480,000 Americans every year.
Hopefully to eventually be followed up by advertisements by the sugar industry reporting the severe risks to health posed by their product. Honestly, if I had any kind of power at all, Big Tobacco and Big Sugar's leading figures would be defendants in crimes against humanity trials. They've killed more people than the Nazis, and with as much planning and strategy as the Third Reich.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Putting things in financial terms is also important when deciding how to allocate limited resources. As a society should we invest more in anti-smoking ads, or highway guardrails? The only way to make rational decisions is to look at the cost and the quality-life-years added. We currently make some poor decisions, such as spending billions on extending the lives of geriatric patients for a few more miserable months, when that money would be far better spent on something like prenatal nutrition.
For smokers, TFS is only giving one side of the financial ledger. Sure, productivity is lost when someone gets lung cancer in the prime of their life. But on the other side of the ledger, we save a fortune on Social Security and Medicare payments when elderly smokers die years earlier. It isn't clear that smoking is a net loss to society.