As for Tobacco Observer’s non-legal points, they are clearly not based in fact and are completely ideological…

Tobacco Observer wrote: “You may not like smoking, but the manufacture and sale of cigarettes is a highly regulated, highly taxed legal business in this country.”

Highly regulated compared to what? Name another drug delivery system that has absolutely no FDA regulation? No ingredient listing? The FDA wouldn’t allow nicotine water and nicotine lollipops to be sold over the counter in 2003. As for highly taxed, the tax revenues don’t come close to paying for the tobacco-related health care costs paid by state and federal health care programs, not to mention the privately-shared costs to health insurers. The Tobacco Industry makes billions in profits, smokers pay with their lives and taxes, and the rest of the general public subsidizes the health care costs. The commentary is either meant to mislead or is just plain ignorant.

Tobacco Observer wrote: “Popular tobacco useage in the USA existed since its inception, and predated *ALL* of the current cigarette companies, so allegations that people only smoke because of the cigarette companies are disengenous. The cig companies exist because people like to smoke. . .not the other way around!”

Not sure what “popular tobacco useage” is, but if you mean tobacco was used prior to the marketing and promotion, that’s absolutely right. However, with the industrial revolution, mass media and marketing, and political influence limiting regulation, the Tobacco Industry took an addictive and deadly product and made it a part of modern culture. Nobody in his right mind would claim people smoke only because of the Tobacco Industry. But nobody in his right mind would ever claim that popular tobacco use predated all Tobacco Industry influence and that tobacco use is strictly a response to pure consumer demand. Beanie Babies are not a product of people having an innate need for stuffed animals.

Tobacco Observer wrote: “For the government to mandate warning labels on cigarettes, to permit the sale of cigarettes, indeed to subsidize the growth of tobacco, to derive major tax revenues from the sale of cigarettes, to regulate tobacco’s advertising, sales, import, export, and distribution, and then to go around and accuse the tobacco companies of acting in some sort of criminal “conspiracy” to sell them, not only smacks of rank hypocrisy, but also defies common sense. The gov’t has had DECADES to change tobacco policy, if it wanted to, and indeed has chosen to do so many, many times by enacting stiff taxes, mandating health warnings, mandating ingredient disclosure, measuring of consituents like tar and nicotine, and in many, many other ways.”

The only point you make here is that social and political inertia are powerful. Funny how common sense is so relative. To me it’s common sense that once our epidemiologic and medical research demonstrated the true dangers of smoking, our society began to tax, advocate for stricter regulation, slap on warning labels, etc… The only hypocrisy I see is an industry that knows its product is addictive and deadly and spends millions running public image campaigns talking about quitting and their youth prevention efforts, while at the same time (1) spending billions on advertising that directly targets those same smokers and has a clear trickle over effect on those same youth, (2) spending hundreds of millions in legal fees trying to claim they didn’t know tobacco was addictive and that they didn’t target youth, and (3) spending tens of millions lobbying against smoke-free workplace policies, reasonable regulation by the FDA, and laws making sure retailers don’t sell to kids.

Common sense? Hypocrisy? I don’t think these words mean what you think they do.

That’s simply not the case.

“Tobacco has been exempted from every major federal health and safety law enacted, by Congress including the Consumer Product Safety Act, the Fair Labeling and Packaging Act, the Toxic Substances Act, and the Hazardous Substances Act. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) regulates foods and drugs, but tobacco is not classified as either a food or a drug, so is not subject to FDA regulation. Tobacco is the least regulated consumer product in the U.S.” Tobacco Use: An American Crisis, p. 53 and Washington Monthly, September 1993, p. 22

“The irony is that many of the poisons found in cigarette smoke are subject to strict regulation by federal laws which, on the other hand, specifically exempt tobacco products.” K. H. Ginzel, M.D, “What’s in a Cigarette”, ACSH, October 1, 1990.

More info at:

http://new.globalink.org/tobacco/trg/Chapter32/Chapter32POLITICSPage16.html

http://www.acsh.org/healthissues/newsID.832/healthissue_detail.asp

The sad fact is, this product that kills over 400,000 Americans a year, is less regulated than the box of macaroni and cheese on your shelf.

This fact is a testament to Big Tobacco’s power in the Congress.

“Congress has failed to pass more than 1000 tobacco control bills proposed since 1964, and has accepted $9.3 million in tobacco industry campaign contributions in the past three elections.” Washington Post, January 12, 1994

More info at:

http://www.opensecrets.org/lobbyists/indusclient.asp?code=A02&year=1999

http://www.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/state.html

http://www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/BOC_T_DK.asp?L1=20&L2=26&L3=10&L4=22&L5=0&State=

http://www.gaspforair.org/gasp/gedc/artcl-new.php?ID=76

Big Tobacco’s power in the Congress, its ability to kill legislation it doesn’t like, is one reason this trial is happening. When legislation fails as a public policy tool, litigation is an option.

