A New Direction on Tobacco Road
A New Direction on Tobacco Road Three of the most despised subcultures in American life are engaged in intensive negotiations to settle the tobacco war. Each group brings a legacy of profound...
...David Tell, for the Editors...
...A third of active smokers die before ever receiving a dime of Social Security, for example...
...By the 1960s, especially after the surgeon general's report and the warning labels it inspired, that number had almost doubled...
...The 100-plus law firms around the country pursuing cigarette damage claims are all working on a contingency-fee basis...
...These are politicians, remember...
...They are in league with the anti-tobacco lawyers, and they have appropriated the relevant party line...
...They will accept independent state and local restrictions— beyond anything the federal government might impose—on tobacco marketing...
...The president of R.J...
...But wait...
...Few do...
...They will even accept federal regulation of nicotine by the Food and Drug Administration, though they have so far fought that Clinton administration policy in court...
...States will squabble among themselves over how the money is administered—and which of them will get what share...
...Their share of this one, according to the newspapers, might total $360 million a year...
...Many smoking opponents cannot abide any arrangement that tobacco companies can abide, almost as a matter of pure philosophy...
...Since 1994, more than 20 of them have filed suit against the tobacco industry...
...That shouldn't be tied to the money issues and the legal issues...
...Reynolds Tobacco, for instance, recently gave a trial deposition in which he claimed that cigarettes are no more dangerous than many dietary staples...
...Over a lifetime, smokers pay vastly more taxes than non-smokers do: an average of almost 60 cents a pack nationwide...
...And the fund will benefit ex-smokers and their families, thus preserving the fiction that tobacco "victimizes" people...
...It is because, despite the efforts of smoking opponents to draw the parallel, cigarettes are not the moral, spiritual, or public-policy equivalent of any illegal drug...
...The whole plan may yet fall apart, of course...
...This is a lie...
...As early as 1952, 40 percent of Americans already believed smoking directly caused cancer...
...It will reduce demand by young people, who are the most price-sensitive share of the tobacco market, most of all...
...So, led by R. J. Reynolds and Philip Morris, they now seem prepared to offer a truly astonishing array of concessions long sought by anti-smoking activists...
...Several will be running for governor in 1998...
...And because they die earlier, they absorb billions fewer dollars in public pension and retirement benefits...
...critics on the right and left are already lining up to complain about any forthcoming "grand compromise...
...The idea that smokers are unwitting "victims" who do not bear the bulk of responsibility for whatever illnesses they contract is, put plainly, dumb...
...The legislation necessary to enact such a plan in the first place will be almost impossibly complicated...
...It is the example of adult smokers, more than the encouragement of any cartoon camel, that makes new, youthful smokers possible...
...But it's based on miserable economics...
...millions have done it, and ex-smokers now outnumber smokers in the United States...
...In and out of court, the lawyers argue that Big Tobacco's failure to acknowledge health risks has hoodwinked smokers into deadly addiction and that cigarette marketing practices have kept them there...
...It's by no means likely that their ludicrous "social-costs" argument will prevail in court...
...They will accept a ban on vending-machine sales...
...Cigarette smoking, like any drug taking, spreads from user to user...
...The focus should be on public health and kids," former surgeon general C. Everett Koop warns...
...But the AGs have added a twist: They seek monetary "societal" damages on behalf of their citizens, smokers and non-smokers alike...
...Some of these complaints have merit, especially where victimization is concerned...
...Credit the AGs for ingenuity: This is rather like suing the Mafia to recover police and prison costs...
...Also at the table are politicians, specifically state attorneys general...
...Quitting is tough, but it's far from impossible...
...Net it all out—as careful analysts have repeatedly done at the RAND Corporation, the Congressional Research Service, and elsewhere—and smoking actually saves "society" money...
...And from what's been reported about the tobacco negotiations so far, there's reason to hope this might be one of those times...
...From mixed and impure motives, sometimes good things come...
...Conservatives and economic purists don't like the $300 billion compensation fund...
...The advertising bans involve major questions of First Amendment law...
...It does harm to others—not as immediately, but almost as surely...
...Joining the industry executives are tort lawyers, a well-heeled consortium of whom has besieged the tobacco companies with class-action litigation for a decade...
...When all is said and done, such a deal on cigarettes might prove to be a pretty good deal for all of us...
...In an era of flight from personal responsibility, there can be no worse message than that adults are somehow the hypnotized playthings of a clique of dope pushers...
...Why should smokers not pay more for their vice...
...The state attorneys general have a comparable incentive to bargain...
...Given all the obvious sophistry involved in this dispute, why should anyone expect the sophists to strike a deal worthy of public attention and embrace...
...They want to be...
...Each group brings a legacy of profound dishonesty to the table...
...If the AGs settle, they will be able to claim that they faced down the modern merchants of death and earned their states some cash...
...To pay for its offered "reparations," the tobacco industry will raise cigarette prices by somewhere between 25 and 50 cents a pack...
...By all accounts, tobacco companies will accept a total ban on outdoor advertising, a total ban on print advertising depicting human or cartoon characters (like Joe Camel), a total ban on "product placement" advertising in movies and on television, and a total ban on cigarette sponsorship of sporting events...
...The market adjustments it implies involve major questions of antitrust law...
...There's hardly a smoker still alive in this country, certainly none under the age of 60, who took his first puff unaware that it might be bad for his health...
...It's the centerpiece of the deal, the trade of cash for immunity, that's getting people hot and bothered...
...Most tobacco executives still officially deny such facts...
...An end to a litigation machine built on specious arguments that corrupt public discourse and damage public policy...
...They haven't been paid yet...
...They will fully disclose the chemical additives in cigarettes...
...They are more eager for a deal than anyone...
...And these are mere details...
...Trial lawyers are more addicted to money than any smoker is to nicotine...
...He cited "British research on carrots...
...Its costs will be passed along to current smokers, who will thus be penalized for making an informed choice to continue endangering their own lives...
...Even so, we cannot escape the times we live in, and at the moment, the deal being discussed seems, amazingly, a good and fair one...
...That will reduce nationwide demand for cigarettes by 6 to 11 percent...
...So much money, in fact, that economist W. Kip Viscusi has joked that cigarettes "should be subsidized rather than taxed...
...The overall trial lawyers' lobby, most of whose members are not participating in the negotiations, will oppose any settlement that limits the bar's future ability to sue...
...And this is not only because people can quit if they are concerned about the health risks of cigarettes...
...Their stock prices are significantly deflated by investor uncertainty over future legal judgments, and they spend hundreds of millions of dollars more each year on attorneys' fees...
...In return for all this—and a $300 billion payment to "compensate" the states and settle individual damage claims—tobacco executives want some serious form of immunity from past and future liability...
...And what about the tobacco companies...
...And it will strike a blow for adult responsibility that more than offsets any "victimization" nonsense implied by compensation...
...Their effect on people's characters and souls is entirely benign, even if their effect on people's respiratory systems is not...
...As is the idea that they are powerless before nicotine and Joe Camel...
...Fewer smokers...
...And since no damage award in an American tobacco lawsuit has ever been upheld on appeal, plaintiffs' attorneys have every reason to prefer a macro-settlement...
...Because public health programs treat cancer- and emphysema-afflicted smokers, the AGs allege, tobacco is a multi-billion-dollar drain on their treasuries...
...First, you've got the cigarette industry, whose product puts the average customer in a coffin half a decade or more before his time...
Vol. 2 • May 1997 • No. 33
