By Gilbert Ross, M.D.
Posted: Friday, May 29, 1998

EDITORIAL
Publication Date: May 29, 1998

The big five tobacco companies have mounted a multi–million dollar ad campaign to persuade the American people that they no longer endorse the proposed tobacco settlement. This is just part of their plan to get it passed, since they know very well that any bill they support is doomed. Some members of Congress feel the McCain bill is the best we can expect.

Well, it’s not. Not if the health of our people is the yardstick. Tobacco representatives are even now shedding torrents of crocodile tears, loudly denouncing the proposed caps on liability, a form of immunity, as “intrusive, punitive, and patently unconstitutional.” Concerns of health and equity aside, why shouldn’t these profit–hungry barons be punished for their rapacity? They have, in tantalizingly slow stages, been admitting that over the past 40+ years they have been fraudulently conspiring to manipulate the levels of their addictive substance to more efficiently ensnare our children, aiming at elementary–school age kids at one time, and even now at teen–agers. Who can blame them for this approach, as they need to replace the few who quit and the many who die.

We can blame them, and we should. As the lawyers love to say, we can never bring back those who have been killed by their addiction; but we can make the people responsible for their deaths (and disease) pay for it, by making sure that the legions of lobbyists paid for by Big Tobacco don’t get their way. We can’t allow them to convince Congress that the blood–money extracted from the tobacco companies will balance out the years of life and health lost . If the settlement is enacted, the tobacco barons will raise the price of cigarettes, and markedly curtail their outdoor and print ads. These are good things, right? Perhaps fewer people, fewer kids, will become new smokers. The tobacco companies bottom line will be barely affected, and only temporarily. The cap on yearly liability payouts will allow them to mark this off as simply a new business expense. And this cap will effectively grant them the immunity they crave, as patient’s lawyers will be reluctant to pursue a case with the prospect of having to wait a decade or more for settlement.

Sure, those billions of dollars in penalties look good at first glance. Congress and the President are already arguing about how to spend it all! But that payoff is a sellout which would let the Lords of Tobacco off the hook for the damage their cigarettes have caused, and which they knew it would cause , and which they cynically conspired to hide from the American public.

Simply have the courage to do nothing. Congress should not be pressed to act just for the sake of acting. Why do we have to offer these venal poisoners of our youth a benefit enjoyed by no other industry, immunity (in the form of liability caps) from legal responsibility for their actions? As it now stands, they will have to pay out many billions of dollars from suits still pending, and much larger amounts in the future. The common response to this threat, in all other industries, would be to clean up their act, behave responsibly, and fully inform all potential users of their product of it’s risks. This would require either a complex “package insert” similar to what one finds with medical prescriptions; or having every individual consumer sign an “informed–consent” document. The desired effect would be achieved: far fewer smokers, and those who so chose would assume the risk of their behavior.

This is strong medicine—but it’s a lethal problem! Cigarettes are highly addictive; smoking among our youngsters is actually increasing, in contrast to the trend among adults; the tobacco “executives” have manipulated nicotine levels in a shameless and fraudulent attempt to addict as many as possible; 500,000 Americans die yearly as a result of smoking.

The decision is clear—Public Health on one side, politics and money on the other. You have to decide which is more important.