FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                          Contact:  Richard A. Daynard

November 21, 2001                                                                             Mark Gottlieb or

                                                                                                                 Edward L. Sweda

                                                                                                                 617-373-2026

 

 BACKGROUNDER from the TOBACCO PRODUCTS LIABILITY PROJECT

 

FACTS ABOUT THE UNITED STATES LAWSUIT
AGAINST THE MAJOR CIGARETTE COMPANIES

 

            The federal government filed its lawsuit against the tobacco industry on September 22, 1999 in U.S. District Court in Washington, DC.  .

 

            The complaint alleges that the cigarette companies have, since the 1950s, conspired to defraud and mislead the American public and to conceal information about the effects of smoking.  Specifically, the concerted efforts by the defendants include the following:

 

  • Making false and misleading statements to create a false controversy about whether smoking causes disease, even though they knew that smoking does cause disease;

  • Making false promises that they would undertake or sponsor research to determine whether smoking cause disease;

  • Sponsoring research that was designed not to answer the question of whether smoking caused disease, promoted biased research that would assist in defending lawsuits brought by injured smokers, and suppressed research that suggested that smoking causes disease;

  • Denying that nicotine is addictive, despite knowing that the opposite is true;

  • Failing to warn consumers about the effects of smoking, including that cigarettes are addictive;

  • Refraining from developing, testing and marketing potentially less hazardous products; and

  • Denying that they marketed and/or targeted products to children, although they actively sought to capture the youth market.

 

            The federal government's lawsuit employs the special authority of the U.S. Attorney General to bring civil actions under the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) statute, to obtain equitable relief, including the disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, and to prevent and restrain certain unlawful conduct.  The complaint includes more than 100 allegations of mail and wire fraud, including making false and misleading statements to the public and using the mails and wire transmissions to further the companies' scheme to defraud.

 

            While U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler, on September 28, 2000, dismissed the government's claims that were brought under the Medical Care Recovery Act and the Medicare Secondary Payer Act, she upheld the government's right to proceed with its RICO claim.  In her ruling, Judge Kessler noted that the extent of the tobacco industry's potential liability "remains, in the estimation of both parties, in the billions of dollars."  That is exactly the conclusion of a renowned group of experts whose reports were submitted to the court on November 15, 2001.  

 

            It should be remembered that, once the Department of Justice's lawsuit was filed, the tobacco industry wasted no time in attacking it.   Gregory Little, a lawyer for Philip Morris called the lawsuit "a blatant political maneuver" that was "nothing more than the height of hypocrisy."  Little added: "We will not succumb to politically correct extortion.  We will not settle this lawsuit.  We will defend this case vigorously, and we expect it to be thrown out promptly."

 

            More than two years later, the government's lawsuit not only has not been thrown out -- it is strong and viable!

 

            Here are some samples of the evidence the government is prepared to present at trial:

 

            "Smoking-attributable health costs for smokers who smoked as youths (i.e., before age 21) during the period 1954-2000, and who have been or are expected to be diagnosed with a major smoking-caused disease such as lung cancer, we expect to exceed: $800 billion, for persons who smoked daily as youths; $750 billion, for persons who smoked 5+ cigarettes a day as youths; $530 billion, for persons who smoked 10+ cigarettes a day as youths."

--Timothy Wyant, Ph.D (president of Decipher, a statistical consulting company), Scott L. Zeger, Ph.D (Chairman of the Department of Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins University) and Leonard S.  Miller, Ph.D (Professor, School of Social Welfare, University of California at Berkeley).

 

 Tobacco industry revenue from the "youth-addicted population" (i.e., everyone (regardless of age) who was addicted to smoking before age 21) between 1954 and 2000 ranges from $552 billion to $926 billion. 

--Franklin M. Fisher, Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (and the US government’s principal witness in the Microsoft case).

 

            "I have seen no evidence to show that teenagers, or others who start smoking, have realistic knowledge of what it is like for a smoker to experience lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, congestive heart failure , or any of the other fates awaiting smokers that many would consider 'worse than death.'"

--Dr. Paul Slovic, Professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon.

 

            "Young smokers tend to underestimate the risk of becoming addicted to cigarette smoking."

--Dr. Slovic.

 

            "Thousands of new smokers must be recruited daily to replace those who quit or die.  Tobacco companies have long been aware that these recruits must come from children and adolescents under age 18." 

