Judge Rejects Big Tobacco's Effort To End Lawsuit Over Dangers Of Cigarette Smoking

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge has rejected the tobacco industry's latest effort to end a case in which the companies were found to have concealed the dangers of smoking for decades.

The nation's largest cigarette manufacturers had argued that U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler no longer has jurisdiction in the government's landmark lawsuit against the companies because a 2009 law empowers the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to regulate the industry.

The companies say that in light of the FDA's powers, there is no longer a reasonable likelihood they will commit violations. Kessler ruled that argument unconvincing.

The judge is considering forcing the companies to pay for a campaign of "corrective" statements on the addictiveness of nicotine and the lack of health benefit from cigarettes sold as "low tar," "ultra-light" or "mild."

Comments

[ReedYoung]

07:58 PM on 06/02/2011

This sets precedent for suits against the Koch brothers' for the dishonest, publicly harmful activities of all their global warming deniar tanks (so-called "think" tanks). If they had really been thinking, they would have diversified 20 years ago into clean energy.

[grant06]

06:37 PM on 06/02/2011

What drives me crazy is that kids are still able to get cigarettes. Why not raise the smoking age every year so that if you are eighteen now and for some stupid reason want to smoke: fine. But if you are seventeen and it is illegal for you to smoke, then it will be next year and every year thereafter. That way the farmers and tobacco workers will slowly wean off the tobacco economy while eventually, cigarettes will be a sad side story to history.

[VJSleight]

12:41 PM on 06/04/2011

Because there is too much money in tobacco, both for the tobacco companies and the retailers who sell cigarettes. The tobacco companies have influenced the laws concerning their product for years to make it beneficial for them, not for their customers.
It's illegal in all 50 states to sell to a minor but stores still do. There needs to be stronger penalties for selling to minors and we need a social norm change from thinking teen smoking is just a rite of passage that it something all kids will try and that it's just a bad habit, to understanding the true physiological changes nicotine does to the brain which causes physical addiction.
www.stopsmokingstayquit.blogspot.com

[blukazoo]

03:33 PM on 06/02/2011

It amazes me that cigarettes are still allowed to be sold. They provide no benefit to humans and are known to cause cancer. We recall cars if there's even the slightest chance their design may cause and accident. We recall toys because they're painted with lead paint even though they aren't intended to be consumed. It's about time we stopped regulating the sale of cigarettes and stopped the sale altogether.

[Bombadillo22]

05:33 PM on 06/02/2011

They provide pleasure for those who smoke. Happy, relaxed people are a benefit to society.

Car exhaust has as much potential to cause cancer. But cars and cell phones provide us pleasure too..and we'll never get rid of those--and shouldn't try.

We all have a right to pick our own poison. Noone should deny or choose someone elses'.
That's where trouble starts (and don't say 'that's not fair that I might catch someone elses smoke', because you could also get killed by another driver's car, or your friends may call you too muich on your cell phone-putting you at greater risk for cancer. That might lead to no cell phones in bars).

NOw to the point...coporations that lie and pretend, and won't pay their taxes, do need to be gotten rid of altogether.

[grant06]

06:38 PM on 06/02/2011

I don't suck on tailpipes.

[ReedYoung]

08:01 PM on 06/02/2011

Just make sure you're downwind from me if you're smoking anything that isn't marijuana.

[prodemlib]

01:55 PM on 06/02/2011

awesome!

[jabreal00]

12:53 PM on 06/02/2011

I cannot believe anyone still smokes in this day and age, especially in industrialized countries.

[Guy Underbridge]

01:58 PM on 06/02/2011

Have a smoke, then we'll talk

[Chlowina]

12:11 PM on 06/02/2011

Now, if we could get this judge to go after Corbett and demand he return the money he withdrew then shut down from PA's low cost health care which came from the settlements with the tobacco companies.

[Blueneck]

09:25 AM on 06/02/2011

For better or for worse, big tobacco has created a "tax dependency" with the states. It was truly very clever of their lawyers to create these state programs funded by the tobacco tax. Now the states can't kill their "golden goose" without damaging their own state budgets.

The fines levied by the settlement of this case will not cripple or put big tobacco out of business, (Plus, many of us remember John Boehner passing out checks from the tobacco lobby on the House floor several years ago.) Big tobacco is not going away anytime soon.

Plus, anybody alive and sentient today should know about the health effects and addictive properties of tobacco. It surprises me some that they still are getting sued.

[sensimilla]

12:05 PM on 06/02/2011

they are getting sued because tobacco lied AND altered the cigarettes to be MORE addictive using substances such as ammonia.

[usamade]

08:35 AM on 06/02/2011

The money that Pennsylvania received from the tobacco industry to be held for healthcare was used to create Adult Basis which was a low income insurance plan. Our new Republican Governor has gotten rid of Adult Basic and is using the money elsewhere.

[PennsylvaniaHero]

10:23 AM on 06/02/2011

Yep, using the money for "improving Pennsylvania's business." Know none other then bringing his friends business to the state and giving them grants as well as tax breaks.

[Chlowina]

12:12 PM on 06/02/2011

Pizzer, ain't it? I read that he plans on setting up low interest loans for businesses. Again, skrw us.

[pinkeyelemonade]

08:07 AM on 06/02/2011

First off, yes, the article did cause me to light up a cigarette [at least these are additive free].

Secondly, as a staunch opponent of the DEA, and the War on Drugs, I'm also inclined to support, more or less, tobacco and alcohol legality.

However, I must say I'll be very pleased to see the tobacco companies shell out a crippling sum of their own profit. I know it's unlikely, though. They'll find a loophole, just give them time. Don't forget corporate welfare, and the history of ''punishment'' they've faced since Day 1. Ahh, the conundrum.

