Word: tobacco
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Maybe Big Tobacco should be suing the government, instead of the other way around...
...This, of course, is what anti-anti-smoking contrarians in the U.S. have been whispering for years: to the government, Big Tobacco is half scapegoat, half cash...
...cigarettes at exorbitant rates because higher per-pack costs affect teen smoking - and "sin" taxes go down easy with the public. It's a regressive tax, since smokers are statistically lower-income types. Yet nobody complains - not even Republicans, who hate tax cuts and take big contributions from Big Tobacco - because all politicians must be anti-teen-smoking. And all politicians love money...
...Then there's that little matter of the 25-year, $206 billion settlement that the four largest tobacco firms reached with 46 states in 1998. The states were suing to recoup the Medicare dollars spent on ailing smokers. But what if smokers had been actually saving them money over the years by dying young...
...some point during the negotiations, Philip Morris must have been tempted to commission a similar study in the U.S. - but of course this sort of calculation can be seen as a little on the callous side. Big Tobacco knows that while its image may never sparkle, it can always get worse. And while the government may talk about putting Big Tobacco out of business, it'll never happen...