For 40 years the Congress failed to stop an epidemic that was killing millions of Americans. For 40 years Big Tobacco has blocked virtually all effective legislation and regulation that would have stopped it.

That’s why tobacco product remains lightly regulated, highly profitable, and the number one cause of preventable death in America.

No. That’s not the point of civil RICO actions under 1964(a) and never has been.

If the gov’t can prove ongoing racketeering, that section of the civil racketeering code allows the court to apply three remedies to prevent further racketeering activity: dissolution, divestiture, and “reasonable restriction on future activities”. The gov’t hasn’t even bothered to ask for the first two things.

If undoing past purportedly illegal activities is what the gov’t wanted, they could have chosen to bring a criminal RICO suit against tobacco industry executives. But the gov’t deliberately did NOT do that, because otherwise they would have have to deal with pesky legal obstacles like statutes of limitations, proving things beyond a reasonable doubt, the fifth amendment, juries, etc. In fact, the DOJ itself, after conducting a protracted study of the matter, decided that it simply did not have grounds to bring any sort of criminal action against the tobacco industry.

So instead the gov’t deliberately brought the weaker civil case, essentially so that it wouldnt immediately get laughed out of court. Remember, the original gov’t case was largely based on recovering Medicare costs. That part of the case was discarded years ago as being entirely without legal merit. The remaining part of the the case that is now being tried, the RICO case, was literally an afterthought, tacked on to pad the bill a bit.

You may not like smoking, but the manufacture and sale of cigarettes is a highly regulated, highly taxed legal business in this country. Popular tobacco useage in the USA existed since its inception, and predated *ALL* of the current cigarette companies, so allegations that people only smoke because of the cigarette companies are disengenous. The cig companies exist because people like to smoke. . .not the other way around!

For the government to mandate warning labels on cigarettes, to permit the sale of cigarettes, indeed to subsidize the growth of tobacco, to derive major tax revenues from the sale of cigarettes, to regulate tobacco’s advertising, sales, import, export, and distribution, and then to go around and accuse the tobacco companies of acting in some sort of criminal “conspiracy” to sell them, not only smacks of rank hypocrisy, but also defies common sense. The gov’t has had DECADES to change tobacco policy, if it wanted to, and indeed has chosen to do so many, many times by enacting stiff taxes, mandating health warnings, mandating ingredient disclosure, measuring of consituents like tar and nicotine, and in many, many other ways.

For the government to allege, as it has, that legal smokers between the ages of 18 and 21 are actually a “youth addicted population” and to try to enjoin sales to this group. . .merely because they feel it, is insanity. Since when does the DOJ have the right to decide for itself national tobacco policy? More to the point, selling cigarettes simply IS NOT ILLEGAL, and the executive branch of the gov’t has no right to try and enjoin those sales via an end-run around the legislative process.

If Clinton’s DOJ wished to lobby Congress to ban the sale of cigarettes, or to use monies to battle the ill-effects that smoking has on society, that would be a bizarre action for that branch of gov’t, but at least it would be legally proper. But this lawsuit legally CANNOT be used for that reason, nor reasonably SHOULD it.

Tobacco industry influence is in many ways comparable to the “Big Bang.” They created a cultural and political Big Bang through marketing and political activism that have established smoking as common product despite knowing its addictiveness and deadliness. We get cigarettes - a product that kills at least a third of the people who use it - at the same places we buy milk, gas, and candy. The industry’s drive to make smoking part of our social fabric was a conscious, strategic, well-funded, and monumental campaign. It was, and continues to be, a societal Big Bang.

And just like the planets continue to float through space at millions of miles an hour, billions of years after the actual explosion, the impacts of the industry’s brilliant yet devious deeds will be felt for generations to come. They will be felt for generations to come, that is, unless something active is done to reverse the momentum of their previous efforts.

So, to the question. In this case, does RICO specify that not only must the tobacco industry stop its illicit actions, but it must enact sufficient remedies so as to blunt the residual and ongoing benefits of their previous illegal actions?

If they must do the latter, then it seems clear the industry hasn’t addressed the fact that they will enjoy future benefit from past illegal actions. Funding a national network of quitlines and access to free phamacotherapies, funding independent youth prevention programs and anti-tobacco media, restricting where tobacco products can be sold (not in convenience stores and grocery stores, but only in tobacco outlets), establishing FDA regulation of tobacco, and eliminating all tobacco advertising and marketing seem like they might stop the momentum.