Word: liggett
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...Liggett, a company with a negative net worth and shrinking business, is the door prosecutors hope to walk through to get at the likes of Philip Morris, the maker of Marlboro, which controls half the tobacco market as the center of a diversified empire. Last year Philip Morris made $6.3 billion worldwide on revenues of $69.2 billion. What excited prosecutors most was the prospect of getting their hands on mountains of documents that Liggett agreed to surrender and that they believe could incriminate all the other cigarette makers. They have already seen a slew of Liggett files, the product...
...ready to cave in, the tobacco giants call the agreement a lot of huffing and puffing and a desperate ploy by Liggett boss Bennett LeBow to cut his losses and possibly force another cigarette maker to buy him out. Liggett's deal is transferable to any acquiring tobacco company except Philip Morris. "The only ones who potentially benefit from LeBow's latest shenanigans are plaintiffs' lawyers," said a joint statement from the four major cigarette makers (Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson Tobacco and Lorillard), who account for 98% of U.S. tobacco sales. Through the first nine months...
...smoking guns as if they were product samples. The smallest U.S. cigarette maker, whose brands include Chesterfield, L&M and Eve, admitted what just about everyone outside the industry long held as fact: that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease and emphysema. In another affirmation of the obvious, Liggett acknowledged that nicotine is an addictive substance. That refuted the sworn denials that seven industry leaders, including a Liggett representative, made before Congress in 1994. Says LeBow of the thinking behind last week's confessions: "It was a business, a moral and a personal decision...
...perhaps the most revealing statement, Liggett confessed that cigarette companies like itself have long aimed their pitches directly at teenagers--something the rest of the industry denies. Declared Matthew Myers, a lawyer for the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids: "For 30 years the tobacco industry has said to anyone who will listen, 'We don't market our products to children,' despite the fact that virtually all new smokers start as children and are addicted before they are old enough to purchase the product legally. Today that claim is dead...
...children. For example, the Administration strongly backs new Food and Drug Administration rules that require smokers up to the age of 27 to show photo ID cards when buying cigarettes. (The regulations bar tobacco sales to anyone under the age of 18.) Said Vice President Gore, who greeted the Liggett deal as a breath of fresh air in a smoke-filled room: "It's about time the tobacco companies told the American people the truth...