Word: tobacco
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...promo begins with the swell of Coplandesque melodies. The camera pans over spacious skies, over purple mountains' majesty and amber waves of...tobacco. We hear the voice-over of a man, a simple farmer; we'll call him Merle: "Some things jes git better with time..." (more Copelandesque strains) Merle goes on to describe the painstaking process by which the "tobacco smooth enough to be Select" is cultivated and packaged. We follow the camera through Merle's tobacco fields to his barn, where another man cuts and dries the tobacco leaves. The crop will become Wintson Select's "Perfectly Aged...
...amending its product-liability laws last year. Now it can claim damages based on general health statistics, and cigarette makers can be assessed financial penalties based on their market share, rather than having to prove that an individual patient's illness was caused by smoking a particular brand. The tobacco companies have already tried to have this new statute declared unconstitutional, and makers of other products such as alcoholic beverages have expressed concern that the law could be used against them as well. But last week, in a move that should help soothe such corporate fears, the House Judiciary Committee...
...that's something the industry has avoided. More than 800 antismoking lawsuits have been filed since 1954, but not a single cigarette maker has been forced to pay a single penny in damages. Says Maura Ellis, a spokeswoman for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.: "Juries have consistently found that smokers should be held responsible for their own actions." But public sentiment began to shift during last year's congressional hearings, in which tobacco executives stubbornly refused to admit that smoking was addictive, even as internal company memos revealed that cigarette makers have long understood-and hidden-nicotine's addictive properties. Says...
Lawyers also understand that if juries begin to turn on tobacco manufacturers, the potential for making money is mind boggling. There are 46 million smokers in this country and 400,000 smoking-related deaths each year. In the Florida Medicaid case alone, the attorneys who succeed in winning the legally mandated triple damages and collecting their 25% contingency fee would divvy up a $350 million pot. So it's hardly surprising that some of the country's best product-liability lawyers have been eager to join Chiles' Dream Team. Meanwhile, 60 U.S. law firms have pledged $100,000 each...
Whatever that bill's ultimate fate, the tobacco wars are sure to drag on like a bad habit. This week several major health organizations and a bipartisan group of Governors will publicly rededicate themselves to the fight, waged with sin taxes, lawsuits, and no-smoking areas. Yet some legal experts doubt that the the Medicaid-reimbursement suits will be the decisive new weapon. Says Stephen Sugarman, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley: "My feeling is that a lot of these untried methods have a dubious likelihood of success." But as any nicotine addict knows, when people want...