--Dr. Slovic.

 

            "Most smoking begins before the age of 18.  Young smokers are unlikely to switch from the first brand they smoke.  The tobacco companies conducted sophisticated research on young people and smoking….Despite the tobacco industry's frequent public assertions, the empirical evidence is quite clear in showing that tobacco company marketing is effective in influencing young people to smoke." 

--Anthony Biglan, Ph.D., Senior Scientist and Director of the Center for Community Interventions on Childrearing at Oregon Research Institute.

 

            "As recently as May, 1997, RJR was studying brand preferences of 12 to 20-year-olds." 

--Dr. Biglan.

 

            "It is the other self-service-oriented, advertising-saturated, convenience, "ma and pa," liquor, and tobacco-only stores where the tobacco companies now see their best opportunities for attracting new customers, and they are reportedly targeting their sales-force efforts and promotion toward those stores." 

--Paul N. Bloom, Ph.D., Professor of Marketing, Kenan-Flager Business School, University of North Carolina.

 

            "The huge post-MSA spending increase on trade deals, value-added, and other forms of promotion, along with the relatively lower and more varied real prices these promotions have helped to create, have likely raised demand for tobacco products more than the elimination of billboards and certain sponsorships have reduced it."

--Dr. Bloom.

 

            "Tobacco advertising has a significant and positive effect on tobacco consumption.  Banning advertising in a limited number of media have little effect." 

--Henry Saffer, Ph.D., Professor of Economics at Kean University and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

 

 Surgeon General reports "represent a state-of-the-art consensus of the scientific community on the extent of scientific knowledge about cigarette smoking at the time at which they are published." 

--David M. Burns, M.D., Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine.

 

            "Exposure to cigarette smoke causes human diseases including: cancer of the lip; cancer of the tongue; cancer of the mouth; cancer of the esophagus; cancer of the pancreas; cancer of the larynx; cancer of the lung; cancer of the bladder; cancer of the kidney; ischemic heart disease; cerebrovascular disease; atherosclerosis; aortic aneurysm; peripheral vascular disease; chronic bronchitis; emphysema; chronic airway obstruction (also called COLD or COPD)."

--Dr. Burns.

 

            "The impact of this misinformation campaign [after the 1964 Surgeon General's report] by the tobacco industry was to reverse the decline in smoking that resulted from the publication of the Surgeon General's report and its statement that the scientific community was certain that cigarette smoking caused lung cancer in men." 

--Dr. Burns.

 

            "Smokers have a seriously deficient of the risks of cigarettes and that, in particular, adolescents' understanding is insufficient to make informed decisions about becoming smokers." 

--Dr. Neil Weinstein, Professor in the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.  

 

            "I conclude that smokers, especially adolescent smokers, do not adequately comprehend the risks of smoking and that they underestimate both the likelihood and seriousness of the harms to them from smoking and the likelihood that they will continue to smoke long after they plan to stop." 

--Dr. Weinstein.

 

 "Most people smoke cigarettes regularly in order to experience nicotine's effects on the brain and the body, and smokers become addicted to nicotine."

--Neal L. Benowitz, M.D., Professor of Medicine, Psychiatry and Biopharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco.

 

            "The tobacco companies have long understood and exploited the addictive nature of nicotine.  In particular, tobacco companies have developed technology to control the nicotine levels in cigarettes." 

--Dr. Benowitz.

 

            "There is sufficient evidence to establish that many children and adolescents under the age of 18 smoke cigarettes because they are addicted to nicotine.  This is true for most children and adolescents who are daily cigarette smokers." 

--Dr. Benowitz.

 

            The tobacco industry defendants will file their own experts’ reports by February 1, 2002 and all depositions should be concluded by September 15, 2002. Tens of millions of pages of new internal tobacco industry documents will have been turned over to the government in the course of the litigation. 

 

Last summer it was reported that that Bush Administration was hoping to settle the case because it believed that success at trial was unlikely. That set off a firestorm of criticism from the public health community and members of Congress.  These critics noted that serious negotiators do not begin settlement discussions by disclosing that they think they will lose.  The tobacco companies refused to negotiate and the Department of Justice has been moving forward aggressively with the case ever since. The 22 expert reports filed November 15th demonstrate just how strong the government’s case is.

 

The case is scheduled for trial in July, 2003.

                       

 -- 30 --