But it's only fair, isn't it? They've killed so many, who - willing or not - bought into the addiction responsible for the inevitable financial imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical care, often becoming DEBT...shouldn't they get to scratching our backs, for once?

[theveggiedude]

03:30 AM on 06/02/2011

Time to go after the Meat and Dairy industry. They have been doing the same thing the tobacco industry did in this respect.

[memery]

03:11 AM on 06/02/2011

Cigarettes are the only product in the American marketplace that, when used as directed, kill one-third of the people that buy them.

Would we allow Detroit to make cars that killed this percentage of people?

[VJSleight]

12:48 PM on 06/04/2011

I don't think the real problem is that smokers die too young from smoking but they live too long with the effects--I've had clients house bound, waiting for someone else to die, so they could get a heart transplant because of smoking. Dying from COPD, as you cart an oxygen tank can take years. Often smokers think that they will just smoke up until the day they die and then -boom, a heart attack but it's the disability caused by smoking that is the real tragedy because smoking causes disabilities to almost every smoker, if they live long enough.
I want a long life and a short death but smoking only offers a short life and a long death.
www.stopsmokingstayquit.blogspot.com

[TeraWatt60]

11:11 PM on 06/01/2011

This sounds so much like the "debate" over global warming/climate change. You can directly substitute the two terms and it is the exact same bullchit arguments

[taliesin2323]

08:14 AM on 06/02/2011

There is no debate. Cigarettes kill - oops - Nicotine Kills. There are over 10,000 Scientists who support the fact that there is a gradual Global Warming which is now accelerating. As the earth warms up more and more, more gases such as methane and CO2 are released from areas that were once frozen. And it accelerates more and more. Nicotine is addictive, a carcinogin, and can cause emphasima and other breathing problems. Some people are more resistant than others but in a population of 1000 smokers and 1000 non-smokers, there is a 47% greater mortality rate among smokers. This is an established fact gathered from over 1000 trials So, smoking kills. Live (or die) with it.

[smolenski]

09:20 AM on 06/02/2011

Nicotine doesn't kill. Nicotine is the hook that keeps people addicted. It's everything else in the cigarrette that causes cancer.

[pistol13]

10:41 PM on 06/01/2011

This is a good start. Now let's see some real guts and stop ALL the subsidies to tobacco farmers. Think there are enough courageous people in Congress to do that? I don't . Then jack up the Federal tax for a PACK of cigarettes by $2.00. Make it hurt to smoke. Use that and the money we would save in subsidies(if Congress had the guts to do it) toward the national debt. Then smokers could consider themselves patriotic. Do the same for alcohol. We might as well get something out of these people that are intent on killing themselves(and others in the case of alcohol) beside huge medical bills.

[shmoonie]

04:40 AM on 06/02/2011

what about all those factories that are putting millions of tons of co2 in the air we all breathe? You know corporations are people now so go pick up the big abusers. Fracking is killing our water tables. Corporations (them again?) put how many chemicals in our water, food and air. What do you think the cost is there?
In fact, why stop there? Obese people. Mentally ill, the physically deformed they're all costing us money. People on Welfare, Medicaid and Social Security. All costing us money. The MIC are really costing us money and lives.
Now to use an old term, I'm gonna go mellow out. Bye

[pinkeyelemonade]

08:12 AM on 06/02/2011

I wouldn't mind seeing regulations so harsh on the industry as to stop making cigarettes 20 to a pack, and instead sell them individually. Only one cigarette per pack. Then raise the taxes on each pack by at least $10. I doubt many people of any political stripe would agree with that....I'm aware that the sound of my proposal is so outrageous it's hilarious. But cigarettes aren't food, or any truly vital commodity. And it wouldn't prohibit the companies from SELLING anything....

[VJSleight]

12:56 PM on 06/04/2011

A tobacco advocate in Australia is proposing a novel idea that smokers need a "license" to buy cigarettes. In the states we would probably call it a prescription instead of a license but same idea. If you're in pain and need pain relief, you need a Rx to get pain meds, so nicotine addicts would need a Rx to get their drug of choice. You wouldn't be able to buy without a Rx. The license fee would be refunded after the smoker quits.
www.stopsmokingstayquit.blogspot.com

[Jeany]

09:59 PM on 06/01/2011

Well thank heavens. After years of the subversion of truth by industry shill biostitutes, we will be spared watching the DoJ being fouled by justitutes.

[fiftyseven]

09:48 PM on 06/01/2011

I have mixed feelings about tobacco. Tobacco companies did deliberately deceive the public (I've seen the documents), but what does it say about us that we need to be told that it's bad for us. Anyone who has smoked, or sat through an evening in a smoke-filled room, knows how it makes you feel, even without the now familiar clinical findings. Tobacco companies used the fact that people like to smoke, and tend to believe what they want to, to promote tobacco products that were supposedly not as harmful. Come on. When did we stop taking responsibility for ourselves? Were we a people that truly celebrates life, we would collectively destroy the industry by neglecting it, but instead we turn to legislation and litigation, making a few lawyers very rich and changing nothing. Does anyone else find this weird?

[Jamie R]

10:58 PM on 06/01/2011

You can't argue that the campaign by the government to reduce smoking has changed nothing. There have been enormous, positive changes in smoking patterns, most of it brought about by government educational campaigns and higher taxes on tobacco. And we can, and should, do more.

[theveggiedude]

03:34 AM on 06/02/2011

"When did we stop taking responsibi­lity for ourselves?"

That argument went out the window when they found second hand smoke is hazardous to *other* peoples health.

[Hawkeye2010]

12:26 PM on 06/02/2011

You can smoke away from other people, that is possible.