For instance, Philip Morris led customers to believe that “light” and “ultralight” product was less lethal. It didn’t need FDA’s permission to do that. It didn’t need anyone’s permission.

The slight problem for Philip Morris is that it didn’t deliver on its claim, the product wasn’t safer, it knew that at the time, and all these facts came to light. So it’s now being held accountable for its deception.

But Philip Morris is smart and learns from its mistakes. Its strategy now appears to be to set up circumstances so it can make a health claim yet not be accountable for it. How to do this? Get FDA involved. Then later point at FDA and say “we didn’t say it, they said it!”

Philip Morris doesn’t need FDA to make a health claim. What FDA can do for Philip Morris is give it teflon in court later when customers start getting sick.

But the history of Big Tobacco and health claims isn’t all about litigation. It’s about millions of smokers who were sold a lie. Litigation came too late for most of them.

Big Tobacco pours literally billions of dollars of advertising into selling that lie: at least it’s filtered, at least it’s low tar, it’s not as bad for you. Yes you can switch down.

Very few smokers knew the truth. To this day, few know what Philip Morris knows about filters and light and ultralight product.

Whenever I hear a cry to let Big Tobacco “inform” customers, I wonder when Philip Morris will start telling its customers what it knows about this. Nothing stopped it from doing that, either. It chose not to.

The same as it chose not to tell its customers what it knew about engineering the product for addiction.

How many people died from this?

How many lives were cut short?

How many people spent their last years in pain, unable to walk far, unable to breathe normally, losing their voice, mobility, independence, dignity?

That’s the history of “safer” tobacco product.

And litigation won’t change that.

It might reduce Philip Morris’s profits, though.

Which is why Philip Morris wants FDA approval of health claims. So it can keep and hook new customers with health claims, but then back away from those claims when the customers start getting sick. And dying.

http://www.ash.org.uk/html/regulation/html/big-one.html

LOL! Are you serious??

You find the WORD “filter” to be a deceptive health claim? What’s the claim exactly? I think I missed it!

If you don’t like the word “filter” what word would you suggest the cigarette manufacturers use to designate the cigarettes that have the little cellulose acetate “thingies” on them, from the ones that don’t? “non-unfiltered”? “Cigarettes with plastic cylinders formerly known as filters”? Or maybe you are just against “thingies” on the ends of cigarettes altogether?

>>>”In fact, Big Tobacco is entering a new phase of lies, regarding reduced carnage product. “May pose a reduced risk” and so on.”

So let me get this straight. You are claiming that every single cigarette. . .high tar. . .low tar. . .high nicotine. . .low nicotine. . .high nitrosamine. . .low nitrosamine. . .lights. . .non-lights. . .menthol. . .filtered. . .non-filtered. . .100s, etc are all EQUALLY DANGEROUS? They are all identical? No difference whatsoever between them?

Because if some of them are MORE dangerous, by extension, some of them have to be LESS dangerous. If some of them are LESS dangerous, doesn’t it behoove the tobacco companies to figure out which ones are more dangerous, and which ones are less dangerous and point that out to the consumers? If tobacco doesn’t do that, who is going to do it?

The gov’t tried to do that by requiring tar and nicotine labelling requirements. Then AFTER requiring them (over tobacco’s objections that they were practically speaking irrelevant) the gov’t then turned around and SUED tobacco claiming the machines they mandated were inaccurate!

Look, its pretty simple. Either tobacco is supposed to make safer cigarettes. . .or they aren’t! The DOJ claims as part of this hypocritical lawsuit, that tobacco was supposed to make safer cigarettes, but didn’t do it. So now you’re saying that they tobacco **shouldn’t** do it? You can’t have it both ways. Which is it. . .safer cigarettes, or not?

If the issue is who decides which ones are “safer”, Philip Morris has been petitioning the gov’t for years to make that kind of evaluation. . .but the FTC absolutely refuses to do it, or make any guidelines on how others should do it. Philip Morris has been trying for years to get the FDA authority to do that, but that has failed in Congress three seperate times.

I wish that were true.

But it’s not. I just saw one today: lite and ultralite product.

Yesterday I saw a similar one: filters.

These are two longstanding — and utterly misleading — health claims about tobacco product that Big Tobacco continues to put forward every day.

Big Tobacco still lies and misleads every day about what its product does to its customer. By no stretch of the imagination has Big Tobacco come clean.

In fact, Big Tobacco is entering a new phase of lies, regarding reduced carnage product. “May pose a reduced risk” and so on.

In this very trial trial, it continues to deny the facts about smoking and disease, secondhand smoke, and addictive tobacco product.

http://democrats.reform.house.gov/Documents/20040827162948-44223.pdf

“Despite their attempts to portray themselves as new and responsible companies, leading cigarette manufacturers continue to deny or evade in the DOJ litigation the truth about the health effects of smoking, the harm of environmental tobacco smoke, and the addictiveness of nicotine. Moreover, Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, and British American Tobacco have also not accepted evidence of their corporate behavior regarding control of nicotine in cigarettes, marketing to children, and document destruction. Their misleading and evasive statements conflict with the companies assertions that they have reformed.”

Naturally Kessler doesn’t like the majority decision considering it completely contradicts her legally erroneous mis-interpretation of RICO 1964(a). She may disagree with the DCCA but that doesn’t grant her the legal right to “side” with the dissent. Its strange that she acts so suprised by all of this; its not as though she has never had major decisions reversed by the DCCA before. In fact, she had already been reversed once before during this very trial!

Anyway, to say that this decision lays waste to the gov’t case is an understatement. Simply put the DOJ had no legal right to ask for the majority of the penalties it is asking for under the auspices of the civil RICO act. If the DOJ can prove ONGOING (not past) RICO violations, or a likelihood of same, they can get injuctions to stop said violations, but that’s about it.

Since marketing to “youth” between the ages of 18-21 is legal, Kessler MAY NOT order tobacco to cease such marketing. Since medical monitoring, smoking cessation programs, or public health campaigns don’t prevent any illegal behavior, Kessler may not grant those either. The real question is, what is LEFT?

From the gov’t request:
“Several of the components of the injunction [the gov’t is asking for]– including a prohibition on engaging in future racketeering activity; preventing Defendants or their agents from making false or misleading statements about the health effects of smoking and secondhand smoke, the addictiveness of smoking and nicotine, and the marketing of cigarettes; and ordering Defendants to make affirmative corrective statements in future cigarette advertising, marketing, and promotional materials – are plainly aimed at preventing and restraining Defendants from engaging in precisely the same fraudulent conduct that lies at the heart of the United States’ claims.”

So some of that is still valid. Kessler probably has little real authority to regulate tobacco marketing since third parties are involved, there are first amendment issues, and and it is already regulated by the FTC. Assuming they can make their allegations of ongoing and likely ongoing violations stick (which is going to be hard, once Tobacco starts talking about the MSA in their defense next week), they can force tobacco NOT to lie about addiction anymore, or not to make anymore misleading health claims.

Considering that all of the tobacco companies already concede that smoking is addictive, that it has associated health risks, and most of them are no longer willing to make *any* health related claims about their products anymore the practical effect of that injunction is ZERO. Its already subsumed by the MSA, which, of course, is what tobacco has been saying since the inception of this waste-of-the taxpayer’s money.